After two years of the pandemic, many aspects of life changed and the e-commerce industry was no exception, especially in Latin America. According to an eMarketer report, the Latin American region once again stood out in 2021 as one of the main digital commerce markets in the world, growing more than 35% compared to 2020.
In 2022, this accelerated growth should continue and reach 20.4%, led by Brazil, Mexico and Argentina. This would position Latin America as the area with the second highest growth potential in the world, only behind Southeast Asia, which forecasts growth of 20.6%.
To talk about the new opportunities within the country, at the Inter.Mx Expansión Summit 2022, Marcos Oliveira, Head of LATAM Partnerships, Business Messaging in Meta and Barbara Gurjão, commercial director at Sinch, one of the enabling business partners of WhatsApp Business, They talked about the opportunities that Mexican companies have.
According to Oliveira, “once the customer is talking to a business on a channel (WhatsApp) with which he communicates with friends and family, this communication becomes more personal.”
This is important for doing business, especially in countries like Mexico and Brazil “where relationships are very important.” He mentions that transferring the personal aspect of talking with a friend or family member to a relationship with a company has resulted in high business rates.
On the other hand, one of the tools used in c-commerce are bots, or automated responses. Gurjão shares: “Although the bot is very smart to give programmed responses, a bot cannot give advice. People talk to a bot like it’s a friend.” One of the main challenges for brands is to connect with their customers quickly, but also in a more personal way.
Golden rule: be where customers interact
Oliveira referred to the case of McDonald’s as an example. He explained that this company uses WhatsApp to direct traffic to the store, because through this channel, they distributed 150,000 coupons to be redeemed in stores. This represented a 17% conversion rate for the brand and a relationship with almost 2 million customers on the platform.
“We must be where the clients are; to have a conversational platform where you can have conversations and you don’t need to repeat them”, adds Barbara.
