Long, long ago, when streets still had pay phones and we all had landlines, it was software programmer Neil Papworth who sent the first text message in 1992. And the rest is history!

It's two decades ago and the way consumers connect, talk, and build relationships has seen a drastic shift in the past few years. Gone are the days when the validity of a human connection was based on proximity. In the past 20 years, texting has replaced other forms of communication as our main tool.

Texting has facilitated communication in a variety of ways, including enabling individuals to skip lengthy phone conversations and making a harmless 'Hello' much quicker. 

The Pew Research Center says that 72 per cent of teenagers routinely text, and 1 in 3 sends more than 100 texts every day. Young people prefer text messaging over other forms of communication, and adults are not far behind, following this trend by texting far more frequently than they did only a few years ago.

The way we communicate and consume information is constantly evolving. We are, today, more visually oriented than ever and have shorter attention spans. A simple 'like' now serves as a sufficient answer in many situations, and the word 'emoji' even made it onto the Scrabble authorised list.

The messaging apps are quick to respond to changes in consumer needs and expectations. Messaging apps today aren’t just plain old text messaging platforms, but you can share videos, audio, voice messages, stickers, GIFs, documents, and photos with your contacts.

Why Does Instant Messaging Work?

Millennials and Gen Z have been born into a digital world and have lived a digital life since childhood, and the pandemic has only accelerated this process. Instant messaging plays a central role as a means of communication and is changing faster than we might think. Whether we use social media platforms, dating apps, or office communication platforms, it's messaging that keeps us hooked. The many reasons why people are so driven toward using messaging apps include:

1.  No wait time: If we know anything about today’s consumers, it’s that they are really impatient and demanding. This means that the consumer wants what he/she wants when she wants it. So naturally, the very famous quote "Good things come to those who wait" does not hold true in today’s world. This means that the consumer today does not even want to wait when it comes to communication. Instant messaging allows you to communicate with others in real-time, with no delays like those associated with other forms of communication like email. As long as the other person is available, you can hold a conversation instantly, meaning quicker and more efficient communication. This is reason one for the appeal that messaging apps have today.
2.  Personal: While people love using other social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram, there is something that these instant messaging platforms provide that other social media platforms don't, i.e. a personal touch. While the world becomes more and more social, the importance of personal touch becomes more important. The ability to chat one on one with people and share personal details is unique to messaging apps.
3.  Non-Intrusive: People lead busy lives today, and calling often seems like an intrusive option. A quick message is often the best way to communicate your message without disrupting the receiver of the message.
4.  Experience: Today's messaging apps are not just texts—they are multimedia. Instead of writing a boring text, you can simply send a fun emoji, a GIF, a photo, a video or an audio note.

India Gets Chatty
With Jio penetrating all parts of the country and the lowering of smartphone rates, we are experiencing a mobile revolution in the country. India has leapt forward to adopt newer ways of communication. This, coupled with the mobile-first behaviour in India, has led many global messaging apps to open shop in our country. In 2022, most Indians will be accessing the internet using their smartphones. If the recent numbers are to be believed, then India currently has a smartphone penetration of 54 per cent, and it’s expected to reach 96 per cent by 2040.
Today, there are 467 million active social media users in India, whereas when we compare it to the most used messaging platform, we have 487.5 million WhatsApp users, more than the social media users in the country, and that is the power of instant messaging apps in India. To make things even more interesting, today India has the world's most WhatsApp users. The use of instant messaging apps in India is not just to talk to friends and family but also to interact with businesses.
For sure, Indian users do not only use WhatsApp. They are present on other messaging apps as well. In fact, the second most popular messaging app in India right now is Telegram.
Telegram's rise in India is particularly striking, as it wasn't even on the map of social media platforms till about a few years ago.
Messaging app brands are making every effort to attract users in India. The proliferation of these apps has sparked a battle for market share. Many of them actively promote themselves on television and hire celebrities for their campaigns. The messaging market is already getting crowded, and every player is trying to differentiate themselves.

Messaging Apps Are Changing How Businesses Talk To Consumers

A casual one-on-one conversation with a helpful employee at a store That’s how brands connect at a purchase point with consumers. Not anymore. Today, while the purchase touchpoint may be a brand website or app, the helpful store employee is now a bot, just as friendly but much more efficient. According to HBR, Today six out of the top 10 apps globally use messaging apps and these are used by over 1.4 billion people across the globe and this increasing by 12 per cent annually.

Unlike the fragmented experience of email, messaging offers a continuous thread between the customer and the brand. A sale confirmation email, even one that encourages additional action, frequently expires in the inbox, while messaging app conversations are more like a continuous discussion. This distinction makes follow-up conversations simpler and more natural, boosting the chances for cross-selling, promoting sharing, seeking feedback, and ensuring a smooth transition between support and commerce. The ability for the brand to quickly focus on what customers need (independent of how they express it) is perhaps the biggest benefit of these app-based, AI-driven dialogues. This is because the brand has a solid awareness of context. The brand can provide the customer with a limited number of pertinent options that meet the customer's needs but still give room for other choices. On Messenger, the user's position as an authenticated user is constantly present, which makes it easier for a company to distribute pertinent information. As is the case when businesses interact with customers on Facebook or Twitter, the trade-off for brands is that they give up some control over the applications.

 How Brands Can Leverage These Messaging Apps

Online marketers now have more reasons than ever to use messaging technology to engage their clients. For people who work in e-commerce and online retail sales, this is particularly true.

Businesses should take advantage of the chance to generate leads, connect with clients, and build long-lasting connections as messaging applications become more popular than social media platforms themselves.

Users and brands see messaging apps as a method to engage in conversations and create a direct line of communication with one another in a more personal and quick way. This type of conversational marketing entails removing barriers and embracing dialogue-based interactions through commonly used channels.

 Connecting Through Chatbots

Chatbots tend to be very useful in a world where customers expect instant replies from companies. There are many reasons why brands choose to connect through chatbots, some of which are:

1.   Chatbots work 24/7: The first advantage of chatbots is that they can work 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. If a chatbot struggles to understand some users' inputs and gets stuck trying to answer a question or solve a problem, it can escalate requests to the human support team.
2.   Make shopping easy: Facebook Messenger enables businesses to reach their customers through chatbots. Consumers can choose to receive information about their orders via messenger, use the app to contact online retailers directly, get product information, and get prompt responses. Everlane and Zulily are two of the first brands to use Facebook Messenger.
3.   Chatbots enable more conversation: A survey conducted by MobileMarketer found that millennials prefer talking to a chatbot rather than a person, such as when checking the status of their order or searching for product information. This is mainly because they want quick and accurate answers. Plus, they feel more comfortable asking the chatbot questions because they know they won't be judged if they think their question might be a bit naive.
4.   Interact with multiple customers at the same time: Typically, an employee can handle 3 to 4 simple customer queries at the same time. ‍Chatbots can, however, handle as many requests as you want at once. By automating responses to most queries, chatbots significantly free up employees' time, allowing them to focus on higher-valuetasks.
5.   Easy collection and analysis of data: Once you've implemented a chatbot in your business, you can generate a consolidated report that shows you how your chatbot is being used by your customers, what requests are most common, and more. You can then analyse this data, modify your chatbot accordingly, and thus improve your chatbot even once it is deployed.
6.   Personalisation possible: As explained in the previous section, chatbots can collect data by analysing customer input. Thanks to this data, they can tailor chats to the users according to many factors, like their requests, their way of speaking, etc. For example, chatbots can use the customer's name in the conversation. More sophisticated chatbots can significantly personalise the conversation, making the conversation more natural and engaging for the customer.

Using Ads Within Messaging Apps

In today's fragmented landscape, where competing for audience attention is tough, advertising on messaging apps is a compelling opportunity to promote a brand. As users leave their overloaded feeds, brands can dynamically engage with consumers, helping businesses stand out. It makes it easy to bypass the crowds and interact directly with prospects and customers through a promotional message displayed on the home page of the user's messaging app. 

These messages can direct users to the landing page, where they can learn more about a business and come back later and talk to them on the messaging app. 

 Brands Upping Their Game

Beauty and chatbots: The beauty industry has been quick to adapt to chatbots. As one of the first in the retail industry to use chatbots, Sephora wanted to use technology to improve customer service and experience. After the success of a basic app—through Kik, the messaging app—they introduced additional features that made it easier to interact with their brand at home and in-store.

The two services—Sephora Reservation Assistance and Sephora Color Matching—focus on key areas of the customer experience. The first allows customers to easily book appointments with beauticians by sending messages to the chatbot. Thanks to their intelligent learning ability, chatbots can understand the language that customers use to interact more easily. Second, Color Match uses augmented reality to help consumers choose colours. The user simply holds the camera in front of an image or face, and the shade is determined by an algorithm from the Sephora product line. It can also be used to combine cosmetics with costumes.

Coffee with Alexa: Another brand using chatbots well is Starbucks. In a market as competitive as coffee, new ways to make the ordering process easier are key to standing out from the crowd, even for a well-known brand like Starbucks. With the desire to make ordering as easy as possible, Starbucks introduced a chatbot that works through the MyBarista app, where you can order by voice via Amazon Alexa or by text message.

In addition to allowing customers to stay in the comfort of their own homes until their drinks are ready (the robot sends you a message when the order is ready to be picked up), the barista robot also allows payment. and charge a tip, which means all a customer has to do is show up. In addition, the chatbot will allow loyal customers to place a variety of specific orders and, thanks to its learning ability, will be able to assess customer preferences and habits based on previous orders.

Chatbot as the bartender: Drinking alcohol is different from other drinks because it involves many taste tests, and each person has their own colour palette. Thus, wine brand Johnnie Walker developed bots for Amazon Echo and Facebook Messenger. 

After age confirmation, the bot helps users by providing alcohol knowledge, choosing the best whiskey for them based on a series of questions, or offering ideas and recipes to create a mocktail. 

What's unique about this bot is that it shares interactive and educational videos and images to make the experience enjoyable as well. The bot's voice is like that of a bartender—relaxed and easy to talk to. If you are a customer and not just a learner, you can even place an order.

Brands just need to make sure the bots work properly with no issues. If it can conquer that, it is a good application for its target market. 

Bot journalism: Part of being in this digital world is being aware. Today, newspapers are an old sight, so social media marketing platforms are primarily used for this purpose. Quartz has observed the changing habits of consumers on online news platforms and launched a chatbot on a popular social networking application. 

People love to talk about political, social, and economic issues, which is exactly what the company wanted to use. According to Quartz's report, bots are designed to collect data about user preferences over time and form a message stream accordingly. The experience includes a variety of message beats and fun challenges. Obviously, chatbot journalism isn't completely correct yet. After all, it's a machine that needs to be upgraded.

Business chatbots will continue to improve over the next few years. New tools and technologies such as machine learning and natural language processing give you greater control in the workplace. Also, as chatbot architectures evolve, interactive AI is becoming the industry-wide standard for customer service.

Marketers are constantly trying to identify new avenues by which they can meaningfully reach the consumer, and messaging apps happen to be a prime part of that conversation. Conversation marketing is changing the game in showcasing how brands can advertise and reach the consumer while managing to stay meaningful and relevant. It is a new avenue for brands to explore and build connections with their consumers.