Email has a bad reputation—and it’s only getting worse. It eats up your precious time at work and your days off. Worst of all, if you search online for “how to manage email” there are a plethora of suggestions, but seemingly no comprehensive solution.
So, many people are ditching email as much as possible for a new and shiny platform … You guessed it—it’s Facebook Messenger. As a consumer, messenger is an amazing solution. Not only does it let you communicate with the people you need in real-time, but it can also help you order an Uber, send payments, mute conversations and much more.
From an advertising perspective, Facebook Messenger is a mostly untapped goldmine. Nearly 1.2 billion monthly users are on the platform, most of which are very active. For example, Hubspot found that content sent on Facebook Messenger has an 80 percent open rate and a 13 percent click-through rate. Comparatively, Facebook Messenger outperforms email by 242 to 619 percent.
Here are five reasons Facebook Messenger will one day outperform email:
1) Customers Love Live Chat
There’s nothing like the convenience of online chatting. Customers love to engage with companies in real-time, so they can get the information they need.
It’s much faster to type a question into a chat box than it is to create a whole email regarding the same question. Additionally, chat it’s private. People are skeptical about email security, and Facebook encrypts their Messenger chats. Users often feel safer knowing that their information is protected by end-to-end encryption.
Consumers are bombarded by redundant messaging and pre-recorded advertising messages every day. On Facebook Messenger, things are a bit different. Even if someone is chatting with a bot, they receive real feedback in seconds that’s catered to their needs. This is far more alluring than impersonal emails.
2) Chatbots can Handle Volume
According to Rory Witt, Digital Strategist at DigiMar, “A key marketing component of Facebook Messenger is its chatbot integration, which allows you to automate responses based on particular comments or questions someone might type when they click on the ‘Send Message’ button.”
Witt and other industry leaders realize that most brands won’t hire a full-time Facebook staff to simply monitor their Facebook Messenger account—and they don’t have to. With the right chatbot programmer, your business can take advantage of automatic replies.
If you’ve yet to experience Facebook Messenger bots and their capabilities, chat with Niki Bot and Poncho the weather cat today to see what they can do.
3) Facebook as a Form
Digital marketers are no strangers to online forms. After all, they one of the main ways marketers secure their leads. There’s one main issue with this technique, though, there’s too many jumping-off points.
If a customer isn’t already on your website, you’ll need to redirect them to your landing page so they can input their information. Then, something is typically sent to them via email—yet another step in the process.
With Facebook Messenger, everything can happen on Facebook. Instead of having a user go back and forth between platforms, they can opt-in directly on Facebook Messenger. A chatbot can ask them all of the questions that are on a general form and provide them with the content they want in the message.
4) Voice and Video Capabilities
Some—but not all—customers like he anonymity. Those who do can use Facebook Messenger’s chat function, those who don’t can use Facebook Messenger’s voice and video options.
Despite technological advances, some customers want to talk with a real person. Furthermore, to some, hearing a real voice is nice, but having a face-to-face interaction is amazing. At the end of the day, seeing the smiling face of a customer service agent can be superior to any other experience.
With email, there’s no way to really capture users in the moment and connect with them deeply. With Facebook Messenger, you can respond to requests and engage customers through video at a near-instantaneous rate.
Here’s a good way to picture what this might look like: say you’re a mobile company that recently sent a new phone to a new customer. When the phone arrives, you can send the customer a Facebook Message and offer to video chat with him or her to help set up the phone.
5) Messenger Ads
There two main types of Facebook Messenger ads—destination ads and sponsored messages. Similar to a regular Facebook advertisement, a destination ad appears in the news feed. What’s a bit different, though, is that when someone clicks on the ad, they’re redirected to Facebook Messenger, so they can chat with your business. Again, this is beneficial because the customer’s experience is managed seamlessly on one platform.
Sponsored messages are the other type of Facebook Messenger advertising, and they shares some similarities with email marketing. You send someone a sponsored message, and it files into their inbox. Again, like email, people who don’t want to see your content can simply unsubscribe from your audience right then and there. Unlike email, however, businesses can only send sponsored content to people who have messaged them in the past.
In a way, these ads serve as re-engagement or remarketing attempts. Digital marketers have a second chance to connect with visitors who might not take action otherwise. They can remind a visitor of why they should purchase while increasing brand awareness in a highly cost-effective way.
Move Over, Email
The days of email marketing are slowing down as conversational commerce rises to popularity. Facebook Messenger offers a new, integrated way of connecting with customers. Not only can they contact you on their own time, but you can advertise to them like never before.
Facebook Messenger is fast, personalized and convenient. Instead of opening their email, clicking on a link, redirecting to a site and searching for the info they need, consumers can figure out everything they need to know via a quick conversation on Facebook Messenger.
As of now, there’s still a place for email marketing, but it’s slowly falling by the wayside. Facebook ads are simply too powerful to compete with, and they’re producing better results and ROI as they improve over time.