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 yr, our world modified from someday to the subsequent. At MSF Spain, we knew that the lives of our confined audiences had modified vastly. Their days lived on-line. Work on-line. College on-line. Even events on-line.
It was an opportunity for us to strive a brand new advertising technique: inbound advertising.
COVID-19 would require us to launch digital-only advertising campaigns. Most of those could be campaigns based mostly on interruption via advertisements, during which communication with a possible donor was fast, and the response we sought – a donation – was rapid. And we knew they’d work, as a result of emergency campaigns do work effectively on digital. There’s urgency, the difficulty is well-known, and the necessity is obvious.
However there was additionally a possibility to strive one thing totally different. For the primary time ever, the factor that almost all pursuits MSF – medical-humanitarian motion – was additionally the factor that a majority of individuals in Spain. These had been individuals who had been residing via a medical-humanitarian emergency in their very own nation, and these shared pursuits are the core of sturdy communication.
4 days after the primary lockdown was applied, we obtained one thing surprising by electronic mail. It was an inner doc, containing a sequence of ideas to assist workers 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 not often noticed with our content material, being seen by lots of of 1000’s of individuals. We noticed the chance to create a marketing campaign that doesn’t ask for one thing however fairly presents it. A marketing campaign that doesn’t chase, however attracts.
An opportunity to strive a brand new device: chatbots
We additionally had an opportunity to check a brand new kind of channel that we knew had the capability to be extremely participating: chatbots. We had been already in negotiations with an company that specialised within the space of chatbots and conversational advertising and had been satisfied of their potential. Why chatbots?
- They’re very versatile. You should use them to adapt to the wants and responses of every consumer with totally different journeys, and work with totally different aims with every chatbot (consciousness, engagement, conversion, and so on.)
- Customers perceive the chat format. Chatbots really feel much like broadly used instruments like WhatsApp and, in contrast to with touchdown pages, customers solely need to course of one piece of data at a time when participating with them
- They’re extremely optimisable. Each click on is a knowledge level. It’s straightforward to know the place persons are being engaged and the place they aren’t so to rapidly and simply adapt and alter each piece 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 the whole lot from textual content and video to video games, knowledge seize, and extra
Introducing our chatbot for psychological well being in lockdown
We launched our chatbot originally of April in 2020. The “bot” was really certainly one of our staff members: Maria Cecilia from our psychological help unit – we even included her image to reassure customers and make the expertise really feel private. The content material she delivered was based mostly on MSF’s inner psychological well being help doc, however rewritten as a sequence of tales within the punchy conversational textual content fashion of chatbots. It provided 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 equipment that provided recommendation and steering based mostly on the ideas contained inside the chatbot expertise, together with different sources. Customers who give their contact particulars to obtain the equipment are registered for a follow-up electronic mail journey, which is the inbound advertising 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 help the combat towards COVID-19.
We added the newly-created chatbot to our coronavirus net pages. As a result of their excessive rating in Google for the search phrases “epidemic” and “coronavirus”, these pages had been receiving 1000’s of distinctive guests day-after-day, making certain sturdy preliminary engagement with the chatbot. We additionally posted concerning the bot on our social media channels, understanding we may count on large attain on any content material referring to psychological well being and COVID-19.
Along with electronic mail advertising, we additionally developed Fb advertisements to advertise the chatbot and attain an viewers past our most conventional supporter base. Throughout 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 ideas
- 7,700 leads (2,000 outdoors Spain)
- 78 donors (€3,350 donated)
- 33 common donors
One of many bot’s biggest successes was WhatsApp, the place it was shared tens of 1000’s of occasions. On one event, a message despatched by me and one other member of my staff to highschool dad and mom teams on WhatsApp went all over the world; 1000’s of individuals from Guatemala and Mexico had been reached by forwarded messages. Months later, we heard from our psychological help 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 grow to be much less strict and the viewers utilizing the unique bot in Spanish has dropped, the price of advertisements has continued to rise. So, we now have continued to optimise and now have to revisit our technique to plan how we are going to use the bot in an always-on manner, 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 of chatbot-crazy, releasing a number of bots to satisfy a wide range of totally different aims: peer-to-peer fundraising, engagement, recruitment, common donor acquisition, and extra. Throughout our discuss at #FRO2021, we talked delegates via the seven superpowers of chatbots and the way MSF Spain employed every one to check this newest device in our arsenal.
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