Death Of Email Marketing And The Rise Of Chatbot Marketing: How Messenger Marketing Can 3X Your Sales And Marketing Effort.

At this point, I need to make a detour, email marketing is not dead per se. Email has worked for several years. Emails are sent daily, making it a great channel to reach customers. And it still works well but the only problem is that it's working less well with each passing year.

Email has its usefulness. Email is useful for nurturing leads and it's a cost-effective way to reach potential customers with an expected ROI of $38 for every $1 spent in marketing.

Email is better for long-form content and marketing to older audiences. Email is easier to share and forwarded to friends.

Email has become cluttered and it's expected that its users will grow to 4.3 billion in 2022 and that's half of the world population now in 2019. According to DMR, an average office worker receives 121 emails daily...consumers now experience email fatigue, most don't read your marketing emails except they have a strong affinity with your brand.

Marketing is evolving every single day and the way to approach your audience is getting harder nowadays. Getting organic visitors, selling your products or services requires a lot of effort. Every known marketing channel is getting crowded and that's the reason why marketers are looking for a new platform and ways of approach to reach their audience.

At the moment, the social world is tilting toward the messaging app.

Business Insider reported that messaging apps are now bigger than social networks. This shows that internet users are now moving towards channels that enable them to personalize their conversation, keeping them away from the clutter on the feed.

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The big four messaging apps are Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, Wechat and Viber. The most popular is Facebook Messenger, which is considered as the largest messaging network in the world and the opportunity it provides for marketers and businesses with its Facebook messenger marketing platform using chatbots.

Taking a quick dive at the opportunities Facebook Messenger Marketing presents.

What is Facebook Messenger Marketing

It's the use of Facebook Messenger as a marketing channel to connect and communicate with prospective customers.

And here is why you should pay attention to Facebook Messenger: Facebook Messenger has over 1.3 billion active users and more than 2 billion messages are sent monthly with Facebook messenger. Your ideal customer uses Facebook Messenger.

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You definitely must have heard about chatbot, combining chatbot and Facebook Messenger becomes a strong weapon in your marketing arsenal.

Using Facebook Messenger as a marketing channel combines the power of interactive instant-message conversations with a scalable methodology - chatbots. Chatbots are programs that automate and stimulate dialogue on a messaging platform.

Facebook Messenger chatbots, for example, can do the following:

• Easily gain contact information like a phone number or email address with a single click from the user.
• Schedule calendar appointment for a phone call or meeting.
• Facilitate payment processing.
• Create and confirm reservations.
• Provide shipping status updates.
• Offer coupons, tickets, access code to events like conferences, concerts etc
• Allow for items purchase without leaving Messenger.
• Send a message blast to thousands of users at a time.
• .Ask a series of questions to segment users.
• Reminder for webinar, workshop, and events.

Here are some interesting facts about Facebook Messenger Marketing you should know:

• 1.3 billion uses Facebook Messenger monthly. Your ideal customers are using messenger.
• Open rate is as high as 80% and click-through rate is as high as 55%
• Many prospects aren't comfortable providing their email address in exchange for a downloadable resource. Worse still, they might ignore your marketing emails. This is called email fatigue. From the customer perspective, opting into a newsletter requires more stress and work than opening a Facebook thread.
• Building an email list is a lot of work. Creating a list for Facebook Messenger leads requires less work because it requires just a single click subscription. Unlike email, where you type your email, your submit and confirm your email.
• Prospect can engage with live chat on the go which helps to close sales faster.
• The majority of customers would rather text than call a business.
• You can gain a new lead when they comment on your post or your Facebook page.
• Retargeting your Facebook messenger leads is easier and faster than retargeting an email lead since your lead is already on facebook.
• Messenger bot is spam-free.
• It is completely optimized for mobile and desktop.

And the best part is you can create a Facebook Messenger chatbot without Knowledge of coding or programming. It can be created in as little as 10 minutes.

How Does Facebook messenger work:

Using experience from Bot Academy as an example. When you click on it, it will take you to their homepage and you will see something like this; it looks like a typical email lead generation CTA, but here, it isn't capturing my email address…..

They are only interacting with me on Facebook messenger…

Take a look at this,

And when I click on "Yes, send me the guide", I will see this:

The experience is interactive and you will want to see where it leads to. When I click on "view it in messenger".

Here, I'm inside messenger and there's the message from Bot Academy as they promised:

Now, here is where it starts to get interesting. The bot starts asking me questions with premade replies...and if you're curious like me you will want to know what the messenger not will do.

When I click on "Yes, Blow my mind" this is what I see:

It's fun and interesting with the use of emojis, gif, and images...I don't have to type any replies, all I have to do is click on the premade replies and the sequence keeps going:

It's pretty fun and easy because I keep clicking on the "show me", " Tell me" messages:

It's fun, the experience is almost like you're chatting with a friend, it's best to experience it than hearing about it.

Seeing what Facebook Messenger chatbot can do for you and your business and the experience your customers get when interacting with your Messenger bot. Here is ...

Why you should start using Facebook Messenger chatbots as a Marketer and For Your Business.

MobileMonkey one of the leading Facebook Messenger chatbot builder gave 14 surprising facebook predictions that will most likely happen in the foreseeable future and jumping on board as an early adopter gives you a first-mover advantage and aside that being a strategic advantage it also gives you a tactical advantage. Messenger Marketing open rate can skyrocket to 70 -80% in the first and response rate of 50% which cannot easily be attained with email marketing.

One of the best ways to begin using Messenger marketing is to add a widget to your website. Once you add a widget to your website, customers can send messenger chats to you without leaving your website and these messages aren't lost either. They are updated on Facebook Messenger, both desktop and mobile.

Once a Facebook messenger widget is integrated into your website you can auto-respond and lead the user through the conversion funnel, and the user now becomes a lead, you can send the leads messages subsequently.

The American Marketing Association ran a study that showed that adding a live chat to your website increases conversion by at least 20%

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Going a step further and taking a look at how Facebook Messenger Marketing can be useful and deployed in eCommerce.

Abandoned Cart Recovery

When a potential customer adds a product to cart without making a purchase, you can set up a Facebook Messenger to send them messages automatically just like email reminding them of the product they added to cart and if they would like to complete the purchase or ask any questions.

The powerful of Facebook Messenger marketing when it comes to abandoned Cart recovery is powerful when compared to its counterpart, Email Marketing.

Shipping Updates

Shipping updates can be sent easily to customers, to track their order status. Shipping updates can get lost in email, so have a second channel where customers can be notified will be pretty useful. Customers can also be notified when a package is shipped, delay or delivery confirmation automatically.

Product Suggestions

First-time visitors on your website may not know what they want. Or they may know what they want but don't know where to get it. A messenger bot on your website can help them can help customers find exactly what they are looking for.

Live Chat

Live chat is a great way to interact with your customers -- if you’re able to respond quickly. You can respond manually, or let your bots do the heavy lifting for you. Your customers receive nearly instantaneous responses to any questions they might have.

How to get started with Facebook marketing?

Here is your four quick guide to start using Facebook Messenger Marketing

• You must have a Facebook business page
• Select a chatbot builder; there are so many chatbot builders out there. The most popular ones include:

Manychat

MobileMonkey

Chatfuel

• Build your first Chatbot. Depending on the chatbots builder you are using, in as little as 10 minutes, you can get your Messenger not up and running.
• Add a Facebook messenger widget to your website. Adding a messenger widget to your website allows you to gain leads. It's far easier to gain a messenger contact than gain an email address.
• Build, learn and grow. After building your Messenger bots, you try different hacks to see the one that works perfectly with your business. Experiment with Facebook Messenger Marketing, reiterate what's successful and grow your business.

Conclusion…

Email marketing and Facebook Messenger marketing are effective strategy tools for growing your business. In as much one can be great in achieving a specific goal. Both can be put to greater use when combined. Email marketing and Facebook Messenger Marketing can be used to achieve better results when used together. While email marketing can be used for drip campaigns and selling live chat and chatbots can be can help you generate leads like nobody's business. So, combine them both for big wins in your funnel and reap the rewards that each can give you!

P.S. If you're ready to dive in and start using Messenger chatbot for your business or you've questions regarding Facebook Messenger chatbot and what it can do for you and your business. Reach out to me on [email protected]