Dive Brief:
- London-based startup BetterBrand is offering marketers a way to take advantage of chat as a communication channel with its chat app marketing platform
- According to BetterBrand CEO Asaf Amir, who spoke with Marketing Land, the product will be the first self-service marketing platform for multiple chat apps not tied to a specific industry or single chat app.
- BetterBrand’s announcement comes at a time when Facebook is actively working to get brands to connect with audiences via Messenger, and after Kik launched Kik Bot Shop, which allows its users to download bots that directly connects them with brands.
Dive Insight:
Currently BetterBrand supports Kik, Viber, Telegram, Slack and KakaoTalk, with Facebook Messenger expected to be added soon. Other chat apps BetterBrand is in discussions with include Line, WeChat and Facebook-owned WhatsApp.
Through the platform marketers can use the same conversation on multiple apps through a decision tree that offers up responses based on keywords. The platform also offers engagement metrics such as number of interactions; clicks; and the amount of photos and other content offered by users for user-generated content campaigns.
Facebook rolled out new features that help brands use Messenger to connect with audiences, including adding brand user names to business pages and link and code shortcuts that make it easy for users to open conversation threads with brands.
Despite a growth of smartphone ownership, smartphone users tend to be selective about the apps they have on their phones, and spend most of their time on mobile on social media and messaging apps such as Facebook and Kik.
"Messengers are the new browser and bots are the new websites," Kik's head of messenger services Mike Roberts told Adweek at the time of the Kik Bot Shop's release.
