Facebook Messenger chatbots are one of the fastest growing and most effective ways to connect with customers. Since its inception in 2016, bots have helped brands scale the way they interact with customers and made it easier to provide one-to-one service.

Facebook Messenger currently boasts to have 1.3 billion monthly active users. Not just that 2 billion messages are sent back and forth between end users and businesses every month. This comes as a natural opportunity for marketers to exploit—to be able to move consumers through the sales funnel and to boost your sales.

Facebook has in the recent past introduced the ability to purchase products directly through the app, the opportunities have grown even larger than before. Meaning you are given this great opportunity to set your brand and your business apart in the eyes of the customers if you can use Messenger well.

Facebook Messenger is Not Just a Messaging App Anymore

Since its launch in 2011 Facebook Messenger has grown so much more than being just a messaging app meant for Facebook users. People can now watch videos, play games, connect with businesses and brands, make payments, send money and more, all of it without having to ever leave the Messenger app.

It is estimated that 64% of Facebook users are already on Messenger. Therefore, there exists a large and thriving market sitting here for businesses to immediately access.

While there are tools that can help you with managing the influx of customer messages, sometimes they are just not enough, particularly when social users are accustomed to a timely response from the brands.

Why should Marketers Care About Facebook Messenger Marketing?

Following are some reasons why marketers simply cannot ignore Messenger to be integrated into your business marketing.

1.Messaging apps have surpassed social networks

A report from BI Intelligence revealed that there are more monthly active users on the top four messaging apps (Messenger,  WhatsApp, WeChat, and Viber) combined than there are on the top four social networks (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn).

2.Get 10-80x better engage vs. Email or social media

Facebook Messenger marketing has the best engagement rate for any marketing channel as on date. It boasts an open rate of 70-80 percent within the first hour.

3.‘Live chats’ can be slow & need to be staffed 24/7

Compared to live chats, customer support via Facebook Messenger chatbots is a better solution for customers because they don’t have to wait on long queues just to address their needs.

Certain chatbots can provide automated services like wireless bank transactions or help customers book a ride, simplifying the process. The easier you make it for the customers to work with you, the more revenue you’ll generate.

Chatbots are extremely valuable, and part of this value comes from their flexibility. When you create a chatbot, you can customize your chatbot to fit your business, your customers’ needs, and a variety of purposes.

Some Facebook Messenger Chatbot Features to Explore—How to Use it to Sell More?

In a recent survey by Oracle, it was revealed that 80% of businesses are already using chatbots or plan to use them by the next year. You’ll have to start by selecting a single goal for your bot such as the given following.

Then you need to refine it based on user feedback.

Then you can further gradually add features that can start diving new sales.

1. Use Chatbot for Abandoned Cart Recovery

E-tailers often acknowledge it as one of the major problems they tend to face—cart abandonment is actually statistically a big problem as well. 90% of the users tend to leave the stores without making any purchase.

Online stores in the past have used email marketing automation to recover these abandoned carts and increase their sales percentage. The results were almost unimpressive, especially with the coming of Messenger marketing.

Facebook Messenger bots can help you recover abandoned carts at a rate that you cannot even think of with emails. Bots can, for example, automate the abandoned cart campaigns over Messenger if a customer does not make a purchase within say 60 minutes.

Your message on Messenger can include the customer’s cart with a checkout button for ease. This approach has proven to be 5x more effective than emails simply due to higher opt-in rates.

2.Use Chatbots to Send Order and Shipping Notifications

With the help of chatbots, you can send receipts, shipping/order notifications, and much more to the users over Facebook Messenger.

This will further result in improving your customers’ experience, without them having to open and browse through their inboxes to check out any updates on their orders.

3.Use Chatbots to Streamline Product Purchases

While it is true that no artificial intelligence can prove to be as effective as a talented salesperson, chatbots especially designed to sell can help you boost sales and increase your profit.

Use chatbots in order to show customers the products they are looking for and process simple sales right in the Messenger app.

All you need to make sure before using a selling chatbot is that you answer frequently asked questions which can help drive sales significantly; use chatbot builder that allows you to accept payments through services like PayPal—this can result in generating more sales than just sending people to your mobile site.

It also a good idea to always ask something like “did you want to look at anything else before checking-out?” as users may still be willing to look at and purchase add-on items.

4.Use Chatbots to Cultivate Connections via Entertainment

It sounds like a truly nice idea to consider designing your chatbot to entertain people which can further help you with building and nurturing relationships with your customers.

Users can then opt to receive messages from you in the future. You can be sending them things like fun facts, games and such content meant purely to entertain them.

Therefore, if you plan to reach out to users in the future, you must always ask them to opt into receiving new content. Also, make sure all your content is also mobile-responsive. You can also plan to use lots of non-text media like videos and images helping your message be as dynamic as it possibly can be.

5.Use Chatbots to Offer Specialised Services

Numerous businesses today have their own mobile apps that offer automated services, but by using chatbots you can take this a step further. These chatbots can offer specialized services in the Messenger app itself.

You should provide preset, clickable menus to people to navigate your automated services. This will simplify the process and make what services you offer clearer.

For services a chatbot is incapable of handling, you can refer people to the appropriate place on your website. Also, you must test services thoroughly on various devices before making the chatbot go live.

6.Use Chatbots to Answer Common Customer Service Questions

As discussed earlier in the post, using chatbots to provide customer service is among one of the most popular usages. There certainly are questions that your customer service teams have to answer over and over again. Implement chatbot is a great way to field some of these questions.

All you need to do is teach the bot what to say when.

Although you’ve provided a bot to assist people in trouble, it is important to have a customer service agent they can contact with if necessary. You can do subtly by offering a “Did we answer your question?” option that directs the still confused users to an actual customer service agent.

It is also a good idea to let the uses know upfront that they are working with an automated response system.

If you need personal information to verify a user’s identity, direct that person to customer service using your website or a phone number. Asking such information on Messenger is still not a widely accepted norm keeping the security reasons in mind.

7.Use Chatbots to Collect Feedbacks and Reviews from Customers

Feedbacks certainly are valuable that aid you with analyzing and improving your e-commerce store. Back in the time (I mean before the era of Messenger marketing) emails or SMSs were sent asking for customers’ feedback—which had a pathetic response rate, naturally being so slow and sometimes lengthy.

You can now use bots to send a message post 2-3 hours of their order being delivered over Facebook Messenger. This approach has proven to be far more effective than emails and other methods of collecting genuine feedback and reviews.

The opt-in rate of using chatbots to be able to collect feedbacks and reviews is much, much higher than any other. Also, the chances of you actually getting a response are higher on Messenger than any other given platforms.

8.Use Chatbots to Narrow Down your Target Marketing

Can you imagine if bots were able to learn about and send customized messages that catered to each one’s specific place in the sales funnel?

Well, it is already happening with email segmentation. It is simple—low commitment prospects are sent low-pressure emails. High-commitment customers are upsold on the newest product.

If it works for emails it is likely to work for bots too. Segmentation is already and will eventually become more automated.

H&M’s bot already does that at a smaller scale. The bot asks users which outfit is their favorite and then it automatically creates a user profile for each person based on their answer.

This goes on to show that bot and the business are becoming better and better at showing outfits that will resonate with their target customers. The bots are quickly adapting, further helping your company better target ads and boost sales.

Conclusion

Messenger apps are a huge marketing opportunity. More consumers and businesses are adopting the use of mobile and messaging social apps every year.

To use Messenger to boost sales, you need to make sure customers enjoy interacting with your brand. The last thing you’d want to do is push away consumers with poorly programmed chatbots.

That’s why it’s so important to use Messenger and chatbots right. Start with setting up your bot for basic interactions. Then sync it with your e-commerce site and add the “Buy Now” functionality.

Once this is done, start programming your Messenger chatbots for interactions that will increase your sales.

It is recommended for you to use Messenger to test your bot programs as well as your other ads, to data mine, improve targeting and boost your sales.

Facebook Messenger bots will have you outshining the competition and increasing your sales in no time.

Source: https://www.techlofy.com/facebook-messenger-chatbot-ecommerce/