Chatbots: Marketing Automation via Messenger

Wondering how chatbots can improve open and click-through rates on Facebook?

Want to build funnels into your chatbot messaging?

To explore how to develop marketing messaging that works in Facebook Messenger chatbots, I interview Andrew Warner.
More About This Show
The Social Media Marketing podcast is an on-demand talk radio show from Social Media Examiner. It's designed to help busy marketers, business owners, and creators discover what works with social media marketing.

In this episode, I interview Andrew Warner. When Andrew was younger, he built a company to $30 million in annual sales. Today, Andrew is the founder of Mixergy, a site and podcast focused on tech startups. Andrew's newest venture is called Bot Academy, a site focused on chatbots.

Andrew explains the many advantages chatbots offer compared to email.

You'll discover how tags and the right content can create interactive and engaging chatbot conversations.

Share your feedback, read the show notes, and get the links mentioned in this episode below.
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Here are some of the things you'll discover in this show:
Chatbots
How Andrew Got Into Chatbots

Since 2008, Andrew has been running Mixergy, a podcast and website focused on helping newer tech entrepreneurs learn from a variety of experienced tech entrepreneurs and exploring topics like their backgrounds, how they built their businesses, and why those businesses worked.

Although Andrew had made angel investments in chatbot software companies, he didn't really use them in his work until his company had a problem with its email open and click-through rates. A big part of Mixergy's business is growing their email list for relationship-building with future customers. To improve those rates, Andrew tried many things including adjusting their funnel, but nothing worked.

Then Andrew realized he was complaining to his team about the problem not with email, but via chat apps such as Facebook Messenger, iMessage, and Slack. Although Andrew was communicating with people he loved and worked with using chat, he was using email to communicate with prospective customers. He began to question whether email was the issue.

Andrew decided to test how communicating with customers via chat would impact the metrics for his business communications. When they communicated with customers via chat, open rates rose from 20% to 30% with emails to 80% to 95% on Facebook Messenger. Click rates rose from 5% on email to more than 50% on Messenger.

Andrew recalls driving from San Francisco to Napa to get away from work for the day. Two different people called him during the drive and said, "Please show me how you're reaching people on Facebook Messenger." That's when Andrew realized chatbots were the future and he could build a business based on chat.

The first company Andrew invested in was Assist, founded by his friend Shane Mac and the founder of Geek Squad, Robert Stephens. One of their tests was this chatbot that at first worked on SMS text messages and then Facebook Messenger. They were so plugged in that when Facebook was thinking about chatbots, the duo went to Facebook's offices to talk about it.

Then when Mark Zuckerberg announced chatbots at F8 2016, Andrew asked himself, "Why am I not paying more attention to what Shane and Robert Stevens are telling me?" That's when he started to get really lit up by the idea of chatbots.

Listen to the show to hear about other efforts that didn't help Andrew improve metrics for his email list.

What Chatbots Can Do and Why Marketers Should Care

Chatbots can provide a sense of immediacy that email doesn't. Marketers can use this immediacy to share timely reminders and links. For example, someone who registers for one of Andrew's webinars receives the message, "Press this button and my chatbot will remind you on Facebook Messenger." When it's time for the webinar, the chatbot reminder makes the recipient's phone vibrate and ...