Messenger marketing is the act of marketing to your customers and prospective customers using a messaging app like Facebook Messenger.
Facebook Messenger is a popular messaging app and platform. Approximately 1.3 billion people use Facebook Messenger.
Users can send messages and exchange photos, videos, stickers, audio, and files, as well as react to other users’ messages and interact with bots. The service also supports voice and video calling. The standalone apps support using multiple accounts, conversations with optional end-to-end encryption, and playing games.
What are Chatbots?
A chatbot (or bot) is a piece of automated software that engages in a conversation with people.
Chatbots are programmed to understand basic questions, provide answers, and execute various tasks. Forbes reports that “according to Gartner, by 2020, 85% of our engagement with businesses will be done without interacting with another human. Instead, we’ll be using self-service options and chatbots. Additionally, according to an Oracle survey, 80% of businesses said they currently use or are planning to use chatbots by 2020.”
How do Facebook Messenger bots differ from other bots?
A Facebook Messenger chatbot or bot is exclusively built for the Facebook Messenger platform.
This provides huge advantages for marketers over those other chat platforms including:
You Get All the Contact Information — The conversations aren’t anonymous. Facebook sends you the identity of people who are messaging your website, including all contact information and even a profile photo. On other chat platforms, if the user closes the browser, the marketers will have no idea who they were talking to, which is frustrating.
You Can Send Them Push Notifications — Anyone who messages your page is opted into messaging, so you can send them follow-ups or reminder drip campaigns, which is amazing.
You Get Their Facebook ID: These tend to last forever, where as business emails expire on average 4% / month due to people changing jobs, etc.
You Can Remarket to Them — Using Facebook ads.
Why are marketers using Messenger chatbots?
Marketers want to reach more prospects, generate more leads, and improve conversions.
Marketers and business owners who have experimented with bots know that bots are proving valuable for businesses. According to Facebook:
2 billion messages are sent monthly between businesses and people
53% of people are more likely to buy from a business they can message
56% of people prefer to message instead of calling customer service
That’s why smart marketers are increasingly using chatbots, and especially Messenger chatbots, as part of their marketing strategy.
Facebook Messenger messages reach far more users than organic posts.
In fact, while organic Facebook posts reach an average of 1 to 2% of Page fans, the average open rates for Facebook Messenger messages is 50–80%, with a 20% average click rate.
Facebook Messenger messages convert 3x to 5x better than Facebook desktop ads.
This is because most Messenger users are on mobile and more frequently engage with messages.
Facebook Messenger messages can reduce your marketing costs.
Facebook Messenger can segment your audience.
You can segment your audience on what they prefer or do and then target different chat blasts to different segments of your audience.
You can create smart chatbots to automate Q&A with a live takeover by a human.
You don’t need to know how to code to launch a Facebook Messenger chatbot.
How can you create your Facebook Messenger chatbot?
You don’t need to know how to code or have a full-time team of software developers. You can use different tools to build chatbots for Facebook Messenger.