Imagine your favorite brand sending you a Facebook message right now— what version would you engage with more: one that addressed you by your name and made the conversation feel personal, or one that clearly states it’s a marketing promotional message that thousands of others probably received?
We’re sure we know your answer.
The point is, personalization is extremely important. And when you have the tools to personalize your campaigns and flows through a channel like Facebook Messenger, you’ll see a major increase in sales and retention.
Did you know that 63% of consumers will stop buying from brands that use poor personalization tactics? If you aren’t personalizing your campaigns and flows today, you’re losing out on engaging with customers in a way that makes your brand stand out and stay memorable.
That’s why we’re here—your friendly Facebook Messenger experts at Octane AI—to share the best personalization strategies for Facebook Messenger marketing! Let’s do this.
What is Facebook Messenger Marketing?
Facebook Messenger marketing is as simple as taking the campaigns you create and send on email and bringing them to Facebook Messenger instead. The difference is, with the right Messenger strategy, you can see open rates higher than 90% and click-through-rates reach up to 60%! This is because Messenger marketing is currently an untapped revenue channel where you aren’t competing with as many brands trying to send promotional messages to grab the attention of their customers.
Compared to all the messenger platforms available, Facebook Messenger ranks as one of the highest. In fact, the Facebook Messenger app is the third most-downloaded app with well over 1.2 billion users. As the number of people using Facebook Messenger has grown over the years, it’s become a great opportunity to offer fast customer support and personalized back-and-forth conversations between customers and brands. It’s true that 53% of people are more likely to shop with a business that they can message. This is why e-commerce Messenger marketing can help you connect with, convert, and retain your ideal customer base.
Messenger Campaigns & Flows That Will Increase Sales
Your customers are constantly checking their phones; that’s just the reality of today’s world. But this also means they’re available to receive Messenger updates right away, giving you the option to engage with them in real time. 59% of consumers say personalized engagement based on past interactions is very important to winning their business, so use Messenger as an opportunity to talk to them about their preferences, past interactions, and concerns.
Here are some campaigns and flows you can implement right away:
Cart & Browse Abandonment
Segment your customers into flows based on their actions with products they previously looked at. By sending browse abandonment and cart abandonment messages, DOYOUEVEN was able to generate over $50,000 in just 30 days and recover 7% of their customers’ abandoned carts.
Use Facebook Messenger for order confirmations and shipping updates. This will ensure a positive customer service experience.
Send follow up messages to people who make purchases and recommend additional products related to their preferences for them to consider.
When a customer gets started, introduce your brand, share information about what your business does, attach links to interesting content, or share a coupon code. This helps build a personal relationship with each subscriber.
Create conversational Facebook ads targeted to audiences from past Facebook Messenger interactions. For example, if you collected information from a subscriber about their drink flavor preference, you can create ads that are better tailored to that preference.
7 Personalization Tactics to Retain Customers
In order to start personalizing your messages with your Facebook chatbot, you’ll want to ensure you’re building a few of these tactics into your overall strategy. Keep in mind that 72% of consumers say they only engage with personalized messaging, so using a few of these ideas will help increase customer satisfaction and engagement rates.
1. Help Customers Find Products With a Back-And-Forth Convo
Creating custom conversations where you can ask customers questions about what they’re searching for helps customers feel like they have a personal shopper to guide them toward products that are right for them. Product finder conversations offer an interactive experience for users, and 79% of marketers say this type of interactive content leads to repeat visitors and greater online exposure.
2. Interact With Customers in a Language They’re Comfortable With
Who’s to say every customer wants to interact in English? You may have customers all over the world! If you know where many of your customers live, there are ways to implement language preferences for them when engaging with you. This makes the experience more comfortable when people can interact with your brand.
3. Make the Experience of Chatting With You Interactive for Customers
Here’s where the beauty of Facebook Messenger comes into play. When people receive promotional messages on email or SMS, they typically can’t respond and have a full-on conversation with the business. With Facebook Messenger, customers can interact with you just as much as you want to interact with them. You can populate auto-filled responses so customers can feel like they’re actually talking to your business, which makes the entire experience feel much more personalized.
4. Simplify the Conversion Process With Auto-Populated Responses
If your customers are interacting with you, they’re interested in you. Use this opportunity to collect more email and SMS subscribers at the same time. Since your Messenger chatbot can automatically pull someone’s email address for them, it’s super easy to ask customers if they’re interested in receiving emails or SMS messages too. This also feels way more personal to customers to ask for these opt-ins over Messenger with a simple one-button response.
5. Follow Up With Your Customers Using Browse & Cart Abandonment Reminders
One of the most successful revenue-generating flows on Facebook Messenger is the browse abandonment and cart abandonment flow. These messages will be sent to any of your Messenger subscribers that have visited your website, looked at your products, added products to their cart, but never completed a purchase. This shows your subscribers that you’re paying attention to them and are interested in following up.
6. Offer the Best Customer Service Experience by Answering Questions Immediately
Customers will use Facebook Messenger to ask you questions. You’ll want to make sure you’re responding in a timely manner. To respond to customers immediately, you can set up automatic AI smart responses to customer inquiries. Helping customers with support-related questions instantly will ensure a positive customer service experience, and it tells them that they matter. Your customers will remember this experience when deciding to shop with you again in the future.
7. Use a “User First Name” Code To Make It Unique To Every Person
Addressing someone by their name is more powerful than you’d think, but doing this sets the stage for a positive customer experience. This helps the message feel like it was handcrafted for every individual person, rather than created and blasted to thousands at the same time.
Get Started With Facebook Messenger Marketing Today
Facebook Messenger is a very comfortable channel for customers to engage with you. It’s something they’re used to using every day, it’s not cluttered with other promotional material, and offers a much more personalized experience for customers.
If you’re ready to build Facebook Messenger automation for your e-commerce business, here are a couple quick tips to keep in mind:
- Use simplistic and clear language
- Don’t overwhelm your subscribers with too many messages
- Understand what the goal of your bot is for
- Speak like a real person. How would you talk to a friend?
- Understand the tone of your business and ensure your Messenger conversations reflect that
If you want to learn more about Messenger marketing, chatbots, SMS marketing, or opt-in tools, you can reach out to Octane AI to see how we can help!
Tina Donati
Tina Donati is a content marketing specialist at Octane AI. Trusted by over 1,000 Shopify and Shopify Plus brands, Octane AI powers ecommerce businesses to target and retain customers through personalized Facebook Messenger and SMS marketing automation.
Aside from sharing daily tips for ecommerce brands to grow, Tina spends her time perusing Linkedin and Twitter, online shopping, reading about content marketing best practices, or walking her dogs.
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This article originally appeared in the Justuno blog and has been published here with permission.