Nick Scott, Head of Digital at MSF Spain, writes about how the organisation had nice success with the implementation of chatbots because the COVID-19 pandemic unfold internationally. Together with Toni Matas, director at Persualia, Nick spoke about their expertise at #FRO2021 from The Useful resource Alliance.
In March final yr, our world modified from someday to the following. At MSF Spain, we knew that the lives of our confined audiences had modified vastly. Their days lived on-line. Work on-line. Faculty on-line. Even events on-line.
It was an opportunity for us to attempt a brand new advertising and marketing technique: inbound advertising and marketing.
COVID-19 would require us to launch digital-only advertising and marketing campaigns. Most of those can be campaigns primarily based on interruption by way of adverts, during which communication with a possible donor was fast, and the response we sought – a donation – was rapid. And we knew they’d work, as a result of emergency campaigns do work effectively on digital. There’s urgency, the difficulty is well-known, and the necessity is evident.
However there was additionally a possibility to attempt one thing totally different. For the primary time ever, the factor that the majority pursuits MSF – medical-humanitarian motion – was additionally the factor that a majority of individuals in Spain. These have been individuals who have been residing by way of a medical-humanitarian emergency in their very own nation, and these shared pursuits are the core of sturdy communication.
4 days after the primary lockdown was applied, we obtained one thing surprising by e mail. It was an inside doc, containing a collection of ideas to assist workers handle their emotional and psychological well being within the face of the pandemic.
With the arrival of this doc, we noticed a singular alternative. We already knew that psychological well being was a key theme for our audiences. A collection of movies we’d launched providing recommendation on psychological well being in a pandemic was getting attain we not often noticed with our content material, being seen by a whole lot of hundreds of individuals. We noticed the chance to create a marketing campaign that doesn’t ask for one thing however reasonably gives it. A marketing campaign that doesn’t chase, however attracts.
An opportunity to attempt a brand new instrument: chatbots
We additionally had an opportunity to check a brand new sort of channel that we knew had the capability to be extremely participating: chatbots. We have been already in negotiations with an company that specialised within the space of chatbots and conversational advertising and marketing and had been satisfied of their potential. Why chatbots?
- They’re very versatile. You need to use them to adapt to the wants and responses of every person with totally different journeys, and work with totally different targets with every chatbot (consciousness, engagement, conversion, and so on.)
- Customers perceive the chat format. Chatbots really feel just like broadly used instruments like WhatsApp and, in contrast to with touchdown pages, customers solely need to course of one piece of data at a time when participating with them
- They’re extremely optimisable. Each click on is a knowledge level. It’s straightforward to know the place persons are being engaged and the place they aren’t so as to rapidly and simply adapt and alter every bit of textual content and each level of interplay
- They will include many types of media and content material. Customers don’t want to depart the chatbot to expertise all the things from textual content and video to video games, information seize, and extra
Introducing our chatbot for psychological well being in lockdown
We launched our chatbot at the start of April in 2020. The “bot” was really certainly one of our workforce members: Maria Cecilia from our psychological help unit – we even included her image to reassure customers and make the expertise really feel private. The content material she delivered was primarily based on MSF’s inside psychological well being help doc, however rewritten as a collection of tales within the punchy conversational textual content type of chatbots. It provided recommendation on eight potential types of emotional stress, with plenty of illustrations to interrupt up the textual content and produce it to life.
Moreover, we created a downloadable lockdown equipment that provided recommendation and steerage primarily based on the information contained throughout the chatbot expertise, together with different sources. Customers who give their contact particulars to obtain the equipment are registered for a follow-up e mail journey, which is the inbound advertising and marketing a part of the equation. Those that gave their particulars have been additionally given an summary of MSF’s operations and the possibility to make a direct distinction by donating to help the struggle in opposition to COVID-19.
We added the newly-created chatbot to our coronavirus internet pages. Resulting from their excessive rating in Google for the search phrases “epidemic” and “coronavirus”, these pages have been receiving hundreds of distinctive guests daily, making certain sturdy preliminary engagement with the chatbot. We additionally posted concerning the bot on our social media channels, realizing we may anticipate enormous attain on any content material regarding psychological well being and COVID-19.
Along with e mail advertising and marketing, we additionally developed Fb adverts to advertise the chatbot and attain an viewers past our most conventional supporter base. Throughout the first three weeks, we achieved very promising outcomes:
- Over 100,000 arrived on the level of first interplay
- 71,000 noticed one of many emotional ideas
- 7,700 leads (2,000 exterior Spain)
- 78 donors (€3,350 donated)
- 33 common donors
One of many bot’s biggest successes was WhatsApp, the place it was shared tens of hundreds of instances. On one event, a message despatched by me and one other member of my workforce to high school dad and mom teams on WhatsApp went world wide; hundreds of individuals from Guatemala and Mexico have been reached by forwarded messages. Months later, we heard from our psychological help workforce that we’d had sufferers from a centre in Guatemala congratulate our medical doctors on the chatbot!
The chatbot has since been tailored into totally different languages and contexts. However, as lockdown has change into much less strict and the viewers utilizing the unique bot in Spanish has dropped, the price of adverts has continued to rise. So, we have now continued to optimise and now have to revisit our technique to plan how we’ll use the bot in an always-on method, in a time when COVID-19 is not going to be such an element.
A primary (of many) forays into the world of chatbots
In our digital response to COVID-19, we didn’t cease at only one chatbot. Throughout 2020, we went just a little chatbot-crazy, releasing a number of bots to satisfy a wide range of totally different targets: peer-to-peer fundraising, engagement, recruitment, common donor acquisition, and extra. Throughout our speak at #FRO2021, we talked delegates by way of the seven superpowers of chatbots and the way MSF Spain employed every one to check this newest instrument in our arsenal.
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