Take a message to the next level

Virtually in the shadow of Facebook, Mikael Yang has set up shop as founder of ManyChat. The company offers software that lets users create a Facebook Messenger bot for marketing, sales and support.

Being in Palo Alto, California, only 15 miles from Facebook headquarters “is sometimes very helpful,” Yang said.

He talked with marketing entrepreneur Madalyn Sklar about the ultimate guide to messenger marketing and chatbots.

“Messenger marketing is any activity that leverages messaging apps with the purpose of growing your business,” Yang said. “You can think of it as the next big thing that has come to replace email marketing.

“It’s hard to believe right now, but the future is pretty clear,” he said. “Consumers already use messaging apps as their primary communication channel. Businesses are starting to follow.”

His own messaging business has exploded with continuing repercussions.

“Just to give you a perspective, ManyChat powers over 400,000 businesses on Messenger that are connected to 160 million subscribers,” Yang said. “We are sending over 3 billion messages every month — all of that in just about two years.

“Messaging will never replace email completely,” he said. “There are some use cases where email fits better. But the majority of business-to-consumer communication will move to messengers in the next three to five years.”

Yang has a related blog post, “The Future of Messenger Marketing: What It Is, Where It’s Going and Why the Future Is So Very Bright for Businesses in 2018.”

Seamless experience

His Top 5 recommended messenger apps that provide a seamless user experience are Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, iMessage, Telegram — “and we are hoping for the rollout soon of Google’s rich communication services technology,” Yang said. “That is basically the next generation of SMS with all the great features of the modern messaging apps.

“By the way, all these apps have an open application programming interface,” he said. “That means businesses will soon be able to use them to connect with their customers to do marketing, sales and support.”

Yang believes businesses will grow with Messenger marketing.

“You should be able to use existing strategies to grow your email list or social followers and apply it to building a Messenger subscriber base,” he said. “The reason you want to drive people to Messenger and not to other channels is that you get 10-times the engagement rates.

“Usually, we see something like 80 percent open rates and 20 to 30 percent click-through rates for a Messenger broadcast,” Yang said.

Marketing strategies should consider the business’ goals, vision and key messages. That collection promotes a consistent appearance via any means.

“All strategy advice should be based on the business’ goals,” Yang said. “If I had to give advice on where to start, I’d say connect your Facebook page to ManyChat, start growing your Messenger subscribers and do Messenger broadcasts.

“Then start figuring out more sophisticated Messenger automation strategies,” he said. “The №1 mistake users make is that they try to build something very complex instead of taking it one step at a time.”

All you need

Yang has unsurprising tool suggestions for strategists to use in their Messenger marketing campaigns.

“This will sound self-serving, but we’ve tried to include everything a marketer would need to leverage Messenger successfully,” he said, citing these ManyChat tools:

• Slide-ins to convert your website traffic into Messenger subscribers.
• Integration with Facebook ads.
• The actual automation flow builder.
• A native live chat so you can hand off the conversation to a real human when needed.

According to Yang, the most obvious advantages of using chatbots instead of email autoresponders is the engagement rates. Email has a 20 percent open rate. Messenger is 80 percent. Email has a 2 percent click-through rate, while Messenger is 20 percent.

“Another advantage is speed,” he said. “On email you get 50 percent of your engagement in the first 24 hours. On Messenger you get 50 percent of engagement in the first hour — and don’t get me started on interactivity, fun, built-in payment features and so on.”

First impressions matter, which puts extra emphasis on welcome messages. Yang advised capitalizing on these elements:

• Every business has its own voice. Make sure the welcome message stays true to that.
• It never hurts to be friendly, polite and a bit fun. This is a conversation, after all. Feel free to use emojis, GIFs and short sentences.
• Ask people what are they looking for, and give them an option to select the next step from a list. If you are a restaurant, ask, ‘How can we help you?’ Give options to check the menu, hours, address and book a table.”

Yang and Sklar continued their conversation on Facebook Live.

About The Author

Jim Katzaman is a manager at Largo Financial Services and worked in public affairs for the Air Force and federal government. You can connect with him on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.