An effective Messenger Marketing strategy requires collecting OptIns from your customers. Opting-In is easy—as easy a click or two. It’s so easy that customers may not be sure what they had done to receive your messages.
The challenge is collecting OptIns without confusing your customers. First, you want to be transparent about how you are able to reach them on this new channel.
At F8, Facebook announced their company’s heightened focus on privacy and creating a good experience for their users. But, they also oozed confidence why Messenger is the future of business. Businesses should do their part to make the Messenger channel feel like a natural place to interact. In return, customers will continue their relationship with your brand.
Brands using ShopMessage’s Immediate OptIn Confirmation Messages are able to provide immediate feedback based on their engagements. This goodwill, in turn, lays the foundations for a customer to build a lasting relationship with your brand.
Wait, What’s an OptIn?
To communicate with your visitors via Messenger, you need to to get their permission first. An OptIn is how Facebook verifies who has permission to message whom. It’s the password that allows your business to proactively engage with your customers in Messenger.
Collecting Messenger OptIns is 2019’s equivalent of collecting emails 20 years ago. Businesses that invest in their list-building now will make Facebook Messenger their next big revenue-driving channel.
What’s the Immediate Confirmation Message?
Immediate OptIn Confirmation messages are a sweet feature upgrade for ShopMessage’s Growth Plugins. Businesses on Facebook are already using Growth Plugins to build Messenger subscriber lists.
It’s essentially a message that sends immediately after the Messenger OptIn event occurs. We’re not talking about days, hours or minutes here. We’re talking about messages that customers receive seconds after they engage with your brand.
Growth plugins were previously optimized around using the plugin to enter a customer into a messaging flow.
The problem was that flows don’t respond immediately. There is a time delay between the OptIn event and the receipt of the message. As a result, there will be a lag between the time that a Messenger OptIn event happens. This delay of even a few minutes can be enough time for a customer to lose interest.
This delay between action and reaction is not new. Even now, customers signing up via email address experience this problem.
With the Immediate OptIn Confirmation, businesses can set up a message that will send immediately. Then, seconds after the Messenger OptIn event occurs, your customer will receive a message from your business page in Messenger.
As a result, this creates a much better customer experience. You can build customer trust in this new channel by delivering the confirmation message immediately.
Since your customers are actively engaging with your brand, they are at peak receptivity to messages, despite the novelty of the channel. Customers receiving this external feedback that opting-in to messages with your brand was the right thing to do.
This micro-interaction with your business primes your customers to view your brand more positively. Furthermore, you can sweeten the experience by adding the delivery of a dynamic discount code. When you do this, you start your customers’ journey with your brand off on the right foot.
How To Use Immediate OptIn Confirmation Messaging Effectively
In order to be effective, you need to be in the shoes of your customer. An effective immediate OptIn confirmation is timely and relevant. Thus, it doesn’t distract your visitor from the thing you want them to continue doing.
Your customer will be able to trigger an immediate message one of several ways.
Visiting an M.Me Link from somewhere else on the internet
Clicking a send-to-messenger button on an onsite Growth Plugin.
Signing up for order updates — coming soon!
When this happens, a message will greet them. In order to be effective, the immediate message will be tailored around the context of the customer experience leading up to the OptIn event.
Visitors from an M.Me link may need additional context about what they gain from chatting with your business on Messenger. You can ask your visitors questions. You can then use their responses to tailor a more relevant landing page experience for them before moving them down your funnel.
People who click an onsite growth plugin will benefit from only receiving a brief confirmation message. You don’t want to pull their attention away from their onsite experience.
Mobile visitors may see your message as a push notification at the top of their phone as they are browsing. This is a great way to confirm receipt of the dynamic discount code in their inbox, without taking them off your site.
The most effective immediate OptIn confirmation messages treat Messenger as a companion experience. These messages support another interaction your customer is already having with your brand.
A frustrating Messenger Menu experience will turn off your potential customers. Frustrated customers walk away, happy ones stay. Businesses that are even thinking about using conversational flows to drive revenue should know this.
But how could a messenger menu be conversational?
The Problem Faced by Businesses on Messenger
Here’s a story about the current state of the persistent menu using the analog phone to illustrate the problem faced by Businesses on Messenger today.
Imagine that a customer calls your store’s telephone number. It rings and rings until finally, the customer hangs up because no one was there on the other end.
Slightly better would be if the customer could call and get at least a menu of choices. “Push 1 to Browse Collections. Press 2 for Frequently Asked Questions. Choose 3 for…” and so on, and so forth. As ridiculous as Pushing 1 to browse products sounds, this is basically the functionality of the existing persistent menus on Facebook these days.
No one likes to be left hanging on the other end of the line, not knowing if they’ve been heard. The Messenger can now be paired with a conversation to create an engaging, frustration-free customer experience.
But what if when a customer Pushes 1, the voice on the other end starts asking more questions. It learns what types of products the customer is looking for, or what size, and what color before it takes them to your site.
It’s almost as if there WAS someone there on the other end of chat the first time the customer came in.
ShopMessage’s Messenger Menu provides the tools you need to automate this concierge-style experience to more deeply engage with your customers.
No one likes a boring menu.
Why You Should Care About Messenger Menus
There are over 20 billion messages being sent on Messenger between people and businesses each month. Customers are already using this channel to engage with your business.
The persistent Messenger menu is the first line of defense protecting your customer support channels from incoming customer requests. It gives customers control of their interaction with your brand.
Customers get the ability to navigate through a couple of layers of menu items to find what they’re looking for.
How Messenger Menus are Getting an Upgrade
The trouble with this is that the customer journey is often complex, with many steps. You might need to ask your customers 3-4-5 or more questions to understand their needs and direct them to a solution.
With the existing persistent messenger menus, nested menus provide at most 2 levels of clarification. Your customers will need to click a link to some destination and the onus is on them to find what they are looking for from there.
ShopMessage’s conversational message sequences provide an extension on the standard persistent menu capabilities. You will be able to anticipate your customers’ needs and present their solution, automatically.
TL;DR: You can set up a large tree of messages. You can have up to 93 Titles with 75 calls-to-action. 3 menu items with 5 sub-menus each having 5 double-sub-menus. The math checks out.
This is what 75 menu CTAs look like.
This is certainly a lot of options, but a lot rides on you choosing the right hierarchy on the first level choice.
What if your customer needs more guidance?
Sometimes the customer needs a little extra help, and there may not always be anyone around to help. The phone will just ring and ring and ring. The dots that show the person on the other end of the chat is typing will never show up.
ShopMessage introduces the ability to take any of those numerous menu items and plug a message sequence into it. Doing this unlocks a much more robust way to further engage with your customer.
3 Ways Brands are Using Messenger Menus to Guide and Engage with Their Customers
Providing highly targeted product recommendations using a product quiz
Reframing FAQ as a conversational interaction instead of a long page of a text
Telling your brand story, fireside chat style
Basically, Customers can interact with your brand through a series of quick reply buttons in the conversation that narrows their search, categorizes their needs, and funnels them to the correct landing page.
And best of all, you can create and manage your Facebook pages’ persistent menu right from the ShopMessage app where you’re already using other flows to drive sales.
3 Benefits of Using ShopMessage’s Messenger Menu
Take customers deeper into your chat experience using images, videos, carousels, and message quick replies before presenting an outbound link to your website.
Track customer behavior such as purchases on your site that direct results of interactions with different Menu items.
See which conversations are engaging your customers the most. Understand what’s resonating about your brand by following the data.
Newcomers will see a Get Started option to engage with your page’s Messenger channel.
Where Does Your Messenger Menu Live?
The persistent menu appears in Messenger chats with your Facebook page.
When a customer engages in a chat with your brand, and you have a persistent menu configured, it will be visible at the bottom of the viewport window.
To activate your menu, the “Get Started” button must also be enabled. New users attempting to chat with your brand must have a way to opt-in to receive messages from your Facebook page.
You can optionally disable the input field that allows customers to type whatever they like. Brands that don’t have the resources to invest in a dedicated human to respond to inbound customer requests would benefit.
Removing the ability to send messages effectively removes the expectation that a reply is coming soon. This, in turn, removes the direct point of frustration.
Your Messenger Menu is accessible from the main navigation.
How to Get Started with Your Messenger Menu
The Messenger Menu feature is live! To access the persistent menu, click the Messenger Menu item from the side navigation of your dashboard.
Here you’ll be able to set up your menu. Different stores will have different menu requirements. Next, learn to make the most out of your Messenger Menu.
5 Tips for Making the Most of Your Messenger Menu
Go beyond a simple set of nested links. Don’t just cross your fingers that you have what your customer needs.
Integrate your brand’s Messenger Menu with ShopMessage’s conversation message builders to create a more engaging, responsive experience for your customers.
Send your customers exactly where they want to go. Why send them to a landing page with your latest product releases if they have a preference for discounts and clearance?
Utilize quick reply button navigation so your customers can tell you what their preferences are. Based on their responses, you can present to them a collection of the most relevant products.
Communicate in your brand’s voice. A conversational medium deserves a conversational voice. Give emojis a try. Who doesn’t like to be greeted with a smile?
So, how about it? Are you ready to get started with ShopMessage?
Dynamic Discounts protect businesses from coupon fraud.
Most Shopify merchants have fallen victim to Coupon Fraud at one point or another. Bad apples always seem to rear their ugly heads to take advantage of your generosity when you’re giving away sweet discounts in your coupons.
We created Dynamic Discounts to give merchants a way to reward their customers for taking an action, while minimizing the merchant’s exposure to the risks of coupon abuse and fraud.
What are Dynamic Discounts?
ShopMessage’s new Dynamic Discounts are autogenerated, unique single-use discount codes that Shopify merchants can share without worrying about fraud or oversharing.
Customers that opt-in to Facebook Messenger conversations with your brand qualify for receiving these discount codes. Merchants have to set up their discount rules only once. Each customer that receives the Dynamic Discount receives a new code having the same discounting rules.
How Do Dynamic Discounts Work?
Dynamic Discounts plug into Shopify’s Price Rules API to create and distribute unique discount codes though Messenger. Your customers will always receive Shopify-compliant discount codes.
At the same time, you’ll gain better insights into the types of discounts that are driving the most value to your customers. You will gain a clearer picture of the growth drivers for your business. Your exposure to risk from potential coupon abuse will decrease dramatically.
Make discount code abuse and oversharing on coupon code sites a thing of the past with Dynamic Discounts!
Generate unique codes for each customer to limit coupon abuse.
What Kinds of Deals Can You Give?
The first great piece of news is that Shopify users will be already familiar with the functionality. It’s a lot of the rules that you’ve already used in Shopify natively.
Just in case you’e not familiar with the bells and whistles, here’s a quick run down of what deals are waiting for you.
Discounting by Type
There are three main types of discounts that we support.
Fixed Percentage: how about 10% off for signing up for that newsletter?
Fixed Amount: why don’t we hook up customers with $10 on their birthday?
Free Shipping: everybody loves a good freebie!
Choose what type of reward you want to incentivize without worrying about it being abused. You can give a percentage off, some flat dollar amount, or just throw in free shipping.
With all Dynamic Discount types, you get the benefit of knowing that your codes won’t get reshared or your coupons abused.
But that’s not all! Each discount type can have other Shopify restrictions applied depending on your marketing needs.
Discount restrictions are not mutually exclusive and you can combine multiple constraints to create Dynamic Discounts for all types of sales or promotions.
Leverage different discounting strategies and promotions dynamically.
Cart Catalog-Specific Discounting
Do you want to offer discounts for certain products or collections only? You can! Or, if you’re feeling extra generous, just apply the discount to the entire cart! Your customers will love it.
Discounting With Minimums
How about giving discounts with minimum requirements? Let customers spend $100 to get 25% off! Give FREE SHIPPING when a customer orders 3 or more items. Deals like this are easy with Dynamic Discount minimums.
Discounting Based on Scarcity
Scarcity discounts work really well when you want to create a sense of urgency. Drive engagement amongst your customers and followers of your brand with a deal that won’t last forever.
Maybe you want to hook up the first 100 people with an insane BOGO or giveaway—you can!
Or maybe you want to have an ongoing discount that can only be used once per person. You can do that too!
Time-Based Discounting
Seasonal sales and limited-time deals are great ways to incentivize customers to act quickly. The ephemerality of the deal increases the perceived value of what you’re offering.
Set up several in advance to create a truly awesome Cyber Week experience that brings customers back to see the latest you have to offer.
Where Can I Share My Dynamic Discounts?
The second great piece of news is that Dynamic Discounts fit seamlessly into the customer’s journey that is already taking place with your brand.
You already have the tools to spread your discounts. You just have to use them!
Distribution via Growth Plugins
Now you can give each and every person a unique discount code when they’ve discovered your brand.
If you’re using ShopMessage’s Growth Plugins to grow your Messenger contact list, you can now offer a unique Dynamic Discount code to everyone who joins your family.
Just like in email signups modules, you can reward new users for signing up for Messenger communications with your brand.
You can display your Dynamic Discount on the completed state of your growth plugin after a visitor has opted in. At the same time, send this same code to your users as part of the welcome message you send confirming that they have opted-in to messages.
People get interrupted, distracted, or just plain forget what they were doing whether we like it or not. Reminding them to come back later is easy when you leave them a discount in their inbox.
Distribution via Messenger Flows
Send your contacts a unique code through Messenger that can be saved for later.
Create discounts in your Abandoned Cart flow for customers that can only be used on each specific cart.
Make unique Browse Abandonment and Winback flows to make it less risky for you to lure your customers back. Some customers just need an extra push with an attractive discount.
What’s better than converting your paying customers into loyal fans of your brand? Give them the true VIP treatment with stupendous savings on their next order.
Who doesn’t like a good discount? Customers who receive discounts are 3x more likely to convert.
Start Using Dynamic Discounts
The third thing that’s great about Dynamic Discounts is that you can get started with them right now!
For existing Shopify merchants using ShopMessage, we’ve prepared a step-by-step walkthrough with all your questions answered here. Please note that you will need to accept updated Shopify permissions. These permissions will allow ShopMessage to set up Dynamic Discounts in the Discounts section of your Shopify store.
For non-Shopify merchants, let us know! We’re working on it next, but it’s always great to hear from our customers!
Not yet using ShopMessage? Click below to get started today!
First, let’s cover what flows are and what they do, and it’ll be clear how these can drive more value for your brand.
ShopMessage Flows are messages that are automatically sent to a customer based on a specific action they take while shopping on your website.
Flows are effective because they are timely, contextually relevant messages based on a customer’s specific shopping experience.
ShopMessage Flows are timely because they respond when customer actions are detected. They are contextually relevant because they pull on data from your customer’s behavior on your site to serve relevant content.
We hate to brag, but we can objectively say that ShopMessage flows are the most flexible and powerful in the industry for e-commerce companies. (Okay, in this case, we love to brag 🙂 What makes them so effective? Glad you asked!
Three Primary Reasons That Messenger Flows Are So Effective
1. ShopMessage flows are designed for all aspects of the customer lifecycle, from welcoming a first-time visitor to engaging a long-time loyal customer. That means you can segment and automatically reach the right customer at the right time in their journey.
There are many touch points along the customer journey for brands to engage via Messenger.
2. ShopMessage flows support custom events so you can trigger messages based on any activity that your customers engage in. With ShopMessage there are no limits for when and how you automatically trigger a message to a shopper.
3. ShopMessage supports custom data so you can send the right message with the right context. For example, you can send a different coupon based on high or low cart values. Or, if a user adds a subscription box to their cart, you may want to send a special flow containing popular items from previous boxes.
While a flow can be set up to trigger on any event, we recommend that brands start by setting up these five flows. They’ve proven to drive revenue, engagement, and long term customer loyalty.
An abandoned cart flow is triggered when — you guessed it! — a customer abandons their cart. The flow is similar to its email-based cousin but is even more effective (most of us ignore our email inbox, while we live in Messenger). ShopMessage abandoned cart flows see over 80% open rates, 35% click rates, and on average drive $9 per recipient messaged.
Listen as Abandoned Cart flows are discussed by Arjun Ohri and the team at Facebook Blueprint.
Order confirmation flows are a polite way to stay in touch and keep your customers updated.
2. Customer Thank You & Order Confirmation Flows
The simple gesture of saying “thank you” goes a long way to establishing long term loyalty with your customers. Thank you flows are message sequences that are triggered and sent after a purchase is completed. A thank you message can automatically include the purchase details, which doubles as a convenient order confirmation. Many brands choose to offer a time-bound discount on a follow-up purchase, which is an effective way to increase average customer value.
Browse Abandonment Flows remind customers what they were browsing earlier.
3. Browse Abandonment Flows
Ah, the art and science of converting browsers to buyers. Sending a Messenger flow to a customer about items they recently viewed can be an extremely effective tactic to close the sale. Browse abandonment flows are set up to trigger when a customer browses a particular product or section but leaves without completing a purchase. The flow is compelling to customers (after all, they were just shopping for that sweet new jacket). Brands can optionally choose to include discounts or other incentives to increase sale conversions.
Customer Win Back Flows are a great way to tell them about all the cool stuff they’ve been missing out on lately.
4. Customer Win Backs
If you are wanting to win people over again, this flow is for you. Customer win backs are directed to customers who have previously purchased from you but have lapsed since their last purchase. The purpose of this flow is to build up brand loyalty and help people remember why they love your brand.
Product Discovery Flows help customers whittle down a wide catalog into the most relevant products for them based on their choices in the conversation.
5. Product Discovery Flow
One of the best parts about shopping in a physical brick and mortar store is there are employees on staff to help you find exactly what you’re looking for. They’ll ask you questions and suggest products based on your responses and taste. That’s where ShopMessage product discovery flows come in. The product discovery is a chatbot that helps the customer browse your catalog and discover the most relevant products.
Welcome Flows get your relationship with your customers off on the right foot from the first time they visit your store.
6. Welcome Flow
So someone just signed up to join your Messenger list. Welcome them to the crew by automatically triggering a conversation. You can choose to send a discount code or simply ask them some questions to better get to know your customers — data you can later use to send personalized campaigns.
These flows are just a taste of how brands can make Messenger THE revenue-driving channel of 2019. The important thing is to have a well-rounded messenger marketing playbook to have better quality conversations with your customers.
Have you checked out ShopMessage Smart Pop-ups yet? What are you waiting for? Our new Smart Pop-ups are built to help you quickly grow your Messenger subscriber list and we’re already seeing an average of 8% opt-in rates. That’s more than double a standard email opt-in!
Example Strategy: ShopMessage Promotion on Arrival
That said, you’ll need to think about alternative ways to build your Messenger subscriber list. Luckily, we just launched some really cool new tools to help you quickly grow your Messenger subscriber list. We can objectively say that they are WAY more effective and feature-rich than anything out in the market.
💬 Smarter pop-ups for smarter marketers
We’ve taken a proven opt-in method and brought it to the next level. Now, you can grow your list without hassling existing contacts. Our pop-ups only appear to users who are already logged into Facebook and have not already opted in. We also auto-detect other pop-ups so we never interfere with your existing email capture promotions.
Not only are they smart, they’re beautiful. Thanks to a talented design team, we offer hundreds of customizable templates so promotions are always “on brand”. We also let you choose exactly when to display your promotion with the option to immediately send a follow-up Message!
💥 Email is declining while Messenger is exploding
ShopMessage clients have seen ~81% open-rates and 34% click-thru rates. Take a moment to compare that to your current email open and click rates. Convinced yet?
Brands must choose the right growth marketing strategy when they are getting started with Facebook Messenger Marketing.
A question we get a lot is how a Messenger marketing strategy fits into the picture when email modals are already involved.
The goal is to avoid creating a conflicting, confusing experience for your customers. Messenger opt-in growth plugins and email capture modals appear and behave similarly. The last thing you want is getting poor performance from both channels by using them in tandem poorly.
When considering the right Messenger Marketing strategy, there are three to keep in mind:
Customers don’t want to be annoyed while browsing.
You want to maximize your Messenger opt-ins.
Understanding The Steps of Your Customer’s Journey
To choose the right messenger marketing strategy to grow your brand, you need to take a look at the various points in your customer’s journey with your brand. Some common events include:
Discovering your brand
Landing on your website
Browsing your site
Adding an item to their cart
Completing their purchase
Becoming a happy customer.
ShopMessage’s team has identified the most common scenarios that a merchant would want to offer their visitors a promotion. The best part is a merchant can use more than one!
If you understand the scope of possible customer engagement points, you can identify where your existing email capture strategies fit into the larger puzzle.
You’ll be able to spot the gaps where you are not engaging with your customers. These are the opportunities where you’ll want to deploy your Messenger growth plugins.
What to Consider When Choosing a Messenger Marketing Strategy
First, you’ll need to determine whether there are any existing modals on your site that you need to take into account.
What to Do If You Have No Email Modals
If you don’t have an existing email capture modal, then this choice is easy. Display your promotional plugin upon arrival with a slight delay.
We also recommend using the exit intent and post-purchase promo strategies for good measure.
In general, you want to maximize your opportunities to capture opt-ins by using multiple strategies that hit the visitor at various steps in their customer journey.
What to Do If You Already Use Email Modals
If you already have email capture modals, they will likely display upon arrival and/or when exit intent is displayed.
The alternative is to find a new step in the journey to prompt your visitors.
Along the customer journey, a majority of brands that are using email capture modals have them deploy upon arrival, or when the visitor has displayed exit intent.
Choose the Persistent Offer strategy if you want your growth plugin to coexist with an email modal.
This subtle pill keeps your opt-in promotion visible, without competing with the arrival or exit-intent modals for attention.
The Post-Purchase Promotion is unique because it displays to visitors that have already converted into paying customers.
Use this time to celebrate your customers and encourage them to turn into repeat buyers.
You can balance your email and messenger plugin displays by targeting your visitors at different sections of their customer journey.
Use Multiple Strategies To Grow Your Messenger Marketing Contact List
Every customer is unique, and every store experience is unique, which is why we’ve put together multiple Growth Plugin strategies to make sure there’s a tool in there for every situation.
Each messenger marketing strategy determines a set of rules governing the behavior of your Growth Plugin and will pre-populate a certain set of messaging into your preset that is appropriate for the timing of your promotion.
Across all of our strategies, you will have the ability to customize every aspect of your Growth Plugin, including:
overlay type e.g. modals, flyouts, and full-page takeovers
background image
messaging
typography
colors e.g. buttons, text
discount
your own logo
The Arrival Promo
Maximize your impressions by presenting all eligible visitors an offer moments upon arriving at your store. You can set this to display immediately upon arrival.
An arrival greeting is a great way to guide your visitors’ first impressions of your site. We recommend adding a few seconds of delay, so your promotion benefits from the added surprise/delight of popping-up.
A promotion that displays immediately, or very shortly after, a visitor arrives on your site.
The Purchase-Intent Promo
Use this strategy to strike a balance between your customer’s ability to browse the site and maximizing your opt-in rate. Purchase-Intent is defined as viewing the page for X-seconds, scrolling down Y% of the page, or adding an item to their cart. You can customize the timing and page scroll percentage delays based on your typical customer’s behavior.
A promotion that displays when a visitor exhibits purchase intent. This can be defined by time spent on a page, the percentage of the page scrolled, or adding an item to their cart.
The Exit-Intent Promo
Wait to display your promotion until your customer appears to be navigating away from your store. Catching them on their way out could mean the difference between an abandoned cart and closing the sale.
A promotion that displays when a visitor appears to be navigating away from your site.
The Persistent Promo
This is a subtle, yet visible way to build your Contact list that doesn’t take up a lot of space. This hybrid promotion will render as a pill in the bottom corner of your page until your customer engages with it, or an Intent rule is triggered. When this happens, the pill will expand into a modal, a flyout, or a full page takeover depending on what design you chose.
A subtle, yet persistently accessible pill in the bottom corner of your site that visitors can engage with at will. A great way for your growth plugin to co-exist with an email capture modal that may already be in place.
The Post-Purchase Promo
This strategy is different because it targets the customer after they have completed their purchase. Use this to ensure opt-in collection by celebrating your customer with an offer they can save for their next visit.
Promoting at this stage lays the foundation for building a repeat customer while they are still feeling the joy of their purchase. Strike while the iron’s hot!
A promotion that displays after a visitor has completed a purchase. A great way to celebrate your customers and re-engage them for repeat purchasing.
Bottom Line
The customer journey is complex. There are many steps where a visitor can decide they love you or don’t care. You can engage visitors to your site with a well-timed modal overlay to build a connection with your brand’s customer.
Already using email modals? No problem. ShopMessage is designed with Smart Logic to work around existing modals and maintain a positive experience for your customers.
ShopMessage’s Growth Plugins can be powerful tools in your messenger marketing strategy. Conversational brands that engage their customers at the right time in their customer journey will be the ones that win the future of digital marketing.
