How COVID-19 helped MSF enter the world of chatbots

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 subsequent. At MSF Spain, we knew that the lives of our confined audiences had modified massively. Their days lived on-line. Work on-line. College 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 primarily based on interruption via adverts, during which communication with a possible donor was fast, and the response we sought – a donation – was fast. And we knew they’d work, as a result of emergency campaigns do work effectively on digital. There’s urgency, the problem is well-known, and the necessity is obvious.

However there was additionally a chance to attempt one thing totally different. For the primary time ever, the factor that the majority pursuits MSF – medical-humanitarian motion – was additionally the factor that a majority of individuals in Spain. These had been individuals who had been residing via a medical-humanitarian emergency in their very own nation, and these shared pursuits are the core of robust communication.

4 days after the primary lockdown was applied, we acquired one thing sudden by electronic mail. It was an inside doc, containing a sequence of suggestions to assist workers 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 sequence of movies we’d launched providing recommendation on psychological well being in a pandemic was getting attain we hardly ever 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 reasonably provides  it. A marketing campaign that doesn’t chase, however attracts.

An opportunity to attempt a brand new instrument: chatbots

We additionally had an opportunity to check a brand new kind of channel that we knew had the capability to be extremely partaking: chatbots. We had 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 targets with every chatbot (consciousness, engagement, conversion, and so on.)
• Customers perceive the chat format. Chatbots really feel just like extensively used instruments like WhatsApp and, in contrast to with touchdown pages, customers solely should course of one piece of data at a time when partaking with them
• They’re extremely optimisable. Each click on is an information level. It’s simple to know the place persons are being engaged and the place they aren’t in an effort to rapidly 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 every thing 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 at the start of April in 2020. The “bot” was really certainly one of our crew 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 primarily based on MSF’s inside psychological well being help doc, however rewritten as a sequence of tales within the punchy conversational textual content fashion of chatbots. It supplied recommendation on eight potential types of emotional stress, with a lot 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 primarily based on the guidelines contained throughout 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 had been additionally given an summary of MSF’s operations and the possibility 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. Attributable to their excessive rating in Google for the search phrases “epidemic” and “coronavirus”, these pages had been receiving 1000’s of distinctive guests day-after-day, making certain robust preliminary engagement with the chatbot. We additionally posted concerning the bot on our social media channels, figuring out we may anticipate large attain on any content material referring to 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. Throughout 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 exterior Spain)
• 78 donors (€3,350 donated)
• 33 common donors

One of many bot’s biggest 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 crew to high school mother and father teams on WhatsApp went all over the world; 1000’s of individuals from Guatemala and Mexico had been reached by forwarded messages. Months later, we heard from our psychological help crew 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, now we have continued to optimise and now must revisit our technique to plan how we’ll use the bot in an always-on manner, 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 slightly chatbot-crazy, releasing a number of bots to fulfill quite a lot of totally different targets: peer-to-peer fundraising, engagement, recruitment, common donor acquisition, and extra. Throughout our speak at #FRO2021, we talked delegates via the seven superpowers of chatbots and the way MSF Spain employed every one to check this newest instrument in our arsenal.

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