All over the world people are logging into messaging apps multiple times a day to stay in contact with their family, work colleagues and friends.
Surprisingly, they may also be logging in to connect with brands, transfer money, watch content and more, as this is what many of these apps are capable of.
Once these apps were built for the simple service of talking to people. They were built for exchanging messaging, pictures, videos and audio message and that was it.
It is unusual to find one that does just this now, as they have evolved into expansive systems that allows the user to do so much more than send messages.
Research suggests that people want more than just messaging from their messaging app.
Research has shown that these chat apps have a higher retention rate and usage rate than other mobile apps.
The majority of the users of these apps are fairly young, which would have an influence on their functionality.
For example, many brands are eager to get involved with messaging apps as it is a great way to market to their demographic, and these brands will be targeted at the users of the app.
The popularity of messaging apps
Mobile messaging apps are massive, some of the biggest brands such as WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger and WeChat have almost or more than a billion users.
The fact that data prices continue to fall, the devices to use them on are cheaper and that they have rapidly improving features are some of the main reasons for their sudden growth.
Some of the biggest apps are constantly trying to come up with ways to get users to stay engaged.
Popular Asian messaging apps have taken the lead here and have come up with some innovative features as well as some successful strategies for monetizing their services.
At the moment companies and marketers are still putting most of their money and effort into social media apps, but this is set to change soon as messenger apps change the way that they are working.
Soon many messaging apps will build out their services to provide bridges for brands to connect with users of the apps.
Messaging apps for business
Worldwide, consumers are becoming more and more comfortable interacting with brands through their messaging apps.
To highlight this, more than a billion messages are exchanged between business on Facebook and the consumers who are using the Facebook messenger app every single month.
63% of these people commented that they do this now much more than they did two years ago. The question is, how many people will be using this method to get in contact with brands in another 2 years.
Facebook has even enabled brands to be able to roll out adverts that will link people straight to a chat with a bot on Facebook messenger.
More of this sort of thing will be seen on apps in the coming years as companies make use of this new marketing feature.
Presented by Skilled.co
