6 Facebook Messenger Marketing Tools to Connect With Your Audience

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More than ever, people are connecting with brands through social media. This is great, as it allows companies to build relationships with their customers. Often, this occurs through private messaging. However, this requires resources. Today we’ll look at six Facebook Messenger marketing tools to help make this both cheaper and easier.

What are Facebook Messenger Marketing Tools?

A chatbot is a form of AI which mimics human speech through text. When it comes to Facebook marketing, there are two kinds of chatbots. The first can only respond to certain commands. The other will analyze language patterns, learn from responses, and improve.

Chatbot software can be used for a number of tasks. The most obvious is customer service. Using a Facebook chatbot to respond to simple customer queries allows your staff to spend more time on urgent issues. This in turn will reduce both costs and response times. You can also use Facebook Messenger for outbound marketing. This might mean selling products, like traditional email marketing, or even delivering personalized content.

Here’s a quick overview of our six Facebook Messenger marketing tools. We’ll go into a little more detail on each below.

SoftwareStarting FromBest Thing About ItBiggest Problem
MobileMonkeyFree.Free version is very feature heavy.Not suitable for customer service.
ManyChatFree.Impressive WYSIWYG interface.Pricing structure is based on audience size
Smooch$145 a month.Cross-platform functionality.Expensive.
ChatFuel$25 a month.Auto-respond to comments.More limited marketing functions.
SequelFree.Incredibly easy to use.Unclear pricing for premium version.
Botsify$50 a month.Website integration.Less suitable for outbound marketing.

As you can see, each has it’s pros and cons. There’s also a fairly wide spread of prices. That begs the question, which Facebook Messenger chatbot software is the right one for you? Let’s take at each in a little more detail.

Facebook Messenger Marketing Tools

MobileMonkey

MobileMonkey is one of three of today’s Facebook Messenger marketing tools which can be accessed for free. Unlike many ‘free versions’ out there, this one is a fully usable. Indeed, you can easily set-up simple chat bots with no coding knowledge

Some of the specific features here make MobileMonkey particularly good for eCommerce. This includes integration with the major platforms in this area, including Shopify. I also enjoyed the ‘Click-to-Messenger Ads’ feature. This has great potential to boost the conversions of your Facebook ads, by enticing your audience to launch messenger and reach out.

The only drawback here is that MobileMonkey is specifically aimed at marketing. That means it’s not totally up to scratch for service functions. It’s great if you want to send out seems of marketing messages, but not much good if you need your interactions to go any further.

ManyChat

ManyChat

Similarly, ManyChat offers a free version. This however, is a little more limited. To get the most out of it, you’ll probably want to move onto the Pro version. The pricing of this is based on your page’s number of active subscribers. This allegedly works out at around $15 per month to engage 1000 users.

The real strength of ManyChat is its ease of use. There’s a simple drag and drop editor which allows you to create ads and widgets to direct users to your chatbot. There’s also cross platform integration, so you can let your audience know about new content on your Youtube channel or RSS feed directly in Messenger.

ManyChat offers enough functionality to work as a proper live chat tool too. It’s easy to program in response based on keywords used by your customers. You can also add default responses for situations you haven’t accounted for.

Smooch

Smooch

Smooch is a different beast entirely. It’d have to be for $145 per month. Indeed, it’s certainly more of an enterprise-level tool than the others. It’s also more of a pure chatbot than a dedicated Facebook Messenger marketing tool.

In fact, Smooch’s live chat API can integrate with most direct messaging platforms, including Twitter, iMessage and WhatsApp. Your sales staff can then interact across all of these channels from a single platform.

Your customer’s profile can also be saved to a central CRM. That provides an opportunity to utilize the data you gained from the Facebook Messenger chatbot software in your marketing efforts. For example, you could pitch leads to a webinar you hosted with your webinar software.

ChatFuel

ChatFuel

The second more traditional chatbot we’ll discuss today is ChatFuel. It still offers many of the functions of the dedicated Facebook Messenger marketing tools. However, its biggest strength is the ability to create very convincing chatbots for as little as $25 per month.

You can construct these with no coding knowledge. This can be done either by creating set responses based on keywords or by using conversation ‘blocks’. These blocks contain leading questions or calls to action. That way you can control the direction of the conversation, and ensure that your bot has all of the necessary answers.

The options for multimedia messaging are very impressive too. You can leverage both visual and audio media to give your customers a more authentic experience. ChatFuel can also be used to respond to comments on your Facebook page, using the same methods as in Messenger.

Sequel

Sequel

Of the free platforms, Sequel impressed me the most. Firstly, this is because of the ease of getting started. There is a wealth of industry-specific template for creating chatbots on offer. You can begin with one of these and then tailor it to your needs by simply dragging boxes around a flowchart.

As a pure chatbot, it has some pretty advanced features. Most notably, it uses Natural Language Processing. This is a type of machine learning, which allows Sequel to learn from each interaction and improve over time.

It also has the main functions you’d expect all decent Facebook Messenger marketing tools. These include broadcasting to your whole network and auto-sharing new content. It also allows you to send out polls and quizzes, which are really great for engaging your network.

Botsify

Botsify

Finally, we have Botsify. Starting from $50 per month, this one is aimed purely at customer support. With customizable templates, you can have a working chatbot in a matter of minutes. This will then let you cut out the costs of running a large customer service team.

Botsify gives your customers access to 24/7 support. If for any reason they need to speak to a human, you’ll receive a push notification. That means an agent can get to them ASAP. You can also use the same bot on your website as you do in Messenger. That way, all of your customers have access to the same great service.

However, as Botsify is aimed purely at service, it lacks marketing functionalities. That means that it doesn’t have any outbound marketing features. As such it can’t be used for the likes of eCommerce or distributing content.

Final Thoughts

We’ve looked at a range of different Facebook Messenger marketing tools and chatbots today. As I pointed out already, they come at a broad range of different price points. I’d be hard pressed to pick a favourite, as they’re all useful for such different contexts. Some are great as service tools but lack marketing functions, and vice-versa. If I had to pick a best all-round though, it would probably have to be Sequel.

For more useful tools for online business owners, check out our guide to the best social media plugins, and best landing page builders. You might also want to check out our roundup of the video marketing tools.

Hope you like our content. If you feel you have a solution that should be on this list, shoot us an email. We want to make our articles as comprehensive as possible.

About the author

Nicholas Prins

I'm the founder of Launch Space. We work with global companies helping them scale lead generation through SEO and content marketing. Head over to the homepage to find out more.

By Nicholas Prins