Selling web chat for agencies has skyrocketed in popularity in recent years due mainly to its ability to produce a high ROI for clients. With chatbot technology only increasing in usefulness, it’s no wonder digital agencies continue to mention web chat as a key to their client portfolio growth.
In fact, 57% of businesses agree that chatbots deliver large ROI with minimal effort. Furthermore, 56% of businesses claim that chatbots are driving disruption in their industry (Accenture 2020).
It’s not bold to suggest at this point that every digital marketing agency needs to at least consider selling web chat as a service to their clients.
Plus, it’s a relatively simple model to sell chatbot services as an agency:
- Create custom chatbots for your clients.
- Set a price for the creation of the bots.
- Charge a monthly ongoing retainer for the continued use of the Messenger bots.
After reading this article, I guarantee you’ll be persuaded that your marketing agency needs to sell multi-channel chatbot services, or double-down on your existing web chat strategy.
Customers.ai for Agencies
Higher retainers, improved ROI, and happier clients.
Web Chat for Digital Agency Marketing
It’s become clear with chatbots capturing leads from web traffic and ads, that agencies are providing better performance for clients than ever before. Chatbot marketing automation is a 24/7 solution to quickly increase engagement and sales for your client portfolio.
The benefits to agencies are undeniable. Getting positive results and growing your agency will mean that you can expand retainers with existing clients and deliver higher profit margins.
Okay, now that we’ve hyped up the benefits of web chat for agencies, let’s jump into the 7 tools and tactics that can make chatbot services the new cash cow of your agency.
- Multi-channel chatbot automation
- SMS text marketing for agencies
- Live chat widget for client websites
- Facebook web chat for agencies
- Facebook Messenger ads
- Re-engage your client’s audience
- Track campaign metrics for your clients
#1. Multi-channel chatbot automation
Live web chat software allows you to proactively engage with customers and prospects in order to grow revenue, generate leads, and offer real-time support. However, the best live chat solutions today are also cross-channel marketing tools.
Studies have shown that web chat software:
- Boosts engagement rates by 3X
- Increases conversions by 45%
- Makes consumers 63% more likely to return to a website
Still, the aforementioned problem that most web chat tools are only available to use on a single channel still persists.
However, with OmniChat® technology by Customers.ai, you can engage with customers across multiple channels, whether that’s a website, SMS text messages, or other messaging apps, such as Facebook, Instagram, or WhatsApp.
There are a lot of web chat examples for digital marketing agencies to choose from, such as:
- Qualify and generate leads
- Build a sales chatbot
- Get more reviews
- Run a contest or giveaway
- Send bulk text messages and Facebook Messenger chat blasts
The ability to use live web chat on different marketing channels, all from one unified inbox, can be a game-changer for your marketing agency.
Learn all about OmniChat® by Customers.ai and you’ll see why so many digital agencies have already jumped on-board.
#2. SMS text marketing for agencies
Text marketing for agencies is rapidly growing in popularity, and that’s because it’s instant, convenient, and universal for consumers.
Outdated mobile-targeting tactics are costing your agency conversions, clients, and revenue. Meanwhile, SMS marketing is lurking in the background, waiting for you to capitalize on it.
Using Customers.ai SMS marketing tools, agencies can set themselves apart from the competition by dramatically increasing open, response, and conversion rates.
SMS marketing tools empower businesses to send customers both bulk and personalized messages at scale with smart features like:
- Contact list growth tools
- Text message delivery time scheduling
- Triggering text messages to send based on behaviors and interactions
- Results tracking and analytics
Getting your clients’ audiences to opt-in to text message marketing campaigns is simple with Customers.ai. Multiple opt-in options exist, such as SMS keywords, a website chat SMS opt-in widget, and an SMS opt-in popup form.
For example, here’s one of our CTAs where we’re using a dedicated phone number and the keyword “UNICORN”: Join my Unicorn Marketing Club for news and updates once a week by texting “UNICORN” to 1-309-740-3151.
When you text UNICORN to the number, you’ll receive the text message found below.
Go ahead and test it out for yourself to receive marketing news and updates from Larry Kim!
There’s so much more you can do with Customers.ai SMS marketing tools. Here’s just a few:
- Bulk text messaging
- SMS drip campaign automation
- Automated responses and proactive messaging
- Send GIFs, emojis, and images in text blasts
- Trigger workflows through Zapier and the Customers.ai API
Not sold on SMS marketing? Take a look at these 60 SMS marketing statistics, and you’ll surely change your mind.
#3. Live chat widget for client websites
Adding chat to a website can improve conversion rates by 45%.
The best way to get live chat integrated into your website is to install what is generally called a “chat widget.”
From a technical perspective, a chat widget is simply a quick line of code that you can easily install on your website.
This code will position a chat icon at the bottom right-hand corner of your site. When customers click on it, they can chat with an agent from your business.
There are many benefits to adding a Messenger bot to your website, including:
- No wait times for customers — 24/7 instant responses
- For visitors chatting in Messenger, they will save the conversation and can reach out any time with follow-up issues
- Your business is able to reengage that website chat contact in Messenger with Sponsored Message ads
- Your business creates customer profiles enriched with each interaction
- Messenger web chat is cross-device functional and mobile-friendly — the conversation is available on your site, the Messenger app, and Facebook desktop!
Here’s how to get started and how to add live chat to a website.
#4. Facebook web chat for agencies
Facebook Messenger is an automation weapon that your clients will love.
Using an omnichannel chatbot like Customers.ai, you can use the same dialogue as you do on your client’s website across multiple web chat apps. This makes it easy to get tons of Messenger contacts and their data using tools like Facebook post autoresponders.
In addition to the items listed in the infographic above, there are even more powerful ways you can use Facebook Messenger marketing for clients as well.
The latest and greatest of which, is the Free Facebook Lead Generator.
Customers.ai has built a free tool that allows you to get email addresses from Facebook. And this free offer is great because, with just a few clicks, you can turn your Facebook fans into leads. These are people who follow and like your company’s page on Facebook.
And you capture their names, emails, and phone numbers – automatically!
This is great for remarketing campaigns as well because you’re capturing all of their Facebook contact information. What you can do is segment the leads you capture for your clients into audiences based on certain properties, and then re-engage using customized bulk messages on Facebook, SMS, and other web chat apps.
Lastly, because you receive the user’s contact information as soon as the conversation starts, the cost-per-lead becomes incredibly low.
So, delight your entire client portfolio by adding the Free Facebook Lead Generator to their Business Pages and Posts. It’s a no brainer to effortlessly capture leads and add prospects to your retargeting campaigns.
#5. Facebook Messenger ads
You’re probably used to running ads that send traffic to client landing pages where the average website conversion rate is 4%.
And that’s a solid and predictable business model if you’re good at it. However, there are thousands of performance marketing agencies out there, and you need to impress clients with ads that lower CPAs and a higher conversion rate.
Solution: Add click-to-Messenger ads to your list of services.
Facebook Messenger ads direct prospects to your Messenger bot, where 100% of replies to the bot are captured as a lead.
And that’s why Messenger ads present a rare opportunity that savvy digital marketers are taking advantage of in 2020.
Messenger ads actually perform better than normal Facebook ads, which can be attributed to the fact that they start a more engaging experience with conversational chatbots.
A couple of types of Facebook Messenger ads exist. There’s an ad viewed on any Facebook property that directs traffic to Messenger. And then there’s sponsored content that’s native in Messenger.
Another cool thing about Facebook Messenger ad experiences is that they can take place across the Facebook family of apps, including the Facebook newsfeed, Instagram newsfeed, Facebook and Instagram Stories, Marketplace, Messenger, and others.
Here are the top 4 reasons why marketing agencies love Facebook Messenger ads:
- Messenger ads outperform other ads by 2X-10X
- Instant lead and data capture
- More features available for personalization
- Fully automated lead qualification and follow-ups with chatbots
Experience a click-to-Messenger ad in action for yourself here. As soon as you respond to the bot, your lead info is captured!
Your clients will love this unique lead generation tool!
#6. Re-engage your clients’ prospects and customers
What should be obvious by now, is that people would rather be using live chat software or text to stay in touch.
The average chat session duration is 8-12 minutes according to a 2020 live chat benchmark report.
Meanwhile the average web session duration is 2-3 minutes.
So, establishing a connection to message with someone in an opt-in messaging app with persistent history, like Messenger and SMS, is key to restarting messaging sessions and leveraging messaging as a re-engagement channel.
Here are the top reasons why consumers are interested in receiving messaging re-engagement:
- Product offers and coupons: 62%
- Account activity, payment reminders, fraud alerts: 59%
- Order alerts or delivery notifications: 56%
- General appointment and event reminders: 51%
- Security authentication prompts: 32%
- Satisfaction surveys: 22%
With those types of content in mind, let’s talk about the importance of retargeting and marketing automation for agencies.
Drip campaigns automatically send messages to customers based on triggers, like when a new contact subscribes, you can send them a welcome message and offer.
Or when a customer support ticket is closed, and a chat conversation is marked done, that can trigger a satisfaction survey.
In the image above you’ll see a chat drip campaign example in action.
Shortly after the prospect’s last text, they receive a triggered message, “Let us know how we did.”
Twenty minutes later they also receive an offer for new customers. And then again, one more offer comes an hour later.
Webchat drip campaigns are easy to set up using Customers.ai. Better yet, with OmniChat, you can send chatbot drip campaigns via SMS, Messenger, and live chat on your website.
Learn how to do SMS drip marketing and Messenger chat drips to sell more and increase engagement for your clients!
#7. Track campaign metrics for your clients
Running a marketing agency has many challenges. Everything has a hard deadline. Clients demand unreasonable results. Your competition is constantly trying to underbid you. And your team wants catered lunches at least once a week ????.
Paramount to your success, however, is being able to demonstrate that your marketing campaigns are producing an ROI.
Therefore, it goes without saying that you want your digital agency tech stack includes tools that allow you to present the KPIs and reports that matter most to your clients.
So let’s jump into how Customers.ai’s newly updated chatbot analytics will help you retain agency clients.
These are the B2B web chat marketing metrics you’ll be keeping tabs on:
- Contacts
- Sessions
- Conversion rate
- Open rate, response rate
- Unsubscribe rate
Live chat support metrics include:
- Response time
- Satisfaction rate
And when you want to know more about conversation stickiness and conversion hurdles, you can use tagging to understand how many people enter a conversation flow, where there are conversational bottle-necks or abandonment.
And then here’s a chatbot analytics dashboard view from Customers.ai. As you can see, these interactive analytic dashboards include:
- Total contacts captured by each platform.
- Daily contacts and bot sessions
- Top-performing chatbot dialogues
- Q&A keywords that have been triggered
Furthermore, Customers.ai’s bot analytics include dashboards for both chatbot and live agent performance, as well as analytic dashboards for all of your Facebook Messenger ads.
These interactive dashboards allow you to view your data at a high-level. Additionally, you can hover your mouse over each of the dashboards to get further details, and you can also click on them to drill down even further into your data.
More Web Chat Resources for Digital Agencies
Customers.ai has a plethora of resources for digital marketing agencies.
We have great relationships with our digital marketing agency partners, and continue to be amazed by the returns agencies get by selling chatbot services to clients.
Start by watching the Marketing Agency Growth Accelerator Summit with Larry Kim.
Or, if you prefer print, here are our latest knowledge bombs to help you grow your client portfolio, increase your average deal size, and win more business:
- Text Marketing for Agencies
- Marketing Agency Pricing Guide
- Affiliate Marketing Tools
- Digital Marketing Agency Tools
Customers.ai agency Team Plan partners get advanced web chat marketing automation features, multi-page and multi-user dashboard, and new client referrals as a certified Customers.ai agency.
Customers.ai for Agencies
Higher retainers, improved ROI, and happier clients.
Live Chat for Agencies: Important next steps
See all the tools in Customers.ai’s multi-channel chatbot platform by getting started with Customers.ai for free.