Who would benefit from having a Messenger Bot. Then we'll talk about the benefits and the three myths when it comes to bots. How to not annoy users when it comes to sending messages. What you cannot do with Messenger Bots, just a super quick overview of Messenger Policy.
So let's first talk about who who would benefit from having a Messenger Bot? I would say any business who wants to communicate and connect with their customers.
For example for those selling a service or service as a software. Like consultants, coaches, designers, real estate agents, virtual assistants, and of course, marketing agencies! If you're a course creator or author, bots are an excellent tool to teach and educate others. Which is what Stephanie was designed to do! That's my Messenger Bot. Her goal is to help you learn how Messenger Bots work .
Next we have anyone who hosts webinars, online summits, or other live events.
For example, Facebook usually creates a Messenger Bot for their annual F8 conference, to remind people to attend their scheduled seminars. Email marketers or anyone who uses email marketing as part of their business. There's definitely an overlap between email marketing and Messenger Bots. It's just a different platform and another way for you to reach your audience!
Anyone who owns a restaurant or store will also find Messenger Bots useful since they allow you to showcase your products, service or provide people with instant answers to common questions relating to store hours or directions for example. And lastly we have an individual who is looking to promote their brand or themselves. There are many different types of Bots including game and fun entertainment Bots, but if you own a business, here's eight features you can build for your Messenger Bot, all without coding of course.
You can build a Bot to help you send out your newsletters, latest blog articles, which can drive more traffic to your site. Since messages have a much higher open rate than email you'll probably get more people to view your content! You can also create a survey to collect information or to get users to register for an upcoming event! Bots can help you send out important announcements or reminders for events like webinar or a Facebook live. Since Bots are built inside Messenger, a communication tool, they are a great way to provide customer support. You can use Bots to educate your visitors about your product or service.
They can also complement your website to provide people an additional way to access information about your business! Messenger Bots can help you capture new leads and help you sell your product or service to warmer leads. A single Messenger Bot can perform one or all of these tasks all within Messenger.
Now let's go over some of the benefits and the three myths when it comes to Messenger Bots.
Myth number one nobody wants to use messaging to talk to businesses. This is definitely a myth because studies showed that 9 out of 10 consumers wants to use messaging to talk to businesses.
Which means by introducing Messenger Bots you'll allow users to contact you using their preferred method of communication. Over 8 billion messages are sent between people and businesses each month on Messenger.
Myth number two Bots are impersonal which lot of business owners might think at first. But if built using best practices Messenger Bots can remember details and learn more about each person. Even though you have that ability the problem is that there's only one of you. Meaning personalised recommendation and advice is not scalable unless you have a customer support team that works around the clock! On the other hand if you add Messenger Bots as an additional tool to your business it can act as a first level customer support to guide visitors to the product or service that can address their current problem.
But remember, a Messenger Bot is not meant to completely replace human support. It's meant to help you offload some of the more easier repetitive questions so that you have more time for more meaningful conversations.
Myth number three is that Bots are difficult to build and difficult to use. Without any coding or requiring a team of developers, you can build a simple bot to help you with your business. If you want to build a highly intelligent personal assistant like Google Home, Alexa or Siri, well that's a different story! To prove that Messenger Bots are easy to build here's a fun fact that I discovered.
Did you know that it took Google roughly nineteen months to reach a hundred thousand Android apps. Apple about sixteen months to reach that same milestone. Yet it only took Facebook about twelve months to reach a hundred thousand active Messenger Bots? I think the main reason for this is because Messenger Bots are so much easier to build in comparison to your traditional mobile apps! So the benefits. It's easy to use to communicate with visitors since it's like texting a friend. And Bots are easy to build because no coding is required If you rely on visual bot building platforms like ManyChat or Chatfuel. Now let's talk about the benefits. First, studies showed that ninety percent of all text messages are read within three minutes. So if you're using Messenger Bots, users will be more likely to read the message right away.
Unlike email where it goes unread or sits in the inbox for hours - if not days. This is why Messenger is such a great tool to send reminders about webinars or other time-sensitive events. If you use Messenger Bots for these reminders, you might see an increase in engagement and participation! Second, when a user interacts with your Messenger Bot or taps on a send to messenger button you will automatically have access to the user's name and other basic information from their Facebook profile. Which means that users do not need to waste their time entering in their email or name in order to subscribe or to download the lead magnet So here's what happens. When a user taps on a send to messenger button, your Messenger Bot can send them their free PDF or confirm their subscription instantly! But a user's name isn't the only information that you should know or collect. Even without coding you can build a fun interactive Messenger Bot that can ask users about their interests or needs, so that you could send out more relevant content.
And the important keyword here is relevant. Which brings us to the next section of this lesson. If you send the right message, to the right person, at the right time, you won't be annoying your users! Because if you take a moment to think about it, any marketing tool can be annoying if used incorrectly or in a spammy way! Emails are effective but they can also be very irritating! Just look at the number of unread emails in your inbox. Popups on a website can also help you grow your subscriber lists but if you have too many pop-ups people are just going to leave and probably never come back. The same concept applies to social media posts, ads, and telemarketers that try to sell you something that you don't need.
Here's some great advice from the VP of Digital Marketing at Sephora. When using chat bots, brands should focus on a pull model where the chatbot is facilitating a conversation and client discovery. Not pushing their marketing messages or agenda. So if you're planning to build or introduce a Messenger Bot into your business Be sure to use them to learn about your visitors and existing customers.
Who they are and what they want. You'll need that information in order to provide relevant content and helpful recommendations. You can do this by sending users a message to let them know about your latest blog article or ebook. Get them to sign up for an educational mini-course or video series! You can tell subscribers about your upcoming challenge and send them a message each day to keep them motivated.
Or get them to register for your upcoming free webinar. Bots can help with a registration process and send out reminders Since users check their messages more often than they do their email there's a higher chance that the user will see the reminder and attend.
You can also build a Messenger Bot to ask questions to prequalify and make sure that the user is a right fit before you schedule a live one-on-one conversation. If built correctly using best practices, Messenger Bots can be a helpful assistant for both you the business owner and your visitors. It can help you by automating repetitive tasks and connecting with visitors to build trust and a relationship at scale. It can also help your visitors and customers by providing them with the right information at the right time. It's also an easy way for them to get in touch with you. If users are not interested in hearing from you or your Messenger Bot they can always unsubscribe. Messenger Bots shouldn't be used to send out spammy promotional messages.
Something that you should not do and cannot do since you're building on Facebook's Messenger Platform where there are strict rules and guidelines when it comes to interacting with people. Even though there are many rules I think that the most important rule is to not use Bots to spam people with promotional messages. The approach I like to take when it comes to Messenger Bots is to first attract users.
Engage with them through education and sending valuable relevant content. Then, identify the warmer leads to convert those users.
There are three policies that you should go over. The Messenger Usage Guideline. Messenger Platform policy and Facebook's Commerce Policy which is important to read over if you plan on selling anything on Facebook. Here's a super quick high-level summary of Facebook's policy just to give you a rough idea. If a user interacts with your Bot or sends you a message then there are no restrictions for 24 hours. If you could not reply back during this 24 hour window, then you are allowed to send one message to follow up on the conversation.
When you're messaging any of your bot subscribers that has not interacted with your bot during the past 24 hours, then the message cannot contain any promotional content. Which is quite different and some might even find restrictive if you're using email marketing where no such rule exists. But remember, the goal of a Messenger Bot is to build a relationship, which you can still do by sending out useful informational content like your news or your latest articles. So if you're hoping to build a Messenger Bot to primarily or only send out messages about sales, promotion, discounts, coupons, all to push users to make a purchase, then I would say that Messenger Bots are not a great fit for you since Facebook does not allow this.
You could try but you might end up getting your Facebook Page and Messenger Bot banned by Facebook. There are some other options like sending a paid sponsored message where promotional content is allowed, but again this is just a quick summary. There's a lot of things that I didn't go over so please refer to Facebook for full details as well as the most up-to-date policy.
So what I want you to take away from this post is the different ways to use Messenger Bots to help your business. Instead of spamming users with promotional messages, a Messenger Bot can help you deliver lead magnets, allowing users to opt in to free events or content, to generate more leads.
They can also help you grow your subscriber lists. Use Bots to have a conversation, to provide a combination of automated and human customer support. Engage with users by sending them relevant helpful content to solve their problem and build a relationship. You can create a form to qualify your leads to make sure that they're the right fit Or use it to ask questions to learn more about your visitors. Which means instead of taking a one-size-fits-all approach you're acknowledging and treating your audience as individuals. By providing them with an interactive choose-your-own-adventure experience. And the best part is you can do all of this without ever writing a single line of code.
So I really hope that was helpful. If you'd like to try out our Bot Stephanie then click the link below.
Introduce yourself to Stephanie our Chatbot
Introduce yourself to Stephanie our Chatbot