WhatsApp Messenger is an instant messaging client for smartphones. It's intended to send text, audio, video messages to the contacts and family/friend groups. But surprisingly in Brazil, this direct messaging app turned to be one of the most popular platforms for digital marketing and eCommerce and virtually replacing traditional CRM platforms.

In this podcast, Atish Narlawar talks to Fernanda Saboia, Digital Strategist at Huge about her research in the Brazilian Digital Marketing space “The Rise of WhatsApp in Brazil Is About More than Just Messaging."

Fernanda starts the conversation with the brief introduction to the research, and what made her work on this topic. She gives the figures stating how WhatsApp is so close to Brazilian and it's already trumped the other social media(Facebook/Twitter/Instagram) with user engagement, and the most significant user "Open and Read rate." She states, read rates for organic search is 7%, email is 22% while direct messaging is impressive 98%.

She introduces some real-time use cases, where business owners use WhatsApp to connect to the segmented audiences, and discuss the implementation, economics behind it with types of issues owners face and how they overcome with smaller adjustments.

Although WhatsApp hasn’t facilitated any services(aka. API) to leverage it as a CRM tool, she thinks it's definitely on their radar. With much discussion happening in the digital space about Conversational UI, AI bots, data-driven engagements, Fernanda believes WhatsApp will come up with a new groundbreaking product, to leverage the power of direct messaging and Facebook expertise and will compete with top CRM products in the market.

She observes the issues of privacy, spamming and other types of noise in this system and sees the adverse impact on the businesses in case they try to use it as a platform to push the content. She also finds a social aspect in this engagement, where business owners are trying to make social groups and feel their customers together to share some interests, and that's a good plus point.

Fernanda thinks this phenomenon will replicate in other continents like Asia and Europe and very optimistic about WhatsApp as a niche player to serve this market better.

Venue: Huge, Brooklyn, NY.

Host: Atish Narlawar

Contact: [email protected]

Guest: Fernanda Saboia@saboia