Conversations 2019: Learnings from Day 3

Although today was the last day at Conversations, the energy was just as high as day 1! In case you missed it, we pulled all the top takeaways from our speaker sessions (and product team)! 

Thank you to everyone who took the time out to come. We had a blast. And for those of you joining blog-by-blog — thank you for continuing to be apart of this awesome, inspiring, empowering, incredible, and bold community of marketers and entrepreneurs. 

Molly Mahoney: Facebook Live and Messenger Bots — How to grow engagement and create deeper customer relationships

Molly kicked off Conversations Day 3 with a big question for us:

What is your dream?

We talk about bots and automation … but really, it’s all about your ultimate dream and how you can achieve it. We also want people to throw credit cards at our faces, right? Molly gave us a few practical strategies to make that happen. 

• Live content converts. To create live videos that convert, you need to know you, your ideal clients, their problems, and your solutions.  
• Want to reach over 1 million views on your videos? Preschedule live videos using a tool like Be.Live, and attach a comment growth tool. Encourage people to comment in return for a gift. It helps get more eyeballs on your content and build your subscriber list.
• Move imposter syndrome aside. Get over yourself and deliver the video. 
• Molly’s engagement hacks are to [1] create your own language, [2] use a creative CTA (for example, “sprinkle this among your friends”), [3] create consistent connections as a human.
• Do 1 weekly live video. Put a promo cover photo on your business page for visitors to know when you go live.
• Create a character for your bot and use fun and exciting character graphics to add a little human touch. 

Neil Patel: Future Trends — Multi-Channel Marketing and Beyond

Next up the man of digital marketing himself, Neil Patel, took the stage to talk about future trends. 

But first, some truth bombs. Did you know there are over 1 billion blogs on the internet? And that 50% of searches in 2020 will be voice. Oh, and Neil likes to Netflix and chill with his wife — on opposite ends of the couch. 

Neil covered a LOT of stuff in his 45-minute presentation — but we were able to condense it down to a few key points:

• Marketing is going omnichannel. Brands who take a multi-channel approach while see lower acquisition costs and better ROI. 

Marketing never stops. What works today may not work tomorrow. You need to keep testing and seeing what works well.

Neil Patel

• The average number of social shares per post is getting crushed. Successful posts in 2020 will be video and audio. Google’s already ranking audio — so get that voice strategy moving. 
• Conversion rate optimization is the channel that provides the biggest ROI for companies. 

• Personalization is the new CRO. When you message people, use their names and other custom elements like time and location.
• Use chat to enrich your data — it’ll help you boost conversions. 

Chat is responsible for 28% of our [coaching] sales.

Neil Patel

And the most inspiring piece of advice for entrepreneurs who get in their own way:

Stop slapping yourself around. Stop reading books. Just go and market yourself.

Neil Patel

Thanks Neil!

Mackensie Liberman: Advanced bot building — Take your bots to the next level, no coding required

We happily welcomed a Mackensie Liberman, a ManyChat Community moderator and popular bot builder, next to the stage. Last year, people wanted more ‘how-tos’, so Mackensie delivered some actionable ways for us to make more advanced bots and get higher lead conversions.

• Using ManyChat’s advanced features with or without Zapier/Integromat can help you achieve greater functionality and improved user experience.
• Use timely reminder messages for lead generation flows to keep people moving through your flow to your final call to action.
• Once you get a conversion, don’t let your bot flow end there. Depending on the CTA, you can send a follow-up message with more information and the next steps.
• When you have an evergreen offer, you want to provide an expiration date to get more people to opt-in.
• Create an expiring buy button to add scarcity to purchases inside Messenger. 

Connor Cirillo, Hubspot + Mikhail Lariono, Facebook: Fireside Chat with Hubspot & Facebook

Following Mackensie we got to hang with Connor Cirillo from Hubspot and Mikhail Lariono from Facebook in a fireside chat. The topic was how conversational marketing has evolved over the last 5 years. 

• Focus on communicating with your audience on multiple channels, it’s not about reaching one person on one channel anymore.
• Customers want instant engagement. They want to reach businesses like they reach friends and family — quick, easy, and natural. 
• Every channel is equally important. Consumers expect beautiful experiences across the board — not just in one place.
• Automation is great for repetitive or self-serving tasks, like resetting a password. Humans are needed for more empathetic and high-level conversations.
• There are still a lot of things that legacy or evergreen channels do. Lean into the strengths of what each channel is good at, and when you reach someone on Messenger, they know that interaction will be perfectly suited for the channel.
• You want to use all the channels, but you want to treat them all differently.

John Bellamy – How to Connect LinkedIn and ManyChat to increase revenue and sell more high-value products and services

Ever considered using ManyChat and LinkedIn? Well, look no further than John Bellamy to learn how to pull in qualified leads using the two. 

• Engage your audience on the platforms they prefer. 
• For LinkedIn, capture connection data and re-market on other platforms. 
• Clearly articulate who you are and what you provide on your LinkedIn profile. You need to have a strong foundation in order to successfully market on LinkedIn.
• There are three campaigns you can use to get leads from LinkedIn with ManyChat: 

Connection Campaign:

Push connects into a ManyChat sequence through a Thank-you message.

Competition Campaign:

Generate leads by incorporating a prize giveaway in a Linkedin message.

Lead Magnet Campaign:

Tie your lead magnet flow into a message to get subscribers from LinkedIn.

Send 3-5 follow up messages over 30-60 day span that give value, build trust, and transition into a conversation.

John Bellamy

Manuel Suarez: Top strategies to generate and nurture 2 Million messenger subscribers

If you’re obsessed with marketing, you’d love Manuel’s talk. He passed on all his subscriber building and revenue-boosting secrets around content and Messenger marketing. 

• Educate your audiences with content. You don’t have the right to sell to people if you don’t provide them value.
• Outsource what you can so you can focus on more strategic areas of your business. 

• Offer mini-courses and lead magnets inside Messenger to improve engagement and user experience. 
• Don’t put your ads in front of people who don’t have Messenger. You can toggle that setting in Business Manager. 

Ladies Who Rock: Movers and Shakers in the Chatbot Space

We were lucky to welcome all these AWESOME ladies to talk about how they built their own chat marketing companies. They covered everything from supporting other women in their ventures to Messenger bots and what it’s like to run a kick-ass business.

Life tips:

• Make sure you go to sleep at a normal time every night. Maintain a good diet. In order to perform better, you need to treat your body well. 
• Get a support system, whether it’s your spouse or group of Queens who love and support you. 
• You don’t have to do everything. Learn to say no and take time to be fully committed to your family. And the time to fully commit to your work. 
• Batch your work to get more done in a shorter time frame. How much can you get done in 20 minutes? 
• Make rules for yourself. For example, if you say you’re going to sleep at ten, go to sleep at ten.

Bot tips:

• End a bot conversation just like you would with your friends and family. Tell users what they should expect next from you so they know the interaction is over. Use can you simple closing statements like “Thanks! [Bot Name]” or “We’ll talk tomorrow”. — Natasha Takahashi
• Break your bots down. Wherever you can, cut your sequences back, organize them and put them into folders. — Kelly Mirabella
• Bring human interaction into your bot, for example, meet people in person or jump in live chat to have a conversation — Molly Mahoney
• Focus on growing an audience. The more people who see your content, the better for sales and engagement — Rachel Miller
• Segment, but don’t over segment. Future messages will be super relevant and you can reduce unsubscribes — Mackensie Liberman

Make your audience the hero. If you make your audience look good, feel good, and do better in life  

Kevin David: How to get to 6 figures and create a booming educational business!

If you’ve been on the fence about starting a YouTube channel, Kevin’s talk is for you. He really impressed us with his YouTube + ManyChat and deep-linking strategy. Follow his advice:  

• YouTube has over 1.9bn logged in monthly users and it’s the 2nd biggest social media platform.
• Every day people watch one billion hours of videos on YouTube and generate billions of views.
• Youtube is an incredibly profitable channel — it helped Kevin grow from a zero to 8-figure business in 18 months. 
• When you send traffic to an app, it typically goes to a mobile browser. Deep links redirect users right into the app itself. 
• 50% of mobile traffic to apps is lost. Deep-link into a specific point in your lead generation flow based on their journey. 
• Put your link EVERYWHERE! Youtube Tutorials, Facebook Groups, email lists, Ref URLS, and smart delays. 
• Talk with people across all communication mediums. Some people open every email, others open every Messenger.

It’s not the best person who wins, it’s the best known.

Kevin David

Steve Chou: Practical Examples (With Data Driven Results) On How To Use Messenger To 2X Your Physical And Digital Product Sales

Do you love girl scout cookies? Have you ever bought them in a chatbot? Then talk to Steve about how he sells both digital and physical products online. 

Should you go all-in on Facebook Messenger? 

• Email opt-in rates drop when you go all-in on Messenger. If your bot gets shut down, you’re in trouble. Don’t let your block rate go higher than 3%. 
• Even if you follow Facebook guidelines, you can still get banned if a lot of people block your bot. 
• Facebook is unpredictable and has burned many people, many times. As a result, Steve favors email but focuses on cross-pollinating between the Messenger and email.

eCommerce tips.

• Chat is the highest engagement channel right now
  • CTRs better than email by 5-20X 
  • CTRs better than push notifications by about 2X
• Browse abandonment flow is where someone is looking at a product. If they don’t buy, send them a picture with a link to instant purchase. 
• Use a customer win-back program. If someone hasn’t bought from you in 60 days, send them a coupon. Automatically applied.
• Send out receipts in Messenger instead of a confirmation email. A high amount of people go on to make another purchase. It also trains people to look at Messenger and be more open to future communications. 
• Offer a free gift on your check-out page that pushes people to Messenger. It can be anything from an ebook to a checklist. Whatever works for your audience. 
• Giveaways get the most Messenger subscribers. You can run an ongoing evergreen giveaway by using ManyChat’s randomizer tool. 
• After someone gives you an email, push them to a landing page. They are excited. Offer a bonus on the landing page that sends them to Messenger. 
• When running a webinar, tell people not to take notes. Instead, have them comment and in return, you’ll send them notes. 

Derric Hayine: Beyond Customer Service: How to track ROI from on-site chat for e-Commerce 

Many of us aren’t really sure how customer service ties back into ROI. Derric wrapped up our speakers’ sessions by showing us:

• Putting a chatbot in your eCommerce store is critical. If someone has a question and they get an answer right then and there, they’ll go somewhere else and buy.
• Forrester data reveals that site visitors who use live chat are 2.8x more likely to convert than those that don’t. 
• Additionally, from Intercom, one reply makes visitors 50% more likely to convert, 2 replies makes them 150% more likely to convert, and 6 or more messages with a prospect or customer can increase conversion rate by 250%.

Pre-sales

• Pre-sales is about getting the customer to buy for the first time. 
• Imagine a sales rep in a department store. They guide you through aisles, take you to the dressing room, show you what’s on sale. A digital equivalent can help you sell more online. 
• Sales is one department that a B2B organization always has, but Ecommerce merchants typically don’t. Bots can act as a sales department for your eCommerce store. 
• Companies typically send live chat queries to email. This lowers customer service ratings. You’re better off not even having a live chat option. 
• By adding a bot, but not actually having a chat, you make customers unhappy.

Do not put a live chat tool on your site if you don’t have anyone to operate it. 

Derric Hayine

And last but not least, a 6 step strategy to building a customer service chatbot

Step 1: Build a detailed FAQ or knowledge base section.

Step 2: Create a detailed chatbot that can answer and mitigate the most common questions.

Step 3: Create a sales training guide for your team.

Step 4: Use the users’ purchase and browsing behavior to help indicate a pre-sale or post-sale ticket and segment your support team into pre-sales and post-sales to best allocate the ticket.

Step 5: Have humans ready to respond to tickets within 90 seconds in real-time.

Step 6: Profit.

ManyChat Product Marketing Panel: Ask ManyChat (almost) anything

To wrap up the final day at Conversations 2019, the ManyChat product team took the limelight for a Q & A with our audience! Super exciting. 

• One important feature we’re looking at is pixeling people inside ManyChat.
• We’re working hard on releasing protected templates to everyone really soon! For those who don’t know, a protected template is a way to keep work safe from client tamperings. 
• Video + ManyChat? There’s a limitation on video size because the file is served by Facebook. We can’t get CTR or view data. 
• Expect more and more videos to be used as a part of chat marketing.
• More integrations are COMING! Just send our team a request and they’ll make it happen. 
• eCommerce is very important to ManyChat. So we’re investing in major integrations with other top platforms like WooCommerce. 
• Concerned about pricing? We aren’t planning to stay at a super-friendly price. 
• The timeframe for Latin and South America is coming soon. We need to focus on countries where we have more clients. We also need to study the rules of each country so you don’t get banned. 

So long and see you next year at Conversations 2020!

Want to see what else went down this year? Check out our recaps on Agency Day and Conversations Day 2.