205: How To Use Facebook Messenger Chatbots To Sell Physical Products Online With Molly Pittman

Steve: You’re listening to the My Wife Quit Her Job Podcast, the place where I bring on successful bootstrapped business owners and dig deep into what strategies they use to grow their businesses. Now today I’m happy to have my friend Molly Pittman on the show.

Molly is the former VP of Marketing for Digital Marketer and she is one of the foremost experts on Facebook chat bots and Messenger marketing. And that is exactly the topic that we’re going to be delving into today. And I just want to give you a warning that the audio is a little bit choppy in the first five minutes or so but it gets much better later on into the episode.

But before we begin, I want to give a quick shout out to Privy who is a sponsor of the show. Privy is the tool that I use to build my email list for both my blog and my online store. Now Privy is an email list growth platform, and they manage all my email capture forms. And I use Privy hand in hand with my email marketing provider.

Right now I’m actually using Privy to display a cool wheel of fortune pop-up. Basically a user gives their email for a chance to win valuable prizes in our store. And customers love the gamification aspect of this, and when I implemented this form email sign ups increased by 131%.

So bottom line, Privy allows me to turn visitors into email subscribers, which I then feed to my email provider to close the sale. So head on over to Privy.com/Steve, and try it for free. And if you decide you need some of the more advanced features, use coupon code MWQHJ For 15% off. Once again that’s P-R-I-V-Y.com/Steve.

I also want to give a quick shout out to Klaviyo who is a sponsor of the show. Always blessed to have Klaviyo as a sponsor because they are the email marketing platform that I personally use for my ecommerce store, and I depend on them for over 30% of my revenues. Now you’re probably wondering why Klaviyo and not another provider. Klaviyo is the only email platform out there that is specifically built for ecommerce stores and here is why it’s so powerful.

Klaviyo can track every single customer who has shopped in your store and exactly what they bought. So let’s say I want to send an email to everyone who purchased a red handkerchief in the last week, easy. Let’s say I want to set up a special auto-responder sequence to my customers depending on what they purchased, piece of cake, and there is full revenue tracking on every single email sent.

Klaviyo is the most powerful email platform I’ve ever used and you can try them for free at mywifequitherjob.com/K-L-A-V-I-Y-O. Once again that’s mywifequitherjob.com/K-L-A-V-I-Y-O, now on to the show.

Intro: Welcome to the My Wife Quit Her Job Podcast. We will teach you how to create a business that suits your lifestyle, so you can spend more time with your family and focus on doing the things that you love. Here is your host, Steve Chou.

Steve: Welcome to the My Wife Quit her Job Podcast. Today I’m thrilled to have Molly Pittman on the show. Now Molly is someone who I met at both Traffic and Conversions and Social Media Marketing World, and she’s a digital marketing expert and educator. She was the VP of Marketing for Digital Marketer for many years until she recently stepped down to start her own consulting agency.

And over the years Molly has personally spent over eight million dollars on pay traffic while achieving a positive ROI. And right now she is one of the foremost experts on Facebook Messenger chat bots, and she is known as Molly the chat bot Pittman. I don’t know about you but I just love her infectious laugh as well. And with that, welcome to the show Molly, how are you doing today?

Molly: Hey, thank you so much for having me on Steve, I like that name Molly the chat bot Pittman, I’m going to tell people about that. Yeah thanks for having me on, I’m excited to talk.

Steve: Yeah so just for the listeners out there, Molly and I actually don’t know each other that well, so I just kind of threw that chat bot Pittman out there and fortunately she has a good sense of humor.

Molly: I love it. I was like girl that will work. I sound like some sort of cartoon or something or a wrestler.

Steve: Actually [inaudible 00:03:45] comes to Mind. I don’t know if I’ve just aged myself, but yeah.

Molly: Yeah I don’t know who that is, but I’m imagining I’m like wrestling and here come the robot and [inaudible 00:03:58].

Steve: So I felt certain that the majority of my listeners know who you are, but just in case, can you give us a quick background story. Tell us how you got started with Facebook chat bots, how you ended up at the Digital Marketer and that sort of thing.

Molly: So I moved to Austin, Texas without a job, I was ready for a career change. And I saw a post on Craigslist for a marketing internship. So I had nothing to lose, took that internship, and that was at Digital Marketer. So two and a half years later, I’d be given the VP of marketing after I started learning Facebook ads, email marketing. I stepped into that role and then as you said Steve I recently left the company to start my own agency, but I’m still a faculty member in Digital Marketer, and I have a podcast with them called Perpetual Traffic and I create courses to help educate users.

But I got started with bot back in late 2015. So it was actually I think November 16th Facebook list Messenger ads, and so I’ve always been really into Facebook ads. So of course I was very interested, okay, we can run an ad inside of Facebook Messenger, let’s see what this is about. And when I started playing around with it, I realized that I really couldn’t run Messenger ads without building some sort of bot.

So that’s when I became familiar with ManyChat which is the bot building tool that I use, and I started learning as much as I could about this new marketing channel, and it’s only gone from there only a year and a half later.

Steve: Just curious, when you’ve been implementing ManyChat or chat bots, have those been for both ecommerce businesses as well as like digital product businesses?

Molly: Yeah, I work with an array of business and luckily ManyChat is one of my clients so I get access to a lot of the data and the happenings inside of their thousand Facebook pages that are now connected to the tool. So I also have a client in the nutrition space based on health plans. I’m also good friends with Ezra Firestone, so I actually went up to his house in New York, and we shot some videos on chat box for Messenger. So I have experience but also I’ve just been around it and seen what’s working for people trying to sell physical products which are bought.

Steve: So Molly what I was hoping to do today was to go in depth on kind of the best way to implement a chat bot just for e-commerce store that sells physical products online just based on your experience, what’s working and what’s not. And my first question actually along these lines are when you’re going for a chat bot Messenger like how can these tactics be kind of mixed in with e-mail? Do you have to choose whether you want an email or Messenger subscriber, or do you try to get both?

Molly: So both are still valuable, right? Email is a huge revenue driver for businesses. So any time that you can have a prospect across multiple platforms, you’re in better shape. So you can’t really — it’s interesting, Messenger and email work very similar in terms of functionality. You’re building this list, you can send broadcasts, you can set autoresponders, but in application they are very different because the messaging is very deferent, right?

Think about how you use email, you usually send longer emails, you might not respond to emails for a few days. With Messenger it’s these short quick back and forth messages almost instantaneous. So, the two are similar but also very different. So any time that you can use e-mail to drive Messenger subscribers and the other way around, you’re better off. So for example, I’ve seen Ezra Firestone for example, he sends a coupon code to his e-mail list for his skin care line, and he said, to redeem this coupon to get the code, click here and get this code inside of Messenger.

So he sent that e-mail as a way to run a flash sale, but he also moved these email subscribers over to Messenger, and was able to deploy this flash sale but also ensure that they run both purposes. The same thing works the other way around. When you’re engaging with someone in Messenger, you can ask them for other contact information.

And a few weeks ago Facebook actually rolled out a feature for when you anchor some bot to email address as a brand, a quick reply button shows up above their keyboard with their email address that they use to log into Facebook. They can one click that button and now the brand has the e-mail address and it’s not just an email address, you know that’s probably a good email, right? It’s the one that they use to login to Facebook.

So then you could use a tool like Zapier or ManyChat just released [inaudible 00:09:03]. If you want to integrate your CRM to ManyChat then you can push that data back over there too. So both is great and they can be used together, but also never confuse them. I’ve seen a lot of people trying to use Messenger just like they use e-mail and it just doesn’t work, because the messaging is so different. So I just always like to emphasize that when we talk about email and bots.

Steve: Sure. I guess the question to kind of clarify is if I’m going for a particular subscriber on my list, let’s have a pop up form on my site, would you be going for an email sign up at this point or a Messenger subscriber first initially because you can’t ask for both right away, right?

Molly: Sorry Steve, could you say that one more time?

Steve: So let’s say I have a site and I have a pop up form on my store, would you recommend I go for email subscriber and then try to move them over to Messenger, or would you recommend that I try to get a Messenger subscriber and then move them over to email, because it’s really hard ask for both in one sitting, right?

Molly: Totally. I would use Messenger first because it is so much easier and frictionless for the end user. So think about it, inside a ManyChat there are things called overlay widgets. So you can trigger a pop up or have a hello bar at the top of your store, you could embed a button, you can embed a box, and when they interact with any of these widgets it opens in Facebook Messenger.

So say you have a coupon code, and you use a pop up and you say, click here to get the coupon code in Messenger. Well they click the button on your pop up, it opens in Messenger, they click yes I want this, now they’re a Messenger subscriber, and they have the coupon code. You could also ask them for their email address if you want. And then again just one click and they can give you their e-mail address. They never have to type anything, right?

Steve: Yes.

Molly: They literally clicked three buttons. So with e-mail, you would have to ask for their e-mail address, you probably ask for their first name, last name, which you don’t have to do inside a Messenger because Facebook already knows that. So I would lead with Messenger because it’s easiest for the end user, and that’s the theme of bots and Messenger. This isn’t a shiny object; oh look at this new tool.

This works because it’s where the people are, but it really works because it’s so easy for the consumers; three clicks versus trying to fill out these form fields that people are tired of filling out especially because most of them are still for some reason not mobile optimized. It’s like this is easier for the end user so you’re getting a better result. So I would always lead with Messenger because you can still ask for the e-mail, but you’re going to get more interactions because it’s just so much easier for them.

Steve: I guess part of the reason why I’m squeamish is that Facebook controls Messenger and at some point they might just like nerf the reach of Messenger or they might start charging for it. Do you have any insight into what you think will happen going forward?

Molly: That’s such a good question. I have a little bit of insight. I don’t think that Facebook will ever charge to use Messenger in terms of the way that we think about it with ads, right? I think that the rules will change. I think what Facebook does a really good job of, Facebook does what is best for their end user, and their end user are the billions of people who have Facebook profiles.

And as marketers I think – at Social Media Marketing World, the keynote session day two I was on a panel talking about chat bots, and we opened up for Q&A. And the first question was a man who asked because there was a lady from Facebook Messenger on the panel, and he asked, how can we trust Facebook after all of the recent changes and how it affects businesses? And she gave a really sweet answer that was…

Steve: It was a very pissy answer yes.

Molly: It was a very pissy answer but then I said, hey guys listen; I totally understand your frustration. You’re using a platform and it changes, and it affects your business, so it’s really frustrating, but as marketers we really need to readjust our entitlement or expectation of these platforms. These platforms have to do what’s best for their end user just like I hope every business owner out there does what’s best for their end user.

And they need to make a change like decreasing the amount of organic reach that Facebook pages are getting because it’s not healthy for consumers, which is what they found through studies. It was literally not healthy for our society. They may need to do that and we need to adjust. And so, I think the same — sorry if I’m a little off. That part of how I feel here, I think that Facebook, they will continue to adjust.

I had the pleasure to meet with some people from their team in San Diego and then they came to Austin for South by Southwest and really the theme that I’m getting is that they still don’t quite know either, right? Like they opened this up in 2016 to advertisers, and they are going to create rules and best practices and pricing models and ad types based off of what they think is best for the end user.

And I think that’s why they have things like the 24 hour rule, right? You can only be directly promotional within 24 hours. I love that, I don’t want Messenger to turn into email. Emails lasted a long time and e-mail is not dead, but darn, my inbox is flooded and that’s because there’s not one person ruling the rules of e-mail.

So long story short, I don’t know where it will go. I know that Facebook will continue to reward the people that follow the rules, and I think the key here is that we’re moving into a different time where what’s happening on Messenger really is what consumers are expecting, give a little value first. I heard someone — someone came up to me, and they’re like Molly, I’m not going to use this because you can’t be promotional after 24 hours. And I’m like, wow, that’s so small minded. This is a new channel that we get to use as marketers and we have to be willing to change what we’re doing a little bit to play nice.

So I think there is a fear factor in terms of this is on Facebook’s platform and it could go away at any moment, but I think my thought process is why would you miss an opportunity like this in fear of losing it, right? And I understand why. I do understand that fear, but what are the other options right now? Like email opening click through rates are decreasing, Facebook ads are still effective, but we’re starting to see Facebook run out of inventory. If you’re a really good marketer, Facebook ads will still work. Google is there, YouTube is there. There are these different platforms, but in terms of the opportunity, it much outweighs the fact that we’re building this on someone else’s platform.

Steve: So I ask you those questions because I was pretty biased. I’ve recently been playing with these for like the last four or five months and the performance of these chat bots have just been amazing for me especially with the ads, the Messenger ads.

Molly: They are.

Steve: I’m getting maybe like a 6x ROI per subscriber compared to email, and in then the open rates are just ridiculous and the click through rates are as well.

Molly: That’s awesome, what are you doing Steve, would you mind to share?

Steve: Yeah absolutely. So I have this free plus shipping flow right now, so I set an ad giving away a free handkerchief, this is what we sell, and then that actually takes them over to a landing page. So they opt-in as a Messenger subscriber, then I take them to a landing page where I really describe the offer very well and then I ask for an e-mail there, and then I have an up sell and a down sell. And ideally I get a Messenger subscriber, an email subscriber, and a purchase.

Molly: That’s awesome. And see Steve I love what you’re doing because I think what a lot of people are doing right now, they see bots, they see Messenger marketing and they’re like, oh this is intimidating, all right? Like I have to build this little bot, people think about bots and they think about bots that have been programmed to answer any question you might ask. Tommy Hilfiger has those types of bots, like cute brands.

And that’s not really what we’re talking about here. We’re talking about taking something like what you just said Steve, that’s a funnel that was already working for you. You’re just using Messenger as an entry point, right?

Steve: Absolutely.

Molly: You can take that a step further and remove those web pages all together, promise the free handkerchief. They click on the ad that opens in Messenger, you say, okay great, what’s your e-mail address? I want to send you some other cool updates and information. You get that e-mail which is so much easier than sending them to a landing page, and then you could say, great, now about this free handkerchief, here’s some bullet points.

You definitely probably wouldn’t want to have as much information as you do on the landing page, maybe you have a little video or an image of the handkerchief. And it’s you know ask, are you interested in purchasing, or are you interested in taking you know what’s up on this offer or whatever the language is. And then if they click yes, you could send them to the order form or and the next week or so ManyChat’s launching payments across all accounts.

So first it will be Stripe. But this is the ability if they click yes to literally pop up a credit card like box for them to input their credit card information and process that payment inside of Messenger. When that first launches, it’s not going to be what everyone wants to use because you can’t do up sells and down sells, but it shows you this is what’s coming. But for now you could also have another button that says, learn more so they could click learn more, and go over to the landing page if they do want more information.

So you did the first step which is, here is something that already works in my business, let me just use Messenger as the entry point because Messenger is frictionless for the end user. And it’s cheaper to run those ads because Facebook’s like, oh you want to send traffic inside our ecosystem and not off to a URL, awesome. But I love what you did because you just took something that was working and used Messenger. It wasn’t about building this bot, and I think that’s the frame of mind everyone needs to be in to get started with this, this year.

Steve: I mean I will say one other thing that I did with my site was I introduced a live chat widget. So basically it’s actually reduced our customer support load because we put the most frequently asked questions on there, and every time someone clicks on a button or interacts, we instantly get a Messenger subscriber as well, so this is fantastic for us.

Molly: Yeah, especially for people selling physical products because you guys know the top five questions somebody is going to ask. So using that live chat plug in, you get the subscribers. Something else I’ve seen people do that was really smart, if you engage with the live chat they say, hey Molly, thanks so much for engaging, let us know if you have any questions.

They could have also said, here are frequently asked questions, if you want to browse through. But then they gave me a coupon code, and it was like, hey thanks for visiting our site, use this coupon code for five dollars off. And so I thought that was a cool way to add a conversion element to that live chat plug-in.

Steve: Yeah absolutely. So in your experience, what are some of the best implementations and uses for chat bots that you’ve seen for a physical products store?

Molly: Yeah great question. So I think the first is similar to what you are doing, promising a coupon or some sort of free plus shipping offer either in an email and then using the Ref URL growth tool to create a unique link that inside a ManyChat when they click it opens in Messenger, or running ads. So promising them something, whatever that top of the funnel offer is that you use in your business and then delivering it through Messenger, sending them off to a landing page or a sales page when you need to do so.

Steve: So on ads real quick Molly, I just want to ask you this question since you have a lot of Facebook ads experience. When you’re targeting a Messenger subscriber with your ads versus a conversion element, how does the relative performance work? I’ve been experimenting with it myself, but I haven’t quite figured out what works better just yet.

Molly: So I’m still seeing using general conversion campaigns optimizing for that low dollar purchase to have a lower CPA than using Messenger. And that’s just because people are still getting familiar with Messenger. People still think when they click on an ad and it opens in Messenger, some people think it’s a bug. So remember that we still need about six months for consumers to catch up, but that doesn’t mean you should wait as the business owner because don’t forget you’re building that subscriber list, right?

So you’re getting this lead, it’s not just about the purchase, it’s also the lead. So when I’m running ads for Messenger, I’m seeing the cost for the click or the conversation is cheaper than sending them over to a landing page, but I’m still seeing the CPA a bit lower going direct to a landing page than Messenger. But when I run Messenger ads, I either use the traffic objective or the Messenger’s objective, and then you just select the destination as Messenger and Facebook knows instead of sending this to a site, we’re just going to open this inside of Facebook Messenger.

Steve: Yeah I mean I’ve been trying to – the CPAs are better for me if I don’t use Messenger, but then I’ll send like a broadcast via Messenger and it’ll make up all that money.

Molly: Exactly, exactly and that’s what the client, the nutritional client I was telling you about, the CPA is higher going through Messenger, but then once a week we send a broadcast that’s content and if they engage with the content, we tell them about a sale we’re having. And then every other week we send a sponsored message which you can pay Facebook about $30 CPM to send a sponsored message that can be directly promotional to all of your subscribers. And that’s because you’re paying Facebook.

So we send about one of those every other week. So between those content broadcasts and the sponsored messages, we’re seeing what you’re seeing. We’re able to make up the money because we can leverage, we can continue this conversation. And then don’t forget the follow up sequences. So if someone engages with you on an ad, it opens in Messenger where you can set up a follow up sequence.

For the nutritional company I have one that follows up for six days. The one that goes out on the 5th day has a 92% open rate, that’s insane. So people are still engaging after that first interaction.

Steve: Can we talk about that autoresponder sequence? You mentioned they’re messaging someone every single day for six straight days.

Molly: No so the responder, the actual sequence is over seven days. And we’re sending a message about every other day, but it’s all themed, it’s mostly content. So this is a nutritional company, so we’re talking about people’s health, and I can’t get super specific into what the ad is. So we’re using comment to Messenger to ask a polarizing question in the market, something that they would debate.

So for example, for copywriters that would be something like should you use the Oxford comma or not, comment a little with your thoughts and we’ll let you know what we think. So we’re using the comment to message as a way to just drum up conversation and build Messenger subscribers. They don’t even see an offer until the next message. So they comment below, this is about food, and which types of food you should eat.

They comment below with their thoughts, now this post has thousands of comments, the relevant score is super cheap. For this particular ad, I’m optimizing for engagement because that’s what we want, and then every person that comments it opens in Messenger. So we open up in Messenger and we say, thanks so much for your comment, here’s the correct answer, and there’s a video with one of the health coaches, so they’re starting to build a relationship with him.

And the video gives the correct answer, and then the correct answer leads into a free plus shipping offer for a product that leads seamlessly into this conversation we’re already having with them. And so, hey do you want this for free, yes, they click and they go over to buy the free plus shipping offer. Then for a week, so the first three days we do follow up every day, but it’s with more content, recipes, here’s a video with more content.

And anyone that engages with those, we then say, hey, don’t forget you can get this for free. And people love it. They’re like, oh this — they’re following up with content, I’m in the kitchen with them, this is so cool. And then we go every other day for two more messages. And the goals of those, there’s one that’s more scarcity like, hey, this free plus shipping offer is going away. And that one only goes to people who have engaged in the last 24 hours, and then two days later the last thing we ask is just a question for segmenting.

So like the three big buckets of products they sell, we just ask a question that allows those people to self select based off of their health goals for the year so that we can tag them and send them more relevant information later. But it’s a weeklong sequence, but it’s not buy, buy, buy. It’s statements that leads into the offer, but it’s really fun for the end user and that’s what this takes outside of when you want to take this past coupons or funnel style actions, it does take a little bit of creativity and knowing the conversation your market wants to have. And that’s what’s really fun to me.

Steve: It seems like the way you just described would work a lot better than what I’m currently doing now, because when you shove some sort of offer in someone’s face, sometimes that leaves a bad taste in their mouth, but it sounds like if you ask them an open ended question, get them on Messenger, that would lead to much higher conversions. Is that what your experience has been?

Molly: So it’s — I mean I don’t know if I would say much higher conversions, but it’s a longer term relationship. This client decided, Molly we want this CPA but we also want to be one of the first people on Messenger. We want to build Messenger as an asset in our business just like we have e-mail. So they’re committed to a long term relationship. So it’s also just a different way of looking at it. I think that’s the way everyone should be looking at it, but not everyone has the resources to do that too.

But yes any way you can make this more conversational, it’s going to work better short term and long term because that’s what this is, it’s a conversational platform. So giving them value even if you were running an ad to some sort of lead magnet like I saw a yoga company, this was awesome. They had a seven day free challenge where you learned a new yoga move every day. So they ran an ad and it was a click to Messenger ad, hey sign up for this seven day challenge in Messenger.

So you click, you quickly sign up, they ask for your email address, they got everything you needed. And then they said, okay, here’s day one, and they delivered the actual video there in Messenger. You could also click off to a web page if you wanted to do that. And then every day for seven days, you’re getting a video in your inbox, hey, it’s day two. And sometimes it would say, hey, are you interested in the yoga mat that you just saw Sarah using in that video? Yes or no.

And then at the end, they were able to do a larger pitch for a bundle of their products like a starter pack. But what they did that was brilliant is they gave value first, here’s a seven day yoga challenge. You know people are going to consume it because Messenger open rates are so high, you’re in their Facebook inbox, but they’re weaving their product into this value. And that’s the type of stuff that I’ve seen work really well. Now they’ve built a long term relationship, they haven’t pissed these people off because they’ve given them value, but they’re also able to sell their product, right?

Steve: Yeah, I mean this is just like the email funnels that I use for my digital class and email funnels that I use for my store. It’s just a matter of I guess translated them over to Messenger.

Molly: Yeah and Steve if you’re interested, go to Course.ManyChat.com, Course.M-A-N-Y-C-H-A-T.com. And I think you would like this free course that myself, and Dan from ManyChat just released, because what I did is I made 15 blueprints. And the goal was to take things like you just said, funnels that you already use, webinar funnels, many class funnels, lead magnet funnels, coupon funnels, and say, okay, you probably have these because you’re a marketer, here’s how you translate them into Messenger.

So I think you would find a lot of value in modules four and five are just those blueprints. But yeah it’s key to say because I think the trouble people are having is Messenger is cool, what do I do? I don’t want to invest a bunch of resources and this not work. So taking funnels and selling systems that are already working in your business and translating them to Messenger, and a lot of times that’s just realizing that instead of an entire sales page, you can say something like, hey, are you interested in this yoga mat? A lot of it is just the messaging, changing that really in my opinion.

Steve: And making it a lot shorter and more concise, right.

Molly: Exactly. And thinking about Messenger is a lot of questions, and giving them options, and buttons and choose your own adventure. So traditionally, that health and fitness company would have said, hey, we have this free container of this health supplement, do you want it free plus shipping? But yeah I had to back it up a little bit and say, what’s a cool question we can ask to engage these people, how can we ask them about their health goals? We had to flip the script a little bit.

Steve: Yeah, I mean actually what you just said has made me rethink the offer, because ultimately I want the Messenger subscriber. I’ve already seen the power, and so when I said conversions earlier, I actually meant a conversion in terms of getting a Messenger subscriber not a sale.

Molly: Oh heck yes, Messenger subscribers are cheap. Like that client I was telling you about, we’re getting Messenger subscribers for like a dollar. Even Kajabi, the [inaudible 00:33:20] they are one of my clients and we were talking email leads, a lead to them as an email lead. And they had a traditional lead magnet funnel for this report that they give away. And normally when they run a conversion campaign for Facebook ads, their cost for lead is about five to seven dollars which is great for them.

We took that same funnel, same ad, just changed some of the copy to, hey, make sure when you are running an ad to Messenger that you set the expectation that they’re going to get this in Messenger. That will help with the congruency. So we just changed a little bit of the text, you’ll download this inside of Facebook Messenger. Their cost per lead which I mean email lead, they were still asking for the e-mail went down to a dollar seventy five because it was way easier, no telling how cheap the Messenger subscriber was.

Steve: Oh yeah, yeah totally.

Molly: So yeah sorry to change…

Steve: What you’re talking about here is like the one click email?

Molly: Exactly.

Steve: Okay, got it got it. One thing I did want to ask you about the comment growth tool, I know Facebook has been cracking down on like fake engagement. So when you run one of those ads, you don’t necessarily want to tell them what to comment anymore, right?

Molly: Yeah, so when that first came out, I mean I taught people the first thing that I did was comment yes below to get this lead magnet. But yeah Facebook doesn’t want that anymore. They don’t want people to scroll through their news feeds and just see thousands of comments that say yes. They want meaningful conversation. So basically what they told us is we just don’t want people asking someone to comment one word or one sentence to get something. So ask a real question that starts a conversation.

So that’s really it. You can still say, ask your question and say, what do you think, leave a comment below and we’ll let you know what we think and we’ll send you this free thing. That’s okay to do. They just want people to actually comment with real answers.

Steve: I see so you should set up your growth tool to not detect any keywords, just to automatically set them up?

Molly: Exactly, so I’ve seen a lot of people doing — basically they just ask a question in their market that people debate about. And it’s something that also leads to whatever their offer is. So it just takes a little creativity, but those are super powerful because you’re paying Facebook for the engagement. If you ask a good question that people want to weigh in on, that will be really inexpensive. And then the relevance score is super high because all of these comments are here.

Steve: So current talk a little bit about Facebook ads. So do you suggest doing a traffic ad and use the comment growth tool, or would you recommend a Messenger ad? What’s worked better for you in terms of variety?

Molly: Yeah, it really depends on what you’re doing. So if you’re using the comment growth tool, I recommend using the engagement objective because that’s really what you want. Anyone that engages comments on that post, it’s going to open in Messenger, and then as soon as they engage with you they’re a subscriber. So for comment growth tool, use engagement. When you’re running click to Messenger ads that when they click it opens in Messenger, sometimes I use the traffic objective and then just change the destination to Messenger, and sometimes I use the Messenger’s objective.

Honestly I’ve seen the traffic objective to be a bit cheaper. But I’ve tested both and you can use either of those to run a click to Messenger ads. So every lead just depends on what you’re doing. If you’re trying to say, hey, here’s this coupon code, click below to get it in Messenger, you would run a click to Messenger ad and use the traffic or Messenger’s objective. If you want to ask what’s your favorite yoga pose and why, let us know below and we’ll send you a free seven day challenge, then that would be an engagement objective in the comment to message growth tool.

Steve: What is the distinction between click to Messenger versus traffic to Messenger?

Molly: So click to Messenger is basically just what Facebook calls that ad type. So that ad type exists in multiple objectives. The objectives are the first thing that Facebook asks, what’s your objectives? So whether you choose traffic messages, you could even choose conversion, I absolutely would not recommend that until the Facebook pixel is somehow integrated inside a Messenger. But the click to Messenger is just what they’re calling the ad that you see in your news feed that when you click on it opens in Messenger. So you can set those up through the traffic objective, Messenger’s objective or conversion objective.

Steve: So the click to Messenger, does that imply that Facebook is showing your ad to people who are more likely to click to get a Messenger response?

Molly: So it’s more of an ad type. I would say that they probably know that and so they know, okay, we selected traffic, we want the destination to be Messenger. Well they’re going to show the ad to people who are most likely to click on ads. I’m not sure if the algorithm is smart enough yet to know who clicks on Messenger ads. It probably is. So I would say that’s the case.

Steve: So in your experience, if the goal is to get Messenger subscriber, has it been cheaper for you to run these engagement and use the comment growth tool, or quick to Messenger type of ads for a response?

Molly: Yeah, good question. It really depends on the offer, but I would say if you’re going, you kind of need to decide like is your goal for this particular sequence going to be a CPA, Messenger subscriber or both. If the question that you ask in comment to message is super engaging, that’s the way to go, but the question has to be really good. Or if the offer is really good for the click to Messenger ad, like your free plus shipping offer, I would probably click on that. But if someone said, click here in Messenger to talk to my bot, I probably wouldn’t.

So it’s really all about the offer. I wouldn’t get — I don’t like to say one strategy is better than the other. It depends on your offer, but I think the comment to Messenger is going to give you cheaper subscribers unless that click to Messenger offer is just super enticing.

Steve: Right okay.

Molly: And a huge mistake real quick Steve, I see people using video in click to Messenger ads. Don’t do that because when you click on a video it just pauses or opens that video. And so the only part of the ad that they can click on to open Messenger is your headline or the button down at the bottom. So you’re losing out on a lot of clicks. So when you’re running those ads, use an image or a carousel so that anyone that clicks on that image opens in Messenger too.

Steve: It’s funny that was my next question actually, because I experimented with a video versus a static image and I found that the clicks for the static image were a lot cheaper and the Messenger subscribers were a lot cheaper. But the CPA for the video was a lot better because it did a much better job of describing the value proposition of our products.

Molly: Interesting. So if you’re going for CPA, video could be good because it gives that extra info, but if you’re looking at Messenger subscribers, I’ve just seen people be like, Molly, why is the cost of video much higher here? And I’m like, oh it’s the video, you are losing those clicks.

Steve: Yes I guess it’s like a trade off in that case because I’m trying to describe my offer, and I just have to be able to describe it much better in a video as opposed to a static image. And so I just found that more people are giving me the email going through the offer with the video.

Molly: And that’s why Steve like with any of this, anything in marketing or business really, people ask me Molly, what is better, what should I do? And I always say, what is your goal, what is the one thing? Like with a marketing campaign, you kind of have to pick one thing you want to do. I want to sell this product and then my secondary thing is Messenger subscribers. Or my first thing is Messenger subscribers; my secondary thing is the CPA. So once you decide that success metric I call it, then you can pick the strategy that best fits what you’re needing.

Steve: Yeah I mean there’s no right or wrong answer. And the questions I’ve been asking you, I’ve just been kind of framing them based on like the clients and what you’ve seen.

Molly: Yeah I love it. This is a great conversation.

Steve: So how much longer do you think chat bots and Messenger bots have until everyone kind of just hops on the bandwagon and it turns into like email?

Molly: I mean the good thing is that it can turn into email. That’s what I love about this and that’s why I am a proponent of this platform because there will always be people that can get around the system and things like that, like I will address that. But this platform in my opinion is good for humans, and the reason is because it is conversational and because Facebook is not going to let it become e-mail.

So you’re going to see more people use this, but the ones that have success with it are the creative people that are willing to step out of the box and write conversationally and come up with the strategies that we just talked about. The people that aren’t are going to say Messenger doesn’t work or they’re not going to get good results, and they’re going to retreat.

So you can’t be — because of the rules Facebook has put into place, you can’t be that person. You literally have to give value first. And if you don’t know how to do that, you’re not going to be able to use the platform well. So I think you’re going to see more people use the platform. You’re definitely going to see more messages from brands in your inbox, but it’s going to be maintained and controlled in a very different way than e-mail has been, because one person owns it, and that’s Facebook.

And if people start to get angry about the messages in their inbox, they’re going to make the rules more restrictive. And I think I love this because I think good marketers will win on this platform, and people that actually take time to get to know their audience, know the pain point of their audience, know the progress that their audience is trying to make and then they provide that experience inside a Messenger.

Steve: I guess the one difference is that no one can send me a message unless I specifically subscribe, whereas anyone can send me email today, right?

Molly: Exactly, that and Facebook is actively hiring people by the hundreds to be Messenger moderators they’re calling them. So this is kind of like policy for Messenger. And right now if your bot or your Facebook page gets marked as spam a few times, someone is actually going to go manually review that, and they’re going to see are they sending promotional messages outside of the 24 hour window? And if you are, you’re probably going to get a block for a few days.

So that is what Facebook is doing well with Messenger. Instead of just banning accounts, they’re putting people in timeout. So that’s really good because they understand that people still need to understand the rules better and things like that. But Facebook is going to patrol this, like don’t think that they’re going to let what I think is their best asset, Messenger has more active monthly users than the actual Facebook platform, they’re not going to let this get overrun.

And if people think that, look at the announcements Zack made earlier this year. So they have people policing this, and I don’t know what the rules will look like in a year, but I know that they’re going to let businesses use this platform because that’s their huge initiative and that’s where this is going. But they’re going to change the rules to make sure that this doesn’t turn into email. And like you said, no one can just message you on Facebook; no Facebook page can just message you on Facebook. So this is all up to the user, it’s all up to the user and Facebook patrolling this promotional policy.

Steve: So in order to send them a promotional message, what are some creative methods that you’ve got to just get them to interact so you can send them a promotional message? And are there any grey areas there, so for example can I say something like, hey, we just got a bunch of new products in our store and we’re having a small sale, would you like to hear about it? Yes, no, unsubscribe, is that like a violation?

Molly: So it’s still a gray area, they haven’t come out and really said what is promotional or not. I gather that it’s pretty much going to a sales page. So I would try not to do the, hey, we have new products available, are you interested? Anything other than that, talk about anything other than the product. So a lot of what I do is I’ll give them a question.

So, say I was selling a water bottle, we could say like when is the last time you cleaned your water bottle, or when is the last time you purchased a water bottle? These aren’t great, but like how many days out of the week do you use a water bottle, and provide some button answers which is great because then you learn more about these people. So you don’t ask domain questions, just ask them, ask questions so it’s like, wow, we really want to talk to the people that use a water bottle every day.

So ask a question like that that engages them, and then it’s like awesome, we just released this new water bottle, you can grab it here, or lead with content. So I wouldn’t lead with like, hey, we have a sale going on, or we have new products available, are you interested? I would lead with something just a tad a step forward than that like just something a little broader than that if that makes sense.

Steve: Okay so a little more subtle like the examples you just gave, or just simply say, I have this piece of content, would you like to take a look or something like that.

Molly: Yeah I have this free piece of content. You could even say, hey I have this new piece of content and link to it. And anyone that clicks that button you can say, awesome, thanks for checking out that that piece of content, what do you think, are you interested in this product? So I mean most of what I do is just giving an audio message, a question, but something that also leads seamlessly into the whatever we’re trying to sell in that moment.

Steve: Okay, yeah so you’re basically just trying to get them to respond to at all or in any way shape or form and then you can lead on to other conversations that lead to more promotional messages. Hey Molly, we’ve already been chatting believe it or not about chat bots for 47 minutes and I want to be respectful of your time. Thank you so much for coming on the show, and where can people find you and what good resources can you recommend if people want to learn more about you and your chat bots?

Molly: Yeah thanks so much for having me Steve. So I have a consulting agency at Digitalstrategybootcamps.com. It’s kind of a long URL. There’s a wait list out there now, but we’re launching a site next month. And then of course ManyChat, M-A-N-Y-C-H-A-T.com, course.ManyChat.com, there’s over ten hours of video and blueprints that will teach you all of the details of what we just talked about for free.

So those resources and then the Perpetual Traffic Podcast. You can find it at Digitalmarketer.com/podcast. We’re inside of iTunes, but we talk a lot about traffic, and chat bots, and digital marketing on that podcast. So, any of those would be great.

Steve: Awesome. I will link all those up in the show note resources. And thanks a lot Molly once again for coming on.

Molly: Yeah thanks so much Steve, I had a blast.

Steve: Take care.

Hope you enjoyed that episode. Molly really knows her stuff and I love how generous she is with information and her willingness to help. For more information about this episode, go to mywifequitherjob.com/episode205.

And once again I want to thank Klaviyo for sponsoring this episode. Klaviyo is my email marketing platform of choice for ecommerce merchants, and you can easily put together automated flows like an abandoned cart sequence, a post purchase flow, a win back campaign, basically all these sequences that will make you money on auto pilot. So head on over to mywifequitherjob.com/K-L-A-V-I-Y-O, once again that’s mywifequitherjob.com/K-L-A-V-I-Y-O.

And I also want to thank Privy.com for sponsoring this episode. Privy is the email capture provider that I personally use to turn visitors into email subscribers. They offer email capture, exit intent, and site targeting tools to make it super simple as well. And I like Privy because it’s so powerful and you can basically trigger custom pop ups for any primer that is closely tied to your e-commerce store. If you want to give it a try, it is free. So head on over to Privy.com/Steve, once again that’s P-R-I-V-Y.com/Steve.

And finally, I want to thank Payability. If you’re looking to take back control of your cash flow and scale your Amazon business fast, then sign up for Payability, and say goodbye to cash flow issues and stock outs. With daily payments, you can speed up your supply chain, buy inventory at optimal times, and stay in the buy box. The more control you have over your cash flow, the more buying power you will have. Visit Go.payability.com/Steve to get started, and cash in on a $200 credit just for being a My Wife Quit Her Job listener. Once again that’s Go.payability.com/Steve.

Now, I talk about how I use all these tools on my blog, and if you’re interested in starting your own ecommerce store, head on over to mywifequitherjob.com and sign up for my free six-day mini course. Just type in your email, and I’ll send you the course right away, thanks for listening.

Outro: Thanks for listening to the My Wife Quit Her Job Podcast, where we are giving the courage people need to start their own online business. For more information, visit Steve’s blog at www.mywifequitherjob.com.