How To Build A Facebook Messenger Chatbot

Chat Bot messengers are going to be the THING of 2019 marketing.

Remember when the original internet marketers killed it when Facebook allowed like-gates? And when the Facebook ads were uber cheap? or the first people to integrate email marketing? 

Chat bots are like that, they aren't used heavily now, but the early adopters stand to do REALLY well.

Facebook's new Messenger Marketing features gives businesses an entire new way to communicate with their users, in real time. Unlike email or any other traditional form of marketing it creates an automated 2 way conversation with it's users. All of this happening within the same marketing platform and works with only a click of a button by the "Send To Messenger" button.  Sounds almost to good to be real doesn't it? 

My campaigns have been SO successful for our clients websites so I decided to change over all my email marketing forms, and replace with only Facebook Messenger Buttons.

Just Click Here and see how my bot works. This is a special sequence I created just for this post. 

I should mention that a typical Facebook Messenger Chat Blast receives a 70-80% open rate within less than an hour. 

To put this into perspective how AMAZING that is, most email marketing campaigns receive approximate 10% open rates and have slower one sided replies. With the increased Spam Messages and Gmails "Promotion Tab" even more emails will be filtered making it harder to reach your customers. 

In this post I am going to take you through all the steps on how to build a Facebook Messenger Chatbot and why your business needs one. 

I am confident to say that every single client we implemented this strategy with increased their conversions, sales, and most important engaged with more customers. This is because messenger is designed to engage with your users allowing you to stay top of mind.

A Chatbot is a computer software program that is designed to stimulate conversations with its end user. They work through messaging apps, telephone directories, websites, or SMS. You will be familiar with the typical "1800 number dial #4 for this department" functionality, but am excited to share a new way for marketers to use Chatbots that does not suck. I am talking about Facebook Messenger Bots.

Facebook introduced these new features in September of 2016 inspiring a new channel for marketers to communicate with their clients. Unlike the traditional Chatbots, with Messenger Bots you get to lead the conversations with predetermined responses.

It lets you see easily navigate between guides, homepage, or consulting services so you find the correct service your client is looking for fast. They are all programmed to automatically engage with customers providing a better shopping experience. As the business owner you can even choose to have specific messages texted messaged or emailed direct to your phone for faster responses. Here is one of the messages we send out below.

Facebook Messenger is not only the largest messaging app in the USA but they have an open source API for developers to build on. This means that you do not need to be a coder to create conversational flows as shown above, and can literally setup your own bot sequence in a day. Leverage their 1.5+ Billion Users who are already using Facebook Messenger daily!

The BEST part about this, is once a consumer starts interacting with you get can their email, name, phone numbers and may other attributes because they have already registered with Facebook. With just ONE CLICK on the Send To Messenger Button it will instantly open up in a new conversation without requesting any information at all from the client. 

By engaging in real time, and not having to ask for any other details, clients are experiencing far better results then emails. This is how easy and effective it is to install on your website ASAP.

Just to be clear,  the goal of your bot should be not to replace you as a human (yet). But is designed to engage in conversation and build relationships with users.

Many of our users were not able to distinguish the difference between our bot and support at first. However, they all enjoyed instant access to the support they needed. The possibilities and uses of messenger bots are endless including: 

1. Customer Service - FAQ's & Instructions

2. Event & Webinar Registration Follow-ups 

3. Sales & Lead Generation  

4. Receipts, Tracking Invoices, & Shipping Confirmations

For those that still have "live chats" on your website, you will want to update these immediately. Not only do these need to be staffed 24 hours a day, but if someone leaves your form they are gone forever. By chatting with Messenger, even if you are not there at that exact moment, you have the ability to respond to clients on your own time.

Plus you can not mature them through a funnel and automatically collect their contact details. Who here is not guilty of providing a fake email or hilarious name when asked to get a free download in the past. 

Major hotels, car rental companies, and event coordinators are some of the very effective companies harnessing the power of Chatbots. Customers engage so you can send your confirmations, and can even pay from the app. After they subscribe you can send them coupons, limited time promotions, FAQ section , polls, surveys, or feedback.. the list is endless!  If you visit Chatfuel/bots you can see a list of 100's. 

Just wait until you see how effective they are for webinars! This is shown to boost webinar attendance by 3 X 5 Times.

In a recent webinar I had 45% of all registered attendees showed up. Can you see why so many businesses will be rushing to enter this space?

I understand that at first Chatbots may seem a little intimating, because they are. However, once you start learning and testing your bot you will see how easy these really are to operate.

In fact, I can easily setup a fully functional Chatbot (like this one) in less than an a few hours. However, it takes time writing out scripts, and working on your bots responses. You do not need to add in a very complex code, just simple customer service steps. 

MobileMonkey makes this process a lot easier with pre-installed templates and training videos. I find their interface much easier to use then the alternative that I explain below. 

For those just starting out here are the 5 steps I would follow when setting your your first bot. 

1. Choose A Chatbot Software Provider

2. Connect Your Facebook Page  

3. Map out your sales funnel 

4. Crete your message flow (responses) 

5. Follow up and SELL SELL SELL! 

Most of you reading this are probably not robots.... wait a second, we have thousands of bots from Google & Bing Search Engines crawl constantly.  Well, for my human readers you need to write for this for real people....wait a second, am I not writing this blog post for SEO reasons?

Well whoever is reading this, let's take you how to create an engaging flow for your Messenger Bot 🙂 

1. Defining your goals & writing for your target audience. 

2. Write 20 short messages for your different problems you solve. 

3. Create a fun personality an name for your Chatbot for your target audience. 

4. Offer real value in your posts and think outside the box.

5. Split test new sequences and always monitor your analytics. 

Even though I do believe that Messenger Marketing is 10X more effective then email marketing (right now) it is important not to put all your eggs in one basket with Facebook. Plus when you combine both email marketing and messenger together they provide the ultimate tag team partners.  

However, it is important to note that you do not have to have them leave Facebook to signup or subscribe, but ask them directly in the conversation. Facebook automatically fills their email address and with one click of the customer get automatically added to your email to your email list. Most of the time none of the Messenger Program integrate direct, so I use Zapier + Drip to connect with my MobileMonkey. 

There are several different companies out there providing the service, and after using all the alternatives ended up choosing MobileMonkey.

The alternative Manychat & Chatfuel have escalating fees that cost a lot more once you have 5000+ subscribers. Plus I liked the simplicity and customize features of Mobile Monkey and the fact it was created by Larry Kim.

Larry Kim is known as one of the best online marketers, and build AMAZING software. He founded (and recently sold) WordStream for 150+ million dollars and is 100% intending to make MobileMoney the best product in the market. Plus you can signup for 10,000 contacts for only $19 / Month. If your not happy, no worries, they even have an Export function as they do not need to lock their clients in. 

MobileMonkey and Facebook Messenger marketing are evolving platforms, and we're sure you'll have a lot of questions about the course material as you progress through the course. We will be constantly updating this page with links and updates to our newest articles. 

If you have ANY questions... just comment them below and I promise to answer them ASAP.  Happy Botting friends 🙂