WhatsApp: 8 Mistakes to Avoid when Marketing with WhatsApp – with Rich Evans, Get Better

The only way you're going to get into WhatsApp is like a real level of engagement and trust. I think, again, speaking from UK market where WhatsApp is quite sacred, you know, we all use it for families and things. I think if someone lets you into WhatsApp, that is a real, like, show of trust. Don't breach that trust because if they don't like your emails, they can just unsubscribe. But I think a WhatsApp breach of trust is going to probably run quite a lot deeper and you would just use that customer. You're listening to the Keep Optimizing Podcast. Do increase your traffic, improve your conversion rates, and grow your profits. Hello and welcome. I'm Chloe Thomas, the host of this e-commerce marketing focused podcast. If you're not familiar with our format, we release five episode mini series that dive deep into one e-commerce marketing topic. It could be channels like email or SEO or WhatsApp or a big topic like acquisition retention or analytics. In each episode, new ones released on Wednesdays, I interview a different expert to explore the latest advice on making it work for you. And then, after each five episode mini series, we take a week off to give you time to take action on what you've learned. At the moment, we are in a five episode series all about WhatsApp. The first time we've ever covered WhatsApp. Last episode, we were super zoomed in on one set of tactical strategies. If you can have tactical strategies, I think you can. This time though, we're going much broader to understand the wider WhatsApp space and how it will fit in with the rest of your marketing. And we are going to be going through eight key mistakes you want to avoid if you want to make your WhatsApp marketing a success. And we've got the brilliant Rich Evans back on the show again to take us through this. So get ready for eight mistakes to avoid. And do make sure you listen right to the end of the episode because Rich's quick fire inside a tips round is really good too. And then I'll share my take on it all and reiterate what those eight mistakes to avoid. Ah, everyone's talking about automation, AI, personalisation. But there's one big opportunity that many are still missing. It's conversational commerce using WhatsApp. In India and the Middle East, brands using WhatsApp to engage customers are already seeing three times higher engagement and up to 40% more repeat sales. Yet in the UK, most e-commerce brands treat WhatsApp like a support channel, not a revenue engine. That's where quick engage by GoQuick comes in. It helps you turn conversations into conversions with smart automations for cart recovery and product recommendations, Instagram to WhatsApp automation and IABase support. If you want to build personalised buying journeys that actually sell, not just chat, it's time to get quick engage by GoQuick. But your demo now via KeepOpt.com/QuickEngage, that's KeepOpt.com/KWIKENGAGE, KeepOpt.com/QuickEngage. In this episode, I'm chatting with WhatsApp expert Rich Evans. Rich is the founder and reluctant managing director at Get Better, an agency focused on building personalised email marketing that helps their clients reach their full growth potential. Clients include Absolute Collagen, Myo Master and Port Candles, Hello Rich. Hello Chloe. Lovely to have you back on the show. This time we're talking about WhatsApp, so how did you get involved with WhatsApp? Well, it's lovely to be back on the show, it's always good to get a re-booking because it means that it hasn't gone too terribly. WhatsApp, I mean, I think kind of called in on the basis of it being another channel. We obviously are an agency, so work on email, SMS, push notifications and was aware of the bubbling away of WhatsApp and the excitement about WhatsApp is going to come. It's going to be the first new platform in quite a few years that we'll be able to utilise and so it started spotting up on it, seeing where it was already being put to produce and things. So, yeah, in preparation for it, it's explosion into, I guess, one of the Western world. It's an interesting one. You talk about the explosion, and I find it quite fascinating how, in some countries, it's like the number one customer commerce channel, India and some of the other countries in the far east, far, yeah, Asia, Asia and the far east. And then in the Western world, it's having very different reactions in different market places. And as you say, the UK seems to be kind of on a slow bubble, quite a lot of talk, but not many case studies coming through yet. I'm not sure I've ever known a comms channel in our space have such a diverse level of reaction in different market places. Yeah, I think there's definitely a nervousness, like the excitement and the noise has definitely outweighed then the adoption. I think a lot of that is because big players and stuff started, like, entertaining it, but wait too close to key for when people kind of put a bit of a freeze on, let's not do anything new and wild, let's just, because it's such an important crucial time of year for revenue and sales. I think that those cultural differences, I mean, I, I remember getting to Canada two years ago over Christmas and with all my cousins and stuff when we got there or Canadian, I was like, right, she said, well, what's that group for? Well, we're here and the stuff and goes, don't really use it. Can we do eye message? And I was like, wow, I don't think I've, I don't think of use eye message other than for verification codes or to be marketed to for some quite some time. And I think it's that realization that, yeah, we, we do all use different, different platforms and stuff. So, yeah, I think India was really where it kind of has boomed and that's where you see a lot of the big numbers and things. I think UK, we are more inclined to use WhatsApp for, for very personal sort of contact and family chats and things like that. I have a number of unread SMS messages, but my WhatsApp is kind of gospel. Like, I use the unread tab to make sure that I don't leave anyone too long and stuff. So I think there's a, there's a nervousness around people not wanting to be marketed to in WhatsApp, maybe letting that govern how bullish they are and using WhatsApp as a brand. I think there's, there's floodgates that are at the moment closed, but I think things are starting to trickle through and I think some case studies will start to land and then I do think 2026 is probably going to be the year, the year of WhatsApp. Yeah, I, I totally get what you're coming from with that because it feels like the use case makes a huge amount of sense for a lot of brands and I liked your point about Q4. People just starting to get into it over the summer and they're like, oh, we're not launching this. We're not launching this now. Let's leave it to Q1. So yeah, I think we're going to see a very different WhatsApp adoption activity, certainly here in the UK as we go through 2026, which is I guess one of the reasons why we're doing your topic of mistakes to avoid with WhatsApp because as you said, there was a, you know, big nervousness when SMS first became a marketing channel and it almost feels like that's potentially greater nervousness with WhatsApp. So if we can run through things not to do to make everyone feel a bit more confident in doing, then I think that's going to make, make a lot of people feel a lot more, more comfortable and positive about giving it a go this year. So what's the biggest mistake we want to avoid when we get started with WhatsApp? I think just using it as a broadcast platform. I think the other thing with WhatsApp is there is, it is a conversational platform. That was the original nervousness with SMS, I think, and about, you know, sort of, well, if someone messages us back or, you know, and actually SMS is just really as a broadcast platform now. There's very rarely is there any consideration for a reply unless it's to stop. I audit a lot of CRM accounts and generally speaking, you know, you go in and if there is a service desk functionality and you just see it's a bit of a graveyard of people that have maybe tried to ask the question and it's not been looked at. I think WhatsApp, the expectation is going to be for conversation. So it's also a very expensive way to broadcast. So billing sort of is different on different platforms, regards and like how they do things. But generally speaking, you pay a somewhat bigger initial credit be to send the WhatsApp. But then if there's a conversation that takes place, you can stay within that chat and have as many messages backwards and forwards over a 12 or 24 hour period again, depending on the platform where there's no extra cost. So it's a very effective way to have a conversation or close a ticket if it's customer services or, you know, go back and forth, but a very inefficient way to purely broadcast. So I think that's probably one of the biggest tips is to make sure that you're not just having it as another broadcast platform and that you have got in mind with an expectation to converse on that. You want to be asking questions that trigger an answer and so, yeah, that's probably the first thing to avoid is don't just broadcast. It is one of those pricing structures that does seem to push us towards what as consumers we would expect. I think on WhatsApp, you know, it's like it's quite expensive. someone so you're not going to bind kit mail. If you magically had your entire database subscribed to WhatsApp messages, you're not going to magically, you know, blast them all, because the cost would be horrendous compared to the, you know, the ROI is not going to be that. But to do it with targeted messages to people at key points on the buying journey, where you can then have a conversation to overcome their objections, there seems to be a very, almost like a mystical alignment between pricing, use case and assumed consumer behavior. Yeah, I mean, it's more, it's more closely aligned to Meta Messenger, so Instagram Messenger, Facebook Messenger. And I'm old enough to have been around in a previous life, in a previous agency, where we were really on the cusp of when Meta monetized. And so we first had Meta advertising and things. We were dealing with a lot of big brand multi-unit businesses at that point, so pub chains and things like that where you'd have one brand, but, you know, 110 in that one group, different channels and different platforms, pages sorry. Facebook Messenger became a really, really, really effective way of handling customer service questions, so taking things like off sort of main social media pages out of public viewing into Messenger. But then you'd also have the opportunity to sort of if take table bookings and so transact, if you like, in that sort of instance, you would then be able to set notes to go and follow up with people after they'd done that table book in to see how they went and see if they had a good experience and things. And I think that for me is where WhatsApp is going to become the platform. It's going to be in that sort of conversational commerce, customer service, and I think where customer service and marketing get, which is the part that excites me because that's history and community management now in sort of e-commerce and CRM. The idea of customer service and marketing coming quite close together, where customer service can start being treated as an opportunity to win more business and to win customers over. And marketing can be seen to be having a customer service edge to it, so we're not just going to broadcast you should buy this because you bought this last thing. We're going to come at you and go look, you know, you know, you bought this, what do you think of this and then trigger what the next messages are. So yeah, it does excite me. I just don't know. There's a confidence level that needs to come up where, you know, case study and things might be the way to do that. Also, I think there's a capability level as well. So the rise of AI agents and things like that that are able to have these conversations. So I reckon we're at three mistakes so far and I want to dive a bit deeper into the third one. So we had, it's not a broadcast platform. It is conversational. Forgetting that is clearly a massive mistake and a massive missed opportunity. And then thirdly, this link up between customer service and marketing. And I was joking before we hit record about, do not launch this without telling your customer service team. But it's not just about going, oh, guys, can you log in here once a week and have a look? It's a much, it's going to be a much less silo, much more integrated relationship between marketing and customer service if this channel's going to work for you, hasn't it? Yeah, I mean, the best, well, arguably only experiences I have had on WhatsApp so far have been customer service-based. So one was with Southwest water. And it was a throwback to my, my community management, sort of, local social days and things where, you know, the idea of a telephone customer service. So my issue was with Southwest water. It was this time actually. I moved house 14 days before Christmas, wild decision. I needed to change addresses. But there was just a floor in the system that I couldn't, I couldn't do it. Called the number, you know, you're one of 19 in a queue. And I'm not the sort of person that has like that much time to spare, especially when I'm just moved house and it's the period before Christmas. So but it said or we can, we can torture on WhatsApp. And so that customer service query took like the best part of 24 hours, mainly because I would fire a message. They come back quite quickly, but then I'd go back in my own time. And that was a really, really positive experience for me. I got it sorted without having to spend a load of time on the phone. And it kind of won my trust. So I think that's the other thing we need to do is, you know, if you've got a pop up and let's say we're going to, it's a two-stage pop up at the moment, asking for your email and asking for your SMS. If you're going to add that third stage in, it's going to be WhatsApp. There'll be different arguments to say, well, WhatsApp should come first and things. But I think that the level of intent, it's going to diminish at each stage. So I think if let's say that there's a set of 25% of people serve that pop up, I'm happy to give you email. I think that will probably diminish down to about 12 and a half, 10% will be willing to hand over their SMS. I think the amount in a UK specific market at the moment, because that's where I'm operating. I think that'll probably be as low as maybe five or six percent. But crucially, those people that do trust you to give you the WhatsApp, I reckon the conversion levels will be much higher because the form of engagement is so much richer. So I think we'll see all sorts of things about how much more effective than what's the email, WhatsApp is, and I don't disagree. But I think the volumes of people willing to hand over their WhatsApp and stuff to you, especially as a new acquisition level is going to be really low. So I think it's going to be, I would start with transactional messages when that trust allows someone to edit their order, you know, and things like that. And then I think you probably have bought the ticket then to be enabled to put some sort of post purchase, cross sell up, sell communication in there and see how it goes. Okay, I'm going to call that number four. Don't start with, I feel like the secretary here, this is quite fun. Number four, being don't start to marketing e. Go service before marketing. And then I'm also going to say, because you touch that on consent, and I think that's another mistake that people are going to think is, oh, we've got SMS subscribers, you know, we've got 20,000 SMS subscribers, let's just send them all of WhatsApp, but we can't do that. Can we, we start from zero with WhatsApp? Yeah, I mean, that there are definitely polarizing views and differing views on this. I would always proceed with caution, but to be honest, compliance is obviously important. So you've got to make sure for the territory when that you get this right. And that's probably worth saying it is going to be different in different areas and things. For me, though, what matters more is the customer experience. And I think I would definitely be really cautious about, I mean, I was, I was privy to one brand the other day that was sort of forging on and earth for our health. And we just sort of said, look, we can't really align ourselves with this because we fundamentally don't think it's the best way to go. But it was sort of taking an SMS list of consent that was maybe gathered 12 months ago and a failed SMS test. So three months in, they've been SMS off, but we had the consent. It was locked in back a time capsule. So we've got nine months of zero activity on SMS. And then it was like, right, we're going to try WhatsApp this time round. So we're going to just everyone that we've got SMS consent for. We're going to fire out a WhatsApp to them on Black Friday at 9 a.m. in the morning and out of Singapore. And I just, you know, regardless of whether or not the consent is right there, which I think needs some real clarification on, you know, from platforms and stuff like that. But regardless of whether the consent was there, I just don't think that is a way to win a customer over and announce yourself into WhatsApp. So yeah, I think if that brand wanted to do that, there may be Tuesday after Saturday the Monday or the people that had had SMSes and hadn't marked them as spam or how do emails open them and not converted. Maybe it's a WhatsApp to say, hey, yeah, you missed out on our sale. We are now, you know, on WhatsApp. So, you know, as first of all, cool, we're going to give you the opportunity and here's a copy. You can use it. But I'd even advise against, I think I am a very cautious Colin when it comes to these things. And I just don't want to be the one that's responsible for the case study where it's like, here's how not to do WhatsApp. Yeah, I think, I think anyone sending their first message via any marketing channel on Friday of Black Friday, you know, morning of Black Friday is a terrible idea. You're not, you're not going to see good results. You know, I might have done a some kind of pre warm up, join on WhatsApp list for the best deal, you know, so they opted in. But anyway, yeah, so don't assume consent, everyone. That's what we're saying for that mistake to avoid. I think like a concierge, you know, that's how I would be selling WhatsApp. So, you know, sign up to email to get, you know, emails you won't know how that works. Sign up to SMS to maybe have the first access or quickest access and things to sales to launches, exclusive this or sign up to WhatsApp for our concierge sort of service where, you know, will help you navigate our site will help you, you know, recommend products and things like that. That for me is where the true value of WhatsApp is going to be. So we've mentioned about the link up between customer service and marketing. And we've mentioned in passing AI agents, but, you know, I think the thread going between the lines of what we've been talking about is that the volume, you know, once you get past the impact, even when you're doing the transaction or once you get into the world of abandoned baskets and upsells and all the rest of it, you can't have a human team dealing with that because that's where the customers expecting very fast responses, accurate response and so on, so forth. So at that point, we get into the world of AI agents. Any mistakes to avoid when we're turning this on, Rich? Um, I mean, It is. And I think that's probably why there's such a nervousness around it and things like, you know, especially brands that work so hard on their tone of voice, and then they're going to hand that over to, and if you're only an experience of AI as chat GPT and, you know, the prompts and the vastly different, like, responses that you get. So it, look, these AI agents are way more, way more developed. And you can train them with your tone of voice, you can train them to make the odd mistake, you can change them, you know, there's all sorts of things. I had a really good conversation with one of the partnership people, live at an e-comp event about this where we sort of indulged a panel in front of a load of people, went off script and talked about how these agents again, a need to impact. I think the other thing though is you just need to have a structure and a plan in place. You need to get all of the team to go and try and speak to your agents and try and break them, try and do something because that's what users will do. Is if they sense their speaking to an agent, they'll try and find a loophole, try and find a wormhole. You also have to allow for grumpy or men like me at the moment that they're speaking to a robot or like talk to a human, like, you know, like me, my dad, and probably every other generation, whereby you're going to have to have a quite clear communication. There's this, hey, no problem. Just so you know, our humans work from and then the hours, if it's out of hours. Or the response time for a human can be up to. So we're going to pass on your message now and hopefully they'll come back to you. And then again, hopefully you've listened to mistake number one, you've told customer services that you're doing this. And there is a way that they can then be the pass-off can go to them via a service desk or whether that's a Zen desk or gorgeous, you know, whatever the platform is that you're using, that there is a way then the customer service can pick up the conversation. Yeah, no, it's both the one of the things to say on the AI agent front as well as that, of course, you're depending on which piece of software you've bought to enable you to do the WhatsApp marketing, they, you're building an AI agent within their software, which their software should already have done some of the trading towards a customer service person. So you're building on top of that rather than just getting a raw chat GPT. So it should be a little bit safe, but yeah, you definitely still want to do all the testing and the trying to break it and see where it goes a bit crazy. Yeah. And of course, the agent won't have the entirety of the internet. It's just basically, it will only have your lines of data, your integrations, your tone of voice and content sort of lessons and stuff. So it shouldn't be able to go rogue. But then I think that's the other thing that everybody is scared about. And I think there's going to be a nervousness around people want into hand over data to what they essentially now believe is going to be, you know, open source and available and things. So I think it's just a big, a big old education. I don't think this is going to be like, I mean, this time last year, we were probably still having conversations about how TikTok search was going to take over the world and Google would be out of business and things. And I don't, I don't think I've heard that mentioned for the last six months as a genuine risk anymore. So I don't think this is that level of like ludicracy. It is come in. It is going to be used. It's just, yeah, to what effect and to how widespread it's going to be. And of course, the other key thing we're training any agent that's talking to your customers is making sure that the data you've given it to learn off is kept up to date because, you know, giving it uploading an Excel spreadsheet of your products as they are now. It's not going to mean it's up to date in three months time when the products have changed and the information has changed. You've got to make sure that that is happening too. Is there anything we should be careful with in terms of what's that being part of meta, Rich? Yes, I think that so straight away, one of the big blockers as well is just the people misunderstanding that you've got to have all sorts of like business providers for your WhatsApp account. You've got to have a number, you've got to have a device and stuff. You haven't got to have any of that. This setup is actually crazy, easy to sort of set up and things. I think obviously I operate in the world of email from marketing and things and I also am a receiver of email marketing and there are people that use like outreach and if there's anyone out there that's thinking right, well, we'll just burn a WhatsApp account, we'll just go wild and we'll send all sorts of messages and stuff. And then once that gets burnt, we'll move on to the next one. I would just remind you it's like attached to your meta advertising account. So I've not seen any evidence of what happens if you've got a set that matters, got some pretty strict rules in so you can, you can't message more than 1,000 people to start off with until you kind of show you a meta that you are a responsible WhatsApp sender and things like that. But yeah, I would be, it's not just going to be a case like you can with some outreach where you just burn a domain and move on to the next one. You can't just burn a WhatsApp number or a WhatsApp account and then move on to the next one. You have got to build a reputation and then keep that reputation. I would dread to think that an entire meta account could be suspended on the basis of a WhatsApp mistake, but I also wouldn't put it beyond the realms of possibility when it comes to meta. And I think anyone that's tried to rescue a meta account from suspension or something would tell you that that's probably not a line to tread. Yeah, I would agree as someone who has fallen foul of meta in the past. Yeah, you're not going to speak to anybody. You can do all the posts you like. You are not going to get to speak to anybody. But I think in that way, it's quite interesting. New ground we're breaking with WhatsApp because email as a channel is not owned by anybody SMS as a channel is not owned by anybody WhatsApp as a channel is owned by someone. So I think that I suspect if WhatsApp takes off in the way we suspect it will in a few years time, we will be talking less about consent and is the in the level of sending that the customers are happy with but the level of sending that meta is happy with you doing and their level of how happy the customer has to be in the same way as we know we talk about the need to stay on the right side of Amazon and customer services and all that kind of stuff. Rich, is there anything else people need to avoid these mistakes before we finish this bit of our chat? I think I would just say again, like there's what meta thinks of your behavior and what meta, you know, but again, just a bit like the consent thing to bring it back to the customer I think the only way you're going to get into WhatsApp is like a real third level of engagement and trust. I think again, speaking from UK market where WhatsApp is quite sacred, you know, we always use it for families and things. I think if someone lets you into WhatsApp, that is a real like show of trust. Don't breach that trust because, you know, if they don't allow your emails that you can just un-subscribe and I think I think a WhatsApp breach of trust is going to probably run quite a lot deeper and you would just use that customer, you know, we've got lots of brands where they're subscription brands and you see their subscribers, their happy subscribers, they purchase every month but they've been unsubscribe for emails for the last six months. They're only getting transactional messages because they just don't like it. I think if you break that WhatsApp trust, I think it could have a wider effect. So yeah, all of the things that we've just said, lean into that, there's some clients, there's not upsetting meta, I nearly swore then you nearly had to beat me. But I think ultimately it just needs to come down to that bond that you've got with your customer and I think WhatsApp is a real top level of that bond that's sure to be in on the phone to them. Awesome. Thank you, Rich. It's been great picking your brains about all of this. Listeners, remember to stay tuned right to the end so you don't miss out on Rich's insider tips on WhatsApp and my suggestions for more free resources to help you improve things even further in your businesses. Everyone's talking about automation, AI, personalization, but there's one big opportunity that many are still missing. In India and the Middle East brands using WhatsApp to engage customers are already seeing three times higher engagement and up to 40% more repeat sales. If you want to build personalized buying journeys that actually sell, not just chat, it's time to get quick engage by GoQuick. But your demo now via KeepOpt.com/QuickEngage. That's KeepOpt.com/KWIKENGAGE. KeepOpt.com/QuickEngage. Okay, Rich. So far, we've gone deep into mistakes to avoid on WhatsApp. Now you get to whilst with your insider knowledge about the whole of WhatsApp. So for the following questions, your answer can be anything to do with WhatsApp, which of course includes everything we've already been talking about. Rich, you ready for these? I'm ready. Okay, let's start with newbie advice. If we've inspired someone to take their first step, what do they need to know to give themselves the best chance of success? In the context of WhatsApp, I would just say caution, which I know sounds so boring and probably very different to lots of other advice and things, certainly the noise and LinkedIn and things. But we just aren't seeing really wonderful examples of great WhatsApp use. We have from test and one of them I'm really excited about. I think it's the perfect brand with the perfect community and stuff. And I'm really hoping that we can be one of those case studies that in two, three months time, people are using for their own, the basis of their own plans for launching stuff. I think WhatsApp will be great. We just collectively need to grow it and the understanding of it being applied. form where we do now, converse brands and customers. That is in the context that you came out. I appreciate it. You've got a massive worldwide audience. So that advice might be slightly different in some territories. But I think caution with any new marketing channel is a good idea. You know, not going crazy on day one, but learning just simply because you've got to learn from your customers and how they respond to it. So I will take that as a global answer, Rich. Now, once you've started, of course, you've got to keep optimizing. So what's your favorite way to improve performance? I mean, it's the wider advice for all of you converse, but definitely in what's that specific, I would say test, test, test. You know, don't just go in with one approach on WhatsApp and then be like, ah, well, that didn't work. And so we're going to stop WhatsApp, like try different approaches, try conversational, try, try broadcast. Like, I'm absolutely happy to be, to be wrong and to be corrected in things. But I think definitely in the context of what's that tested. I also really like the idea of if you're not sure, call some of your top-tier customers, call some of the people that have been placed orders with you, have SMS consent for them, and just ask them what they think. Like, we're going to launch WhatsApp. Would you would you like to talk to us on WhatsApp? Would you prefer that to, you know, would you prefer it to this and things and try and formulate your own plan based on that? Excellent advice, as always. If someone listening wants to learn more, is there a cheap or free resource you would recommend? I mean, cough out, not yet. And I think that is the, that's the issue, is there is no, there is no case that you know, I am reliably informed that some really good ones are coming down the line. I did try and do some research today and found, and I've been able to point out to a couple of SaaS providers just about, um, some like unfinished templates even, on case studies that have published and stuff. I think those that I first passed the post with, with some really good use cases and case studies that show both good customer experience and tangible ROI will, will be able to really profit. So yeah, hopefully we can, we can be one of those first past the post in the New Year with some good case studies. Yes, having done a lot of giggling of, of WhatsApp myself, uh, recently and AIing of WhatsApp. There's a lot of keyword opportunity out there at the moment for WhatsApp and e-commerce. Um, finally, crystal bull time, what's coming up in the next six to 12 months that we should be getting ready for? Um, I think it will be the rise again in a WhatsApp context, the rise of the gentick, um, commerce. I would even go as far, as this, you know, I'm not just did, uh, sort of boring old fart when it comes to these things. I would go as far as to say we will see agent to agent. So, you know, as, uh, as a consumer, I think there will be, we're going to be using more than just chat GPT. I think there will be bolt-ons that we'll be able to add on where we've got like a personal shopper agent that we can sort of feed into it ideas and it can sort of go away and then bring us right. This is, this is what we're going to recommend. Would you like it to purchase for me? And then, of course, the brands, would have their own agents, their side and things. So we could see the rise of where I like, actually, the transaction isn't between a human and a brand at all. It's between the two agents that represent the both. Um, I genuinely see that as, as what will happen. Whether it's in the next six to 12 months, I don't know. But I think this is all paid in the way for that level of, um, AI and automation. Yeah, I think it, I'm not sure if you're entirely going to be right there, but I'll, as I'm a little bit less boisterous, I suppose, on, uh, on getting to that agent, two agents buying from each other for you, um, the most. But I think the thing which I extrapolate out of that is that we talked about, you know, training your AI agent within the tool you're using to run WhatsApp. But then you've probably got another one that you're training within your gorgeous or your Zendesk or whatever it is you're using to manage normal customer service. And then you've probably got another one tied into email somewhere or something else. And this, there's going to come a point, I think, quite quickly in the next six to 12 months where the brands are going to want, we want one consolidated customer service agent. And we want the tech to, to control that in house and then feed that out. I don't want to have to update five or six different databases when we change some of our brand stuff, or we've got some more tone of voice stuff to go out. So I think that's, that's, that's coming as well. Yeah. I mean, one of my, um, a good pal of mine is a, there's been a voice on AI for quite some time. You know, he, he speaks internationally and he, like, uses a line which I've stolen and repeat constantly, which is that AI is against deal people's jobs. People using AI is going to steal people's jobs. And I think it's probably, I mean, if you, if you're shopping on a, on a Saturday evening and your customer service or your responses on your website query forms and stuff are nine to five Monday to Friday, the, and you go to three brands and one of them has an AI agent and, and what's that functionality? You, by the time you, the other two brands get to Monday morning and get sort of to, to reply to that inquiry and stuff, the, the sale will have already occurred if that AI agent is able to answer all of the questions and stuff that are opposed to say, I say, I, I would be if I was owned in a brand investing time now into starting to model this and starting to look at using it. And, and it is marketing and customer service is being aligned and one and the same. Yeah, huge opportunities in that space at the moment. Well, look, Rich, we are very nearly at the end of the show. So if the listeners want to get in contact with you, how can they find you in your business? LinkedIn is a, is a good place to find me, especially, I mean, if this is going out in January of the 21st, I might be having a, the relax because I'm posting every day for some daft reason. But yeah, I'm, I'm Rich Evans on LinkedIn. There are two of us in similar sort of spaces. We have a quarterly call. So make sure you tag the right one because I'll lose points in our, in our ongoing competition. If not, a safer way, though, would be get a better.co.uk where, yeah, we've got web forms on there and things. Brilliant. Rich, thank you so much for coming on the key optimising podcast and for outlining so clearly key mistakes we need to avoid in on what's up journeys. So thank you so much for being here. Thank you, Paul, with me. What a fascinating chat with Rich there. And I counted that as eight mistakes to avoid when marketing with WhatsApp. So let's quickly run through those. First off, treat it like a broadcast platform. You don't want to do that. Forget that it's conversational, which I think weaves through every single one of these eight, but is worth pointing out on its own. Number three, don't fail or your mistake would be to fail to have marketing and customer service working together on it. It is not one channel or the other. It's both of them. Number four, go straight in with marketing rather than service. So you want to start off with those service messages, then build in the more transactional marketing based ones. Number five, misunderstand consent got to get that right. Legally and in terms of the customer's reaction to it all. Number six, fail to consider how the channel's role fits with the roles of email and SMS. Where does it fit in how much you want customers to sign up to it? Where does it fit in the type of messages you're sending out via it? You should not be sending the same stuff across all three. Number seven, don't have an AI agent ready to respond to inbound messages. That would be a massive error on this platform. And then number eight, respect that it's a part of matter. A more complex one. I'm not going to try and reiterate that. Rich did a great job of explaining it earlier, but it's it's an owned channel by somebody else. It's not the same as email and SMS. And we're going to need to get to grips with that. I'm sure over the coming years. You can get our notes on that and the links to all the things we discuss, the full transcript of the episode, important notes and more at keepoptimizing.com. You can use keepopt.com/the number of this episode to go straight to the right page of the website. And when you get there, why not put yourself on our email list? We don't have WhatsApp yet or even SMS, but we do have email. So come and join our email newsletter. And thank you so much for tuning in to this episode of the keepoptimizing podcast. If you've enjoyed this episode, then check out episode 289, the one immediately before this one, because I think it will help you build on what you learned in this episode. Because in it, Luca is explaining the ins and outs of revenue recovery strategies on WhatsApp, including abandoned carts. So we're getting super tactical in this one. Whereas this one, this episode was a bit more big thinking that one is super duper tactical. You can also find our full thread of WhatsApp content by scrolling up your feed or use the short link keepopt.com/whatsapp to find it all on the website. And please do tell your fellow marks about the show because there's Richard and I were discussing this is super new stuff. So I know they need to know more about WhatsApp marketing and that's what we're here to help them understand. Have a great week and make sure you listen to the next episode so I can help you to keep optimizing your marketing. If you want to build personalized WhatsApp buying journeys that actually sell not just chat, it's time to get quick engage by GoQuick. Book your demo now at keepopt.com/quickengage. That's keepopt.com/kwik ENGAGE.