With the pandemic, the speed and prevalence of digital transformation has increased significantly in our country and abroad. The survey and research data from SmartMessage, which provides services to companies in the field of digital communication, illustrate this situation.

One of the major effects of the pandemic has been the increase in the importance of digitization in customer habits. While the weight of digital has grown in the channels where the masses interact with the brands, global e-commerce volume has also grown.

Digital has become the first choice in communicating with the masses

In the studies that SmartMessage has conducted for its target group, it appears that the investment will mainly increase to reach end users via digital communication channels. The surveys of 5000 participants from the business community show that new digital channels are also on the radar of managers. When asked which digital channels will be invested first in 2022, emails take the top spot at 57 percent, followed by chatbot at 29 percent and push notifications at 14 percent. The answer to the question of which messaging platform is gaining weight in chatbots was WhatsApp with 78 percent. Again, the answers to the question of what is the most effective feature in chatbots, AI-powered dialogues and being able to switch to real customer representatives came up.

The importance attached to email and SMS has grown even more

SmartMessage’s research in the first year of the pandemic has found interesting results regarding the development of digital communication in business. The first study, which also included email and SMS channels commonly used by institutions, examined more than 550 million shipments across 71 industries, a 70% increase in shipments on a monthly basis compared to the pre-pandemic period in email and SMS channels, which are widely used in digital communication. It was noted that the increase was 85 percent for email and 62 percent for the SMS channel. The sector with the highest growth in shipping was e-commerce, followed by energy distribution, insurance, legal and financial consultancy.

SmartMessage’s second study examined the impact of the pandemic in email. According to a study conducted on data from more than 100 million submissions, the overall email read rate increased from 13 percent to 20 percent after the pandemic. The sectors with the highest email read rates include online education, real estate, finance and legal advice. One of the interesting results was that the reading periods during the day, between 12 and 3 am with the pandemic, showed a significant increase compared to previous periods.

Source: (BHA) – Beyaz News Agency