Facebook Messenger Bots are a new and engaging method to communicate with your potential customers to easily move them close to the point of conversion. Building them is easy and they can be used across a number of businesses and industries, they’re really only limited by your own creativity.

We’ve been testing them for customers and clients and the wheels have been turning about the capabilities for so many different types of industries.

Here are some ideas for Messenger Bots that cover the majority of industries and businesses.

NB: This is an evolving post as new ideas and industries come to mind. Be sure to hit the ‘Notify Me’ button below and we’ll let you know (via Messenger of course) when we add new industries to the list.

Entrepreneurs/Online Business Owners

Messenger allows you to deliver lead magnets and downloads directly to users via Messenger and/or via email. This allows you to market to them through both channels to deliver relevant information and stay front of mind when you’re getting them closer to the point of conversion.

To do this, you need to connect your Manychat account via Zapier to your CRM to trigger automations and send the download via email.

Some users will still rather opt to receive the download via email or signup on a landing page, so I give them both options if they don’t want to include their details in a Messenger conversation.

Once the download is delivered, offer to subscribe the user to future updates such as webinars, Facebook Lives or new blog posts.

Podcasters

Offer a snippet via the audio functionality to give listeners a preview of what they will hear during your podcast.

Offer to subscribe users to the podcast via Chatbot. Using the ‘Tag’ feature, you can send a broadcast to each person that hits the ‘subscribe’ button to send episodes to after the fact.

When you deliver new episodes directly to them in Messenger, you could provide options for them such as:

• Send a link to listen to them on your website
• Open in iTunes
• Open in Stitcher
• Receive the audio directly in Messenger

These engaged listeners are also ideal to send a broadcast message after listening to 3+ more episodes to leave a review of your podcast.

Restaurants & Cafes

TEST A RESTAURANT CHATBOT BELOW:

Most users want to find out key information about a potential restaurant or cafe they’re attending. It’s usually 1 of 4 things.

• View the Menu
• Times you’re open
• Make a booking
• How to contact your venue

You can use these options as the first things they see when they start a conversation and automate flows based on their answers from there.

For instance, a booking inquiry could ask the following questions and use the manual entry functionality so they can type their own answer:

1. What date do you want a booking for?
2. What time?
3. For how many?
4. What is your phone number?

From there you can then automate a message/SMS/Email directly to the booking manager to follow up immediately via phone.

Manychat also has the ability to connect with one of the 3rd party booking systems you can use in your venue (EG Calendly, Acuity Scheduling, Simplybook, more information here) to deliver all the information automatically there.

Some other ideas for Restaurants & Cafes:

FIND OUT HOW WE CAN BUILD YOUR MESSENGER BOT

Personal Trainers/Gyms/Yoga Studios

Most people at fitness studios want to overcome the self-doubt of whether your business is the right solution for them. To help with this, you can ask questions that are commonly asked by your existing clients. Making the questions strategic, not overly invasive or impersonal, can help make them feel more comfortable and give you the information you need to deliver relevant answers to their questions.

Let’s take for instance the question, ‘What are you looking for help with?’ – The options they choose could be things like:

This is a great tactic to discover key themes but more importantly, allow the potential client to open up to really tell you what they’re wanting to achieve.

From there the questions could be more general about their gender, age, existing exercise and any qualifying questions you need to better answer their queries.

Connecting them directly to a Google Doc to collect the answers and notifying staff to follow up, allows them to go into the phone call or interview armed with valuable information.

Another idea could be to help train your clients and potential clients with free classes, programs and exercises delivered straight to the Messenger inbox. You can deliver daily, weekly or monthly challenges that send exercise and program ideas to your clients.

Accountants

Savvy accountants can stand out by offering valuable advice for free to potential customers. Using Messenger is a fantastic way to make it easy for them access and for you to deliver it to them.

I can’t speak for other countries, but the Australian Tax Office have several calculators on their site that you can utilise to better determine the impact that your income and other benefits has on your overall return. It’s a simple opt-in that can immediately gain a potential customers trust.

Using some advanced solutions, you can take user’s manually entered answers to calculate a formula that gives them an immediate answer.

Combining this with the constant offer to talk to someone real or request a call back also has a more personal touch that helps people complete the calculator and reduce drop-off rate.

Ecommerce/Retail stores

If you’re an ecommerce or retail store with a number of products in your store, delivering the most applicable products to your customers is key to getting them closer to the point of conversion. You can use bots to make your customers feel as if the options you’re recommended are tailored directly to them (as an aside, it’s the reason why services such as Her Fashion Box, Trunk Club etc. are so popular).

Use some strategic qualifying questions based on the products you offer.

For example, a women’s fashion store could ask:

• Are you looking for?
  • Spring & Summer style
  • Something simple
  • Autumn & Winter comfort.

The follow-up questions could ask specific product related questions to finalise a result for them. Once they have their recommendation, using the carousel ‘cards’ feature allows you to feature high-quality images of the styles that suit them with links directly to the products to purchase.

NB: Manychat are currently working with developers to open up their API directly to programs like Shopify & Woocommerce so customers can complete purchases directly from Messenger. Eliminating any sticking points will reduce cart abandonment rate an improve overall conversion rates from customers that drop away before making a purchase.

Doctors, Dentists, Massage Therapists, Acupuncturists, Myotherapists, Chiropractors & Health Professionals

Talking about your personal health with a robot isn’t most people’s cup of tea. But helping answer some of your patient’s biggest frustrations will help create a more loyal customer.

Most patients will be looking to make a booking or inquiry. If it is out of business hours, customers can find it difficult to get an answer or confirmation in what is usually a stressful time before seeing a health professional.

If you can’t connect your Messenger directly to a 3rd party booking system, you can at least get the required details to confirm as soon as one of your staff can let the patient know. You can also set up a condition to send a reply out of hours to set expectations and let them know when they should expect a reply.

Using the manual entry functionality in Manychat, you can get answers to questions such as:

• Are you a patient here? Yes/No (you can let new patients know if you’re not seeing taking new patients right now)
• What day are you looking to book?
• What time?
• Do you have a preferred doctor/dentist/professional – Listing the options here allows them to choose if they have a family doctor
• Do you have private health insurance? Yes/No
• What is your Medicare number?
• Would you like to leave any comments?

Forwarding these answers via email and to the admin of the Facebook Page immediately can let them respond accordingly.

Health professionals are also about promoting better health to their patients to help build a stronger and more loyal customer base. You can use broadcasts to send notices about recent content and any announcements about local health warnings they should be aware of.

Using the features inside Messenger is an easy and time-efficient way to stay in touch with your patients over time.

Real Estate Agents

TEST A REAL ESTATE CHATBOT HERE

Real Estate agents usually have two main types of audiences. People looking to buy a house, and people looking to sell a house.

With this in mind, you can easily segment your audience using Messenger Bots so you can deliver them more relevant information.

For people looking to buy a home, Messenger bots can alleviate some of the time it takes to search for and find the information on listings available. By asking a series of questions to potential buyers you can use an automatic feed or a carousel of listings directly within messenger to take them straight to the website.

For instance, you could ask:

• What suburb are you looking for?
• How many rooms?
• What price range?

Based on their answers, they’re shown the properties available. You can then follow up to see if they’re interested in booking an open for inspection.

You can also offer to book an open for inspection for any property, directly in Messenger by placing a Messenger plugin on your website.

Messenger bots remove the need for phone calls, missed calls and phone tag and when you’re dealing with purchases that last a lifetime, removing any sticking points is pretty critical!

Book Stores

I still love a good bookstore and wandering the isles to find a good read. But you know what holds me back? Not knowing if it will be a good book or not and then whether I’ll waste the time reading it. Sometimes I wish someone could just give me some suggestions and tell me what I’ll enjoy no matter what.

Thankfully, Messenger Bots can help deliver relevant information and recommendations based on my answers.

Creating a ‘Book Finder’ Messenger bot is easy since bookstores are already split into sections anyway. That’s a great place to start and then following up on questions regarding genres, styles and authors allow you to give the customer a tome they get lost in.

Artists

Artists of all mediums have a fantastic opportunity to help bring people beyond the finished piece by building momentum and interest while it’s being created.

Subscribing to a simple Messenger bot, you can follow up with broadcast updates as they happen. Promoting key moments, milestones and live broadcasts helps you build a relationship with the potential buyer at the end of your finished creation.

As it gets closer to the time of promoting the sale of your piece, you can push further opportunities for VIP events, openings and subscriber only specials and discounts.

Golf Courses

I’m a passionate golfer, so I think the opportunity for Golf Courses to improve their operations to grow the sport is incredibly important.

There are two main markets that most clubs are marketing to – members and the general public. Here are some ideas to help educate and market to both.

Members

Golf club members like to be kept up to date from their local club and hear directly from them. This can be as simple as publishing weekly updates from the green keeper, pro and/or club captain about any important updates that affect them as a member.

Members can also subscribe to competition results to receive the results each week, or opt-in on the day to receive the results of that competition only.

General Public

A simple bot that promotes discounts or promotions on golf, food, driving range or events is a simple way to get people interested and subscribed to your Messenger bot.

From there, you can create questionnaires that gather more information from them to be able to deliver more relevant opportunities to play more golf and potentially become an ongoing member of the club.

Both Members and General Public

Golfers are always looking to improve their game (some more successfully than others) and proving tips on techniques, practice drills and real life swing critique examples allows the clubs to promote opportunities to learn more and use the facilities more often.

A successful Messenger Bot to execute this type of program could be one that staggers automatic pre-recorded messages over the course of each week with the opportunity for the user to explore more lessons and book directly within Messenger with one of the professionals for further lessons.

Plumbers, Electricians, Landscapers, Tradesman

Messenger helps solve one of the biggest issues that customers have with their tradesman – contacting them!

Sometimes the hardest part is getting an answer and quote on a potential job. There are of course, some road blocks to completing this, but most tradesman can give a guide on prices before providing a finalised quote.

This process can be made easier by asking some detailed questions around the service, problem or issue the customer needs completed. From there, a series of questions asked strategically can automate and estimate for the customer. This streamlined process is often one of the best ways to gather new customers by making it simple and easy for them to find out more.

Following the estimate, offering the opportunity to book a time to receive a call back and gather more details gives you the opportunity to provide a more detailed final quote to secure the job.

Vets

As an avid animal lover I think both my pets and me cringe when I have to go to the vet. Them for the car ride, myself for the bill. But over time I’ve built a great relationship with my local vet. The difference, is they care for my pets as much as I do.

One thing they do every week is a tip for pet owners on their Facebook and Instagram page. Sometimes it’s a video with the vet, others it’s just a description. But they’re all little things that build trust and authority with their audience so when it does come to visit, we know we can rely on them.

Animals have the ability to bring people together, so an idea for vets using Messenger marketing could be to provide weekly/monthly tips and information about their particular pets. They could opt-in for potential pets and be tagged with which animals they’re interested in hearing more about.

Pet Services

Following on from the animal theme, if it comes time to leave our furry (or feathered) friends behind then we want to know we can trust who we’re leaving them with. For boarding kennels and catteries, that involves making it easy to book and see if a customer’s dates are available and then also building loyalty by keeping them updated while they’re away.

Linking your bot with your online CRM and booking system allows them to easily enquire if the dates are available, and even have the possibility of booking directly in Messenger.

As a pet owner, I recently left my pets at a boarding place that sent constant updates to let us know how our beloved furry friends are going. It was actually why we chose them over another slightly cheaper and more convenient place. An idea to build more loyalty is to have customers subscribe to an updates bot that sends updates to all owners while they’re animals are staying there. They don’t necessarily always need to be about their pets, but it’s a much more resourceful way as a business owner to send a set amount of photos to all people that have opted in recently.

Insurance Brokers

Insurance Brokers are all about building trust to generate leads with their clients. This initially starts with assessing what solution is the right one for the client – messenger bots are perfect for this!

By asking a series of questions you can build a custom result based on their answers and assess the likelihood of them becoming a client and how valuable they potentially are to your business.

You can do this through an advanced combination of custom fields and scoring. So each time someone selects an answer, they are assigned a score that totals to a final lead score.

News & Media Outlets

While some people say that traditional news and media outlets are a dying industry, I believe that the ones that iterate and adjust to modern technology can play an important role in the future.

A simple way that outlets can deliver value is by recognising that people are limited for time and want the most valuable stories in front of them (kind of like the Facebook newsfeed).

So a simple questionnaire when they first sign up to bot can set preferences for automated messages to be delivered in the future. Questions such as:
Topics they’re interested in
How often they want updates
What type of media (written, video, audio etc.)

Once they select these options, you can automatically connect rss feeds to your chatbot to deliver new stories to people that have selected preferences related to that topic.

Travel Agents

Wunderlust, anyone? That’s basically what Travel Agents sell. The ability for people to picture themselves enjoying a break at a location that makes them feel good about themselves.

So how do you inspire this image of cocktails by the beach? You get them to build it themselves of course.

Asking users what sort of holiday they’re looking for and what they want to experience can give them an immediate idea of your potential to deliver EXACTLY what they’re looking for.

For instance, here is how a series of questions could go:

1. What are you looking to experience the most during your holiday? – adventure, relaxation, culture
2. Do you prefer? – beach and the water, the urban city, forest and nature
3. Are you looking to travel – interstate or internationally
4. Do you need to book travel to your destination?
5. Do you need to book accommodation at your destination? And for how long?
6. Lastly, how many people are you looking to book for?

Based on their answers you could deliver a customised package that links directly to a preset document (such as a simple google sheet) or advanced connections via the Manychat API directly to your booking system.

Imagine if you could automatically deliver a package that said:

Based on your answers, we’ve developed the following 3 options to give you a relaxed, beachside vacation at an international destination. These include:

• Spain for 6 nights for 2 people at a luxury beachside resort
• Seminyak Bali for 6 nights for 2 people at a luxury beachside resort – free breakfast included
• Phuket, Thailand for 6 nights for 2 people at a luxury beachside resort – free transfers included

…with token sunset and pina colada images included in your reply, of course 😉

Coming soon…

• Photographers
• Child Care
• Hotels
• Not for profits
• + Many more!

Click to be notified and tell us what industry you want us to cover next…