Messenger Marketing

Messenger marketing is the practice of using mobile chat apps to facilitate business and connect with prospects and customers. It leverages mobile messaging platforms like Facebook, Telegram, WhatsApp, or WeChat to reach the target market.

In this video, a SendPulse marketer explains how you can improve your marketing results with the help of chatbots for various messengers.

Messenger marketing provides an easy, convenient, and quick way for businesses to reach millions of people from anywhere in the world. Companies send marketing messages in any form, including text, videos, audios, and images, or set up bots. Customers, in turn, learn what a particular brand is selling and buy the products or services offered. When implemented correctly, messenger marketing strategies improve customer relationships and boost sales.

Why use messenger marketing for business?

According to Statista, 61% of companies say that traffic and lead generation is their biggest challenge. Reaching prospects and boosting brand awareness through most marketing methods is difficult, expensive, or both. Currently, there are more active users on messaging apps than social media apps. That is why businesses are using messenger marketing to connect with prospects, boost lead generation, and increase conversions. It is now the go-to way for marketers to reach and engage with customers at lower costs.

Check out the impressive statistics below that will make you try this communication channel.

Messenger Marketing Statistics

The mere number of monthly Facebook Messenger users is surprising. Take a look at some other marketing stats that make this platform a powerful marketing channel.

• 1.3 billion people use Facebook Messenger every month
• Approximately 18% of adults use messaging apps to ask for customer support from online sellers, while 43% of millennials use these apps to research products.
• Facebook Messenger users send 8 billion messages every day.
• As of 2018, 300,000 bots were created for Facebook Messenger.
• CTR and open rates for Facebook Messenger are astonishing. According to Neil Patel, the open rate reaches 88% and CTR — 56%. Medium found open rates of up to 90% and an average CTR of 20%.

Now let's find out how messenger marketing works.

How does messenger marketing work?

Messenger marketing allows a business or internet marketers to subscribe users to their campaigns in a messaging app such as Facebook Messenger or Telegram via widgets on the website. Once a prospect or customer has subscribed, a business can then send marketing messages such as images, videos, GIFs, or communicate with customers through a live chat. Marketers can launch a messenger marketing strategy with SendPulse by merely setting up an account.

Chatbots provide convenient content delivery with a higher open and click rate compared to traditional marketing channels. They allow brands to send relevant notifications and reminders about upcoming events and offer excellent opportunities to re-engage prospects. Besides, they can help your sales and technical support department to answer users' questions, collect orders, register people for events, and promote your brand.

Facebook Messenger Marketing

Today, Facebook Messenger is the most popular messaging application, with 1.3 billion users already on Facebook. According to recent data from Statista, Facebook Messenger is the leading mobile messaging application in the US, with 103.55 million active users in 2018. Therefore, Facebook provides the perfect platform for marketing.

How to start Facebook Messenger marketing with SendPulse?

With SendPulse, it's as easy as pie. Follow the instructions.

1. Sign up with SendPulse and go to Messengers
2. Connect your Facebook page to SendPulse to set up a chatbot
3. Collect a subscriber list with a subscription widget
4. Create and send your campaign

In our Knowledge Base, you'll find a step-by-step guide to create a chatbot and connect it to your Facebook page.

Before you send campaigns, users should initiate a conversation with your bot. To collect a subscriber list, place a subscription widget on your site. Here you'll find the instructions that will help you create a chat widget for your site.

Telegram marketing

Telegram marketing is kicking into gear now. Lots of brands have already evaluated its benefits. You can grow its list by creating a chatbot with SendPulse builder.

How to start Telegram marketing with SendPulse?

It will take you less than 15 minutes. Follow the instructions.

1. Create a bot with @BotFather
2. Copy the token value and paste it to your SendPulse account

In our Knowledge Base, you'll find a more detailed guide to creating a Telegram bot.

Messenger Marketing vs Email Marketing

The statistics above show that messengers are a great tool to increase user engagement since the average email open rate across all industries only reaches 19.21%, while a CTR makes up only 2.44%. Comparing this to messenger marketing stats, you may think that email as a marketing channel is no longer effective but that's not the case.

These two platforms are different and they serve different purposes. This is predefined by the nature of these two channels. Email is created for sharing news, updates, and promotional offers. It follows the model of one-way communication. While messengers represent two-way communication as the name suggests. People check messages much more often than their email inbox. If customers have questions regarding the service, they will likely use a messenger to contact a brand rather than look for an email address. 

And that’s great! You can combine these two powerful channels in your strategy to reach your goals. Keep your customers informed about recent updates, teach them how to effectively use your product, and share your plans for the future via email. Now, when they are “warm”, offer them to join your brand on messengers. Here you can answer their FAQ, collect orders, help with making an order, etc.

SendPulse allows marketers to effectively combine these channels at the very top of the sales funnel. Create a multichannel subscription form so you can not only collect users’ email addresses but also offer them to join your chatbot in Facebook Messenger or Telegram.

Chatbot Messenger Tools

There’s plenty of services that allow marketers with no technical background to build chatbots for messengers. Most of them offer either a free trial or even a free plan that you can use to test the waters.

We tried several of the most popular chatbot builders. Check out our findings below.

1. SendPulse. This a multichannel marketing service created for automating communication with clients via email, SMS, web push notifications, and chatbots. You can create a chatbot for free for Facebook Messenger and Telegram. With a free plan, you can create three bots, send up to 10,000 messages monthly to an unlimited number of subscribers, use up to ten variables, design your subscription widget to collect leads, and more. The paid plan starts at $9.85 monthly and lets you create unlimited bots, send unlimited messages, and use as many tags and variables as you need.
2. MobileMonkey. This is a platform that helps marketers promote their brand with a chatbot for Facebook Messenger. With a free plan, you can send up to 1,000 messages each month to an unlimited number of subscribers, create a widget, and use custom attributes and tags. The paid plan starts at $14.25 per month billed annually or $19 monthly. The platform lets paid plan users send up to 2,000 messages per month to an unlimited number of subscribers, schedule messages, and use lead alert widgets.
3. Chatfuel. This is a chatbot platform for Facebook Messenger. The free plan provides all the essential tools to create a chatbot. You can send messages to 1,000 subscribers for free. The paid plan starts at $15+ per month since the accurate price depends on the number of users. For example, 500 subscribers will cost you $15; 1,000 subscribers — $20; 5,000 subscribers — $55; 10,000 subscribers — $85. Free plans offer precise targeting with Facebook Ads, sending cart reminders, running A/B testing, and using priority support.
4. 13chats is a platform for increasing sales using chatbots for Facebook Messenger, online chats, and smart widgets. Additionally, users can create an unlimited number of variables to add user information into messages, analyze subscriber activity, send messages as a team, add notes to customer profiles, and use quick replies. All of these functions are available with a big free plan for 5 team members with a limit on the number of unique visitors per month (10,000), online users (10), scripts (5), and texts in messengers (10,000). A paid plan starts at $13 per month. The cost increases depending on the number of online users and operators, scripts, messages, and duration of chat storage. The maximum Premium plan costs $93 per month, individual plans are also available upon request.

Choose the platform that best fits your business needs.

Messenger Marketing Tips and Best Practices

Here are some tips and best practices to gain the most from this relatively new marketing trend:

• Build and update the chatbot based on customer feedback;
• Send notifications to the existing list of customers too, focusing on engagement;
• Describe the bot to customers and prospects in the brand’s marketing material;
• Promote the chatbot in specific places, which the target prospects are likely to visit;
• Personalize the bot for more relevant and timely interactions;
• Keep it simple by limiting the number of options available.

Messenger Marketing Examples

Below is the Eddy Travels bot on Telegram. It helps users discover the best flight deals in seconds and let's them buy a ticket.

Booking.com's bot for Facebook Messenger helps customers find apartments that best fit their desires, check it out below.

Wingstop's Facebook Messenger bot lets users order dishes from their restaurant right in the chat window.

References

1. The article comes up with 4 Facebook marketing strategies you should try.
2. The article provides 7 Facebook marketing tips from the pro.

Start messenger marketing

Last Updated: 28.09.2024