Table of Contents
Introduction
In this blog, I will give you the best strategies in messenger marketing that engage users and bring in customers. Fundamentals explained in this blog will work for any business be it online eCommerce or bricks and mortar.
So, what are the strategies that work best to engage users and bring in customers through Messenger marketing? There are so many and really the sky is the limit but the theme between most of them, that are really successful, is that they are conversational in nature. Over 10 billion Business messages are sent between consumers and businesses in just one month on FB Messenger alone. That does not include SMS, Instagram, WhatsApp, that’s just on FB Messenger. 65% of people say messaging businesses offer them a faster response than more traditional channels which is crazy to think about. You know you can call up a business, but it seems to be that 65% of people say the messaging of business will actually get them a quicker response. Think about live chat, would you rather do email or live chat?
So messaging businesses and a live chat version of your business connectivity online is obviously the way to go. Of the people who were surveyed that have messaged businesses, 83% asked about a product or service of the business. 76% of those people were getting product or service support, so that’s after the purchase. I know a lot of times we talk about getting new people in reaching your target market, getting them to the sale but what about after the sale and providing the customer support. Chat is really one of the best ways to do that. There were 10 billion-plus messages a month sent on Messenger. Those 10 billion messages are sent through 1.2 billion users of Messenger as of 2017.
The other huge benefit of Messenger for your business is, it’s an easy transition from Facebook ads. Facebook is really making it easy for people to see an Ad in their news feed. Click a button and then have it pop up a message. There are other ways, comment growth tools where someone comments on a post of an ad or even an organic post on your Facebook page, and it will take them into Messenger. It’s great to be able to utilize paid traffic and the power of Facebook ads to then get them into your Messenger bot.
Messenger marketing has higher open rates and click-through rates (CTRs) than compared to email. I’m not saying that email is dead, that’s the furthest thing from the truth but people do respond and open messages much more than email alone. If you think of the hierarchy of notifications on your phone, you can text message, respond to the messenger messages first. When customers get to know a little bit about your brand then the email will have better engagement rates.
The ability to have two-way communication is conversational in nature unlike email marketing which is usually for the most part is one-directional. You can usually reply to people but it’s not necessarily asking for that engagement. In Messenger, you’re asking them questions, getting them to click buttons, giving them options, etc. That’s where two-way communication comes into play and makes it more engaging.
In Messenger, you can have images, audio, text, etc and it’s a lot more engaging. This is one of the go-to strategies that I use especially with new clients.
Giveaways
If you are getting started with Messenger bots, the first thing I suggest is doing giveaways because giveaways are really are a great way to get an influx of subscribers to your bot for the cheapest amount of money possible. Being able to put in an amount for your page traffic or using even organic traffic, using your email list, using website traffic, YouTube traffic, or whatever your traffic sources.
Being able to run a giveaway to get a lot of those people into Messenger, you can also utilize these giveaways to build your email and SMS list. By making the ability to opt into the giveaway by asking your audience to share their information will allow building the potential buyers list very quickly. The other big point to giveaways always gives a consolation or entry prize, so those who are not the chosen winners, give them something that they can use to come in an or use in your online store, for example, 20% discount coupon, etc. It’s really beneficial for the business to see an influx of customers coming in from that specific coupon for that campaign.
Quizzes
The other best strategy that I like to use is quizzes. People love to take quizzes. You scroll through your Facebook news feed and you see people sharing a link to a quiz about something. You can also utilize that for your business in multiple ways. That’s really beneficial and it is also engaging.
For example, one of my clients was having a posture type of product to help people with the right posture. We gave 11 questions/quiz for people to go through to see if they needed help with their posture and be able to give them that feedback. The great thing about quizzes is that you might not realize not only does it warm up the subscriber to the potential solution that you’re offering as a business, but it can also double as real-time customer research for the business as well. If you get enough traffic going through this quiz and you get all these answers, you can then look through and see what some of the common answers are that can actually help to give you insights.
In summary, quizzes give you insights into your potential customer mind and build a relationship with buyers. You can potentially improve your product, launch a new product, or create content around it.
Quizzes inside a Messenger really does allow for that conversational back and forth, that is more engaging than just a web-based quiz or survey. You see a lot of times where you click the Quiz button, it takes the user to the website with various banner ads, promotions which is quite distracting and makes the user think it as a sales strategy. With Messenger, it is less distracting in that way. it’s also back and forth and conversational and more engaging as well.
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Coupon Code Distribution
The third strategy that I love to use especially for eCommerce businesses, (Amazon, Shopify, WooCommerce, or whatever platform you sell products on) is using a coupon code. It also works with brick and mortar. People love a discount right which is why we have great business-like Groupon or other major brands with a focus on discounts. It doesn’t matter what you are giving in terms of a service or product, customers love to save money.
You can do it one of two ways: 1) you can provide a single-use coupon code which is really a common go-to theme for Amazon stores or 2) you can use generic coupon codes say to welcome new customers who opts by giving you an email. It’s also an easy transition from Facebook ads to send people into Messenger to get the special code and eventually added to your email list. You are also building your Messenger list as well. It provides an easy way to send one-time use coupon codes. You can actually upload your list of one-time use coupon codes into Google Sheets and then using Manychat integration to pull a coupon code for the next person. Engage those availed coupons with simple to follow up asking if they are able to purchase the product. With messenger, you can have the logic to make sure that customers haven’t previously received a coupon code to avoid some sort of exploitation of this offer.
Special Personal Event/Birthday Offer
For this strategy, what you want to do is have a special offer or you can tweak a current one for those people who have an upcoming birthday. So what do I mean by tweaking current offers? we all have some special days (Birthdays, Anniversary, etc) and we all love receiving some special gifts.
With your current offer, just run an offer whose birthday is coming then you are giving a highly personalized offer. Plus, it shows your brand does care, unlike other brands. You will most likely see a higher conversion rate from customers who are actually seeing this birthday offer because it’s calling them out on their special day. This is another great opportunity to add them to your email list.
Facebook pre-populates with their personal email linked to their Facebook account, so you are getting a pretty good high-quality email. Also, don’t forget about SMS. Being omnipresent on multi-channels. For example, 20 minutes after the user received that coupon, they get a message — “Hey! we look forward to seeing you for your birthday meal. If you’d like to receive future offers, click the opt-in SMS button below”. If user opt-in, the system will pre-populate their phone number in that button, so they just have to click it and agree. Now you can send SMS messages through Manychat.
Reminder Strategy
My final strategy is reminder messages. This strategy is really paramount to utilize once someone is already in your bot and has not completed the final call to action. Potential buyers get distracted and drop off sometimes or maybe they have something holding them back or some sort of objection completing the call to action. Using a reminder message will help to bring more people through to the call to action and to overcome these objections.
There are so many different ways to utilize messenger marketing for businesses. If you’re not using it yet, you definitely should be. I see the industry of chat marketing and Messenger marketing in 2020 and beyond.
Future Beyond 2020 — Level up
You are building your email list and your SMS list. There are also some new upcoming channels that will be released in the new future. WhatsApp and Instagram are a few of them. A possible breakthrough in messenger marketing may come from RCS (Rich Communication Services), which is also known as SMS 2.0.
Another addition we will see in Messenger marketing is augmented reality options for businesses which would be really great for home improvement, home furnishings where you can actually pick an item inside of Messenger and then be able to hold your phone up to see what it looks like in the room.
I think Augmented Reality is going to be a big part of it. Being able to use Augmented Reality within Messenger, it will definitely be easier to implement NLP (natural language processing) and AI into chatbots which will create an even better experience for the end-user. Not only bots will be smarter, a better experience for everyone with improved Reporting and Attribution capabilities.
I hope that this has been helpful for you and if you have adopted any of those strategies then comment. If you want to connect with me, drop me a line at sachin@fulon.co. If you have an Amazon store, I highly suggest joining the Facebook group Amazon FBA — Ninja Automation Secrets.
