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 the world over. Together with Toni Matas, director at Persualia, Nick spoke about their expertise at #FRO2021 from The Useful resource Alliance.
In March final 12 months, our world modified from sooner or later 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 strive 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 advertisements, through which communication with a possible donor was fast, and the response we sought – a donation – was speedy. And we knew they’d work, as a result of emergency campaigns do work effectively on digital. There’s urgency, the problem is well-known, and the necessity is evident.
However there was additionally a possibility to strive 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 had been individuals who had been residing by a medical-humanitarian emergency in their very own nation, and these shared pursuits are the core of robust communication.
4 days after the primary lockdown was applied, we acquired one thing surprising by electronic mail. It was an inside doc, containing a sequence of suggestions to assist employees handle their emotional and psychological well being within the face of the pandemic.
With the arrival of this doc, we noticed a novel alternative. We already knew that psychological well being was a key theme for our audiences. A sequence of movies we’d launched providing recommendation on psychological well being in a pandemic was getting attain we hardly ever noticed with our content material, being seen by lots of of hundreds of individuals. We noticed the chance to create a marketing campaign that doesn’t ask for one thing however reasonably affords it. A marketing campaign that doesn’t chase, however attracts.
An opportunity to strive a brand new software: chatbots
We additionally had an opportunity to check a brand new sort of channel that we knew had the capability to be extremely partaking: chatbots. We had 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 consumer with totally different journeys, and work with totally different goals with every chatbot (consciousness, engagement, conversion, and so forth.)
- Customers perceive the chat format. Chatbots really feel just like extensively used instruments like WhatsApp and, in contrast to with touchdown pages, customers solely should course of one piece of data at a time when partaking with them
- They’re extremely optimisable. Each click on is an information level. It’s simple to know the place individuals are being engaged and the place they aren’t with the intention to shortly 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 go away the chatbot to expertise every thing 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 initially of April in 2020. The “bot” was really one among our staff members: Maria Cecilia from our psychological assist 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 assist doc, however rewritten as a sequence of tales within the punchy conversational textual content fashion of chatbots. It supplied 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 package that supplied recommendation and steerage primarily based on the guidelines contained inside the chatbot expertise, together with different assets. Customers who give their contact particulars to obtain the package are registered for a follow-up electronic mail journey, which is the inbound advertising and marketing a part of the equation. Those that gave their particulars had been additionally given an outline of MSF’s operations and the prospect to make a direct distinction by donating to assist the struggle towards COVID-19.
We added the newly-created chatbot to our coronavirus internet pages. Attributable to their excessive rating in Google for the search phrases “epidemic” and “coronavirus”, these pages had been receiving hundreds of distinctive guests every single day, making certain robust preliminary engagement with the chatbot. We additionally posted concerning the bot on our social media channels, figuring out we might anticipate big attain on any content material referring to psychological well being and COVID-19.
Along with electronic mail advertising and marketing, we additionally developed Fb advertisements to advertise the chatbot and attain an viewers past our most conventional supporter base. Inside 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 suggestions
- 7,700 leads (2,000 outdoors Spain)
- 78 donors (€3,350 donated)
- 33 common donors
One of many bot’s best successes was WhatsApp, the place it was shared tens of hundreds of occasions. On one event, a message despatched by me and one other member of my staff to highschool mother and father teams on WhatsApp went world wide; hundreds of individuals from Guatemala and Mexico had been reached by forwarded messages. Months later, we heard from our psychological assist staff 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 turn into much less strict and the viewers utilizing the unique bot in Spanish has dropped, the price of advertisements has continued to rise. So, we’ve got continued to optimise and now have to revisit our technique to plan how we are going to use the bot in an always-on approach, in a time when COVID-19 won’t 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 a bit chatbot-crazy, releasing a number of bots to fulfill a wide range of totally different goals: peer-to-peer fundraising, engagement, recruitment, common donor acquisition, and extra. Throughout our speak at #FRO2021, we talked delegates by the seven superpowers of chatbots and the way MSF Spain employed each to check this newest software in our arsenal.
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