There has been increasing interest in chatbots over recent years because of their ability to take on the burden of time-consuming business tasks. Now more than ever, there are benefits of adding a bot to your Facebook page in order to respond to customers quicker than ever and provide them with a high-quality service.
Facebook data shows that:
- 61% of people in the UK messaged a business in the three months between March and June 2018.
- 53% of people are more likely to interact with a business they can message directly.
- More than 50% of people consider business messaging the modern way to communicate.
And who can blame them!? Messaging a business is much easier than contacting via telephone or email, as it can be done easily while on the move.
There are a huge range of benefits for businesses that are installing Messenger chatbots to their Facebook page, too. One of the most important is a chatbot’s ability to increase conversion rates, as long as the pre-designed messages are written and planned effectively. Here are five ways that you can use Facebook Messenger bots to increase your conversions, as well as our top tips for writing high-quality messages.
1. Improve customer service
The first way to use Messenger chatbots to increase conversions is obvious: Through the use of automated messaging, you are guaranteed to provide potential customers with an immediate response to any questions they may have.
Providing excellent customer services is crucial to upping your conversion rates and sets you apart from the competition. When building your chatbot, make sure you take into consideration FAQs sent to your business and provide a means through which people can quickly find answers to them. The easiest way to do this is to offer multiple choice responses that gradually narrow down to a specific question.
By ensuring that you are providing high-quality answers, potential customers can quickly and easily decide if they wish to purchase your products or services. Not only does the relaying of accurate and precise information play to your favor, but by providing an immediate response you are reducing the chances of these people sourcing an alternative supplier or buying from someone with a quicker response rate.
And a bonus perk: By getting a bot to request information from customers you are also pre-qualifying them before spending human hours on getting the details.
You can view your response rate on your Facebook homepage.
2. Build brand awareness
Use your bot to let people know what it is your company does, particularly when communicating with people who have recently entered your brand’s sphere of influence. This is a great way to capture interest. By conveying your brand in a way that appeals to your target audience, you are qualifying people from a cold audience to a warm audience and moving them down your sales funnel. There are a few ways to do this, and there’s no reason that you can’t do them all. It’s all about what works best for your brand.
First up, provide people who decide to message you with a greeting message. This allows them to learn a little more about your business before they engage in conversation.
UNICEF’s greeting message provides information about what the organization does.
Your second option is to provide a menu at the bottom of your Messenger window. This enables people to ask questions to learn more about who you are, what you do, and other useful information.
This bot menu allows users to learn more about the agency.
You can also engage in brand awareness directly as part of your bot conversation. By letting people know about a recent event your business has been a part of or an interesting project you’ve been working on, you are likely to capture your audience’s attention.
3. Encourage people to visit your product page
Once you’ve used one or both of the above features to warm your audience up, you can start directing them to your product pages. However, it is important that you make it feel natural and conversational and NOT like a sales pitch. This is a big no. If you don’t want to direct people to your product pages this way, you can always add a shop button to the menu, but well-organized conversation does tend to work well.
Burberry provides you with the option to browse its products in both the menu and the conversation.
4. Send broadcasts to subscribers to increase your customer lifetime value
As well as your standard bot conversation, you can send out ad hoc broadcasts to your subscribers. There are many useful ways to use these to draw attention back to your brand and increase customer lifetime value and the likelihood of future conversions. Once again, make sure that these aren’t too sales orientated and send them out sparingly – no more than once per week.
You can use broadcasts to let customers know about important business news you think they will find interesting, to offer them content that they may find useful such as a blog which will draw them back to your website, or to ask them if they want to be made aware of future product launches and information.
With broadcasts, it’s important not to bombard people with information but to engage them in a conversation. Try asking questions to see if they are interested and wish to continue. You should also offer multiple opportunities to end the conversation if they aren’t interested.
5. Include augmented reality
Victoria Beckham is one of the few people to embrace augmented reality as part of her chatbot, and the results are seriously impressive. She uses it to allow users to use their camera try on her collection of sunglasses to see whether or not they would suit them. This is a great way to encourage conversions, which we are hoping to see more of in the future. For more information on her bot you can check out this case study.
Victoria Beckham’s bot includes augmented reality, allowing you to try on her sunglasses collection
Our top tips for writing chatbot messages
You now know how to use bots to increase conversions. But how do you craft effective messages? We’ve included some tips below for you to bear in mind when building your Messenger bot.
1. Don’t overdo it with the text
Your bot should never have more than three messages in a row without asking a question or providing options for a person to respond with. Messenger bots should be conversational, so make sure you only provide a couple of sentences per message. Remember it’s a conversation, not an email.
2. Use emojis
Chatbots are meant to be much less formal than other methods of communication. Adding emojis can make the experience more fun and friendlier, while reducing the need for so many words.
3. Use breaks between messages
Avoid using large blocks of text or swamping users with multiple messages immediately after one another by introducing text breaks into your conversation. We recommend two-three seconds between messages, much like a normal conversation.
4. Include images or GIFs
Make conversation feel more authentic with the inclusion of images and GIFs. It’s okay to add humor to your bot, too, but do so with caution as people find different things funny.
5. Provide people with the option to unsubscribe
Make sure people have the option to unsubscribe if they want to. Although you want to build up your bot following, there is no point in having subscribers that aren’t interested in your brand. You also don’t want people to start resenting your brand for receiving unwanted messages they are unsure how to get rid of. The easiest way to allow people to unsubscribe is to add it into a “Bot settings” option in the menu.
By clicking on “Settings” on this bot you are given the option to unsubscribe.
6. Collect data from your subscribers for future targeting
Make use of the answers and information people give to your bot by tagging them and creating subgroups. This enables you to send broadcasts to certain caveats of people that have opted in and for you to retarget people that have shown an interest in a certain topic. This is another way of increasing customer lifetime value and keeping people in your sphere of influence by serving them content they want to see, thus heightening the chances of conversions.
Include Facebook Messenger in your marketing strategy
Before you go and set up a chatbot for Facebook Messenger to start increasing your conversions, we want to let you know that bots should be used in conjunction with other advertising formats. Chatbots are there to complement them and should not be used as a replacement.
About the author
Jordan Bucknell is the CEO and founder of Upbeat Agency, a Facebook and Instagram ads agency based in London. The agency offers ad strategy and creation for both platforms as well as customized Messenger bots. Their purpose is to help companies drive sales, generate leads, and scale their businesses.