Message bots have gone from being a curious technological phenomenon for early adopters to the panacea for business success.
Yet it should be obvious that message bots aren’t the end-all to business challenges. Message bots are, instead, a potential asset that requires strategic implementation.
Used correctly message bots can drive business success, which is exactly what you’ll discover by reading this article:
- The one tool you need to build any message bot
- A simple message bot template you can still to generate leads
- A drag-and-drop solution that will save customer service hundreds of hours
And that’s just the beginning.
Let’s dive in and drive up your business revenue.
First, off, what is a message bot?
A message bot is any computer program that facilitates actions or chat on messaging platforms.
Message bots go by other names — chat bot, chatbot, bot, messaging bot, etc. The concept is the same.
Messenger bots are more specific. Messenger bots are chatbots that work specifically on Facebook Messenger, thus the name Messenger bot.
Many forward-thinking and strategic businesses are selecting Facebook Messenger as the locus of their chatbot marketing efforts.
Why the focus on Facebook Message? It’s simple.
Facebook Messenger is vast, boasting a user base of more than 1.3 billion people.
Besides, Facebook Messenger is the fastest-growing messaging platform on the planet.
But it’s not just Messenger alone. Facebook is merging the messaging capability of Messenger, Instagram, and WhatsApp. Throw in users of Facebook, and you have an astonishing number of total users on these Facebook-owned properties — 2.5 billion.
From a volume perspective, using message bots on Facebook Messenger makes sense.
Another angle, however, makes message bots on Facebook Messenger more appealing: functionality.
As this article asserts, message bots on Facebook Messenger can drive more business demand, higher conversion rates, more engagement, and all the other metrics that marketers fawn over.
The takeaway for businesses is straightforward. If you’re going to use message bots, you’re going to want to use Messenger bots.
So what can these wonderful Messenger bots do? You’re about to find out.
How to Make a Messenger Bot: Use a Facebook Messenger Chatbot Builder
In order to harness the power of Messenger bots, it’s essential to first select a chatbot builder.
Customers.ai is the premier chatbot builder for Facebook Messenger bots and is the fastest-growing Facebook Messenger partner.
Customers.ai provides a single source to create any kind of Messenger bot. The interface is simple and straightforward.
To create a Messenger bot, all that’s required is to add and arrange various elements in the bot creator. No coding required.
Even easier than creating Messenger bot sequences from scratch, however, is to do so using a chatbot template.
With just a couple of minutes of customization, you can have a high-performing and fully-built Messenger sequence. In the sections below, I’ll show you some of these sequences and you can test them out yourself.
Before continuing through the remainder of this article, please sign up for a Customers.ai account now.
You can create a free account with most of the functionality that you’ll need to execute the conversion-boosting tactics below.
Message Bots for Lead Generation
There are many ways to generate leads through message bots.
If you’re looking for a quick plug-and-play solution, however, we’ve got you covered.
Customers.ai’s Lead Generation Messenger Bot Template is such a solution.
The bot allows you to offer the contact something — a ticket, a webinar, whatever — and then clinches the deal by requesting the contact’s information (phone, email, etc.)
Try the chatbot out here. (And if you don’t want to provide your email, you don’t have to.(
As you move through the sequence in Messenger, consider what kind of offer might work for your specific business.
Message Bots for Qualifying Leads
Most businesses want more leads. But what happens if you start getting too many leads?
This can be a real concern. If you start using message bots to bring in the leads, it’s a problem that can manifest itself into reality sooner than later.
So what do you do when the leads are coming in — whether at a trickle or a torrent?
Lead qualifying is the process of selecting only those contacts that are most likely to convert or become paying customers. The rest? You can siphon them off into a Facebook group or gradually nurture them over time.
This lead qualifying process happens on autopilot using message bots.
It works like this. Go ahead, try it out.
One of the greatest benefits of message bots like this is their time-saving power.
Lead qualification through bots requires only the time it takes to create the message bot. And since you have a template to customize, your job is almost entirely done.
Message Bots and Customer Service Tasks
If there’s one thing that message bots are really good at, it’s handling customer service inquiries.
- What are your store hours?
- Where are you located?
- How do I get there?
- What products do you sell?
Great questions, everybody, and here’s our message bot to answer them!
A lot of people think that the sole purpose of bots is to pretend to act like a human chatting with you online. In reality, a bot needs to be no more sophisticated than providing users with a menu of options, kind of like a phone menu.
Let’s pretend you own a pizzeria. Your bot can step in and help people order a pizza, book a table, scope out the menu, find out daily deals, or get directions to the restaurant.
It’s all there in the bot, handled seamlessly and flawlessly, letting you focus on what you do best (making pizza, of course).
Message Bots for Drip Campaigns
If you’re familiar with drip campaigns, then you know how effective they can be…or how effective they once were.
Drip campaigns traditionally use email as the medium, and send contacts a series of emails usually over the course of 3-5 days, funneling them to an eventual or hopeful conversion.
The sad truth is, most email drip campaigns have abysmal engagement rates. There are a huge amount of undeliverables, unsubscribes, unopened messages, and low levels of eventual conversions.
Imagine if you sent your drip campaigns with a message bot. Facebook Messenger has average open rates that exceed 70%, giving you exponentially more engagement than the best email marketing drip campaign could hope for.
Here, for example, is one that I sent recently:
Take a look at that 81% read rate!
A Messenger drip campaign might start out like this:
And then follow up a little while later with a message like this:
Message Bots Right on Your Website
Far and away, one of the most powerful uses of a message bot is initiating content with your website visitors.
Take a look at how this works on the Customers.ai site. Wherever you are, a friendly monkey is asking you if you need any help.
This kind of engagement is magnetic.
The chat is 100% bot-driven, meaning that you aren’t being woken up at 2 am by having to answer some website inquiry.
Each contact that interacts with your message bot becomes one of your Facebook Messenger contacts, giving you permission to engage with them and market to them.
How do you add this bit of magic to your website?
It’s easy. It’s called the WP-Chatbot. It’s a simple WordPress plugin that will give you your own website chat widget within just a few minutes.
Once you have the chatbot installed, there’s virtually no end to the kind of power that you can unleash with your chatbots.
Message Bots: This is just the beginning.
I’ve shown you just a few examples of how message bots can blow up your conversions.
And here’s the thing — it’s just scratching the surface.
Marketing with message bots is the new frontier in marketing. Facebook Messenger is the channel with the highest levels of engagement and the biggest amount of potential.
The simple way to harness the power of message bots in your marketing efforts requires three simple action steps:
- Sign up for Customers.ai now.
- Connect Customers.ai to your Facebook Business Page.
- Create your first message bots within minutes by cloning one of our templates.
