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 conversations this year, we did run our Conversational AI base model across every single Drift, a Salesloft company, 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 conversations, 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. (Note: Drift bots currently support 29 different languages. See the full list here.)

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 buyers 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.

Agents who waited 5 minutes to respond increased the risk of site visitors leaving by 10x.

Agents who waited 10 minutes to respond increased that risk by 100x.

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, a Salesloft company, 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 more time with your brand.

The easiest way to understand your buyer’s intent is by leveraging AI-powered intent tools like Drift Engage. Drift Engage scores your site visitors’ intent in real time and uses it to automatically trigger the most relevant playbook — even to those site visitors who are 100% anonymous. In doing so, Drift Engage helps you make sure that you’re giving each site visitor the most relevant experience, so they can get to their goals faster.

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, a Salesloft company, 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, a Salesloft company, playbooks of 2023 and finding out what made them tick.