Facebook Chatbots for eSellers: How They Work and Why They Matter

As an eSeller, it can be overwhelming to pin down exactly which marketing efforts to put your time and money behind. But what if you were told that by using Facebook Messenger and chatbots, you could see an 80% open rate and a 20% click-through rate? Chances are you would seize this opportunity.

Knowing this makes it easier for you to get your customers to click through to Amazon where they can buy your product. As a bonus, you’ll be building a list of customers on Messenger, which you can use to send out future promotions, review requests, and more.

What Is a Facebook Chatbot?

With more than 900 million users, Facebook Messenger provides unlimited potential to enhance relationships with your customers.

According to David Marcus, VP of Messaging Products at Facebook, more than 8 billion messages have been exchanged between Facebook users and businesses that are taking advantage of chatbots.

Furthermore:

• Live chat software has become the top way for customers to interact with businesses, posting a 73% satisfaction rate.
• It’s predicted that by 2020, up to 85% of all customer-business interactions will take place without human interaction.
• An experiment by HubSpotfound that content delivered through email had an open rate of 33% and a click rate of 2.1%, whereas content delivered through Facebook Messenger had an open rate of 80% and a click rate of 13%.

While Facebook chatbots are free to build and implement, the process itself does require some technical skills.

Depending on the complexity of your chatbot and the type of conversations it’s expected to have, external help may be required. For example, a chatbot that utilizes natural language processing will take longer to develop than a chatbot that only uses pre-programmed responses.

For a more in-depth explanation on how to build your chatbot, Facebook has a quick start guide for developers.

Benefits of Facebook Chatbot Marketing

Facebook chatbot marketing provides a number of benefits with regards to increasing your conversions.

With straight traffic engagement ads, the user clicks on the ad, makes a purchase and leaves your store. But when you implement messenger bots, you can engage potential buyers in a conversation about their experience with your company.

Additional benefits include:

Customer service – Chatbots can fuel FAQs, provide simple answers and be used to collect some basic information from customers before a support rep steps in. Chatbots are also available 24/7, meaning they can send near-instant responses.

Order confirmations and updates – Chatbots can be used to handle order confirmations and shipping updates. In one single thread, you can send out tracking numbers, order updates, and solicit feedback.

Upselling and cross-selling — Chatbots can be used to let customers know about products they might want to check out or new promotions which might interest them. The key is to give personalized service without being invasive. While the occasional promotion can be useful, spammy sales messages might turn customers off.

Getting more reviews — Chatbots make it easy to solicit reviews you’re your customers. They give you a way of letting your customers know that you have a new product and would appreciate their honest feedback.

Facebook Chatbot Best Practices

It’s important to remember that while the future with chatbots is exciting, it’s still early and customers might not be used to interacting with them. This means there are a couple of things that you should keep in mind.

Use simple language — Avoid slang, and make sure the user can get a simple answer to their question or solution to their problem.

Don’t be pushy — Users must first approve and initiate contact, and you’re there to improve the customer experience, not necessarily just your bottom line. Offer good customer service, and then slowly build in promotions and selling opportunities.

Offer human interaction — This might seem counterintuitive, but customers should always know that they can reach out to a real person for help. Chatbots are great, but most are often only programmed for simple requests and might have difficulty understanding user intent.

The Bottom Line

Given that chatbot conversations are projected to save businesses nearly $8 billion in productivity by 2022, it’s a marketing strategy that’s worth your time and effort. Not only will it save you time in the long run, but it will increase your conversion rate — and in turn, increase sales.