By Larry Kim, Founder, and CEO of MobileMonkey
Sometimes, the idea of making messenger chatbots can be a little tedious, but chatbot development is worth every effort. Utilizing Messenger chatbots can do wonders for your eCommerce business while transforming your marketing strategy.
In fact, according to Mindshare’s report titled “Humanity in the Machine”, 63% of people consider messaging a chatbot to communicate with a business.
In addition, a consumer research study conducted by myclever Agency shows that people prefer talking with chatbots to get fast emergency answers to their problems and questions.
8 Ways Messenger Chatbots Can Transform Your Marketing Strategy
Chatbots mimic the conversations of people with the use of AI. “It can transform the way you interact with the internet, from a series of self-initiated tasks to a quasi-conversation.” – The Guardian.
1. Customer Service
Have you ever experienced waiting for more than 30 minutes for a customer service agent to pick up your call? I think in some part of our adult lives, we have.
And let’s face it — there are businesses with the worst customer service.
The younger generation, for instance, is more impatient and they are used to doing almost everything online like banking, making reservations, ordering food, shopping, and a lot more.
They don’t want to be put on hold, waiting to speak to a customer service agent. This is where chatbots come in — providing your customers the immediate answers to their needs and questions.
Instead of waiting in line to ask five simple questions, they can simply send your chatbot a message and have their answers in a flash.
2. Building Your Contact List
Chatbots can also help you build your contact list and open up more opportunities to send information, news, and updates aside from sending email newsletters or giving social media updates.
Chatbots are able to collect user data and information from the engagement your page gets. This is why chatbots are now considered one of the biggest innovations in digital marketing.
3. Generating Leads & Revenue
Chatbots use direct messages to collect information that is needed to provide effective and efficient support to your customers.
One example is creating a chatbot that asks your users the reason they are visiting your page.
From this initial reaction, your customers or users can share the information you need to determine the essential things that can help you serve them better.
This will help you generate leads and revenue because you’ll know what your customers or users are looking for and you’ll be able to deliver it effectively.
4. Cater To Your Business’s Needs
Chatbots can be created to adapt to any business’s requirements. If your business is on Facebook, then you should be utilizing the benefits and efficiency of a messenger chatbot.
Here’s an example of a dentist’s clinic where patients can do the following:
- Schedule an appointment
- Meet dentist/s
- See the clinic’s list of service
- Determine clinic or office hours
- Get directions to the location
- Get a free cleaning
This makes it easier for customers or patients to get what they want and need. Scheduling for a cleaning appointment would take 4 taps on the customers’ screens.
Chatbots can help you solve a customer’s service or support issues.
5. Engaging Your Users In Unique Ways
Chatbots offer fun, interactive, and unique ways to engage your customers with your brand. Once you have the data or information about a certain user, you can use it to personalize your engagement with them.
If your brand offers a service, like a hair salon or massage spa, you can get back to your customers after a specific time to ask if they would like to make another appointment.
6. Selling Products & Services
It is now easier to sell your products and services using a chatbot. According to the Facebook Messenger marketing report, 53% of consumers are more likely to purchase from you if they can send you a message.
Your customers can also choose to purchase tickets to concerts, events, or movies via their Messenger mobile apps. They won’t have to visit websites to do this kind of task.
In addition, your customers can also proceed into making payments without leaving their Messenger app because you can set up your chatbot to do that task for you.
7. Offering Personalized Messages
This is another proven messenger chatbot marketing strategy that is effective and successful in creating personalized messages.
Here’s how it works: When your customer engages with your chatbot with an inquiry, your chatbot will send a greeting and would gather preliminary information, and would ask your customer to wait for a moment.
Chatbots can personalize a message. For example, using the MobileMonkey messenger platform, users can dynamically select parameters like the customer’s first name, last name, time zone, location, and more when sending responses to customer’s messages.
Receiving a message with your name on it feels more personalized and once your customers have engaged in the given parameters you’ll be able to segment them into new audiences too.
8. Maintaining Active Presence On Messenger
According to Gartner, 40% of mobile interactions will be managed by artificially intelligent agents by 2020, as stated in a report by MobileMonkey.
If you’re able to maintain your presence on a Messenger app via chatbot, you’ll gain more in terms of growth and revenue.
Final Thoughts
With an estimated 1.75 billion people using mobile messaging applications this year, it is really now the perfect time to build a chatbot or indulge in messenger chatbots.
Both digital, social media, and Messenger marketing strategies are changing, and these are changing fast along with customers’ preferences.
However, with the help of chatbots, these challenging changes can be overcome.
