Sometime last year, we noticed a new feature in our facebook messenger interaction with a top social media strategist.

He sent us a couple of automated messages in facebook messenger and while we realized it was automated, it looked so real like he was the one personally chatting us up.

Wondered how he did it and what new thing has happened in the Facebook space.

We sort of forgot it for some time until much news and benefit of facebook chatbot came ringing everywhere.

The hype was so much, people said it is finally the doom of email marketing.

We felt it will be nice to take it into the laboratory to figure out more about it, how it works and if it performed better than the normal and wonderful email marketing automation.

CHATBOT DEFINED
A chatbot in our simply defined English is a computer program that allows users to communicate with the computer in such a way that seems like the user is talking directly with a human.

An example: I want to inquire about the price of a certain commodity from the sellers of the product so I send a message to the authorized platform given by the seller and I get a reply immediately with my question answered in such a manner that looks like a human was the one giving me the response at the time.

In the case, this does not answer your question you can read more about chatbot here

FACEBOOK MESSENGER CHATBOT
We will be specifically looking at facebook messenger chatbot.

It’s the new kid on the digital marketing block and is really disrupting the way we do our marketing.

It is the closest to email marketing and seems to even be better than email.

You can do a lot of things on the chatbot like:

thank you messages
order confirmations
shipping notifications
upselling messages
newsletter and general communications
cart recovery
informative articles
customer care
service sign-up / lead generation
We will start by looking at chatbot marketing strategies and even compare it to email but we will leave you to decide which one is actually better for your business.A

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SAVES STRESS:

If you in anyway use technology in your business, you will realize that one of its greatest upsides is its ability to save you stress and energy.

Imagine being able to send out series of messages to thousands of people without having to do it manually or log in every time you have to send the message.

With messenger chatbots, it even gets better.

Here you can automate even conversation and not just your series.

You can set it up in such a way that it gives specific answers to questions, majorly questions that are always asked by your customers, thereby making it a form of Frequently Asked Question but this time with a semi-human form.

INCREASES ENGAGEMENTS:

Statistics have shown that while email has about 25% open rate and 3% click-through rate while messenger has about 95% and 50% click-through rate.

The point of talking is to be heard and if only 25% of your audience is hearing what you are saying then you need to re-strategize.

But with messenger chatbot, you are getting 95% open rate and if that does not shake you, then I don’t know what will cause this is nothing short of an awesome development.

INCREASES SALES:

You must have also noticed that you are not only ensured of getting your message heard, you are also assured of higher sales by virtue of its higher click-through rates.

Imagine you have a good sales copy and great product backed by an audience of 100,000 in your messenger chatbot.

When you broadcast your sales copy to your audience and achieve a 90% open rate (90,000) with a 45% click-through rate (45,000).

Even if you get to sell to 10% of those that clicked, you are selling 4,500 of your product and that is WHOOPING!.

That is the magic of facebook messenger chatbot marketing.

Highly Converting Sales Copy

GETS YOU A HAPPY CUSTOMER:

You realize that when a brand you respect answers your question promptly and in a human form, even though you realize that it is a bot talking with you.

With good tweaking, you can even make it look like a conversation where you hold the user clicking and getting deeper and deeper.

In the end, the user feels a unique experience that doesn’t particularly look like a marketing strategy thereby leaving you a happy customer.

Another way to see this is that while email marketing looks like a statement, messenger chatbot marketing looks like a conversation.

And unlike email, it has the ability to allow the user put a call across to you without leaving the space with its call option.

EASY SALES AUTOMATION:

The chatbot also allows you to set up automated messages just like email but this gets better because the user can initiate the conversation and get every sales information needed without you even needing to type anything.

A user can come to a chatbot and just type in cake, the bot brings you a list of cakes available in the store and you can choose the available ones while presenting you with the prices of each cake.

MAKE PAYMENTS:

After reading through the options as stated in the previous point, It actually also allows you to make payment on the platform.

So it entirely has the ability to handle your every sales function without you lifting a hand or being active on your social media platforms.

MULTI-CHANNEL SETUP:

Seeing as you might have people in different areas other than facebook, chatbot was also created to integrate seamlessly with all other platforms.

It has its website plugin that helps you sign up people to your chatbot with just one click or no click at all.

It allows for people that comment on your post to automatically sign up to the chatbot list and even as much as gives you a landing page.

ANALYTICS:

They also understand that you would love to see your analytics, see the open and click-through rate and all this is available in the chatbot.



After all this, the only reason I prefer email to messenger chatbot is the fact that you really own the list in email.

You never can tell what other policy facebook will come up with tomorrow that will snatch off your list or render your page useless.

In any of this circumstances, my personal recommendation is to, first of all, get them to your chatbot list then also lead them to the email list.

Anyhow you want to look at it, chatbot really rocks.

Do well to join our messenger list here

Need help setting up your messenger and getting more customers, talk to us here: m.me/bizworldafrica