Did you know?
There’s a place where 64% of Facebook users flock together?
Yes, that’s true - the great Facebook Messenger!
According to Business Insider, messaging apps hoard more monthly users than social networks.
And Facebook Messenger tops the list with 1.3 billion users.
As a business owner, you might be wondering, “so what?”
Sure - the growth of messenger itself has nothing to do with you. However, the scenario changes when you realize what Facebook messenger engagement can do for your business.
Plenty of reports and studies advocate the amazing engagement and conversion rates from Facebook Messenger. In fact, it’s emerging as the leading marketing platform, similar to email marketing.
Don’t believe me?
See for yourself:
HubSpot saw up to a 619% increase in CTR with Facebook Messenger over email.
Neil Patel revealed an 88% open rate and 56 percent CTR with Facebook Messenger.
Recart showed how Facebook Messenger is outperforming emails in all key automated sequences that most businesses are likely running.
In short, there’s no reason not to leverage messenger for your online business.
But, wait…
That’s not all!
Facebook Messenger Marketing: The Arrival of Chatbots
Facebook Messenger isn’t just changing the face of marketing, but the unprecedented access to data and automation tools has signaled the arrival of chatbots.
Some marketers believe they’re just passing fad, while those generating huge chatbot subscribers and increased conversion rates say different.
The adoption of AI-powered tech by businesses has been rising in recent years. In fact, a report from Statista revealed that the revenue generated from the chatbot market worldwide is expected to reach $1.250 billion in 2025.
But here’s the thing:
The trend is rather easy to spot. But, following it? That takes a lot of effort.
In this age of Amazon’s Alexa and Google Assistant reign, you can’t surprise customers with a chatbot that just answers basic questions.
No.
It needs to evolve. More advanced. So it can actually lead to conversions, thereby, money.
So, how do you produce effective copy for messenger?
Let's see that below:
Conversion Copywriting For Messenger
How you structure your message is crucial for conversions.
And while your medium might change, the need for a killer message doesn’t. Still, with each medium comes new rules to crafting compelling and effective messages.
And right now, with Facebook Messenger taking the lead, here are some key elements and tips you must know to master compelling Messenger copywriting. Let’s go:
Table of Contents
Give It A Proper Name
Brainstorm And Create A Flowchart
Have Conversations - Not Robotic Deals
Write Natural Responses
Designing Error Messages
Maintain Notification Character Limits
Keep Updating
1. Give It A Proper Name
Wondering where to start? First, you need to decide a brandable name for your bot.
While some businesses just use the company name for their bot, many brands use very thought-out, unique names.
The name can impact how people see your bot, or even who decides to interact with it even. So it’s worthwhile to put some thought into it.
Sure - building a chatbot just based on an amazing name won’t take you very far. That said, an attractive name can turn an already-effective bot more powerful.
And since chatbots are just starting to emerge, remember, your bot might become the first experience of your audience. So it’s preferred to go with a warm, personal name, instead of something intimidating and confusing.
4 Types Of Chatbot Names:
When you’re selecting your chatbot name, there are some different approaches. The approach you choose to go with depends on your industry, brand tone, bot’s purpose, and your brand image.
Here are some common approaches for naming chatbots:
Human Name: A human name (like Jessica or Juli) works well for serious businesses. Taxes, banking, medical, law, for example. Such names don’t derail you from the main topic.
Robot Name: Titus or Dexter, for example. Such names make it obvious that the user is talking with a bot - not a human. This helps to avoid confusion. If you’re in education, finance, or technology - a robot name would be a great suit.
Explanatory Name: For example: “Calorie Count Bot” or “Tech Gadgets Bot.” This approach informs the reader about its purpose instantly. While they aren’t very personal or resonating, some may like it, thanks to the clarity.
Creative Name: For example: naming a painting advice bot ‘Mark.’ Or ‘TAA’ for a bot providing Technology And Apparel advice. Such names suit business in the fun and casual industries:
fitness, travel, beauty, food, and such. A creative approach helps your bot stand out too.
Deciding the name depends on many factors - the goal of your boat, the personality of your brand, and the style of communication. To help you understand better and make an educated choice, here are some tips:
Reflect your brand tone and style: Both your bot’s persona and name must align with how your business / brand tends to communicate with customers and prospects. If you’re using a lot of puns and emojis on your social networks, customer support messages, choose a creative name alongside a casual persona. Otherwise, you lack consistency, brand recognition, and might confuse the users.
Be explanatory, but not dry: There’s nothing wrong in naming your bot after its work. However, don’t get too explanatory or boring. For instance: “Dentist Deals And Booking” doesn’t engage so well. However, “Mark, The Tooth Fixer” gets the message across much more interestingly.
Make your chatbot introduce itself: Especially if you’re giving it a human name. Because users may get confused whether they’re chatting with an actual person or a bot. So make it clear right away that it’s a bot. So they’d be aware of what’s going on.
Again - remember, your chatbot won’t make a difference if the bot itself isn’t any good. However, if you’ve got a killer bot already, a killer name would offer the finishing touches.
2. Brainstorm And Create A Flowchart
Before you start creating a conversation, first, you must create a flowchart of the dialogues. Take a paper and pen to doodle or use a flowchart app and design away.
This should provide you the much-needed overview of all possible directions a conversation can go, allowing you to prepare better questions and answers.
In addition, this can help demonstrate how essential it is to cover more than one scenario since every answer option you give to the user can flow to another part of the chart.
Since conversations have elements, a flowchart can help plan the possible outcomes of chatbots. These are the potential elements:
Greetings: For saying hello or striking a conversation. Formality depends on the user relationship (new or returning user).
Updating: Offering info that’s either relevant or requested in the conversation.
Asking: To engage or seek information. Keeps the chat flowing.
Checking: Verifying the user’s comprehension. Re-discussing information and details for better clarity.
Suggesting: Presenting the user pertinent options or actions.
Apologizing: Courteously accepting the bot’s faults and limitations. Must be concise and offer alternative ways.
Error / crash: Situations when chatbots don’t understand, or can’t complete a request.
Conclusion: A solid conversation ender.
Remember your customer journey when mapping out conversation flowcharts. What sort of experience do you want to offer? Would interactions be brief and professional, or casual and conversational?
You’d create diagrams for several conversation types, and they all would likely adhere to a similar speech pattern.
Use your drawing tools to make a flowchart outline. Then use simple boxes and arrows to map out some greetings, chatbot answers, potential user responses, and so forth.
If you’ve got live chat, look through your transcripts to find the FAQs you need to address.
At first, your flowchart may not cover every possible user response. So, error messages are crucial for your bot. And we will cover that in detail later on this article.
Moving on...
3. Have Conversations - Not Robotic Deals
So obvious, right?
Well, did you know most Facebook Messenger bots aren’t conversational at all?
The reason?
Most businesses use chatbots just because of the good statistics backing it, but don’t care at all about having conversations.
However, the Facebook messenger is just that - a platform for conversations.
While the communication style depends on your target audience, in most cases, a conversational language is how you need to train your chatbot to communicate with your audience.
Plus, it:
Makes exchanges as clear and understandable as possible
Prevents bombarding the user with complicated, industry-specific jargon
Offers a friendly and personal approach to conversation
So, how do you create a good conversation and make users comfortable to chat with your bot?
Personalized Greetings: Start the conversation with a spirited greeting that addresses the user’s first name. And since that feels more personalized, users are more likely to continue chatting with your bot.
Always Speak 1-On-1: Most copywriters aim at a general mass, and end up speaking to no one. However, when you’re writing copies for your chatbot, don’t use generic messaging. Picture that you’re chatting with a single person. Use words like “your,” “you,” “we,” and so on to sound more personal.
Stickers and Emojis: When you message your friends, do you use cute stickers and funny emojis to express yourself? Well, most people do! And they’d love to see your chatbots using stickers and emojis where appropriate - spicing up the conversation and making it more engaging.
Images and GIFs: If emojis and stickers aren’t enough, images and GIFs can add more life to your chat. Using them doesn’t just make your messages more engaging, but helps strengthen your message.
Well-chosen images and GIFs can instantly communicate your message. They’re great for adding humor into the conversation. Just don’t overuse them and fit them with your overall brand image.
Short and Concise: Don’t be the marketer who copy-pastes a 500-word email as a message. It’ll look very daunting. You can’t apply your 2000+ worded sales page formula here. Think about how you’re messaging with your friends.
Send a few sentences at a time, instead of large paragraphs, making it hard to digest. However, limit up to 3 messages to avoid annoying the user.
4. Write Natural Responses
When using chatbots, people make requests in two forms: by giving commands and asking questions. Let’s highlight these forms and learn some recommendations on writing more natural responses in both situations.
Commands
When a user sees the chatbot as a servant, they throw orders at it. Let’s see some examples:
“Show my balance”
“Show me shoes”
“Send money”
This master-servant approach is prominent when users interact with machines.
Questions
When a user talks with a bot like an actual person, they behave more politely and ask questions instead of giving commands. Let’s see some examples:
What’s my balance?
Can you show me some shoes?
I want to send money (this message implies “Can I…?”)
Such questions give a more natural language approach to your dialogue and form a stronger relationship between the brand and the user.
Now that that’s out of the way, let’s focus on further techniques.
Cut Right To The Chase
If your brand image (through the chatbot) is more straight and on-point, you can simply answer right away.
That said, there’s an alternative approach.
Acknowledge First
Often, it’s better than the bot acknowledges the request prior to carrying it out. This stage can help inject personality to your dialogue and/or buy some time to collect and present the response.
That said, the question remains…
How Do You Write Responses That Sound Natural?
The easiest and simplest way to write responses to command and ask is to cut right to the chase - responding with facts.
This eliminates lots of ambiguity and simplifies the dialogue. When you’re aiming to add more personality to your bot and make the conversation seem more natural - add an acknowledging message before completing the request.
To write more natural messages:
Use factual responses as they tend to make the least assumptions and cuts to the chase.
Frame each message as if you heard a question, not an order. Responding to questions works in both cases, but not the vice versa.
Test all the responses against both - questions and commands.
5. Designing Error Messages
Speaking of responses, how does your chatbot respond to an error?
Most users don’t know how to interact with chatbots yet. And often, they make mistakes in the middle of conversations. Is your bot prepared for that?
Consider this formula to write an error message to keep the conversation going:
Acknowledge: First, your bot must acknowledge the problem. By being specific when something went wrong, you can help the user understand better what you want the user to do.
However, if you just tell them something’s wrong, without a choice to fix it, then it’s not helpful at all. To make error messages work, you must tell the user what’s wrong and show how they can make it right.
Rephrasing: Unlike a web form, you can’t show users if there’s something incorrect in their message before hitting “send.” However, you give them an example of a successful interaction after they’ve made a mistake for a better idea of what you need.
If you want to go the extra mile, you can set your bot with a few variations of the same hint. This way, users who got it wrong after the second try won’t be annoyed and frustrated with a repetitive message.
Prompt: At this point, your user must know where it went wrong and how they should approach it. So, ask them to actually do it.
Prompt them in a polite and direct way. Users are more likely to do it and keep engaging with your bot.
6. Maintain Notification Character Limits
Facebook Messenger is for quick and short communication. So they have character limits in messages.
In Facebook Messenger, you get up to 640 characters to send in a single message. Actually, you can go beyond that, but it’ll show up as a different message. So you’re better off keeping it within the mark.
Meanwhile, greeting messages should be limited to 160 characters.
7. Keep Updating
You can’t just set and forget your chatbot. Like any other tech, you need to update your scripts regularly. And there can be many reasons behind that.
If you’re adding new products, features, and services, you’ll need more messages for them. So keep that in mind. Notifications can help introduce them.
Also, your user needs and services/product can change. You’ll need to adjust and update your message to that.
Promoting holidays or discounts? Add more messages.
Also, users don’t like to have the same conversation over and over again. To add newness, keep updating your responses. Maybe wittier? Funnier? More clarified?
Closing Thoughts
The door to bigger audience reach and customer conversion is now opened through Facebook messenger. Gone are the days Facebook Messenger’s main goal was to keep close communication with family and friends.
Chatbots are growing increasingly popular among online businesses. Thus, having one becomes a must for success. That said, having a working bot isn’t enough. You need something giving the feel of a person. But if done right, it can catapult your ROI.
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