Chat bots have taken off in the last 6 months, and they are now playing a very important role in the marketing strategies of smart digital marketers. Running an eCommerce store can get very complicated and time consuming, especially when you are scaling quickly. You need tools and strategies that allow you to automate processes, allowing you as a business owner more time to work on the business, not in it.
This article discusses a strategy where you can use ManyChat.com to build and engage your customers, and greatly improve engagement and click-through-rates (CTR) to your store or offers. If you already have an email list or social media following, it’s something you should be doing right now.
Table of Contents
What is a Chat Bot?
A chat bot is a script (bot) that provides automated messages to a visitor, when they take a certain action. A very simple example would be using a Facebook Messenger bot. Facebook already has a built in bot system. For example you can set a welcome message when a customers uses the message service to contact you. However this is only the tip of the iceberg of automation.
Messenger open rates
One of the biggest opportunities right now, is the increase in open rates and click through rates you can achieve with messenger. We typically see 10x and sometimes 20x greater open rates compared to a standard email campaign. Email still works great if done properly, but with messenger, people still love to see the little red icon in their Facebook message menu, or receive a “ding” notification on their phone.
So it makes sense to leverage messenger to your existing list or social media followers.
What is ManyChat?
Manychat.com is simply a Facebook messenger bot service that allows you to automate the process of building a messenger subscriber list, and then uses this list to promote offers or engage your audience. At only $10 per month, it’s super cheap, and does all the heavy lifting for you. The interface is very easy to use and within minutes you can be up and running.
Using your existing email list build a messenger subscriber list
Firstly you’ll need to sign up to Manychat.com. There is a free account option to test the service, but if you have any sort of email list, I would just sign up to the Pro account immediately.
To prove the strategy works, checkout the screen shots below of a recent campaign I launched for Black Friday.
Using ManyChat, we sent a broadcast message to the subscriber list, only 588 people. These were subscribed to the list using the strategy below. We achieved an open rate of 95.4% and a CTR of 15.1%. Have you ever seen 94.5% open rates with email?
From this, we generated of $14,000 in 24 hours from this one campaign. It’s important to note, that this store generally only generates between $1000 and $2000 worth of sales per day.
So….how do you convert an email list into messenger subscribers?
The video further down this post will walk you through the exact process, but the following are the steps of the strategy.
- Use ManyChat’s “Growth Tool” to create an optin message URL
- Send an email using your email platform, (we recommend Active Campaign) and direct them to the Messenger URL you’ve just created. To do this, you might offer them a discount, but to get their own private code, they need to visit the URL
- On clicking the URL, they user will enter Facebook messenger, where they will receive a message. i.e. “to get your private code, please click the link below”.
- Once they click the button in the message, they have opted in to your Facebook messenger subscriber list, and you can now market to your subscribers, in a legally compliant way, at any time you want.
- Send Broadcast messages to your subscriber list, with offers and promos.
Video: Converting your email list to messenger subscribers with many chat
IMPORTANT: Facebook has some very strict rules on how you can market to your subscriber list, and you need to understand these rules before you start sending messages. ManyChat does a reasonably good job at helping you abide by these rules. You can also find a very good explanation here: https://dimniko.com/2018/04/14/manychat-broadcasts/
An example of the message the user will see when they click on the Messenger URL from their email can be seen below. In this example, we ran a 5 day sale and each day we sent a message to our email list to get their unique code.
Obviously it also make sense to post a status in your social media channels, i.e. your Facebook page, Twitter, and Instagram feeds, enticing users to click through to the messenger.
Messenger chat bot: Pros
- Greatly increased open rates
- Greatly increased CTR
- Bots are becoming more popular
- Provides a highly personalized target
Messenger chat bot: Cons
- Not everyone will be on Social Media
- Facebook rules are very strict. Start spamming and you can expect your account to be flagged or suspended
We tend to use Facebook Messenger Bots in combination with our other marketing channels. Generally if we send out a broadcast email, we will also send out a Facebook message broadcast.
Keep in mind this is only the tip of the iceberg of what can be done with ManyChat. It has the ability to create highly complex flows and automations that can target users’ specific wants and needs.
Want help setting up a Chat Bot on Facebook Messenger?
If you like what you’ve read above, why not book Silicon Dales to set up a chat automation feature for your business? Leverage the power of chat bots and message automation for maximum click through rates and increased conversions.