What Are Chatbots?

Are you struggling to engage with visitors to your website or Facebook page? Is it a challenge to respond to all the Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ’s) coming in through Facebook chat? If so, Chatbot Automation may be just the solution for your business!


Facebook, for the first time, announced that in June 2018, 2.5 billion people used at least one of its apps: Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp or Messenger. That’s a helpful number, because it counts real people, rather than accounts, since people can have multiple accounts on a single app.

Facebook messenger has more than 1.3 billion users worldwide with more than 1 billion Facebook messages sent a day, meaning messenger apps are now more popular than social media sites!

There are 40 million businesses currently on Facebook Messenger with 2 billion messages sent between businesses and users per month. However, less that 1% of businesses are able to engage with their customers automatically and at scale.

How are they doing this? Through Messenger Chatbot automation…

What is Facebook chatbot automation?

Chatbots are a new technology that allow businesses to engage in automatic conversations at scale with individual customers and prospective customers through Facebook messenger. Facebook messenger is the only major chat platform that has a chat API, allowing developers to code complex, automated chatbots.

Facebook chatbot marketing combines elements from, and seamlessly integrates with, many advertising and marketing formats, including phone, email, PPC, direct mail and more. Chatbots can be used to both generate new business leads and nurture existing leads through a pre-defined conversion funnel.

Any time you have the opportunity to engage prospects with natural, personalised messaging your likelihood to convert the customer increases dramatically. Chatbots can be accessed on any device (from 2017, mobile is by far the most popular format) at anytime that suits the customer.

Chatbots can be used for many objectives including; new lead acquisition, existing customer nurturing, webinar/seminar attendance and driving brand awareness through distribution of appropriate content marketing material. Facebook chatbots can be embedded on any website as well as numerous other platforms through their extensive range of connectors.

There is no self-serve Facebook bot builder, which is why 99% of marketers and brands can’t use messenger bots to their advantage.

“The Automated Responder Chatbots BMD created for our company have been a game changer. They run 24×7 answering all FAQ’s and even navigate interested visitors in booking a meeting with us!”

Why use Messenger Chatbot Automation?

Chatbots are designed to understand basic questions, provide answers, and execute various tasks automatically. They can even capture unanswered questions by frequency, to incorporate into the conversation flow. According to Gartner, by 2020, 85% of our engagement with businesses will be done without interacting with another human. Instead, we’ll be using self-service options and chatbots. In addition, according to an Oracle survey, 80% of businesses said they currently use or are planning to use chatbots by 2020.”

MobileMonkey is built using the Facebook Messenger platform, so the conversations are instantaneously being routed from your website, to the user, via Facebook Messenger. This provides a few huge advantages for marketers over those other chat platforms including:

  • You Get All the Contact Information — The conversations aren’t anonymous. Facebook sends you the identity of people who are messaging your website, including all contact information and even a profile photo. On other chat platforms, if the user closes the browser, the marketers will have no idea who they were talking to.
  • You Can Send Them Push Notifications — Anyone who messages your page is opted into messaging, so you can send them follow-ups or reminder drip campaigns, which is amazing.
  • You Get Their Facebook ID: These tend to last forever, whereas business emails expire on average 4% per month due to people changing jobs.
  • You Can Remarket to Them — Using Facebook ads.

Why are smart marketers moving to Messenger chatbots?

Marketers want to reach a wider audience, generate more leads, obtain a higher quality of qualification and ultimately improve conversion ratios.

Historically this was easy and cheap to do on Facebook, but in the past several years, Facebook’s organic advertising rates have declined, while advertising costs have increased. As a result, many marketers and businesses have moved their campaigns from Facebook to other social platforms.

But there is now a way to regain, if not improve upon, the historical engagement and conversion levels on Facebook, whilst also reducing your costs: Facebook Messenger chatbots. Don’t be concerned if you are not using Facebook Messenger chatbots, you’re not alone! Currently there are fewer than one percent of marketers and businesses are using this strategy to connect with their customers and prospects.

Messenger bots may well be the best-kept secret in digital marketing today! Primarily because messaging platforms eclipsed social networks in popularity in 2017.

Businesses who have already experimented with Chatbots (and there are currently over 400,000 bots running on Facebook Messenger) know that these bots are achieving significant results for their organisation. According to Facebook:

  • 2 billion messages are sent monthly between businesses and people
  • 53% of people are more likely to buy from a business they can message
  • 56% of people prefer to message instead of calling customer service

Messenger chatbots are regaining reach and engagement with Facebook users, far more so than with organic posts. In fact, whilst organic Facebook posts reach an average of 1 to 2% of Page fans, the average open rates for Facebook Messenger messages is 50–80%, with a 20% average click rate. Using MobileMonkey’s ‘chat blast’ ability, you can ‘blast’ all your contacts directly on Facebook Messenger, so you don’t have to worry about the News Feed filters.

Facebook Messenger messages convert 3x to 5x better than Facebook desktop adverts. This is because most Messenger users are on mobile devices and more frequently engage with messages. Facebook desktop adverts have to share a large amount of screen real-estate, with lots of other ads and content. It also doesn’t hurt that more people prefer to message companies than call in to customer services.

Facebook Messenger messages can also reduce your marketing costs. Facebook Messenger marketing costs 30-50x less than Facebook ad campaigns (when using Facebook Send-to-Messenger Ads) There are a number of case studies showing how MobileMonkey cut the cost of lead acquisition from $150 to $5 per lead using Facebook Messenger.