What is a Messenger Bot?

Messenger bots, Facebook bots, chatbots…oh my!

What in the world are people talking about when those words come outta their mouths? Well, they’re taking about a really cool feature that I’m going to give you the skinny on today.

Just for fun: My messenger bot’s name is Becky, Becky the Bot and she’s an amazing little personal assistant who helps me respond to messages really quickly from my Facebook page.

I’m going to keep this post today fairly introductory so I really just want to start with the basic question of, “what is it?”.

Messenger bots (or Facebook bots, whatever you want to call them) are basically just automated “things” that send a message to a person who takes a specific action.

There are a few things you need to know about messenger bots off-hand:

• They are NOT something on Facebook.
• You have to use a 3rd-party app like ManyChat.com to create a messenger bot.
• You cannot export your list of people from this but ManyChat DOES collect the people who “opt-in”.

I feel like it’s kinda hard to get to the beginning of “what is a messenger bot” but just know that they’re not on Facebook and they’re automated “things” that do things when people do a thing.

Ha.

Some examples might help? Yeah!

• Within ManyChat you can set up a popup box for your website (all pages, one page, whatever) that asks the visitor a question and tries to get them to respond via messenger.
  
  So, if it’s on a sales page, it might say, “Have any questions? Chat with us now!”.
  
  Once the person submits a question, they have “opted in” to your bot. If you haven’t set anything up, that doesn’t mean much, but, if you have, that means that they’ll likely get an automated response that’s either canned (the same for everyone who submits that form) or something that you’ve pre-programmed based on their keywords.
  
  Example: If you know the question, “What is the cost?” might come up over and over, you may program your bot to know that keyword string and answer back with, “Such a good question! This program is $1400 for 3 months.”
  
  You can make the messenger bot as simple or as complicated as you want.
  
• Something I’ve done with messenger bots that I loved more than chocolate milk was that I connected my bot with a specific post (or ad) on my page and when someone responded to that ad with the word, “yes”, they were sent a link automagically.

Messenger bots really are cool but why do you care about any of this.

There are so many reasons bots come in handy:

• Increases your “response” time on your Facebook page.
• “Grabs” all the people who chat with your bot, almost like an email list so you can get back in touch with them at any point (bulk messages, etc).
• Keeps the interaction with the client/customer high-touch even though it’s automated.

One really big way that these bots come in handy is that IF someone has messaged with your page before, you can run a Facebook ad straight to their Facebook Messenger inbox.

So, if you do the work and build up your audience of people who are messaging you via Facebook messenger, you can target people right in their happy place (all the people are on FB messenger) and KNOW they saw your ad vs hoping they see in your feed.

Ok, I need to stop talking.

Bots are automagical creators that help you get in touch with people quicker, help them based on the action they took and get back in touch with them again later.

I promise, I’ll be back SOON with a “how to” video and post for ManyChat.com…hang tight.