Conversational AI Marketing Trends Report

What a year it’s been for conversations!

In the past year, the commercialization of artificial intelligence (AI) transformed the way site visitors interact with brands online. Simultaneously, buyer expectations for personalization skyrocketed, and, when it came to converting site visitors into buyers, the need for speed prevailed. Needless to say, 2023 was the year for redefining what Conversational Marketing means to buyers — and what it should look like for businesses in the future.

But we’re not here to tell you these things anecdotally. We’ve got the data to prove it. To discover how B2B buyers interacted with businesses in 2023, we looked into the over 30 million conversations that took place within all instances of Drift, a Salesloft company — both our customers’ and our own — during the past year. And what we found confirmed what many businesses have begun to suspect:

Today, B2B buyers expect individualized website experiences, and your company’s ability to deliver on that expectation is what will make or break the sale.

What better way to get to know B2B buyers than by talking to them directly?

While we didn’t personally hold 30 million virtual conversations this year,
 we did run our Conversational AI base model across every single Drift conversation. This base model comes trained on two billion B2B conversations out of the box, which helps it understand the most
common topics users bring up in chat.

By running the base model across all the interactions, our AI was able
 to categorize each conversation into one of the base model topics. From this data, our product team was able to look at the most common topics brought up in conversations and compare that to data from 2022.

We also tapped our business operations team to look at what types of playbooks converted the best, what time of day was most popular for conversations, and which pages saw the most chat activity during 2023.

B2B buyers are grateful for digital conversations

From 2022 to 2023, the number of times buyers expressed gratitude through chat nearly doubled. This included things like site visitors saying “Thank you” and “I appreciate it.”

And they expressed this gratitude all day long

After analyzing all of the conversations within Drift, a Salesloft company's East Coast customer base, we found that, while the majority of conversations still take place between 9 AM and 5 PM EST, an additional 39% of all conversations happened outside of normal business hours.

Not to mention that, of these East Coast conversations, 41% of all meetings booked through Drift, a Salesloft company, happened outside of 9 to 5.

On any page they wished

Conversations took place on nearly every website page in 2023, and while site visitors were most likely to convert on a high-intent page like the pricing page or a demo page, still 59% of all sourced opportunities came from other URLs.

In whichever language they preferred

Both the number of requests to change languages during a bot conversation and attempts to speak to the bot in a different language doubled over the past year.

B2B buyers are everywhere on your website, at all times. You should be, too.

B2B buyers don’t care what time it is or what page they’re on — when they’re ready to talk, they’re ready to talk. And that means you need to be ready to talk at anytime, anywhere, too. By leveraging AI chatbots across your website, you can ensure that you never miss the opportunity to engage with a website visitor without burning out your human team. After training Drift’s Conversational AI on your brand’s voice and content, you can deliver an individualized website experience to each unique site visitor based on who they are and where they’re visiting from. Plus, GPT Translations enable your human agents to talk to site visitors anywhere in the world without ever having to leave the chat conversation. Learn more about how Conversational AI can help your business deliver
 a better website experience for your site visitors from our Conversational AI page.

B2B buyers have high expectations about the online buying experience

In 2023, the amount of customer feedback submitted through Drift, a Salesloft company increased 2.5x.

But they won't wait around to tell you their thoughts...

We found that live agents who responded within 2 minutes of a site visitor engaging with a chatbot saw the highest chance of booking a meeting.

And they’ll use the communication method that is most convenient for them

During a bot conversation, when given the option to click a pre-programmed button response or type in their own response, site visitors were nearly split down the middle. In conversations where both options were presented, 53% of site visitors chose a button response while 47% chose the open-text option.

Though ideally, they want to talk to a human

From 2022 to 2023, the number of requests to speak to a human increased 2.5x.

B2B buyers come to your website with a purpose

In 2023, the number of people who “just tested bots” decreased by 4x when compared to 2022. At the same time, the number of people who submitted support, billing, meeting, demo, or pricing questions through the bot doubled across every category.

And they expect you to understand their purpose

Site visitors who sent a high-intent message within their bot conversation proved 5x more likely to convert into an opportunity than those who sent low-intent messages.

2023 Top 3 High-Intent Messages

• Demo request
• Can you email me?
• We’re currently using a competitor.

2023 Top 3 Low-Intent Messages

• Support request (from an existing customer)
• Just browsing.
• General support request

And when Drift, customers created playbooks that acknowledged this intent, the conversions continued to increase. In 2023, high-intent playbooks booked 2x the amount of meetings and sourced 3x more opportunities than all other playbooks.

Note: For the purpose of this research, a high-intent playbook refers to a pricing page playbook, a second net playbook, or a skip the form playbook. You can learn more about the different types of Drift, a Salesloft company, playbooks in our Conversational Marketing Blueprint.

And make it easy for them to achieve it

Fastlane is a Drift feature feature built to streamline the booking meeting process. When a site visitor fills out a form on a website, Fastlane pops up to allow that site visitor to either chat immediately with a rep or book a time for later.

When presented with Fastlane as an option, 26-41% of all form fillers chose to interact with it.

Not all intent signals are created equal

So, cater your website experience accordingly.

B2B buyers come to your website with a specific goal in mind, and they expect you to make it easy for them to achieve it. When you deliver on this expectation, they’re more likely to spend time with your brand. 

The easiest way to understand your buyer’s intent? Signal-based selling. Signal-based selling is the ability to monitor, analyze, and prioritize
 buyer signals in real-time. It ensures that 100% of your effort and time
 is redirected towards in-market accounts and buyers who are actually
 ready to buy. 

Salesloft monitors, analyzes, and prioritizes buyer signals in real-time across your entire go-to-market ecosystem using APIs. From interactions you’re having on the platform itself, to signals you’re getting from your CRM, your marketing automation tools, your additional integrations, and of course your website, Salesloft captures those signals — and captures the right signals —  at every stage of the buying journey. It then analyzes those signals, correlates them with desired revenue outcomes, and then translates that into prioritized actions for teams to take.  

For more, watch our webinar.

Final thoughts

Not too long ago, companies were often left in the dark when it came to knowing what their buyers expected from them. But, thanks to AI, there’s no longer a need to guess.

After analyzing every Drift conversation from the past year, it’s clear that B2B buyers crave digital buying experiences that get them what they need, when they need it. Buyers also want to be heard, and they want to see their feedback incorporated into the buying process.

These are some pretty high expectations — expectations that can only be met with the help of AI. Because only by leveraging AI to listen to your buyers’ needs and streamline your buying process will you be able to deliver the individualized website experiences that your buyers expect, without burning out your team.

The data is clear: The future of Conversational Marketing is inspired by humans and powered by AI. To help you dive into the future of Conversational Marketing, we went a step further in our research by taking a look into the highest-performing Drift playbooks of 2023 and finding out what made them tick.