Communicate with Your Fans – KakaoTalk Channel
In the last post, we learned about Kakao Sync, and its benefits from a brand’s perspective. Brands need to own their brand KakaoTalk channel, not only to implement Kakao Sync but also to initiate various digital activities on Kakao. Since KakaoTalk channel has a lot of functions, we will take a look at it today with our own insights.
What is the KakaoTalk channel? Simply put, it is an official brand account on Kakao. Through the Kakao channel, brands can upload posts about promotion, coupons, events, new campaigns, brand ambassadors, and so on. And as part of an advertising campaign, push messages can also be sent to the users. Brands will not be able to send messages to other KakaoTalk users, but their “fans” who follow their channel. Regardless of the industry, numerous local and global brands launched their KakaoTalk channels and use various functions to reach out to Korean consumers. From this explanation alone, KakaoTalk channel has a similar function to a social media platform. However, KakaoTalk channel can be defined more as a communication channel rather than social media platform because it has a different approach from general social media such as Instagram and Facebook. Since a lot of users follow the channel for information & coupons, and do not go through the contents regularly, overall ‘Likes’ and ‘Comments’ can be lower than Instagram or Facebook.
And according to Kakao, 91.3% of Kakao users answered that they follow KakaoTalk channels. Then what are the reasons for KakaoTalk users to follow the brand channel? More than 9 out of 10 KakaoTalk users have added KakaoTalk channel mainly to receive promotional information, such as discount coupons from brands. Other reasons are that users want to use chatbot services, followed by the fact that users can receive order/delivery messages, and to get free branded-emoticons. All of these detailed features will be introduced in turn in the next post.
Let’s learn more about the advantages of the KakaoTalk channel. To emphasize again, brands can upload pictures and videos on their KakaoTalk channel once the channel is launched. In fact, a lot of brands are already solidifying their brand identity through organic posts related to their products, brand history, local/global influencer, campaign, fashion show, offline event, coupon, and so on. Another benefit of using the KakaoTalk channel from a brand’s perspective is a chat function. Through the chat function, users can ask questions to the brand, and the brand can check the chat details exchanged by customers. There are a few chat functions on Kakao such as AlinTalk, Chatbot, Live chat, and so on so that the informative or official information of the brand can be provided directly to the fans. We will learn more on this later. Additionally, brands can access the KakaoTalk Channel Manager Center and view the channel status through statistics. User data can be managed through accurate statistical figures such as the number of new followers, total followers, the number of channel views, etc. Last but not least, brands can send push messages to their followers. The push message is a customized message sent to a 1:1 chat room which then allows the user to continue the trigger to communicate. One of the differentiation points of KakaoTalk channel is the sending of personalized in-app targeted messages, which directs users to brand news feeds or different features for further interaction. And this is the main reason why the message opening rate (=engagement rate) of Kakao messages is higher than other social media or conventional CRM channels.
As Kakao’s digital services have expanded and customized services have become crucial, it is never too late to launch a brand Kakao channel to continuously communicate to fans in a personalized way. With the functions and features that Kakao offers for brands, brand loyalty, as well as conversion rate increase over time.
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