3-Step Messenger Marketing Strategy (With Examples)
11 min read

3-Step Messenger Marketing Strategy (With Examples)

Our 3-step Messenger Marketing strategy is simple, straightforward and super effective. We run through this strategy and give you some inspiring examples.
3-Step Messenger Marketing Strategy (With Examples)

Table of Contents

  1. Define a goal for your Messenger Marketing campaign
    Build awareness
    Generate leads
    Sell tickets
    Gather email addresses
  2. Write a flow that supports your campaign goal
  3. Choose a conversation starter and kick off your campaign
    Example use cases in 3 steps
    Expand your current email list
    Generate leads for your local business
    Streamline your ticket sales

Do all good things come in threes? People often say so, yet this cliché usually feels a bit meaningless. But we are kinda hardwired to expect things in threes. Things just become a little more easy to process.

We tap into this concept to help you get the most out of your Facebook Messenger Marketing in 2020. Our 3-step Messenger Marketing strategy is simple, straightforward and super effective - see what we did there?

How does it work?

The 3-step strategy is mostly campaign-based. This means you figure out what you want to achieve, how you’re going to use your Facebook Messenger bot to achieve it, and you execute your plan.

3-Step-Messaging-Strategy-Visual

The steps are as follows:

  1. Define a clear campaign goal
  2. Write a flow that supports/achieves this goal
  3. Choose a conversation starter and kick off your campaign

Let’s look at these one by one and outline some examples, while we’re at it.

1. Define a goal for your Messenger Marketing campaign

Ultimately, using a Facebook Messenger bot for business builds on the power of conversational marketing.

Let’s face it, you send messages to your friends, family, maybe even customers on a daily basis. You’re already good at it - hopefully.

But matching this skill with your marketing goals might seem a bit daunting. So here’s some examples for you to consider.

If you have any examples to add to this list, please don’t hesitate to get in touch!

Build awareness

Using direct messages to engage with your target audience is a relatively new marketing tactic. Reading a private message is not like scrolling down a news feed or browsing search engine results.

Do it well, and it can be a very exciting experience for your audience!

To build brand awareness, we suggest you start racking your brain on something really cool to dazzle your audience with. Something that will stop them in their tracks and starts them spreading the word of your amazing Messenger chatbot’s existence.

Generate leads

A lot of marketers are using Messenger as a lead generation tool for businesses. Automated lead generation through direct messaging is easily set up. An added benefit is that you acquire quality leads, that are warmer than average.

But the best thing about using Messenger for lead generation is that conversion rates are much higher than on other platforms.

Basically, you should treat your Messenger flows like interactive landing pages.

Are you trying to get clients to book a consultation? Want to offer discount codes for their next hair cut? Or are you trying to get your restaurant fully booked? Draft a conversation flow that will help you achieve these goals.

It’s a personal and conversational lead generation tactic, so people are much more likely to share their information with you.

Ask the right questions, gather relevant data and contact information, like a potential lead’s email address or phone number, and qualify them accordingly.

Provide a useful, free, appropriate piece of content, like a lead magnet, to finish off the Messenger experience. These are very powerful lead generation strategies that will make your sales team extremely happy.

Combine a lead generation flow with a Click-to-Messenger ad to increase its effectiveness. On top of this, use the channel as a customer service platform in case people have immediate questions about your products of services.

It’s a perfect marketing tactic!

Sell tickets

Here’s what you should realize about the benefits of building a bot on the Messenger platform:

A Messenger flow is like a 24/7 sales person
Your-24-7-Messenger-sales-assistant
Your 24/7 sales assistant that never sleeps

First of all, let’s not forget that potential customers are nearly three times more likely to make a purchase if they’ve engaged in conversation with a brand.

If you want to sell things - like tickets to your show or event - you need to leverage the power of chat.

Using our bot builder to create a Facebook chatbot that guides people through a sales journey needs to be done well, but it only needs to be done once.

And when it’s finished, this digital sales assistant doesn’t require much maintenance, let alone sleep, rest or recuperation.

Either set up the introduction of your Messenger channel to function as a sales chatbot, so you have an inbound sales channel on your Facebook page.

Or create content for a separate sales flow and add the direct Messenger link to web pages, email newsletters or wherever in your sales funnel you deem it to fit best.

Gather email addresses

There’s several reasons why you would want to collect people’s email addresses using Messenger.

If your goal is to generate warm leads, asking for their business email addresses (for instance, in order to unlock a free eBook or to register for a webinar) is essential.

But email marketing isn’t dead just yet - in fact, it’s going through quite a resurgence, partly due to social feeds being oversaturated with advertisement.

If you want to build your email list quickly, cheaply and easily, and fill it high quality subscribers, Messenger is the way to go.

People who interact with you on Messenger are at the more engaged end of the spectrum - they’re among your true fans.

But if you already know your way around Facebook ads, there’s another huge benefit to collecting your Messenger audience’s email addresses.

When you use I AM POP’s user data collection component, people are prompted to provide you with the email address connected to their Facebook account.

These email addresses provide perfect matches for creating a high performing Lookalike Audience in the Facebook Ads Manager, so you can hypertarget future Facebook ad campaigns.


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2. Write a flow that supports your campaign goal

The next step is to use the Chat-editor to create a conversation flow that achieves the goal you picked for your campaign. Basically, this is the fun bit, where you get to test your creative mettle.

If you’re having trouble coming up with creative ideas: you’re not on your own. Our recently revamped and continuously expanding Featured Flow gallery is filled with ready-to-use flows, for you to save, edit and customize to your liking.

Here’s a few tips and tricks to make sure your flows achieve what you want them to:

  • Keep users engaged
    Make sure your flow is both entertaining and interactive. Use GIFs, and rich media to create a unique experience. Take users by the hand using Quick Reply buttons and gallery cards for a slick, intuitive conversation.
  • Treat your flow like a landing page
    It’s a good idea to do some research into landing page optimization. Lessons can be drawn from your own landing page structures as well, of course. Build your flow in such a way that it leads to a CTA, intuitively, to maximize conversions.
  • Test excessively
    Preview your flow often, so you can get a better idea of the user experience. QA test the flow and iron out any kinks you might find. You can add catch-all responses when asking questions you want users to answer with Quick Reply buttons. This makes the questions ‘unskippable’ and circumvents open-ended user input.

Of course, our Customer Success team is there to help in case you’re having trouble optimizing your flows for the campaign goals you picked.

When writing a flow, you can always go to the ‘troubleshooting’ section of your I AM POP dashboard and click ‘Start a conversation’ to get in touch!

Start-a-conversation-troubleshooting-section
How to open a chat window in the I AM POP dashboard

3. Choose a conversation starter and kick off your campaign

Every flow comes with a unique Facebook messenger link - its m.me link - which you can copy and share wherever you see fit. Social media is a great place to start, of course.

Here are a few examples of conversation starters you could easily set up.

Instagram
If you already have a large following on Instagram, create a post directing followers to your bio, and place a direct m.me link to a flow there.

If you don’t want to use up that precious link space in your bio, try using a free linking service, such as Linktree.

For a more general, inbound approach, link to your introduction flow here. The link to your introduction is a combination of m.me + username.

You can find your Messenger username underneath your page name on your Facebook page. For instance, in our case, the link is https://m.me/iampophq.

Facebook
If your Facebook audience is highly active and engaged, simply include a link to your flow in an organic post. As we all know, however, News Feed engagement isn’t what it used to be.

The most efficient way to boost engagement on your Facebook post and drive traffic to your flow is to use our Comment-to-Messenger growth tool.

This allows you to set up automated direct messages as replies to (specific) comments made on your Facebook post.

On top of that, when users interact with your Messenger channel, you can send them a follow-up broadcast within 24 hours, with open rates often rising above 90%.

We recently saw one of our clients (27k likes on their Facebook page) boast the following stats by running a Comment-to-Messenger campaign:

  • 18,470 people reached
  • 5,890 engagements
  • 532 reactions
  • 1.3k comments
  • 45 shares
  • 1.4k emails captured

This is on an unboosted organic Facebook post, mind you. Expect a Case Study from us on this campaign soon!

Update 15-10-19: as promised, read our Case Study on the above campaign by UK drum and bass artist Turno. Spoiler alert: the campaign's results got even better.

Click-to-Messenger Ads
Facebook offers an ad format which lets you drive traffic directly into Messenger. If you already advertise on Facebook, consider using this ad format and combining it with a customized flow.

Here’s an actionable guide to quickly setting up a Click-to-Messenger ad combined with a customized flow.

You can set the placement for this ad type to the Instagram or Facebook news feed, and Instagram, Facebook and Messenger stories.

Click-to-Messenger-ad-in-action
A Click-to-Messenger ad in action

Are you looking to sell more of your tickets, products or to generate leads for your business? Click-to-Messenger ads are the perfect tool.

Even more so, if you use email addresses you captured in a previous Messenger campaign as seeds for a Lookalike Audience.

Your Messenger audience consists of highly engaged fans of your business. Creating an audience based on their user profiles means that your Click-to-Messenger ad targets other people that are much more likely to buy what you have to sell.

Other channels
Since a direct m.me link to a flow is a simple URL, you can share it wherever you see fit. These links are platform agnostic, meaning that if you open them on mobile, the Messenger app is opened, automatically.

This means that any digital channel you can think of will work for distributing your flows. Bear in mind at what point of your funnel people will encounter the place of distribution, and make sure your flow’s content corresponds.

But you can use m.me links for real life, OOH marketing, as well. Again, your creativity is what’s going to set you apart, here.

Facebook recently deprecated Messenger codes, which is a shame, because these were quite a beautiful way to share your Messenger channel. Don’t let this stop you from linking to your flow’s m.me link using a generated QR code, though!

Example use cases in 3 steps

Expand your current email list

Goal: The campaign goal here is to gather user’s email addresses, so you can build your newsletter subscriber list.

Preferably, you combine this with a nice incentive by offering some exclusive content. Nothing in this world comes for free, so an equal exchange of value will benefit your campaign nicely.

Flow: We suggest writing a flow where the email capture component is followed by a free, downloadable eBook, an unreleased track, or a link to an unpublished Youtube video.

If you’ve got none of the above to offer, try offering free advice, tips or tricks your target audience might enjoy.

Or run a viral giveaway campaign, like the one found in our Featured Flow gallery!

Viral-giveaway-Featured-Flow-in-Messenger
Preview this in our Featured Flow gallery

Distribution: This type of campaign works best with a Comment-to-Messenger campaign.

Simply create a Facebook post that says something like: “We’re giving away a free gift to 5 lucky people! The only thing you need to do is leave a comment below and choose your favourite gift!”

Generate leads for your local business

Goal: Gather potential customers’ contact information.

Struggling to get new customers for your local business? Let’s take the example of a hair salon.

The overall campaign goal would be generating leads, but let’s say you would like these to provide you with their gender, email address and phone number and the type of service they would like to book with you.

Flow: Write a flow that asks users these questions, and incentivize them with a discount if they book an appointment within the next month. Link out to a service like Calendly to schedule their appointments at the end of your flow.

General-hair-salon-lead-generation-Featured-Flow
Automated appointment scheduling

You can find a general hair salon bot in our Featured Flow gallery. You can find it in the ‘Small Business’ category.

Preview, or save and edit it and include the user data collection components needed for your campaign.

Distribution: This type of lead gen campaign is best combined with a Click-to-Messenger ad.

Simply target people within your hair salon’s local region. Make sure the ad copy mentions the discount, and run this ad cross-platform (Facebook, Instagram, Messenger) to get the best results.

Streamline your ticket sales

Goal: Automating and streamlining ticket sales.

Imagine the following scenario:

You run a popular nightclub, a museum, or any other type of venue that sells entry tickets. Every day, people stand in line to buy entry tickets, leading to long queues, long waiting times, and frustrated customers.

If only there were some sort of way to automate your ticket sales.

Flow: Write a ticket sales flow, which can be as simple as directing traffic to your general ticketing portal. Or create a little menu that drives traffic to ticketing pages for that day’s individual events.

Distribution: Just print a QR code big enough for people to scan while they’re in the queue, which directs them to the sales flow. This is customer service on steroids that will save everyone time and energy!

This way of using QR codes has become so ubiquitous in China, where people use it to pay restaurant bills, renting shared bicycles and even giving money to beggars, that one Chinese village even built a giant QR code from 130,000 juniper trees to connect with visitors.

Chinese-village-QR-code-tourism-marketing-campaign
A QR field in Xilinshui, Hebei province

How’s that for an awesome OOH marketing campaign? Try scanning the image of this field - it actually works!

If you’ve got any unique ideas of combining Messenger flows, m.me links and marketing distribution channels, let us know. We’d be happy to help you set up!


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Or why don't you connect to I AM POP directly through Messenger at https://m.me/bypophq