Holiday Marketing with Rakuten Viber in 2023

Holiday marketing is a great way to drive sales and attract new audiences. It’s also an opportunity to build relationships with existing customers and show appreciation for their loyalty. By creating a holiday marketing plan that takes into account their needs and wants, you can ensure that your efforts will be successful.

When it comes to special occasion marketing, leveraging the power of Rakuten Viber can be a great way to make a difference. Rakuten Viber is a top-notch communication app allowing users to stay in touch with family, friends, colleagues — and, increasingly, brands.

Advantages of Holiday Marketing with Rakuten Viber in 2023

A Larger Audience

The usage of mobile and messaging apps is growing considerably worldwide:

• People spend about 4 hours and 50 minutes a day online on their mobile devices.
• 95.6% of Internet users access chat and messaging apps.

The popularity of superapps is also growing as people realize how convenient they can be. They are a great marketing tool, and marketers are increasingly exploring them for brand growth strategies. Such apps can help reach a wide audience and offer a lot of different features that can be used to promote a product or service. 

Consequently, Rakuten Viber, with its wide user base and over 1 billion downloads on Android, is a great marketing tool.

Targeting Specific Demographics

Rakuten Viber superapp is great for targeting specific demographics with your holiday marketing campaigns. With its help, you can reach out to different audiences based on their age, gender, location, interests, and more. This makes it easy to tailor your message to the right people, increasing your chances of success.

Many Useful Types of Rakuten Viber Ads

These are Rakuten Viber-specific mobile ad placements:

• Post-call ads appear after a Rakuten Viber call ends. They can contain animated visuals, text and a CTA button.
• Rakuten Viber Explore allows you to show your ads where everyone looks for content.
• Rakuten Viber Chat adverts are displayed on the regular Chat screen — the most used one on the app.
• Rakuten Viber More ads are displayed when users are looking for something in the Rakuten Viber sticker store, subscribe to international call plans, or update their profile.
• Rakuten Viber Calls ads help you reach customers before they dial. Your ad will appear right under the search strip, and precise targeting and appealing call-to-action will do their job.

Options for desktop include:

• Native ads that appear in the bottom left corner of the Rakuten Viber app for desktop.
• Premium video adverts that last 30 seconds, are muted by default, but can’t be skipped.

• Apart from the native ad placements, Rakuten Viber Stickers are a great way to get your message across to potential customers in a fun way. They are typically colorful, eye-catching, and interactive, making them a great choice for businesses looking to make an impact with their messaging.

Suggestions for Creating Effective Holiday Ads

1. Include a CTA. This can be as simple as telling people to click on the ad in order to learn more, or as complex as asking them to fill out a form.
2. Personalize your message, which can help you reach people on a deeper level, ensuring efficiency. For instance, personalized CTAs boast a conversion rate that is 42% higher than that of regular ones.
3. Communicate value — explain how your product or service will improve the customer’s life.
4. Offer social proof. If a person is still unsure about your offer, let them know what the public is saying about the product or service.
5. Provide a solution. Potential customers should be able to see how your product or service will fulfill a need or solve a problem that they are currently facing.
6. Include an image. Since your ad will only be allotted a certain amount of space, using an image will help you to get your message across in a more visually appealing way.
7. Make your ad interesting enough to encourage people to click.
8. Test, test, and test again. Test different images, different CTAs, and different ad copy. You won’t know what works and what doesn’t unless you do that.

Helpful Business Messaging Options

Rakuten Viber business messages (VBMs) come in following types: 

• Promotional VBMs are used to send personalized offers — a useful feature today, when 72% of people prefer just that. The messages can help reduce the otherwise high cart abandonment rate (about 70%) and make repeat purchases more likely. Send your customers exclusive coupons and keep your audience informed when specific gifts they have shown interest in are on sale or restocked by sending them gift messaging and alerts.
• Transactional VBMs increase the convenience of service. Share one-time passwords with your customers when they register in your online store, send  appointment reminders, and keep them informed about the status of their gift delivery during a busy season.
• Conversational VBMs involve live communication between a company's representative and a customer, adding a more personal feel to brand-user interaction. Businesses employ them to aid people in finding the correct product, organizing deliveries, arranging bookings, helping in gift assemblance and so much more.
• Rakuten Viber Chatbots enable brands to provide round the clock fully automated real-time customer service. People can choose products and services directly in the Rakuten Viber app and can easily go to payment. As a result, bots perform boring repetitive tasks, leaving more complex cases to human employees.

Tips for Creating Effective Messages for Holiday Shoppers

Here are some tips to help you capture the attention of holiday shoppers and maximize your sales:

• Keep it simple. When it comes to holiday messages, less is more. Keep your message concise and straightforward so that shoppers can quickly understand what you are offering.
• Focus on benefits. Instead of simply listing products, show shoppers how they can use your products to make their holiday season more enjoyable.
• Incorporate festive themes into your messages. This could mean using appropriate colors and images or even holiday greetings.
• Use Rakuten Viber business messaging options to minimize cart abandonment and increase conversion rate.
• Hyper-personalize your messages by addressing customers by name and mentioning previous purchases. This will make shoppers feel valued and appreciated.
• Use automation, such as Rakuten Viber Chatbots, to interact with consumers.
• Utilize Rakuten Viber Lenses to make your holiday marketing positive, fun, creative, and entertaining.

Rakuten Viber Lenses

Rakuten Viber Lenses (VL) are interactive augmented reality (AR) filters that can be added to messages, photos and videos. They can increase brand’s visibility among Rakuten Viber users, facilitate viral engagement with it, and ensure its popularity among Gen Z. The 200% increase in engagement that AR offers is real!

Using Rakuten Viber Lenses, marketers can create unique and engaging holiday campaigns that bring the spirit of the season to life. With Rakuten Viber Lenses, businesses can enrich their marketing content with:

• 3D elements
• Sound effects
• Character animation

What’s more, festive VLs can be integrated into existing campaigns, allowing marketers to make the most of their existing messaging. 

For example, a company might use a VL to create an interactive greeting card with a 3D snowman, red heart, or a festive filter that’s perfect for capturing holiday memories. You can choose from a variety of fun and creative lenses to make your messages and video chats stand out. With a variety of styles, textures and effects, you can create the perfect look for your photos. From 3D objects and emoji animations to cartoon-like filters and face effects, Rakuten Viber Lenses have something for everyone.

Tips for Creating Effective Rakuten Viber Lenses

Here are a few tips to help you create effective VLs:

1. Engage. Lenses should be fun and interactive, but they should also be easy to understand. Avoid complicated photos, videos, etc. that may confuse or frustrate users.
2. Utilize visuals that are relevant to your brand and what it stands for.
3. Optimize for both desktop and mobile. Cell phones and smartphones are becoming increasingly popular, so it’s important to make sure your lens is compatible with them as much as with desktop.
4. Before launching your lens, test it on different devices and platforms to ensure it’s working properly and that the user experience is satisfactory.
5. Use the analytics provided by Rakuten Viber to monitor your lens’ performance and adjust it if needed.

Future of Holiday Marketing with Rakuten Viber, as Seen in 2023

From its inception in 2010, Rakuten Viber has become one of the most popular messaging apps in the world, with users in over 190 countries around the world. 

Today, it offers a variety of solutions that can be used to reach customers during upcoming Saint Valentine’s Day and any other holiday. With its customizable business messages, chatbots, stickers, lenses, and so much more, Viber is set to remain an increasingly major player in holiday marketing.

If you’d like to learn more about how Rakuten Viber for Business solutions can be used in your holiday marketing campaign, feel free to get in touch with our team.