Do you want your communication with the audience to be more effective? Then leverage Facebook Messenger.
Before you jump to the conclusion that you cannot hire a dedicated team just to talk to customers on Facebook, and keep reading this blog. You will get the best solution for your business.
Social media is an excellent platform to narrow your communications — from general to personalized.
These days you must aspire to provide personalized user experience to your prospects because they want it. Users are more likely to buy from a brand that offers customized user experience.
With social media, your communication becomes laser-focused, unlike SEO and PPC. You can build a funnel where you can develop communication that moves prospects into becoming your lifelong customer.
In this era of social media messaging, you can leverage users’ behavior and automate your communications.
By focusing mainly on Facebook Messenger, you can get boundless opportunities to create new loyal customers and reach new horizons.
I love Facebook Messenger when it comes to building relationships with buyers, and I’ll show you why. And I’m also going to show you a tool to have a Messenger bot to automate your communications.
Before we dive into the nitty-gritty of Facebook chat automation, let’s understand why chatbots are great to have for your marketing and advertising purposes.
Chatbots and Facebook Messenger – Key Observations
Chatbots Have Better Click-through-rates Compared to Emails
Chatbots can have CTRs between 15%-60%, while emails can have 4%. (source)
This statistic proves that chatbots have the power to create high engagement and valuable communications for brands.
In fact, messages sent through Messenger have 84% of the chances of being read. (source)
1.3 Billion People use Facebook Messenger Every Day (source)
Facebook has utilized its strong user base for its other products and successfully gathered a vast audience to use Facebook Messenger.
Daily, 1.3 billion people around the world use Facebook Messenger. And it is expected to grow 2.4 billion users by 2021.
20 Billion Messages are Exchanged between Businesses and Users Every Month (source)
Now we know that people love talking to businesses via chat.
Therefore, it is high time to consider Facebook messenger as the critical platform to communicate directly with users.
Android Users don’t Need a Facebook Profile to Use Facebook Messenger
This clearly indicates that Facebook wants people to use Messenger as an independent messaging application.
Even if your prospects don’t have a Facebook profile, you can still reach them if you advertise smartly on Facebook messenger.
55% Audience Prefer to Talk to Business through Chatbots (source)
This is a groundbreaking fact. As a brand, you have to understand the wants and needs of customers to get maximum sales.
Since users are also interested in talking to a chatbot, it’s a great idea to get a chatbot developed for your business. It will streamline all your digital communications.
Now, I know that building a chatbot is a daunting task. Therefore, you might think of hiring a human to talk to your customers instead of a chatbot.
So, let’s discuss that point in brief.
The advantages of Chatbots vs. Humans
24×7 Availability
The number one benefit of a chatbot is it makes your business available 24/7. Your customers don’t have to wait for the customer representative to come online and respond to them.
Nobody likes to wait in this age. With a chatbot, you can enable instant response and resolution for your customers.
If you want people to manage your Facebook conversations, you will have to hire more your staff to increase the odds of being available most of the time.
Personalization at Scale
The chatbot creation tools and software are very advanced these days.
Users expect brands to provide personalized recommendations, that is easily possible with a chatbot.
You can personalize your chatbot communications so that your consumer would never realize that he was talking to a computer program, and he would be delighted to know his expectations.
The Right Message at The Right Time
With Chatbot, you can schedule tailored messages in bulk based on events, tracking, and behaviors.
This will save you a lot of time if you have thousands of prospects to contact. A human will have to do it manually, and that process will waste a lot of time.
Chatbots are Affordable
Entrepreneurs will love this fact. With chatbots, you will save a lot of resources and budget into hiring and training customer representatives.
You just have to program the chatbot and implement it in your system, and that’s it.
A Brief Overview of ManyChat
ManyChat was founded in 2015 by Mikael Yang. It is based in San Francisco, California, United States.
ManyChat’s mission is to help enterprises increase meaningful relationships with their customers online.
It helps people build Facebook Messenger bot. It can also execute email and SMS marketing campaigns.
ManyChat is for people and entrepreneurs who have unique services and solutions, but they don’t know how to advertise it.
It’s for people who lack the resources and time to create funnels and launch campaigns to acquire more customers.
Currently, there are 1 million customers across the globe who use ManyChat to grow their audience. ManyChat is responsible for 1 billion conversations on Facebook Messenger.
Now, let’s learn more about the tool’s main features that make it one of the best in the business.
ManyChat Features
Schedule Messages Ahead of Time
In the online world, you have to ensure that the right message is broadcasted at the right so that as many people as possible benefit from it.
With ManyChat, you can schedule Messenger conversations beforehand, so whenever a particular action happens, the right message is sent to the right people on Facebook Messenger. So, you don’t have to go to the platform every time to send the message.
To do it, you can mention specific events and responses from your audience to automatically initiate Messenger conversation.
If someone makes a purchase on your site, likes your Facebook page, clicks a particular button on your landing page, or shows interest in talking to your business ManyChat will broadcast a personalized message to them on your behalf.
You can save a lot of time due to this feature.
This could also automate customer engagement activities on its own.
Visual Builder to Develop a Messenger Bot (one of the simplest out there)
Marketers and business owners know what they want to convey in a message.
They know the sales funnel of converting a prospect into a buyer. They know what customers want and how to make an irresistible offer.
But they are too busy to talk to customers directly, and they also lack the programming skills to build a system that can automate those tasks.
Not everyone knows how to write programs to build a chatbot. And working with a developer is not always easy.
That’s when MamyChat steals the show.
What if you can develop a chatbot within minutes without any help from a professional developer?
Yes, with ManyChat’s user-friendly chatbot builder, you can have your chatbot ready within minutes, considering you have all the data required — copy, funnel, media, etc.
You just have to do different permutations and combinations that lead to specific communications and mention what you want to convey in those situations.
You can create cards mentioning these details and connect them by dragging-and-dropping on ManyChat’s visual builder.
This way, you can transform your funnel effectively and automate a healthy conversation with your prospects.
The layout of the chatbot builder is very dynamic and elegant. Just by glancing over the layout, you can form an idea of the conversations you have set.
Even if you wish to add something in the conversion cycle, you can easily do it with an editor. You just have to select the particular conversation you want to edit, and that’s all.
Integrates with CRMs, Sheets, Email Marketing Tools, and Other Services
With ManyChat, you can take your digital conversation automation to a whole new level.
You can also combine your other favorite email marketing, data monitoring, CRM, and other services to provide a unified user experience to customers across channels.
With a single Facebook Messenger bot, you can integrate several tools in one place and execute different activities effortlessly.
Supposedly, if you have gathered email addresses from the conversation, you can get the email address in Google Sheet that you can cite directly to your MailChimp or ActiveCampaign account.
You can use ManyChat with Zapier, which will help you integrate more than 1500 apps.
You can also get support for your Shopify store.
After connecting ManyChat with Shopify, you can message your existing customers with personalized offers and discount codes. You can also send them reminders for abandoned carts.
If you are selling a digital product you can also receive payments through PayPal and Stripe directly from Messenger.
You can also run SMS marketing and email marketing campaigns by collecting required data through conversations on Facebook Messenger. With this, you can go omnichannel with your advertising activities.
Create and Execute Complex Marketing Funnels
By using ManyChat, you can create killer marketing and advertising funnels to get maximum conversions and sales online.
Your communications will no longer be random as you can tailor them to align with the buyer’s persona and customer journey.
You can implement different funnel segments to educate, entertain, purse, and convert prospects into consumers.
Use Cases of Chatbots
Customer Support
Brands that use Facebook for customer support can leverage ManyChat and streamline all the communications.
Due to ManyChat, brands will be available 24×7. Even if they message in the middle of the night, they can get answers through Facebook Messenger bot my ManyChat.
You can automate these conversations by mentioning standard responses. ManyChat will provide personalized answers without you having to interfere with every communication.
These things will result in lasting user experience. People will have a trust that there is always somebody listening to what they are asking the brand.
If your customer support requires technical answers, you can create a flow in your chatbot conversation where the bot will ask some basic questions about the problem and note the people’s email address.
You can then use those email addresses in your CRM or email marketing software to effectively talk to prospects. This way, ManyChat can make the customer process effective and quick.
Collect Leads on Autopilot
Lead generation is one of the most evergreen objectives for any type of online marketing campaign.
Whether you are a local business owner or a multinational company, you are always searching for quality leads to grow your clients and generate more profit for your business.
ManyChat can automate the lead generation process.
You can design your conversations in such a way where you can encourage users to share their email address or phone number for further communication.
Blogs, eCommerce, and local stores can leverage this process and grow their email subscribers.
Then, you can use the collected email address inside the email marketing tool to send emails to those leads. ManyChat supports MailChimp, ActiveCampaign, HubSpot, etc.
In this way, you are not solely dependent on prospects to visit your blog or your homepage, where you expect them to submit their email address on a website popup.
You can collect their details more effectively and confidently on autopilot using the Facebook Messenger with ManyChat.
Share Relevant Content to Keep Your Users Engaged
Content marketing is an ever-changing medium for promoting your content.
With ManyChat, you can make your content marketing efforts focused and personalized.
Based on users’ behavior and engagement with your brand, you can create a personalized conversation to notify them whenever you share something exciting online.
Whenever you share a new blog or a YouTube video, you can share its links.
Otherwise, you segment users using their email address.
You can tag them on a separate list and broadcast them different content that would help them in their daily lives. This way, you can stay in touch with your prospects.
Sell Products Effortlessly
Selling products becomes very easy, thanks to ManyChat.
You can design your chatbot to initiate personalized communication with the targeted prospect. You can tag recent and frequent customers and provide them custom offers and discounts.
If you have a store on Shopify, you can integrate your CMS in Facebook Messenger thanks to ManyChat’s support for Shopify.
Then, thanks to Stripe and PayPal, you can accept payments from buyers directly from Facebook Messenger via ManyChat.
Who Can Benefit from ManyChat
Ecommerce Website
eCommerce websites are most suitable to get maximum benefits from ManyChat.
The features and flow of ManyChat can help eCommerce brands streamline their communications on Facebook.
They will have a chatbot that transforms not only their brand image but sales on Facebook.
Start introducing a new product to provide exciting upselling offers, eCommerce owners can seamlessly automate different tasks easily.
Bloggers
Bloggers can leverage ManyChat for content marketing efforts.
Affiliate bloggers can also use ManyChat to initiate dynamic conversations to grow their sales. They can stay in touch with their subscribers.
Using ManyChat, they can initiate conversation whenever they publish a new blog or have product recommendations to a few subscribers.
Big Publishers
Big publishers can increase subscriptions. They can stay updated by getting to know what’s going on at the end of users by organizing quizzes, surveys, and contests.
They can design conversations in such a way to collect feedback from the users in an interactive manner. This will help them in their content generation and marketing efforts for maximizing engagement for their publication House.
Local Businesses
If you own a local business like a clinic, technician, or restaurant, ManyChat can help you attract more visitors to your local stores.
You can share your business details like working hours, address, phone number, menu, pamphlets so they can know more about you.
You can design your messages, so you encourage them to visit your stores to know more about the products.
You can take orders, book appointments, or schedule a demonstration through Facebook Messenger using ManyChat.
The Most Important Thing to Know about Messenger Marketing
Facebook Keeps Changing the Rules
Facebook always focuses on providing excellent user experience to its users. And it also expects you to do the same when you advertise your brand on Facebook Messenger.
There are some predetermined rules of Facebook Messenger. So, you have to play by its laws to run your marketing campaigns on the platform.
Being in Compliant is Critical
Since you are acquiring users’ data, your bot must comply with Facebook’s policies and terms to function on Messenger.
If it fails to do so, your page might get restricted or banned on the platform.
Because through Facebook messenger, you are talking to real people, and sometimes you also ask them for personal information.
Email, phone numbers, personal addresses are some of the information that might have to ask as a brand. So, you have to comply with Facebook’s policy to use these data for your business.
ManyChat has a dedicated blog post for this matter, make sure you read it thoroughly.
Why Chatbots, in general, Might not Work for You
ROI from Chatbot
Developing a chatbot requires you to have specific programming and technical skills.
Therefore you either have to hire a good developer who makes chatbot or sign up to tools like ManyChat.
Either way, you have to invest in a developer or in a tool to have a chatbot. Working with developers is a daunting task. Developers charge a reasonable amount in developing a chatbot.
If you go with tools like ManyChat, you have to invest a few hundred dollars per year just to make the chatbot work.
So, if you are a business that is just starting out, that investment might not be a feasible option for you.
CTRs May Vary
As discussed, Facebook messages have more than an 80% open rate. But that CTR might vary from brand to brand.
Not every brand can get high CTRs with chatbot marketing on Facebook Messenger.
CTR depends on the message brands want to convey, it’s your targeted customers, prospects requirements, the brands’ offer, and its reputation on prospects.
You have to take care of the copy, media, and deliverability to get a better CTR.
So, just having a chatbot cannot guarantee results. Your business and products might have different CTRs.
Other Channels Might be Right Fit for a Niche
Depending on your industry, you have to be very thoughtful about the channels you choose to advertise your products and services.
Utilizing specific channels for a particular niche might end up destroying the brand image.
Focusing more on B2B sales and targeted customers who are not regular Facebook users, and reaching them through Facebook Messenger bot is almost of no use. Email and LinkedIn are better ways to reach them with your offer.
ROI may be Negative If Messenger Bots are Used Only for Engagement
If your Facebook chatbot usage is just for creating engagement for your new blog, then having a Messenger bot would not give you good profits.
Because just for generating engagement, investing a few hundred dollars per year is not a good investment.
You must know your funnel and be able to align Facebook bot to generate ROI through it. It could be a sale, lead, email subscriber, etc.
ManyChat Pricing
ManyChat has two plans, Free and Pro.
Pro plan starts for $10, considering you have 500 subscribers.
With the Pro plan, you get complete access to all the tool features, including SMS and email marketing.
You can implement buy now buttons, use the data on CRM and email marketing software. You also get advanced automation, and A/B testing features with the Pro plan.
ManyChat has a 30-day money-back guarantee.
If you are not happy with the tool’s performance, you will get a full refund, no questions asked.
Conclusion
So, that’s about it for ManyChat – my favorite Facebook chat automation tool.
What are your thoughts about chatbot marketing, and how you are going to implement it in your marketing funnels?
I hope you found this article helpful and get some unique insights about the ManyChat tool.
If you have any more questions, feel free to drop them in the comments below.
