Messenger marketing is a trend that has been making the rounds in the digital marketing industry. Basically, companies send marketing material via messaging applications, such as Facebook Messenger. These messages can come in the form of text, audio, video, images, and can even be sent through chat bots.
Messenger Marketing is effective because it gives the company a direct connection to its audience and target market. Second, there are 1.5 billion users on Messenger giving companies a more efficient way to make their products and services visible. The vast amount of users stems from the fact that more and more people are using their phones to use the internet. Maryville University reveals that there was a 63% year-over-year increase in mobile traffic back in 2016. This hasn’t slowed down, as that number continues to increase to this day.
While messenger marketing can be an effective way to reach your intended audience and potential customers, there are common errors companies make. Here, are a few tips to avoid these mistakes, and you can maximize your results on messenger marketing
Generic Content
One common mistake when it comes to Messenger marketing is using the same material from your other social media platforms in your messages. Aside from being generic, they don’t maximize the capacity and potential of the method, as they were written with other platforms in mind.
You can avoid this by sending tailored messages in your campaigns. This is especially useful for eCommerce websites, as it encourages potential and past customers to revisit your site. ShopMessage aids companies in this process, as it allows them to send personalized messages that are based on a customer’s activity.
The best way to grab your customer’s attention is to maintain a conversational tone that is aligned with your company’s brand. Keep your messages concise, casual, and straight to the point. A good rule of thumb is to avoid sending messages that are longer than three sentences.
Complicated Chatbots
Companies usually bog down the process with unnecessary chatbot complexities. A good way to avoid this is to establish your goals and expectations before setting it up.
Remember, the main objective is to increase sales and build your brand. A focused chatbot is more effective than trying to shove in multiple tasks that could just confuse your entire Messenger marketing strategy.
Your new Facebook Messenger playbook is here. Activate our recommended Growth Plugins and Flows for a guaranteed 4X ROI or your money back. Our lowest plan starts at just $9!
We guarantee that you will see at minimum a 4x ROI in your first paid month with ShopMessage, or we will refund the difference. The only condition is that you have Growth Tools and Flows active for the entire month and you follow ShopMessage general best practices. Here’s how to recover 4x ROI or your money back:
1. GROW YOUR LIST WITH GROWTH PLUGINS Use a popup on your site to prompt the right customers – the ones who use Facebook and aren’t already opted in. Offer a discount or promotion to drive more opt-ins.
WHY USE GROWTH PLUGINS?
Show a popup to Facebook-logged-in customers to get them to subscribe in Messenger. The popup will ONLY show up to users logged into Facebook and will automatically detect and not conflict with existing email or SMS capture popups. WHAT ARE THE BEST PRACTICES?
Offer a Discount. Brands that offer a discount see nearly 10x the opt-in rate. We recommend a 10% off or Free Shipping, but have seen merchants be successful with giveaway entries. The incentive should be the largest portion of text.
Timing: Show the minimized state immediately and fire the plugin after 15 seconds, at 50%+ of page scroll and after a cart update.
Follow-up: Give the customer their discount code in Messenger while introducing them to your brand.
2. ENGAGE USERS WITH AUTOMATED FLOWS Turn on the four most profitable flows to make money on autopilot: browse abandon, cart abandon, order confirmation, and shipping updates.
WHAT’S AN OPT-IN CONFIRMATIONFLOW? Send a confirmation message to your users as soon as they opt-in to receive messages. WHAT ARE THE BEST PRACTICES?
Welcome users to your brand. This may be your first Messenger interaction, make it count!
Reiterate your incentive. Messenger users will refer to their inbox like a digital wallet. Make sure they don’t lose coupon codes when they end their session!
Link back to your site. Make it easy for your users to continue their shopping experience!
WHAT’S A BROWSE ABANDONMENT FLOW? Send a reminder to users who have viewed a product, but have not yet added to cart. We’ll automatically showcase the last product viewed. WHAT ARE THE BEST PRACTICES?
Include one to two lines highlighting a selling point about your brand.
Consider adding a sense of urgency, scarcity or a discount.
WHAT IS AN ABANDONED CART FLOW? Send up to two reminder messages to users who have abandoned their shopping cart. We’ll automatically send their reconstructed cart! WHAT ARE THE BEST PRACTICES?
Include a 15%+ discount. Through extensive testing, we’ve found this doubles the conversion rates.
Include only two reminders unless you plan to significantly vary the content or increase the discount on the third reminder.
Consider adding messaging that relays product scarcity or urgency (eg. “Your cart is going to expire”, “Last chance to claim your cart”).
WHAT IS AN ORDER CONFIRMATION FLOW? Welcome the buyer to your brand with a short thank you, a receipt and an order tracking option. WHAT ARE THE BEST PRACTICES?
Include an upsell. This is your highest intent audience and they’re likely to come back to purchase again!
Include branded content (eg. size guides, how it works info, brand education, new product releases).
3. ADVANCED: GIFT GUIDES, ADS, AND MORE Messenger is an interactive channel. Engage customers in two-way conversations through gift guides and Click to Messenger ads. Re-engage your subscribers through Sponsored Messages. Create custom flows rules for advanced targeting, take advantage of dynamic discounts and more!
A quick recap: ShopMessage Flows are automated messages that are sent to your customers based on a specific action they take while shopping on your site. After tracking our standard Flow template performance, we’ve decided to give some of our flows an update. Check out our new look– just in time for the holidays!
Our templates pre-populate our best practices to make set-up fast and easy. As always, you are able to customize your flows however you’d like!
Browse Abandonment
Convert your browsers into buyers! Our Browse Abandonment Flow got a much-needed trim. We shortened the text to keep this touchpoint light and friendly. You’ll still find the classic product card that reminders users about their most recently viewed product!
Browse Abandonment Flow
Abandon Checkout
You already know this is our best-converting flow, typically seeing over 80% open rates, 35% click-thru rates, and an average of $9 in revenue per recipient messaged! We’ve made product images larger and more prominent, added an interactive scroll and included a few strategically placed emojis. This two-message reminder is short, it’s sweet, it works!
Order Confirmation
Our most dramatic update for your highest intent audience! Now you can offer users immediate actions after they purchase– include upsells, order tracking and/or whatever works best for your brand! We’ve also replaced our quick replies with buttons for easy navigation and persistent offers.
Order Confirmation Flow
Customer Winback
Show off your latest product releases, best sellers, hot deals or even highlight brand information with our updated carousel. Whatever brings your customers back, showcase it in our two-part Flow sequence.
Customer Winback Flow
Purchase Anniversary
Your customers make your brand successful, celebrate their purchase anniversaries with this short and sweet Flow. Offer a discount, a free gift or even free shipping to show your appreciation!
Activate new Flow templates today by visiting your ShopMessage dashboard > Flows Tab > Create.
Let’s talk about cleaning up your landing pages and optimizing your list-building strategy using Smart Sense.
You’ve probably noticed a resurgence of pop-ups across the internet.
Everyone is building out their lists, which was fine when life on the web revolved around email.
But these days, there’s a new game in town. Email is but one of many channels that people are spending their time on. Messenger and SMS are competing with email for the title of the best channel for reaching customers.
Not to mention people splitting their time between their phones, laptops, tablets, and more.
So Many Channels, So Little Time
Customers are fragmented across the internet, between different channels and devices.
Gone are the days where everyone was accessible via email inboxes.
Savvy brands are deploying ALL the latest plugins and popups they can to keep up with the shifting trends of the modern consumer.
The goal is to make sure that customers can be reached wherever they are spending their time.
But can there be too much of a good thing?
List-Building Builds Clutter
The problem with trying to cover all your bases is that it’s not always pretty.
This mess of modals isn’t from the 90s—this was seen in 2019.
A pop-up for email, a modal for Messenger, a customer chat widget for onsite communication, and (not pictured) a page takeover modal on mobile devices.
Some shops are able to fine-tune their settings across the various products
It can quickly get hairy—no one wants to end up creating a modal mess on their page. Check out this piece for some help on choosing the right Messenger modal for your site.
A Smarter Solution for Contact Capture
But what if instead of throwing things at the wall and hoping that something sticks, your site was smarter?
The easiest thing would be to allow customers to opt-in with just one click using a Messenger opt-in, but this only works smoothly if the user is already logged into Facebook. Luckily, most users are, and it’s much harder to fake a Facebook account than it is to drop in a bogus email address.
But for the folks who don’t use Facebook, then what?
Typing an email in is no problem for desktop users who have a full keyboard and all their digits at their disposal, but typing in an email address on a phone can be a pain!
In that case, what about having them send you a text message instead?
Many factors affect how likely a customer will be to opt-in to your list.
What if your site could automatically detect these details about your visitors? Wouldn’t you want to make smart choices based on what device a customer is browsing from, whether or not they are logged in to Facebook, or if they’ve even been to your site before?
Smart Sense would just do the smart, right thing.
Display the modal with the highest likelihood of collecting your visitor’s contact info with the most frictionless modal at your disposal.
A mobile user that is not logged in to Facebook might find it a hassle to log in but probably wouldn’t mind shooting out a preset SMS message to start a conversation with your brand.
Smart Sense routes the user to the modal that is most likely to capture their contact information.
ShopMessage Smart Sense Technology
Smart Sense is designed to play nice with other 3rd Party modals, instead of competing for the customers’ attention like crabs in a barrel.
Smart Sense now comes standard for all growth plugins created through ShopMessage.
Visitor traffic will be directed based on factors (like the ones described above) to grow your lists without annoying your customers.
ShopMessage coordinates the various plugins and modals like a conductor leading an orchestra, or an air traffic controller. Create an experience that converts, rather than overwhelms.
Still have questions? Check out this help doc for more details!
ShopMessage has joined forces with 8+ e-commerce marketers in order to keep you in the loop of “The Future of Ecommerce Marketing”, a free virtual event taking place on the 7th of August.
Life is full of distractions. Cut through the clutter.
This event is designed to help fast-growing and well-established Ecommerce brands develop a roadmap for better profitability, a stronger brand, and use some of the most innovative marketing and growth strategies in the industry.
The event is free to attend, and by registering, you enter to win a ticket to Conversations Conference, Sept 13-15 in Austin,TX, as well as $100s in tech tools.
Shipping Notifications and order updates stick the landing for your customer’s post-purchase experience.
Customers are kept up to date on the status of their order and encouraged to continue building their relationship with your brand.
The Benefits of Shipping Notifications & Order Updates
Think of Shipping Notifications & Order Updates as an upgrade to your post-purchase follow-up experience. These Messenger strategies allow you to build brand loyalty and drive repeat business through automated post-purchase nurture sequences on Messenger.
Great graphic, McKinsey!
The postpurchase experience is a critical stage of the customer journey in shaping their perception of your product and brand. It influences how they will view the entire category, and can even determine whether or not they ever come back to your store. ShopMessage’s new post-purchase features create more touch points to entice your customer back to your store.
The best part is, all your customer touchpoints are in one place for your customer. Instead of digging through a cluttered email inbox to find their receipt or their thank you coupon, they can just find it in their Messenger chat history with your brand.
Shipping Notifications & Order Updates reduce customer friction to re-engaging with your brand while delivering value every step of the way.
Shipping Notifications Done Right Can Deliver More Than Just A Tracking Number
What are Shipping Notifications?
A new ShopMessage flow that updates your customer when their order is on its way to them.
The shipping notifications flow can help you keep your customers updated on their order throughout the fulfillment process.
What do they do?
The flow sends your customers a message on Messenger when their order ships. The message includes a tracking number (where available) and a link back to your Shopify store’s Thank You page.
If your fulfillment and logistics are on a dependable schedule, you can even fill the gap with cute messages along the way.
If you know that your shipping goes out on a 3-5 day schedule, you can send a message on Day 2 saying their package just on the truck. On Day 3 saying they just left the local sorting facility.
Advanced Shipping Notifications flow like this add character to your messaging. The goal is to keep customers engaged in the conversation all the way to delivery day and beyond. Follow-up these engaging updates with a Quick Reply. Allowing your customers a way to engage back with your brand tells Facebook that they want to keep the conversation alive.
More engagements with your customers give you more opportunities to make a great impression and redirect them back to your website or other destination of choice.
How Does it Work Though?
ShopMessage’s Shopify integration will listen for changes in your Shopify store’s order records.
When we’ve heard that the order is fulfilled via your existing fulfillment processes, ShopMessage will get notified. We’ll take that shipping info, drop it in our message template and kick off the Shipping Notifications flow for your customer.
Your customers will then receive a message accessible on both Facebook and Messenger containing their shipping information. We’ve even configured the default to include a link to your store’s Thank You page which contains their order information and tracking link.
Shipping Notifications is a flow that includes all opted-in customers from your site. Anyone who has purchased an item after your Shipping Notifications flow has been activated will be eligible to receive these shipping notifications, as long as they have already opted-in to messages from your business.
How the Order Updates Growth Plugin Can Help You Collect Opt-Ins for You Shipping Notifications Flow
What’s this New Order Updates Thing?
Order Updates is a new growth plugin placement option for Shopify merchants using ShopMessage. The growth plugin goes on your Thank You Page, displaying after the customer has completed checkout. at peak happiness with their purchase.
What does the Order Updates plugin do, again?
The Order Updates plugin gives your customers a way to sign up for updates about their order from the Thank You page.
The new growth plugin type also allows you, the merchant, to set up three follow-up messaging sequences for your customers right out of the box.
First, you can send an immediate confirmation that the Order Updates request has been received. As soon as they sign up for updates, they’ll receive this message confirming their sign up.
Second, the Order Updates plugin enrolls customer into your Customer Thank You flow. This flow contains the customer’s receipt, a link back to your Thank You page and any other messaging you would like to include. ShopMessage customers will very likely have this flow set up already, but if not, turning it on is simple. Flip the switch!
Third, this plugin will enroll the customer into the Shipping Notifications flow described above. Yes, it’s true that all opted-in customers will be enrolled in the Shipping Notifications flow. But, you still need them to opt-in before you can send them messages!
Customers will inevitably want to know where their order is. The Order Updates plugin is a great way to enroll customers into an automated Shipping Notifications flow that keeps them up to date on their order.
How is the Order Updates Growth Plugin so good at collecting opt-ins?
Unlike other growth plugins on your site, this plugin will display for all customers, whether they are logged in to Facebook from their browser or not.
This increases your chances of collecting valuable opt-ins while delivering real value to your customers at the same time.
Prompting customers to opt-in to receive messages about their new order is a recommended best practice. Offer real value in exchange for their permission to be messaged and you reduce the friction to collecting your customers’ permission to receive messaging.
This is a more convenient way to share info that you would be giving them for free in an email.
Allowing customers to sign up for Order Updates preempts an onslaught of order status inquiries in your customer support channel.
What About the Immediate Confirmation Message?
Your Order Updates plugin can also send your customer a message immediately after they sign up for updates. By giving your customer immediate feedback that their request to be notified has been heard, you’re able to start your relationship with your customer on Messenger on the right foot.
The immediate confirmation message feature is standard across all growth plugins. Read more about Immediate Confirmation Message and see how you can use it to enhance trust in your brand.
How to Get Started
First of all, sign up with ShopMessage if you haven’t already!
When you log into your dashboard, the Shipping Notifications flow will be displayed as a recommended flow to enable. Click here to walk through the details.
When you create a new growth plugin, the Order Updates plugin will be included in the list. Shopify stores can take advantage of this feature today. Don’t worry, more platforms coming soon!
If you already have the Shipping Notifications flow turned on, it will be enabled already.
If you don’t have it turned on yet, you can turn it on during the Follow-Up configuration for this growth plugin.
Turning the Shipping Notifications flow on here turns it on for all of your customers. It does not matter whether they opted in through the Order Updates plugin or a different plugin.
