Running a Facebook Messenger Bot is one of the latest communication trends to hit the mainstream digital marketing space, and they have a ton of benefits when compared to standard marketing channels.
I believe that any marketer – beginner or advanced – can save cost and increase revenue by implementing a Messenger bot in their business.
Here are 7 important benefits to keep in mind when you start thinking about messenger marketing.
Facebook Messenger Bots can easily handle the most basic questions for you
If one more person asks me how to reset their password…..grrrr (just kidding Justin! See that “lost password” button?)
Every business has frequently asked questions… that’s why the term FAQ has become so popular.
The problem? Pretty much nobody wants to spend their time scrolling aimlessly through a huge encyclopedia of generically answered questions!
The solution? By implementing a NLP FAQ bot into your business!
NLP FAQ? Did you spill your alphabet soup?
Let’s break that silly sentence down real quick.
NLP stands for neural linguistic programming, and is basically a fancy way to say that your robot is able to understand, learn, and intelligently respond to people based on what they are saying.
So a NLP FAQ messenger bot is capable of simply sitting innocently in the corner of your screen, fielding the most common questions that your customers have and answering them perfectly in normal English.
Sound complicated? don’t worry, I’ve got you covered at the end of this post!
Building a second “list” is powerful for building relationships
The money is in the list.
Yeah, yeah, we’ve all heard that before. Building an email list is incredibly important for building a lasting business online.
But what’s more powerful than building your list? Building two lists!
The goal of any marketing channel (email, direct response, messenger, carrier pigeon) is to create meaningful conversations with your target audience.
Advanced Facebook Messenger bots have built amazing functionality to rival any email marketing platform out there, including:
- Messenger broadcasts
- Automations (especially visual flow builders)
- Tagging and segmenting lists
- Booking appointments and collecting leads
- Even direct selling through messenger!
So once you have a system in place to build your email list, it’s also a great idea to think how a messenger bot could fit into your overall marketing strategy.
People are already used to chatting on Facebook, leading to a more natural entry point
Businesses grow by finding where your community of prospects already are, and injecting yourself into the conversation with useful advice and tips in order to build that powerful know, like, and trust factor with them.
And while it’s true that EVERYONE is in their email inbox at some point in the day, they are also spending a growing amount of time on the Facebook messenger platform:
Millions of Active Facebook Messenger Users through the years.
These are impressive numbers, but moreso than the pure volume of interactions available, we also need to consider the quality of the interactions.
First of all, when you go to your email inbox, what do you expect to see?
Newsletters… spam… promotions… and maybe a few bills and important emails from friends and family.
But when you open up Facebook Messenger?
You expect to see more meaningful conversations with friends and loved ones, and few (if any) promotional messages that are purely trying to get you to open up your wallet.
We are in an important point in history where marketing and advertising in Messenger is still in its infancy and people still open and read almost every message that comes into their feed.
It’s the best time to get started with Messenger Bot Marketing.
Setting up Messenger Bots is a great way to get engagement
The average email open rates are somewhere around 20%. That means for every 5 subscribers on your list, 1 of them is likely to open and read your message. Bummer.
But don’t get too sad, the picture gets much brighter. On the Facebook Messenger platform, several studies are showing open rates of 80%, 90% and more!
Exciting? We’re just getting started. Let’s also consider the engagement aspect of these marketing channels.
Let’s face it, email marketing is pretty… static.
You write an email that includes some links, and you send it hoping for people to click on the links in the email and take action, right?
Yes, you can create automations that segment your list, but these automations often unfold over the course of days and weeks.
With Messenger on the other hand, you can create a whole new experience for your reader.
Think of it as a “choose your own adventure novel” with each messenger broadcast, allowing the reader to keep the engagement high and create a game of the marketing message.
The better the customer experience is, the better your conversion rates will be as well!
You as the marketer get to learn more about your readers through their engagement. What do they like, what do they want, and what “voice” or style of your bot gets the strongest engagement?
Quick recap: Messenger bots get you higher open and click rates, AND allow you to get deeper insights from your audience at the same time!
You don’t need to pay for a customer support person 24/7
Even after selling over a million dollars in our other business, my wife and I spent most of our day handling emails and customer support tickets.
Why!?
Because we felt that our customers deserved a personal touch with every one of their questions.
It’s honorable. It’s noble. It’s stupid!
Now I’m not saying that you should outsource all your customer support to a bot, but I’m asking you to think of the bigger picture.
How do you as an entrepreneur add the most value?
It could be through any number of things:
- Touching lives one on one through coaching
- Writing insightful blog posts that can reach millions of readers
- Creating videos that educate, entertain, and engage your audience
- Creating products that transform your customers’ lives and provide for your own
I’ll tell you one thing that almost certainly does not add the most value: Answering one off emails.
By implementing a messenger bot the smart way, you can answer the most common questions automatically, and still route the proper questions directly to you.
This provides quicker responses for easy questions, while maintaining the intimacy of having a direct line to you when your bot finally gets stumped.
Some Messenger bot platforms can actually do the selling FOR YOU
Gone are the days when people were afraid to make purchases online.
E-commerce is booming, and multi-billion dollar industries exist to simply optimize the buying process.
Did you know that you can actually contain the entire purchasing process within your messenger bot?
It’s a more advanced feature of messenger marketing, but advanced bot platforms are now directly integrating with your online stores like WooCommerce and Shopify.
What exactly does that look like?
This fundamentally changes e-commerce for the better.
Consider the old way – someone arrives to your online store, browses around for a bit, and if they don’t see anything they like… they leave.
But with Messenger bot marketing, it’s as if you have a professionally trained consultant guiding you through the store in natural language, showing you the products that you are most likely to enjoy… and making adjustments dynamically as it learns more about you.
It takes the world of sales funnels to a new level!
Do you have an online store and would like to implement an automated selling bot? It can be a bit tricky, but I’d be happy to consult and help you out!
Messenger Marketing and Email Marketing are more powerful when used together
I think the biggest benefit of Messenger Bot Marketing is that it can nicely integrate and boost the effectiveness of your current email marketing strategy.
Let’s say you send out a weekly broadcast on Mondays and you get an average 25% open rate.
Why not summarize the best pieces in a simple Messenger broadcast that could get a 60-90% open rate and get more people to your content?
And if you are just getting started with Messenger marketing, but you already have a big email list, there are several easy strategies that can help you “cross-pollinate” and get people on the other list:
- Just… ask! Let your list know that you send out urgent reminders (before you go live on a webinar for example) and that they should connect with your bot to be notified
- Email your list a freebie offer that is only delivered over Facebook Messenger (my favorite strategy)
- Open up the messenger chat widget on your website and tell your list to ask their questions there
But won’t I annoy my readers with too many Messenger Bot messages?
Short answer: No.
Better answer: If you provide valuable content and space out your messages so you don’t seem spammy, you audience will love your Messenger interaction. The only people who you will annoy are people that are likely to never convert into customers in the first place.
We sometimes get self-conscious and want to avoid talking about our offers to our list… because in our eyes, we are always thinking about them and we know about every message we send.
But remember the statistics… 20% open rate on emails… Millions of Youtube videos and tweets and posts go up on social media every day…
The world is bombarded by so much information that there is a very small chance you will come off as “too much.”
But let’s even say that you are too much to some of your subscribers. What will they do?
Unsubscribe from the channel that doesn’t work well for them.
In the old days of only having an email list, that meant that you would lose that subscriber forever.
But now? If they unsubscribe from your email list, you can still message them on Facebook. And vice-versa.
It essentially acts as a safety net AND a segmentation tool so that you always reach your contacts where and how they want to be spoken to.
Cool huh?
How to learn more about messenger marketing
Messenger marketing is a huge opportunity for bloggers, course creators, & agency owners to add an important tool to their belt or to learn a valuable skill that they can offer to clients.
Although Facebook will continue to change their policies and make it more difficult for marketers to leverage messengers for profit, the value is well worth the cost!