5 Ways to Make Money for Your Company With a Messenger Bot

Caroline Klatt

August 28, 2017

Chatbots are an exciting and new phenomena in the tech, marketing and customer service worlds. Messenger bots allow you to program your Facebook page to conduct automated conversations with people that require no human interaction on your end. And the bot can do far more than merely converse — it can be programmed with artificial intelligence to recommend the best products for each user, send interactive content like videos and surveys, and even broadcast out relevant content to each user to re-engage them. And this all happens inside of Facebook Messenger, where there are two billion users ready to discover and talk to your bot!

But, as with all marketing channels, the really interesting thing about chatbots is their ability to generate profit for your brand. Here are 5 ways that brands can make money with a Messenger bot.

Smart, Personalized Messaging

As with email, sending individual customers the right messages at the right times can have a huge impact on getting them to the finish line of a purchase. Unlike email — which is oversaturated and has open rates dipping lower each month — messages sent through chat are opened by recipients at astronomical rates. Though data is scarce because the technology is so new, our chatbot platform at Headliner Labs sees an 80 percent or better open rate across our bots. We specialize in smart retargeting, and our e-commerce companies are seeing massive sales conversion from these. Brands on our platforms realize as much as 63 percent lift in overall direct-to-consumer sales in just four months. More than anything else, this represents the power of a bot messaging regime implemented strategically.

Selling Directly In-Bot

Plain and simple. Bots can be programmed to process payments without customers ever leaving Messenger. Currently, Messenger supports integration of your PayPal and Stripe accounts, enabling customers to input their information once and then have it saved for future transactions cross-bot. How does this play out? The bot sends user product recommendations with photos and key info, and a “Buy Now” button enables seamless checkout. The experience eliminates many of the major friction points in mobile sales, thereby primed to dramatically optimize conversions.

Promoting Sales, Discounts, and Promotions

Incentivizing purchases through sales, discounts, and promotions is one of the most effective methods for increasing sales. Unfortunately, to benefit from this, a company must be able to cut through widespread tendency to ignore marketing messages. As mentioned above, bot messages come into users’ chat platforms, where they spend much — if not most — of their mobile time. Furthermore, bots can be programmed to possess robust segmentation and AI capabilities that learn about your customers over time and can determine which discount or promotion they are most likely to convert on.

Personalized Recommendations

Messenger bots can be programmed with artificial intelligence that learns about users over time through their in-bot behavior, and can even pull in their purchase history and other customer profile information. Robust algorithms then use this information to make personalized product recommendations that are more likely to convert the customer. Think of the efficacy that a personalized suggestion from a live sales rep can have; this is the equivalent, but scaled through bot technology and the appeal of one-click checkout (see #1 above).

Replenish Alerts

Many sales are made when customers restock items they already use. Right now, the most common method for notifying customers of restocks is via email. Messenger is a much more effective way of delivering news to customers. Messenger alerts ensure that customers are receiving these notifications so that they get the item that they want, and brands can make the sale.

Implementing a bot can have a major impact on your company’s bottom line. But implementing a bot is only the first step. The bot must be executed properly, imbued with the AI and algorithms that enable you to take the five steps described above. Luckily, there are platforms that can help you do all or some of this.