How can coaches use WhatsApp & Co. to build closer relationships with their community?

Best Case WhatsApp & Coaching: In the WUMMM weekly interview, we spoke to Erin Chen, a well-known trained sex & relationship counsellor who is now also CEO of the intimacy platform Gilly. She told us why counselling via messaging apps is the most personal way to reach the target group, how she uses WhatsApp notifications for individual counselling and why WhatsApp wins against SMS.

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With the founding of Gilly – a digital intimacy platform for couples with children – Erin draws on her professional experience to make intimacy wellness more accessible for parents. Gilly uses WhatsApp and SMS to send their community little daily tasks to help them improve their love lives.

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The topics at a glance:

🔥 Why WhatsApp & Co. are a good channel for personal coaching

💌 Daily personalized coaching via WhatsApp notifications

💸 How WhatsApp & Co. helps monetize the consulting business

💡 Field test – WhatsApp vs. SMS: WhatsApp wins with the community and offers easier handling

⭐️ With which tool do coaches use WhatsApp?

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Why are WhatsApp & Co. a good channel for personal coaching?

In Erin’s case, which deals with the sensitive topic of sex, it was important to find a channel that the target group feels comfortable with and trusts.

And one, which gives the community the opportunity to talk to the coach in an uncomplicated and non-public way. Which has a huge impact on community engagement. That is Erin’s experience:

Having a real conversation with the community is essential to building real relationships.

Erin’s messaging approach also reveals additional benefits of messaging apps. “Parents don’t have the time or energy to check their email.” Messaging apps are used incidentally in everyday life, perfect for really reaching their target audience.

Daily personalized coaching via WhatsApp notifications

Erin sends the small personal tasks for her community via automated WhatsApp notifications, where she also personalizes the address. To automate the sending of successive tasks, the team used MessengerPeople to connect their WhatsApp channel to their task pool via Zapier!

💡 WhatsApp Notifications are mostly paid push messages from WhatsApp. They are bound to certain WhatsApp templates. However, anyone who is creative here and above all makes sure that the added value of each message for the community is in the foreground can start an offer like Erin.

How WhatsApp & Co. helps monetize the consulting business

Erin has also monetized her digital consulting very smartly with a subscription model. Her community can test Gilly’s messaging coaching for a few weeks free of charge, and those who want to continue using the advice service then pay a monthly subscription fee.

WhatsApp vs. SMS: WhatsApp wins with the community and offers easier handling

By choosing the messaging apps, Erin and her team took a close look at which messaging apps they use to reach most of their target audience. It quickly became clear that WhatsApp  – the most widely used global messaging app – was the right choice for their target markets in Europe. For the U.S. and Canada, the decision was made in favor of SMS, since there has always been an unlimited number of SMS included per mobile phone contract. Thus, SMS is still widespread in the US .

It was important for us to choose messaging channels that are relevant to our core markets. Result: WhatsApp for International. SMS for the USA and Canada.

Erin gave her entire target group worldwide both messaging services to choose from. WhatsApp was significantly more popular than SMS, surprisingly also in Canada and the US.

In the day-to-day handling of the channels, Erin experienced that implementing an SMS service is much more complicated. For each country, you have to talk to the regional telecommunication companies and also have different costs. A WhatsApp channel, on the other hand, only needs to be set up once via the official WhatsApp Business API . The WhatsApp service can then be used globally and the costs for push notifications are uniform.

Together with MessengerPeople, Erin is setting up the WhatsApp channel via the WhatsApp Business API in a few days.

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Numerous coaches like Erin use the Messenger Communications Platform from MessengerPeople

With our software solution “ Messenger Communication Platform ” you can…

• 👨‍⚖️ … use WhatsApp and other messaging apps fully GDPR compliant for your customer service
• 🚀… start immediately and without any IT efforts necessary – even out of home office!
• 💻… edit and reply to all messages centrally – no matter from which messaging app they were sent
• ↔ … assign tickets manually or automatically via autorouting to your colleagues in charge
• 🤖 … easily set up automations with the help of our chatbot builder
• 💰 … use the No. 1 communication channel effectively and at a fair pricing and without a set-up fee for maximum personal digital consulting!

You can get a first impression of our product here:

👉 Tip: Arrange a live demo for the Messenger Communication Platform now. We will guide you through the product via web demo and give you expert tips as well as answers to all your questions.

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