KEY TAKEAWAYS COVERED IN THE PODCAST
- When it comes to the reasons behind using messenger marketing, one of the main reasons to use it is because the open and clickthrough rates are incredibly high. Not only that, but you get to have a one-on-one interaction with your customers, which doesn’t happen often when it comes to marketing. Because of this, you can target your other marketing efforts exactly how you need to.
- As messenger apps are so popular, more people are likely to interact with you in this way. Because it is so new, it’s still fun!
- When it comes to the basics of messenger marketing, it is marketing to audience inside of a messenger app – whether it’s Facebook, Skype, Kik or WhatsApp. With almost 2billion people using Facebook Messenger every day, this is the most common use for messenger for marketing.
- A messenger chat bot is an automated chat you set up based on the answers that you set up. Although it a bot, you can set up your own personal touch and make it as fun as you like.
- When it comes to getting started, you can’t add your Facebook fans or email subscribers to your messenger bot service. You are effectively starting from new. To get people to subscribe to your messenger list, you need people to interact with your chatbot before you can start to message them.
- If you’re looking to grow your messenger subscriber list, you can use a programme called Many Chat. You can send polls and questions to your email subscribers and Facebook followers to direct them to your chatbot. You can also use your messenger bot to reverse this process and grow your email list.
- Although you won’t have access to everything, there is a free version of Many Chat that you can use to help you get started.
- When it comes to what you can use messenger bots for you can run giveaways, give out vouchers and coupons, you can run quizzes, you can run challenges, you can send receipts, you can reengage with customers and you can offer FAQ information.
- If you are thinking of venturing into Messenger Ads, the best thing you can do is test it. It may not work for you, but at least you will have tried.
- In the best case, you may find a method that really works well for you.
- If you’re going to set up a messenger chat bot, you need to ensure you are filling out all of the details. If you’re not going to monitor the chats, let people know.
THE ONE THING YOU NEED TO REMEMBER ABOVE ALL ELSE…
One of the best things about starting messenger marketing, especially in the UK, is that nobody is doing it yet. You have a chance to shape and mould the industry.
HIGHLIGHTS YOU SIMPLY CAN'T MISS
- Introducing Chrys Tan – 05:30
- Why Messenger Marketing? – 07:45
- The Basics of Messenger Marketing – 12:05
- The Rules Around Getting Started and How to Build A Subscriber List – 14:31
- What Can You Use Messenger Bots For? – 23:15
- Are Messenger Ads Worth It? – 30:00
- How To Use Many Chat – 35:15
LINKS TO RESOURCES MENTIONED IN TODAY'S EPISODE
- Hack Your Online Business Podcast
- Chrys Tan LinkedIn
- Chrys's Masterclass
- ManyChat
Transcript below
Okay, so this is really weird. First off, trying to do that intro with a different name. And second off, I still don't have the other intro that we would normally put in between, so you know that American guy that used to go, I'm not even going to do the accent, I nearly did the accent, but you know what I mean.
So I currently don't have an intro and outro. So this is a bit weird jumping straight into an episode, so please bare with me while I'm working out what it is that I'm doing on the podcast, whether I'm going to have someone else do my intro for me, whether I'm going to have someone American or British, and whether I might just do it myself. Because actually I think there is a bit of a trend for people doing their own podcast intros with a bit of music behind. So I might do that. I'm not sure.
But anyway, as of this week, it's now Marketing That Converts. Everything is changing over. Like I said, please don't panic. It's the same podcast. It's me. It's the same sort of stuff. I just wanted to have a title that was more understanding and more a reflection of what I was doing on the podcast.
Anyway, that's why we have a weird start to this podcast. If you're new, by the way, this isn't how they all start. There's normally a much more professional feel to it. It's just that this one's a little bit different while I'm working things out. And the other thing is, I always work in advance obviously, so this episode, episode 67, is coming out … I'm just looking at my calendar, hang on. It's coming out on the 3rd of June. And today it is the 13th of May. So trying to work out in advance when I'll have stuff done by is really tricky.
Anyway, enough of all that. On to this week's episode. This week we've got an interview for you. And this episode makes me laugh a bit because when I'm in this industry, or being in this industry, there is so much to it. There are so many platforms that do so many things. Being in marketing in general, I have over the last probably 16 years now, I have done every kind of marketing you can imagine. Like literally every kind. So there is so much to know and learn, and obviously there's some stuff I'm better at than others. And there is some stuff that, you know what, I try not to get involved with because I know that that's not where my strength is, or I haven't got the capacity at this point to become brilliant at it. Because I'm one of those people that wants to go all in. If I'm going to do something, I've got to be good at it, I've got to know what I'm talking about, or otherwise I just won't talk about it.
And today's episode is one of them. You might remember if you think back to the Pinterest episodes, that was one that was also very similar. So today we're not talking Pinterest. We're talking messenger bots, and using messenger marketing. And even though I've included it in lots of different talks I've done, and I can talk about the importance of it and I can talk about how good it is from a marketing standpoint, it's not something that I've done a lot myself and it's not something that we're using at the moment as a marketing tool. However, like with the Pinterest one, it might be after this episode that I change my mind and we need to focus on it. Because actually the episode is really cool. We go into some really nice detail.
So today I talked to the lovely Chrys Tan, who is the founder of Chrys Media where she helps coaches and online course creators fill up their diaries, webinars and online courses with Facebook Messenger marketing. She's been featured on Buffer, Our Social Times, Business Hour Podcast, and has spoken at conferences such as Social Day Houston. She's originally from Singapore and now runs her own Messenger marketing agency online while travelling the world. Nice, eh? And isn't it cool that with all these online businesses you can do them from everywhere. So Chrys is currently based in Mexico and she was saying that she possibly might come over to the UK next year, so how funky is that that you can actually do that when you've got an online business? Which I think for most people kind of must be the dream.
Anyway, we have a great episode where we go into what Messenger marketing is and what Messenger bots are. Now if you're say there thinking I only have a small business, I'm not doing these crazy amazing automation things, I don't need it, I still want you to listen because actually I make her go very basic. Because I wanted to get everything over in terms of where you can start, what you can do. And Messenger bots are very cool. They can do some amazing stuff. But we don't go into that level. We keep it fairly simple and straightforward in terms of getting started, the platforms you use to get started, and why you want to do that. So I really urge you to listen to this episode because it is something I think that is growing and I think it's going to become more and more important as we move forward. Even though we're using a platform that doesn't belong to us to get to our audience, it's still one of those many ways in which we can communicate and engage with our audience. And there's some very simple, easy things that you can do to get started that doesn't cost you much time or money.
So definitely worth a listen, this one. And I hope you enjoy it.
Introducing Chrys Tan
I'm really excited to welcome Chrys to the podcast. Welcome to the podcast.
I am super excited to be here, Theresa. Super excited.
Awesome. I've said in the intro that we had a chat this other day because I was being interviewed for your podcast, which is exciting, and so we've already had a really nice chat about things. We talked about Messenger and bots and things, and I said that actually I don't think we've really talked about it or covered it. So it's perfect that you've come on to talk about this. So thank you.
But for my audience, if they don't know who you are, can you just give me a very brief outline to how you got to do what you do now, and what is it you do?
Sure. Like you introduced me, my name is Chrys Tan. I am the founder of Chrys Media. We are a Messenger marketing agency and we work mainly with coaches and online course creators to kind of help them fill up their diaries, their webinars, and of course their online courses, by using Facebook Messenger marketing chat bots.
A lot of people get really afraid of the word “chat bots” because of the word “bots” I guess. Like I told you, with the Russian thing and everything-
They're going to take over the world.
They're going to take over the world. Come in and take [inaudible 00:06:28] world.
But there's no need to worry and we're going to go right into it today. But I found about Messenger marketing, I think this was maybe a year ago, like every entrepreneur I was trying every marketing strategy out there. My background is in social media marketing so that is what I was doing. And I was so amazed with the results and the things you can do with Messenger marketing. More than just selling. Don't get me wrong, I love cash, but there's so many things you can do with a Messenger chat bot.
And I dived into and I loved it. I dreamt about it. I wanted to marry it. And I started an agency. So there you go, a very quick story about who I am and my passion about Messenger marketing and why you too have to be passionate about Messenger marketing.
I love it. We've already discussed the fact that this is on one of my list of things to do. And there are a few people in the UK, or a few people that I know that are doing this … Well, I was going to say “well”, and they are doing it well because basically no one else is doing it. For them it's working really, really well.
Why Messenger Marketing?
But I think for me, and I think we talked about this before, there's always so many things to do that you think, okay why is this important? So why did you focus solely down on Messenger marketing and bots? Because there are a million other things that we can do, isn't there? So why was it specifically that?
Yeah. The first thing that really grabbed my attention, to be honest, was the open rates. The open rates was super high, the click through rates was super high. We like to compare Messenger marketing with email marketing. Everyone knows email marketing, right? So we compared it and we're like, okay, with email marketing I'm getting around 20% open rate, 30% open rate. I'm getting around 3% click through rate. Now that is a disappointing number because you're putting all your time and effort into it, right?
We see with Messenger marketing we're getting like 70, 80, 90% open rates and 50% click through rates, sometimes 30 depending on what you're promoting and all that. But beyond the open rates and the click through rates, because we all know that that number is going to drop, just like how email marketing when it first started everyone was opening emails. The number is going to drop. But does that make it a less effective channel later on? No, because we can think about the one on one interaction you can do with your target audience. What other channels out there allow you to ask a question, and then your audience replies, and then you follow up with another question instantly, and then your audience replies again? This one on one interaction versus this one to may interaction. And with Messenger marketing, as your target audience is answering your questions, as they're replying to your polls and your quizzes, you are able to tag those answers and basically know exactly who this person is so that the next time you serve content to them, you serve a promotion to them, you serve whatever your serve is, you know exactly what this person is like. Is this person a Democrat? Is this person a conservative? Is this person in love with online stuff? Is this person more the physical stuff? Is the person in their 60s, 50s, 40s, whatever? You know exactly who this person is.
So even if Messenger marketing one day were to go down the path of email marketing in the sense of the open rate and click through rates, I am still so passionate about this one on one interaction that you cannot get with any other marketing channels out there right now.
Yeah. I love that. And you're right. I think to think that it will always stay at those open rates is probably not a wise move, because it isn't. And I have my own theories as to why I think the open rates are as good as they are. And I think for me, as I just said, there's hardly anyone doing it here. And we're not used to it.
So a couple of things, and let me know whether you agree or not, but one, there's not that many people doing it so we're less tuning it out and just getting rid of it. And two, the way we use out platforms or our phones or whatever it is, Messenger is something that we are using, we're using Messenger platforms like WhatsApp or Facebook Messenger. We're using them all the time, and therefore that's how we're communicating and we're more comfortable to have that communication back to us. And also, I hate having numbers on my phone, which in my job is really not ideal. If there's a one on my Messenger app, I will go click it and open it, and it feels different. So I do think that those are some of the reasons why the numbers are quite bit and successful at the moment. Do you agree?
I absolutely agree. And the reason why, like you said, not a lot of people are doing it and I feel like some people have dived into it but they haven't really quite understand how it works. But also they might have set it up using whatever one of the tools out there, they might've set it up and then they might've went, oh what is this Messenger chat bot thing? I'm going to try it for my business. And then whether or not they continue using it and growing it is another thing, right?
You're right, a lot of businesses out there are still unaware of it. That's why it's so important to have conversations like this on podcasts because I want to get the word out. The number of marketers doing Messenger chat bot is so few. Way lesser in the UK. And I didn't say this, but I think I might be moving to the UK next year, but that's a whole different story.
There we go. Perfect.
I know, right? I'll be coming in like, hey guys.
It's so crazy because it's so new that's where the fun is. The marketers haven't come in and destroyed it. Because we all know how marketers are with every marketing channel. We come in, we see it, we conquer it and then we destroy it.
And then people get sick of it. And therefore it starts to lose its effectiveness like email marketing has. That's so interesting. I love that.
The Basics of Messenger Marketing
So Messenger marketing. I want you to go basic, basic. What do you mean by that? Is it just a case of if you're a business owner sat with your business, you encourage people to send you messages? Is it as basic as that, or are we talking something different?
At the core of it or the most basic of it, Messenger marketing is basically marketing to your audience inside of a Messenger app. This Messenger app, there are a couple out there. There's Facebook Messenger where everyone knows about it, there's Skype, there's Line, there's Kick, in Korea they use Kick as well. So there are a lot of messaging apps out there, but Facebook Messenger is the number one platform for Messenger apps right now. And there's a good reason. There's almost two billion people using Facebook Messenger at the moment, every single day. So the fact that your target audience is going to be on it is very, very high. I can talk about Skype and all that, but the fact that they're probably on Facebook using Messenger to communicate with their friends and family and sometimes businesses is very high.
And what it really is is a chat bot, a Messenger chat bot, is basically an automated system or process that you set up so that you have answers, automated answers already pre-entered into the chat bot itself so that when someone interacts with your chat bot, the chat bot already knows what to say based on the answers that have already been pre-entered into your chat bot. It's a back and forth automated system, but at the same time you're able to bring in a human touch to it. Because one of the things I hear all the time is, oh a chat bot is so cold. It's so cold for a business, I'm not sure if I want automation and that kind of automation in my business. But what people don't realise is that there are many ways to make a chat bot fun and interactive without coming across as this cold, robot thing that everyone is so afraid of or losing that human touch. Because you can always offer that opportunity to talk to a human inside of a chat bot itself. [inaudible 00:14:07] about it.
Just in the general sense of it it's just marketing to your audience inside of a Messenger app and my favourite Messenger app at the moment is the Facebook Messenger app.
The Rules Around Getting Started and How to Build A Subscriber List
Okay. So if I wanted to get started, because there are some rules around you can't just on a page go and message a load of people. You can't do that. So what are the rules around getting started in terms of how would I, if I came to you today and said I want to start using Messenger as a marketing tool, what would I do?
So the number one thing you need to know right now is you cannot import emails. You cannot add your Facebook fans and followers into your Messenger subscriber list. You can't do any of that. So basically you are starting from scratch. So no matter how famous you are, you're popular, or how big your business is or how small it is, all of us are starting from scratch when it comes to Messenger marketing. So even if you've got this huge email list, I'm so sorry, you can't do anything with it.
I have a four step process that I use with every single of my clients. And the first step is the list building because all of us start from babies. So we need to build that list. So you must remember that the only way that you can build your list and get people subscribed to your Messenger list is if they were to interact with your chat bot. So whether that's messaging you on Facebook Messenger and you already have that chat bot set up, or taking one of your quizzes inside of a Facebook Messenger or downloading your [inaudible 00:15:28] inside of Facebook Messenger. So that is very, very important to remember that they must interact with the chat bot first before you can even have them on your list, before you can even message them.
And that's one of the key things about Facebook Messenger or Messenger marketing in general, unlike email marketing, any marketer out there can buy your email. They can buy it, they can spam you and you receive these messages from all these random people. With Messenger marketing, marketers can't do that. They can't just randomly say I want to talk to Teresa, I'm going to send her a message. Now they can send you a private, personal message that is not with the chat bot itself, but if they want to use the chat bot you must first interact with the chat bot. So you probably might have interacted with them in the past by sending them a message, or whatever like I said. So that's the number one thing.
And my favourite ways or growing a list include running polls, so I want to know do they like chicken more or beef more? Are they Democrat or whatever?
So tell me how that poll thing would work. Is that a post on Facebook? I want to ask the most basic questions because I really want people to think about how they can do this for them. Is that a poll on Facebook that then says “DM me with the answer”, or what?
No. Let's go back to a little more basic stuff.
One of my favourite tools is called Minichat. Inside of Minichat you will find different things, different ways to get people into your subscriber list. They're called growth tools. Using their growth tools that comes in the form of a URL, there are growth tools that come in the form of a landing page, there are growth tools that come in the form of a scan code or at least that's going away soon. There are growth tools that come in the form of a Facebook post comment tool. So when someone comments on your Facebook post they automatically receive a message in their Facebook Messenger. Those things are called growth tools.
Now what I always love to use, and my favourite growth tool, is the URL growth tool because basically it goes anywhere a URL can go. So you can post on your Facebook page with that URL, you can send an email out with that URL. So for example, I might create a poll about social media marketing, so how many days out of a week are you currently using Instagram? And I might want to know that because I'm probably creating a course about it, for example. And I might create this chat bot, this sequence inside of my chat bot, that basically says hey Chrys, thanks for taking this poll, just let me know are you this, do you use Instagram three times a week or five times a week or do you never use it at all? And just click one of the buttons below and let me know the answer. So that's a poll.
And I might just use it as a URL, so I might actually send out an email to my email list, because I've already got an email list. I send out and email and say, hey guys I've got this poll going on about Instagram marketing, I would love for you to take it. If you take it I'll give you a voucher, whatever. Just click on this link, it will open up in your Facebook Messenger, and you'll receive the poll inside of Facebook Messenger itself so I don't need your email, I don't need anything from you, it's just really simple. Once they click on that link, and once they open up through Facebook Messenger, and once they get started with the poll, they're automatically my subscriber.
So you see how I can actually convert my email subscribers into my Messenger subscribers, right? That's kind of how it works in general. Like I said, there are many other things that you can do to … Many different growth tools you can use. So one of my favourites for my clients, because a lot of them are coaches and online course creators so they do run Facebook Lives, they do a lot of Facebook Lives, and that's awesome. Because with Minichat and other programmes out there as well, you can actually set up your Facebook post to automatically send them a message inside of their Facebook Messenger while you are on Facebook Live. So you can say, let me know in the comments below, what do you think about tuna? Do you like tuna or do you like chicken more? Or let me know in the comments below, what do you think about the latest Messenger marketing strategy? And I will send you my thoughts about Messenger marketing inside of your Facebook Messenger itself, or I will send you my free PDF about Messenger marketing and the five steps you need to get started.
So when someone comments like, “Oh my god I love it!” Or “I love this thing, I'm going to download it.” Then they automatically receive it inside of the Facebook Messenger. So that's kind of how it works. You see it now?
Yeah. Absolutely. And I think there is something about being within the platform and within Messenger itself that is much more trusting, isn't there? That whole interaction on that platform where you don't feel like you're giving your information away.
But you can also use Messenger to build your email list, right? So as in, you can ask them for their email as well, can't you?
Exactly that. And here's the thing, a lot of people, once they … It's like this new, shiny object thing. I feel like for a lot of marketers today they're so focused on growing their Messenger subscriber list but they forget that they are still playing in the Facebook sandbox. Facebook at any point, and actually they are about to do this, well there are talks about it at least, they can take away the ability to send out messages for free. So you might probably in the future, and that would be awesome, they might start charging for Messengers, for you to broadcast to all these people.
So if you are so focused only on just, all right I'm going to grow my list, I'm going to grow my list, and then you forget about actually collecting those emails as they interact with the chat bot, then you're really missing out on this huge thing. And then with Facebook we all don't know … It's a money thing. If you spend all that time just making this all your eggs in one basket, and then once it goes down the route of Facebook pages and then you're screwed. If you don't want to pay. Basically there are marketers who don't want to pay.
So my suggestion is, there's a way to actually collect emails inside of your chat bot itself. You can ask them for emails. Facebook already has the emails of these subscribers and the first name and the last name, and sometimes even the phone numbers. You can actually just as a subscriber, hey, to download this PDF type your email address below or click on the email below. It's already pre-populated, just click on it. I can't go into technical of how to actually set it up right now. Remember, you have to get those emails.
And I think you're so right. And funny enough I talked about this, or I talk about it quite a lot because I love the lead generation stuff and I love lead magnets, and the thing with it is is like you said, and I love the way you said Facebook sandbox, that's hilarious … But, it's the fact that it doesn't belong to us and they can change it at any point. So for me, although I am a huge advocate of social media and these platforms and Messenger marketing and I think it's so clever and so smart, for me you've got to still have that email address or you've got to try to have that email address. Because at any point anything could happen, boom you're done, you're out of there. And if you've built your entire business just on the one platform or one thing, it's like putting all your eggs in one basket. So you've totally got to keep that in mind when you're doing that.
Exactly. And it's the same across any social media marketing channels. If you were to build your entire business on Instagram and Instagram's organic reach right now, and as you can see that's dropping. So oh my god, what do you do now? And then with Snapchat, imagine you built your entire business on Snapchat and then Snapchat is poof. So you don't want to do that with any marketing channel.
Now I always think of Messenger marketing as part of your marketing strategy, it's not the marketing strategy. And you must always remember that. It might be the hottest thing and the coolest thing right now, but you don't want to forget it has to be part of your marketing strategy.
Yeah, absolutely. It's got to be one of the things.
What Can You Use Messenger Bots For?
So what can we use the bots for? Like you said, people do get a little bit nervous about anything really automated, whereas I love automation. It can save us a lot of time, it can make it really slick, and it can still be really personal. And I think that's the key thing, because what you were saying about as they're answering things or clicking on things, you're learning more and more about them.
So what would I use the bot for? Or what kind of questions, or what kind of things would the bot be really helpful for?
Let's think about it in terms of pre-sale and post-sale. For pre-sale, this is before someone actually buys your service or they pay for your products, there are many things you can do. You can run contests, you can give away vouchers and coupons. If you're a restaurant you can actually give $50 off or your free entrée inside of a chat bot itself. You can run quizzes. So I have a “How Well Do You Know Your Social Media Marketing?” Quiz. People are actually taking that quiz, ten question quiz, and it is all within Messenger marketing.
You can run challenges. So one of my clients actually just ran a five day challenge inside of Facebook Messenger itself. One of the things that she realised was that when she used to run her challenges, people were not really opening her emails so people were not really taking the challenge. To overcome that with Messenger marketing's open rate right now, we actually reminded people hey go into your dashboard so that you can actually take that five day challenge. Don't forget. Here's what you learned today, here's what you learned yesterday. So all this kind of stuff.
You can run polls. You can offer FAQs. A lot of people they tend to ask the same questions over and over again about what's your opening hours, where are you located? All those things can be contained inside of a chat bot itself. So you can actually give them a button that says FAQ, for example, and they click on it and then you're like do you want to know about this, do you want to know about this? And they just go down the rabbit hole and have their answers answered. Of course you can-
Just quickly to jump in there, this is such a prime example of where you'd have to pay a human to do this, and where actually this will save you so much time. I have a client, we manage a client and they do events, and you can guarantee at the run up to every event, even though we don't manage their social, we do their advertising, I have access to their social and I see it. And they get message after message after message, the same things. Can I bring my dog? Is there disabled access? Is there parking? What time does it open? What time does it close? Blah blah blah. Can kids come? Literally the same questions. And the funny thing is, they don't have anything set up at the moment and they manually go in and respond to people all the time. And they said, but I don't understand because it says it. We have a post on our Facebook page. It says it on the website. And I was like, but people are lazy and they don't want to read those things. They would rather just open up Messenger and ask the question in there, rather than go and search themselves.
Whereas like you said, if they had … And it wouldn't take two minutes for them to come up with their most popular question because literally they're the same ones over and over. But if they had something that then said, do you want to know any of these things? Then they literally could just click the button, that's answered. Do you need anything else? No, fine, thanks. Done. They don't have to get involved with that at all, which surely in anyone's mind, even if you're not a big bot fan or automation fan, that's got to be just more efficient for the customer, isn't it? Way more efficient.
Exactly. And here's another great example of using Messenger chat bots before the sale. I actually was on this chat bot for a book company, an online book company. They sell books, different types of books. And it's basically a chat bot that helps you pick the next book that you want to buy and read. Isn't that amazing? So you go to the chat bot and they're like, do you like romance or do you prefer mystery or crime or thriller? So you just click on one of those and they're like, do you like to read a huge book or a short story? So you go through all that stuff and then at the end you're like, this is the book you might want to try out. Do you like the suggestion? If not, here are other suggestions. Do you want to go back to the main menu? Look at this, there are so many things you can do with a chat bot that is so not boring. So not boring at all.
You are basically helping people to make a decision. So whether you sell online courses or you sell services or you sell products, there are ways you can help your target audience make a better decision with a Messenger chat bot. And there are things like even we are talking about this podcast episode right here, and here's the thing, we are so used to promoting our episodes with blasts on emails. But again, if we think about it, only two out of every ten people on our list will actually open the email, and only four out of 100 will actually click on a link to our podcast episode, to our YouTube channel, to our latest blog post. So we are creating all this content and no one is really consuming it as much as we hope to.
So with Messenger marketing now we can actually nurture those people on our lists with all the regular content and really get them so hot and so warm and ready to buy our stuff. So that's one thing you can do before the sale.
Once you're done with the sale, so someone buys that thing and maybe you ran a promotion or even not, maybe you just offered the product inside of Messenger, chat bot itself. Once you're done with that, using a Messenger chat bot this is what you can do post-sale. You can run a survey to find out did they like your course, did they like your service, what they thought about it. Did they like the book that you suggested? What did they think about the customer support and all that stuff?
You can also give them the receipt, right? A lot of companies they do offer receipts after you buy their stuff. So give them their receipt and all that. If you're doing e-commerce you can always follow up with your consumer, with the buyer. Hey, your package is ten days, it's going to arrive in ten days, for example. You give them updates about that stuff that's coming to their homes.
What else can you do? Let me think. Is there anything else you can do post-service. You can re-engage them again. So if someone bought something from you once, chances are if they like your stuff, you did a good job, they'll buy from you again. But they might not be aware there's another product or another service. So now you can re-engage with them and get them back again and then you just basically explore that customer, what do you say, I just suddenly lost the word.
Like lifetime customer value?
I swear to god I actually know what that word is. I ramble on and I'm just like, wait a minute. That train just left my thoughts.
Yeah, you're like “What was I doing? Where am I right now?” Happens all the time, honestly. It's like walking into a room and thinking, I don't know what I came in here for. I think we're just losing our minds slowly.
Are Messenger Ads Worth It?
Honestly I love all this stuff. The other thing I want to just quickly talk about, because I know this might be a confusion of some people, is when you do Facebook advertising there are various ways in which you can interact Facebook ads with Messenger and place them. But there are a few different ways on this. One, you can place an ad in the Messenger chat. Personally, and I'd like to get your take on this, I'm not a big fan of this. I don't think it's … My hunch would be it's not as effective as placing it in other places, because it sticks out so bad. What's your thoughts?
Here's the thing, I am not a Facebook ads expert. When it comes to Facebook ads I do partner up with my partners who are able to offer, I mean they only do Facebook ads. However, one thing I've learned over the years and hanging out with all these colleagues of mins is that you must always test. There isn't one right answer for your company. It might work really well for one company and not for the other company because it's a different audience, different placement, different ad, different creative.
So I would always suggest test it. If you are planning on running Facebook ads, test it. Of course in my case the best ads that work really well are the desktop, the newsfeed ads. Those work the best. However, I will not say no to testing out the other formats for the ads because I don't know if those might work because they stand out, whereas in a newsfeed they kind of get blended. So pros and cons to everything. I will always test it and see if it might work for you or not.
So there's that type of ad. And then there's the type of ad where the call to action button, instead of sending them somewhere it sends them into Messenger. How do you feel about that? Is that something that people should be looking to do?
I absolutely love those ads because those ads … For example, in the past I used to run lead gen ads ad I would get people to download my free lead gen or they click on it, they go onto this landing page, and then they enter their emails, and they entered their names to download it. There's a lot of steps to it, a lot of steps. And you're taking them out of the Facebook ecosystem. Don't forget that people are on Facebook to browse cat pictures. They're not there to download free stuff. By having this sent to Messenger, the ad that you're talking about here, it's so much better because they are still within the Facebook ecosystem. Facebook loves it as well. You get, in fact, I think a better ROI as well with a send to message ad as compared to sending them to a landing page, at least based on what I've seen so far.
Facebook already has their first name, their last name, their emails. You don't need it. You don't need to ask them, hey, what's your first name? Because you can say the moment they click that send to message ad, it automatically opens and says, “Hey, Teresa.” So you're like, oh my god, you know my name! How is that possible? Because they're like, this is so new.
So don't forget to of course ask them for their emails, like hey click on the email below to download it, whatever, so you actually capture those emails as well. Because you do need to get their consent to actually use their emails. So personally love send to message ads. I would absolutely test it and I would do an [A/B 00:32:57] testing. I would test it like, what's the results of a send to message ad versus the send to the landing page and then have them enter their emails? Because as a consumer I hate entering emails. I've reached a point where I'm constantly entering my email to download stuff, and now there's an alternative to me not entering the email, just clicking on my email? I'm down.
And don't forget, people have secondary email addresses, right? So that's another thing about email marketing. You'll use secondary email addresses to download your free stuff. People might accidentally enter the wrong email address, because we're typing on our phones, fat thumbs. Don't forget there are a lot of these things that you can avoid with a send to Messenger ad and then you get them to just click on your emails inside of the Messenger app itself and you're done. You send them the free lead gen inside of Messenger itself.
You know what, so obviously I do a lot of lead generation stuff and I do lead magnets and I've had some really successful ads but they were going to landing pages. And I've literally this morning, at the end of last week I've created three brand new lead generation things. And I'm really excited about them, they're really good stuff. They're about webinars and list building and sales pages. So like blueprints and things like that. And as you're talking to me I'm thinking, we need to test this out through Messenger and split test those results because the last lead generation thing I did my landing page conversion was a 78%. Insane. And it was brilliant. And my cost per conversion was like 39 pence. And I've never had anything work this well. And I'm kind of a little bit nervous because my expectations are insanely high now for this next one.
But anyway, so I'm really interested to see what it would be like if I did it through messages. So I'm definitely going to test that. I think that's a great one. Really, really good.
How To Use Many Chat
So again, let's go back to the bot side bit and Minichat. Obviously I'm going to link up in the show notes to Minichat and all the other stuff we talked about as always, but if I wanted to get started in Minichat, and I know there's lots of different platforms out there that do it but I particularly like them. I quite like their branding and the way they are and that sort of thing. If I wanted to get started with them, is there still a free version of them or is it paid?
There is still a free version. It's great for those who are starting out. There are some features that you cannot use with the free version, like the capturing of emails. So that might be I guess a con of the free stuff. But I mean it's great, just check it out and learn how to use it. If you want to do it yourself, DIY, just make sure you learn how to actually use the Minichat platform. If not, it's easy once you learn it but it can be confusing.
And then for me, beyond just learning how to use Minichat itself make sure you actually understand basic marketing funnels and strategies because a platform, a tool by itself means nothing, creating and sending messages means nothing … It's like me trying to design, just because I know how to use Photoshop doesn't mean I'm a great designer, or doesn't mean I should be designing.
No, not at all. I totally agree with you. Because like you said, sometimes it's amazing that you an literally YouTube anything and find a video on how to do it. But as you completely said, just because you can use those platforms does not mean that you have the skills to do it. So I totally agree.
Even on a very basic level though, if they're just getting started they can literally go and set up a Minichat account and have a bit of automation, can't they? And that will start collecting their lists, their subscriber list.
If you are on the free plan and you're listening to the episode now and you're like, oh my god I'm going to go to Minichat.com right now and sign up for it. Sign up for the free plan, you want to connect to your Facebook page. Setting it up is a whole different thing. Signing up for it and connecting your Facebook page will not automatically have a chat bot itself. What will happen instead is if you don't set up a chat bot once you've connected to your Facebook page, what would happen is when people want to send you a message you'll see a get started button, and you'll click on it and nothing happens. And I see this all the time. And people maybe have tried it out and they forget about it and they didn't disconnect it. So I'm waiting for something to happen because I know something is about to happen, right? I click on get started. Now that's very confusing for your audience if they see that.
So what you've got to do is, make sure once you're connected to your Facebook page, get the most basic welcome chat bot set up. And that's what I do for all my clients. The most basic welcome, the fundamentals I call it. So you have the welcome message there. And with the welcome message, make sure that you're giving, there's a menu, different buttons. So that people actually know, okay, services, locations, FAQs, speak to a human, for example. All this stuff. So that people are like, oh okay. It's like a choose your own adventure, right? I get to pick where I want to go.
So make sure that you actually set it up because just connecting to your Facebook page alone, just signing up for the free plan for Minichat, doesn't mean nothing. It means squat. You have to actually set it up. That's why I say go learn how to, at least learn the basics of it before you even sign up for it and then you're like, okay, what do I do now, nothing's happening?
I'm laughing at this end because my audience know I'm very honest and I'll tell them just as it is, and I swear to goodness that's what we've done. I'm not even kidding you because I didn't understand. I do not profess to be the best at everything. There are certain areas in this world that we live in and work in that I don't have anything to do with because when I know something I go all in on it. So I'm not going to sit there and talk a little bit about Messenger marketing if I don't know enough to carry me through.
So anyway, I'd been to a conference and I'd seen someone talk about it and I was like, this is amazing. This is so good. And it is amazing. And so I went and set up Minichat, and then they saw it kept saying get started at the beginning of any conversation. And I was like, well that's really weird. But I didn't even realise it's because I hadn't set up the bot. What an idiot. So hopefully by the time this goes out, I might've gone and fixed it. If you want to come and DM me over on the Teresa Heath-Wareing Facebook page to see whether I've done it, that'll be interesting. Because I might not have done it. I don't know.
But yeah, that's hilarious. That's so funny. So lots of people like you said are probably doing that. Who are doing it really well? Is there any company you can think of off the top of your head, or any bot that you've seen that you think, oh man you're killing it? That is awesome.
Can I plug my own bot?
Yeah. Plug your own bot. Absolutely fine.
I'm just kidding about mine. There are a lot of people that I admire that have been doing. There's one person I really like, she's Kelly Mirabella. You might've heard of her as well. She's another Messenger marketer. For me those are the best people to go to. My chat bot, her chat bot. I love these two dudes Andrew and Pete. You know them.
Yeah they're my friends.
They're your friends and they're awesome because they use their chat bot to basically remind people to go check out their latest YouTube videos and all that stuff. So that is amazing. And they do it very … Everything they do is very fun and engaging, right?
And it's very on brand for them. They're fun and quirky and bright and it's sort of not in your face, that's not the right word. But you know what I mean. They're very out there. And that was the only one I could think of, to be fair. I think that's the only one I'm subscribed to. And it's funny because … And I work with Andrew and Pete. I do every Monday morning we have a call and I help them with funnels and emails and automation and all this cool stuff. And we have our own group chat, me, Andrew and Pete. And then of course they have the chat that's coming in, so I always get really confused. Is that the bot or is that them? Which account is this on? But no their bot is really good.
The other thing that's just sprung into mind, actually. There's a bot that's obviously within Messenger itself but then you can also get Messenger things on websites. So is that the same and is that still done through Minichat?
You mean that little circle bubble thing you can put on your website?
Yeah, and it can pop up and it can say, do you want to interact as you Teresa from Facebook? Which is always a little bit scary.
Exactly. That is one of the growth tools that we have available. You can actually instal that on your website. So I have it installed on my website. And you can actually create a different message sequence for that pop up on your website. So for example, mine is totally different. So if you were to go on my website right now and you were to see that pop up, that chat thing looks like it's just a Facebook Messenger logo and it's at the bottom, when you click on that it basically says “Would you like to test out my demo chat bot?” So it's totally different, it's not a welcome message. I know that people are on my website because they want to learn more about my service, they want to check me out. So the only best way to really know my ability and my company's ability to build your chat bot is to test out our demo chat bots. We have a demo chat bot for challenges and content and all that stuff. That's why it shows a different message.
Now when you're on my Facebook, if you were to send me a message it's a totally different message you'll receive. You'll see a welcome, hey this is Chrys, so excited to have you here, and all that stuff.
Back to that thing we were talking about earlier, good examples. As I was thinking I was like, oh my god I can think of more bad examples than good examples. And one of the bad examples I've seen, I mean it's always good to know the good and the bad stuff as well, the bad example I've seen is you click on get started, and then you see the one and only message that will ever pop up is, thank you so much for contacting us, please send an email to whatever at whatever dot com, and we'll reply within the next 24 hours. And I'm like, why in the world would you set up a chat bot and then tell people to email you?
That is insane. People are mad, you know. It's not even a case of … They've obviously gone to the effort to learn how to do that, and put that on there. But I remember years ago I did a talk and we were talking about the future of digital marketing and it's kind of reassuring actually that back then I was talking about Messenger botting. And I gave an example, you're sat on your phone at home on Facebook, you see this company, you see a post maybe they've advertised something, and you want to ask them a question. So what honestly are you going to do? Are you going to go click on their page, go to their info about us, scroll down, find the website, click on the website link, go to the website, go to the contact page, scroll down, get the email address, copy and paste the email address, hopefully if it's copy and pastable, go over to your email platform on your phone, paste that in, write your email, and send it? Of course you're not. You're going to hit message and send them a message via Messenger.
It's just how we are. It's just the way we work. And the whole point is if they've decided to interact with you that way, they want a response. They don't want a message saying send us an email. At that point I'm like, you can get lost. I am not sending you an email.
And the craziest thing is, I've seen this happen not just once, not just twice, many times for the big names. We're talking big names in the entrepreneurial and marketing world. These are not people who are solopreneurs right, just starting out. These are people who are famous, who have a team, and yet I'm seeing that. I'm like, what is going on guys? What is going on?
And do you know what, as social media people and as people who have a brand and I'm on everything, you're probably on pretty much everything, it's hard. Because people will send me a DM and I'll see it, and then I'll forget about it, and then maybe days later I'll think I haven't replied to that DM, or I haven't done whatever. So do not get me wrong, if people are getting into conversations with me about something they're wanting to do, I inevitably at some point will go, will you do me a favour and will you send me an email or can I have your email? And then it moves on to email. Because if it's in my email, it stays in my inbox until I deal with it. And my team can see it. Obviously they don't see my personal DMs and whatever. I manage all the Teresa stuff. They see the DHW stuff.
I get it. I totally get it. It's hard and confusing and you can miss things. However, one, the DM side of all these platforms are getting better. So they're helping us manage it better. And I know Facebook and Messenger is really good at that, and especially on a page you can tag things, you can mark for someone else or something like that, you can do-
You can notify someone. You can actually notify more than one person. Like if someone took an action on your chat bot or asked a question, you can be notified for that. So that's a great way so you will never miss it, you know what I mean?
Yeah. I get why people can get like, ugh this is a lot of work to manage. I get it. But seriously, just don't go on there then. Just have a response of “We don't monitor this.” If that's what you need to do. Honestly, because I would be like stuff you, I'm not filling that in.
Yeah or just set up a very simple menu that has no contact us or anything. It's basically am menu or services or anything. The fact is, whether or not you set up a Messenger chat bot for your Facebook page, people are still going to send you messages. That's the thing. That's a business thing. That's my opinion. If you are a solopreneur you're absolutely overwhelmed with all this stuff you could do on top of your finances or accounting or you're growing a business. Then hire someone else. Have a team or an intern, something. But don't let the balls slip through.
Even if you don't have a chat bot set up, people are still going to send you messages. If you don't check your Facebook, if you don't care about it, then I don't know, don't set up in the first place. Don't even have the page.
Exactly. I heard someone once say that ignoring DMs or Messenger or whatever is like ignoring a ringing phone into your business. You wouldn't do it. Or if you did, it's a really stupid move because there are clients at the end of those DMs.
Do you know what, Chrys, that has been so good. It's been so great to have you on, and I think we've given hopefully the audience some real understanding about what it can do, and it is brilliant. Honestly, there's always so much going on in my world and everyone's worlds. I think I'm going to do this, and do this, but I am. So I've got a call tomorrow with one of my team and I'm going to put it on the list right now and we're going to look at it.
Chrys, thank you so much for being on the podcast. It's been a blast.
I am super excited that I was able to share all this stuff. And thank you so much for inviting me on your podcast.
No worries.
I hope you enjoyed that episode. I thought it was cool. Like I said, I kept it fairly basic so that I wanted to give as many of you the opportunity to see how it could work for your business. Like I said, there are some super cool stuff you could do. It's definitely something, as I said with the Pinterest one, that I need to look at in my business. I don't mind telling you that I don't know everything, and that we make mistakes and get things wrong. So I want you to know that we're human too and there's always a million things to do. It's hard to manage your time when there are all these amazing things out there. But also, I don't want you to sit here and think, Teresa you're bombarding us with all these different things we must do. It's not the case of that at all. It's a case of, you know what, this might work better for you than another thing. Or this might resonate with your audience and therefore I want to give you the understanding of what's out there and what you could use it for in your business.
Now I've been onto Chrys' site. She's got lots of resources on there. She's got videos on YouTube. Obviously she has that chat bot, which I've just had a bit of a play with on her site in terms of exploring her demo chat bot. So definitely go and do that, even if it's not something that you're super interested or think that is possible for you to use now. It might just give you a thought. Obviously I've put links to everything and all of her stuff in the show notes, which is teresaheathwareing.com/67, the numbers, not words.
