Attract & Interact: a Rakuten Viber networking workshop in Hungary

Rakuten Viber offers 3 months of free conversational business messages, presents recently launched channels and AR lenses, shares insights on new advertising capabilities and bots' rise in customer engagement.

On April 7th, 2022 Rakuten Viber continued its event season with the first networking workshop in Hungary in two years. Rakuten Viber's senior management team came to Budapest to talk about the rising importance of messaging for businesses in times of change and discuss the newest mobile marketing examples and trends with industry professionals in attendance. The latest Rakuten Viber tools for businesses help marketers achieve their messenger marketing goals,  and strengthen customer loyalty as shown in proven case studies from Hungary and the region. The speakers wrapped up with delineating the company's global goal of becoming a "super-app".

A new era for brand communication

As smartphone use increases, so does the number of hours spent on mobile devices. Rakuten Viber is well suited to capitalize on this trend: in Hungary only, Rakuten Viber facilitates hundreds of millions calls, more than seven billion messages, and timeless connections between users and brands. Rakuten Viber is focused on putting this trend to good use for both the brands and the users, so it's constantly adding new solutions that facilitate user-brand interaction.

Rakuten Viber's latest product—Channels is now available in Hungary for the first time as the ultimate broadcast platform for content creators. Channels offer maximum engagement with advanced moderation options and the new  comments feature which generate top interaction rates for content partners such as influencers, media companies, sports clubs and more. In Hungary alone, there are 2.3 million members on Channels on Rakuten Viber today. Some of the biggest and the most lively examples are one of the leading sports media in Hungary - Nemzeti Sport together with the Nosalty portal for cooking & recipes and a number of sports clubs and NGOs such as WWF Hungary, Etesd, Fradi, Vasas, etc.

Rakuten Viber Lenses, a good example of AR creative engagement in the app, have been a success in Hungary, helping brands stay relevant for a Gen Z audience and beyond. In less than 3 first months since their launch in October, more than one million Lenses have been created by Hungarian users.  On Rakuten Viber, thanks to the lenses integration, businesses can innovate and optimize the user experience, by creating unique experiences with their products or services. 

Native, non-intrusive Rakuten Viber Advertising solutions with different targeting capabilities continue to gain popularity with brands who want to increase their visibility and attract new users. Last year, the volume of monthly ads impressions on Rakuten Viber reached more than 250M, where retail, travel, food and beverage, automotive and telco became the top-performing verticals.

Rakuten Viber business messaging solutions, which include Chatbots and Business Messages, continue strengthening 1-to-1 communications between brands and users. In 2021 in Hungary the company recorded:

• A 40% growth in the number of Rakuten Viber Chatbots, where customers get automated replies to requests in real-time 24/7. Chatbots let businesses offer around-the-clock support without the additional costs that come with human agents—and free up the human service agents to deal with more complex customer care needs.
• A 61% growth in delivered Rakuten Viber Business Messages. The purpose of Viber Business Messages is to bring brands closer to customers via a single channel that has everything one needs for a fruitful interaction: from driving purchases via personalized promotional messages to delivering important notifications via transactional messages and providing around-sales customer support via conversational messages.

Rakuten Viber expects that conversational business messages will continue growing – globally and in Hungary. To help brands familiarize with this 2-way communication solution, the app has launched a three-month free trial of Conversational Rakuten Viber Business Messages: from April 4th to June 30th, 2022 across global markets any brand sending its first conversational message receives 90 days of free conversational messages from the date of the first message.

"Today people no longer want to use apps for different needs separately. On average app users spend 77% of their time on their top 3 apps, and almost half of their time in one single app," says Konstantin Kostadinov, Senior Sales Director CEE & CIS at Rakuten Viber. "People nowadays seek one gateway to many options in one place, and Rakuten Viber continues developing and pushing the app even further to make it a convenient place that meets the maximum of users' needs."