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 internationally. Together with Toni Matas, director at Persualia, Nick spoke about their expertise at #FRO2021 from The Useful resource Alliance.

In March final 12 months, our world modified from in the future to the following. At MSF Spain, we knew that the lives of our confined audiences had modified vastly. Their days lived on-line. Work on-line. Faculty on-line. Even events on-line.

It was an opportunity for us to attempt a brand new advertising and marketing technique: inbound advertising and marketing.

COVID-19 would require us to launch digital-only advertising and marketing campaigns. Most of those could be campaigns based mostly on interruption by way of adverts, by which communication with a possible donor was fast, and the response we sought – a donation – was quick. And we knew they’d work, as a result of emergency campaigns do work nicely on digital. There’s urgency, the problem is well-known, and the necessity is obvious.

However there was additionally a possibility to attempt 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 have been individuals who have been residing by way of 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 carried out, we obtained one thing surprising by electronic mail. It was an inside doc, containing a collection of suggestions to assist employees handle their emotional and psychological well being within the face of the pandemic.

With the arrival of this doc, we noticed a singular alternative. We already knew that psychological well being was a key theme for our audiences. A collection 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 a whole lot of 1000’s of individuals. We noticed the chance to create a marketing campaign that doesn’t ask for one thing however fairly affords  it. A marketing campaign that doesn’t chase, however attracts.

An opportunity to attempt a brand new software: 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 have been already in negotiations with an company that specialised within the space of chatbots and conversational advertising and marketing 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 person with totally different journeys, and work with totally different goals with every chatbot (consciousness, engagement, conversion, and so forth.)
• Customers perceive the chat format. Chatbots really feel much like broadly used instruments like WhatsApp and, in contrast to with touchdown pages, customers solely should course of one piece of data at a time when participating with them
• They’re extremely optimisable. Each click on is an information level. It’s straightforward to grasp the place individuals are being engaged and the place they aren’t in an effort to shortly and simply adapt and alter each piece of textual content and each level of interplay
• They will comprise many types of media and content material. Customers don’t want to go away the chatbot to expertise all the things 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 one in all our group 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 inside psychological well being help doc, however rewritten as a collection of tales within the punchy conversational textual content type of chatbots. It supplied recommendation on eight potential types of emotional stress, with a number of illustrations to interrupt up the textual content and produce it to life.

Moreover, we created a downloadable lockdown package that supplied recommendation and steerage based mostly on the information contained inside the chatbot expertise, together with different sources. Customers who give their contact particulars to obtain the package are registered for a follow-up electronic mail journey, which is the inbound advertising and marketing a part of the equation. Those that gave their particulars have been additionally given an outline of MSF’s operations and the prospect to make a direct distinction by donating to help the struggle in opposition to COVID-19.

We added the newly-created chatbot to our coronavirus net pages. Resulting from their excessive rating in Google for the search phrases “epidemic” and “coronavirus”, these pages have been receiving 1000’s of distinctive guests daily, guaranteeing sturdy preliminary engagement with the chatbot. We additionally posted in regards to the bot on our social media channels, understanding we may anticipate large attain on any content material regarding psychological well being and COVID-19.

Along with electronic mail advertising and marketing, we additionally developed Fb adverts to advertise the chatbot and attain an viewers past our most conventional supporter base. Inside 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 suggestions
• 7,700 leads (2,000 outdoors Spain)
• 78 donors (€3,350 donated)
• 33 common donors

One of many bot’s best 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 group to high school dad and mom teams on WhatsApp went all over the world; 1000’s of individuals from Guatemala and Mexico have been reached by forwarded messages. Months later, we heard from our psychological help group that we’d had sufferers from a centre in Guatemala congratulate our docs on the chatbot!

The chatbot has since been tailored into totally different languages and contexts. However, as lockdown has develop into much less strict and the viewers utilizing the unique bot in Spanish has dropped, the price of adverts 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 approach, 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 somewhat chatbot-crazy, releasing a number of bots to satisfy a wide range of totally different goals: peer-to-peer fundraising, engagement, recruitment, common donor acquisition, and extra. Throughout our speak at #FRO2021, we talked delegates by way of the seven superpowers of chatbots and the way MSF Spain employed each to check this newest software in our arsenal.

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