Leticia Polese - Content Marketing Manager

Chatbots: Understanding the sector that is revolutionizing brand & consumer communication

July 16, 2018

2018 is the year of consolidation of chatbots and their application in diverse and wide ranging sectors of the economy. Intelligent conversation systems are no longer a trend but an undeniable reality: chiefmartec.com has included it in its Marketing Technology Landscape Supergraphic 2018.

This year, LiveChat & Chatbots has emerged as a new sector (within the Social & Relationships category) encompassing almost 100 new platforms. "Both text-based and voice-based chatbots have had an incredible year of innovation and adoption, and I'm sure that this is just a prelude to a spectacular 12-24 months," says Scott Brinker, author of the study.

Following the publication of our first analysis of Marketing Technology Landscape 2018, focused on PR, in this second analysis we wanted to identify the most relevant players of this emerging sector (the rankings are at the end of the post).

The evolution of the company/software map from Martech over the last seven years

Much more functional marketing

"Chatbots are the newest category of digital touchpoints with the fastest growth in 2018," says Brinker. Marketing carried out through fast messaging systems can have open rates of more than 90% and CTR between 35-40%, figures that far exceed email marketing.

Part of last year's boom in these intelligent systems is due to the growth of platforms such as Slack and China's WeChat. Consumers spend more and more time on these platforms and it's only natural that brands want to be there as well.

Chatbots allow for a much more functional type of marketing that offers service and utility to consumers (information, support and even purchases), accelerating and improving the communication between company and client. It's a way to reach people and create bonds without having to use advertising, which is generally considered intrusive by the modern-day consumer.

The reasons for its effectiveness

As Scott Brinker points out, there are a number of advantages that make chatbots highly effective touchpoints:

Persistent: when you’re in a “conversation” with a bot, you can stop and restart at anytime, minutes or days later. It’s not like closing a web browser or hanging up the phone.
Responsive: as chatbots generally use low-bandwidth interactions, they work well on almost any device and any connection.
High availability: once programmed, chatbots can run many conversations simultaneously, so brands can offer unlimited service 24 hours a day.
Cross-channel and cross-device: they work very well on laptops, desktops, tablets, smartphones, and are available on both web pages and on messaging platforms such as Twitter, Whatsapp, Skype, among others.
Intuitive: it's not necessary to learn any specific interface to use a chatbot.
Personalization: the nature of chatbot dialogues, their persistent memory, and the directed nature of user requests allows chatbots to truly personalize interactions much better than what we’ve seen on websites and in email.
Push notifications: on most platforms, a chatbot can send follow-up messages to a user, recover an abandoned conversation or offer a friendly reminder in the context of the original dialogue

The most influential players

We decided to analyze the followers of almost 100 accounts of the companies that appear in the graphic of chiefmartec.com, an audience of about 225,000 profiles. Using Audiense Insights we identified 19,906 influencers, which we divided into different categories based on the results of our reports.

In our influencers report, in addition to softwares, there are professionals linked to technology and marketing, technology media, specialists and startup consultants and a group that caught our attention: people related to the world of cryptocurrencies. Although initially we were surprised by the presence of enthusiasts, developers and experts in crypto, it is understandable considering the growing number of chatbots that help in the investment process and the management of digital currencies.

Top 10 chatbot and live chat softwares