In today’s Ecommerce environment there is a large buzz around the aspect of messenger marketing.
And there is a reason why!
Understanding the way this system works, we first look at chatbots and what they are.
What is a chatbot?
Chatbots, in essence, are a computer programmed virtual assistant that can have many features throughout a company. A chatbot is basically a program based on Artificial Intelligence (AI) that will have a conversation with a real person through any medium of communication. AI chatbots are an evolution of natural language processing which has enabled companies to step up their customer service quality. Apps like Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, and other messaging apps have seen large increases in monthly active users, with Facebook reporting over 1.3 Billion monthly active users in April 2019. Customer service is most likely going to be largely made up of chatbots in the next few years as they eliminate the need for large teams of workers.
On top of customer support, bots are very useful tools for companies to get to know their customers. Chatbots, using messenger campaigns, are able to gather information about customer preferences and tastes by creating online quizzes and other simple questions. Using machine learning these chatbots can turn data into individual recommendations and large segment data for the company to better understand their customers. You can also use further techniques, like transcription vs dictation, to power up the market research on top of the results received from a particular chatbot.
These bots have incredible capabilities and implementing them into a business is essential today. It’s been reported that most people wish to interact with a company through chat, this means that as a business if you have a chat function you will get many messages. If your chat inbox looks anything like most big firms, you’ll know it gets tough to answer everyone in a timely manner. Using a chatbot can ensure that your customers get responses in a timely manner and this keeps their engagement up. Messenger chatbots have the highest engagement rates out of them all, and they are relatively easy to set up most of the time. Chatbots can either be made specifically for a certain business and task, or a company can use a system like Chatchamp to quickly and easily build a chatbot to engage with customers and increase loyalty. Chatbots can be present on any part of a website or a social media page. Chatbots can be implemented onto landing pages of your website or through a call-to-action on your facebook page or ad. Making the call-to-action engaging and attractive is important to motivate the customer to click on it.
Chatbots can be used for lead generation purposes, to send out campaigns, to send shipment tracking updates, customer support, as a personal seller, and many other options. Messenger marketing is a very powerful asset for companies that already use it today as it’s still very new. As there are only around three hundred thousand chatbots on messenger today from the millions of advertisers on Facebook, there is still a large advantage of using a messenger bot in your field. Platforms like email have become very saturated, with your email address being a mandatory field on nearly every website. This has led email marketing to be a failing tacktick today. As seen below the average open and click through rate of email marketing are substantially lower than the rates from messenger.
Why Messenger Marketing?
The reason messenger has such higher open rates and click through rates is because a messenger platform is much more engaging to the end user. The conversational environment makes it far better for a live chat feature to communicate with the customer. Having a chatbot as a business is not the only recipe for success, it’s also about how you incorporate it into your existing marketing strategy and that you give customers a reason to click. As in all other business aspects you need to understand your customer and what he wants and see how you can apply that into messenger. Companies in the past have used click to messenger ads to offer a discount, to promote special deals, or to take a quiz to find the best suited item for the customer.
There are multiple advantages for a business to implement a messenger chatbot campaign in their marketing plan. The first advantage is the low barrier of entry for both the business and the customer. It is extremely easy for a business to create a Facebook chatbot and there very few costs associated with acquiring and maintaining a chatbot. Businesses have to ability to create a dialogue with their customers on a platform they already know and love, this eliminated the need for people to have to be on your website or app to talk to you. Using messenger is most efficient and creates a large pool of potential customers for a business.
Another great advantage is that the chabots are able to process and store the information they gain from the customers. This means that on top of gaining a list of customers you’re also gaining their information and preferences. This is useful data that when used properly will lead to more conversion and sales.
To build a bot there a couple of ways you can go about doing so. The simple way to create these automated conversations is to purchase a ready-made chatbot that needs to be personalized or to subscribe to a service like Chatchamp which easily allows you build your chatbot using text cards, add blocks and buttons and implement it. The more complex option is to build your own chatbot from scratch which requires technical coding knowledge.
What to Remember
Overall the main takeaways from this to remember is that chatbots are a powerful tool for a business to generate leads, increase sales, and increase customer satisfaction and retention. Areas like Facebook messenger marketing are still full of potential and a very successful sales tool. Messenger marketing allows businesses to gain, retain, and retarget customers in a way that has not been done before. Making a conversational environment makes the customer open up more about personal information and this information is used by the business to better target them. The earlier a business chooses to implement messenger marketing and chatbots into their business strategy, the better the results will be for that company.
