9 powerful reasons every business must have a ‘Messenger’ based ChatBot

Businesses: "Chatbot? Okay. Messenger…Why?” I will tell you Why. ChatBot is among the trending buzzwords in the market. The Chatbot market is growing exponentially with 35% year on year growth since 2015.

Businesses, small or big, are slowly realising the potential of Chatbots and embracing them gradually, with 80% of businesses having a positive response towards implementing them. Different reports estimate almost $8 billion in annual savings through the use of chatbots.

Those who have successfully deployed a chatbot are reaping in huge benefits now, both in terms of money and marketing. When it comes to chatbots, a lot of options are available in the market for different aspects. For bot-building, there are bot-builder platforms, like Chatfuel, ManyChat etc. There are AI bots and then there are heuristics based bot.

Then there are even more basic simple ‘notification’ bots. Along all this is the choice of different platforms where you deploy the bot, do you deploy it as a standalone bot on your website, app or through social platforms like Fb/Messenger, WeChat, Slack, Telegram etc.

We will discuss why Messenger is the best option available out there for deploying a chatbot, whether it’s a simple notification bot or an AI bot. Bots based on messenger significantly augment the services offered by the business.

1. Messenger’s Reach

Messenger has an unparalleled reach of more than 1.2 billion Monthly Active Users, which is truly distributed worldwide. It is also very diverse in terms of demographics, be it w.r.t. region, gender, age, nationality, ethnicity, linguistic, economic, social, income or education.

It offers the users of Messenger Chatbot an opportunity like no other. You can reach almost all of the people in the world who have access to a personal computing device.

2. Personalisation

The first message of an interaction is the most important one. It decides the tone for the rest of the conversation, if it is even going to go ahead at all or is the user gonna leave. While personalisation can be offered by all chatbots in terms of content offered, messenger augments the experience by personalising the first message itself, by including your name in the conversation.

While the rest of the Chatbots have to first ask for your name or personal details to respond to you personally by way of form filling or questions, messenger already knows your name. The gratification that we humans receive from being recognized is huge, even if we know that it’s only a messenger chatbot.

You click on an Ad and messenger opens with a message, “Hi Vivek, Would you like to buy this shoe?” That is just exceptional.

Also Read: Top 10 Chatbots on Facebook

3. Re-targeting lost visitors

This one is a gold-mine for the sales & marketing teams, & small businesses. They all spend a lot of money on Ads. Out of the huge number of people the Ad is shown, only a minuscule actually click on the Ad. Now you don’t want to lose even a single one of these people who ultimately clicked.

But you cannot reach them either if they just leave without providing any contact information or name, who just browsed and left, at different stages of lead generation. But not with messenger Chatbots.

Once you integrate it with your Ads, people are diverted to your Chatbot on Messenger once they click the ad, be it on a laptop or smartphone. And we all know everyone of us is always logged in messenger 24/7. Now you know everyone who clicks & gets started, even if he leaves without saying a Hi.

And to add to it, you can reach out again to all of them with targeted messages. Messenger provides you a medium as well.

4. No new app installs

It is extremely difficult for someone to get to install your app or go search your website, even more so for tasks or help they may need only once, once in a while or intermittently, not regularly. Messenger helps you cut through all of that.

It is already installed with almost everyone you want to reach. You can offer at the least, the same spectrum of help & service through messenger chatbots which you do otherwise through difficult mediums like apps & websites. Standalone chatbots, or those on different platforms than messenger, won’t be able to do that, even with AI.

You can reach out to people who don’t have your app, opening up a new potential market for yourselves.

5. Message Open rates & CTR

Message open rates on messenger is ~80%, compared to industry average of 20% over emails. Also, CTR(Click-through-Rate) with messenger content is 13%, whereas a mere 4.53% with email content.

People depending on email marketing have have to move to Messenger Chatbot based marketing, because it will soon be as extinct as dinosaurs.

6. Lead Conversion Rates

Visitor to lead conversion rates are over 30% for messenger Chatbot based marketing, whereas with traditional landing pages, it’s a bare minimum of 2.35% . Are you still doubtful why you should move over to Messenger Chatbots right now?

7. Ease of Use & Familiarity

While every other platform out there might encounter a bit of reluctance from the user's side, messenger offers the familiarity to them that enables you to go go one more step forward then others. People will be more likely to give you information over a messenger conversation, say like their location.

Also Read: Durex launched its chatbot, RexBot and we spoke to it!

8. Sync between Facebook Ads & Messenger

When you are tapping Facebook's social reach for Ads, why would you go for chatbots based on any other platform then messenger? A person is browsing through his news feed, sees an ad, clicks it, the conversation opens in messenger right there - it’s a seamless experience, which wouldn’t be so seamless if offered using other platforms.

Also, it helps you realise more return for your buck spent on Ads on Facebook/Instagram, as a messenger chat helps augment the realisation of your objectives, with chat.

9. Facebook Fan Pages

Reach out to all people commenting on your page’s posts. Messenger allows you to reach out to all people who are commenting on your posts and page, without asking for their permission (By commenting, they provide a tacit permission).

You can push targeted personalised and specific content, offers, messages to people based on which post on or what they are commenting. You can keep your followers/fans engaged like never before, so that retention becomes easy, as well as increase revenue by up-selling.

I believe I have made my views fairly clear. I hope this article helps you make a better decision regarding your business. If you have any doubts, clarification or counter thoughts, please feel free to comment below.