The Exchanges

Q I've talked a lot about the reasons for this. Let's talk practical. Give me an example of someone who's actually using ManyChat to reach their customers and how he's doing, you know, as a business, not like, is he having interesting conversations?

A Sure, sure. So, we have this, uh, just messenger alchemist, uh, Sean, uh, Patrick Simpson, who, uh, gets, he, he got over 40,000, uh, messenger subscribers on his messenger list, and, uh, basically what he does is he uses our growth tools, and inside ManyChat there is a section that allows you to, like, convert visitor, block visitors into messenger subscribers, uh, like, links, uh, Facebook ads into Messenger subscribers, and he uses those to start an interaction, and Facebook has this policy of 24 hours after the first interaction, not the first, actually, the last interaction, so every time a person interacts with your bot, you have this 24 hours to basically message them for free and about anything. So it can be promotional, it can be ads, After 24 hours, it cannot be ads, so it's, it's kind of like the policy that Facebook has right now. So he has this brilliant, like, sequences and, uh, interactive messages that he uses to drive traffic back to his, um, store, uh, online store, and to actually do sales. So one of the campaigns that he did, he, um, um, spent, like, 2000 on ads and, uh, made 11,000 in sales in just, like, a few months. Days. So, it was really, like, the ROI that you can get on new marketing channels is just crazy.

AI assessment note: “spent, like, 2000 on ads and, uh, made 11,000 in sales”

Q it to your home, your office, or somewhere else? I pick the one, right? So here's the thing that I asked you when you first got excited about it. I said, great. Why not just go to eight hundredflowers.com? I mean, if it's, if the whole thing is so good that you can actually just see a web view, why not just be in the web to view the web?

A Because, because it's about the hybrid experience, because you want, uh, the, everything into, inside of one interaction, so the chat thread with the business becomes a, uh, a hub for communication with that business, and if you want certain aspects of that business, you can get them via the menu, via the keywords, or something, and they're gonna send you the links to those, like, Uh, to the, uh, for example, buying the flowers for your wife. Uh, but, uh, you don't have to remember the website. You have to register because you're, when you started the conversation, you already registered. Um, and for the business, it's a much more, uh, convenient way to communicate with customers because if you're, if you have visitors on websites, those visitors are not your, like, They're not your customers yet. You don't know them. You know who they are. You don't know, like, what's, you don't have a connection with them. But if they're in Messenger, everyone that visits your bot is an active connection, and you can, like, interact with those people.

AI assessment note: “Because, because it's about the hybrid experience, because you want, uh, the, everything inside”

Q of your points, what part of your message people are not paying attention to and which part they're paying attention to heavily. All right. And I'm imagining what he does then is after somebody goes through that, they then are in a sequence where I think at first what he did was every day he messaged them, sometimes multiple times a day, and then he backed off of that. Sorry?

A Yeah, he was just, he was just experimenting with it, and, uh, it was, uh, he tried some, some more aggressive, less aggressive stuff, and, uh, it was, like, it's really important to stay within, like, the Facebook guidelines, so after 24 hours you can only send content that people subscribe to, And that cannot be, like, promotional or ads, so the way that you do messenger marketing is you, uh, get the person through an ad to your bot, 24 hours to, like, do something that you want, anything that you want, actually, and then you need to, that person to subscribe that person to something, and to get his explicit permission to message you, uh, to message that person, um, uh, And after that, basically, like, every time the person interacts with the bot, you can do, like, the 24 hours are open again. So, uh, he did, like, a lot of experiments, and, uh, some of them were really aggressive, uh, and then he got backlash from the people, because Messenger is really invasive, and, like, businesses should actually, uh, pay attention to that, because it's really easy for a person to unsubscribe inside Messenger. It's just, like, swipe right, Swipe left, delete conversation, and the business can never message that person again. So it's not like email or SMS where you can just upload your list to another provider or to the same provider, frankly, and like just start messaging them again. Tha…

AI assessment note: “Yeah, he was just, he was just experimenting with it, and, uh, it was”

Q No. What did you learn from 500 startups that you couldn't learn on your own?

A Um, I think it's a whole experience that was very valuable. The network, the mentors, the having 50 other teams running alongside with you, pushing, like, their limits, and it just motivates you. Um, the lesson that I couldn't have learned myself, I think just getting the honest, raw, honest feedback Is, is, is really hard for a founder. Founders tend to be in a reality distortion field when you have to be there. Like, you have to, uh, believe in the vision against all the odds, and, uh, if you don't do that, like, you're gonna, like, the first bump on the road, you're gonna, uh, give up. Uh, but that can backfire. When there are things that you should pay attention to, and you shouldn't ignore, um, that are in the business model, or, or in the go-to-market strategy, etc. And that was really valuable.

AI assessment note: “The lesson that I couldn't have learned myself, I think just getting the honest, raw, honest feedback”

Q What's the kind of content that gives people a reason to message multiple times a day?

A They're, uh, they're talking to, um, their audience is, uh, young adults, um, and health. So, uh, here is, um, a, uh, content about how to stay, uh, healthy during the flu season. Here's, uh, how to, uh, what's, what's the benefits of apples or, like, Like, health-related content for, uh, young people, and they're just like, they, they have the schedule. Like, hey guys, do you want to get two daily tips, uh, on, uh, in the morning and in the evening about your health? And people subscribe to that, and they send this out. So, it's like having that many messages. Of course your CTRs are gonna go lower, because, like, people get, like, people will only read the things that they are interested in, but, like, 10% over 14 messages in a week, like, that's insane, that's, like, I don't know, 10 or 20 times higher than email, and if you're thinking about, like, the, uh, other side of the, um, uh, the other side of the equation, like, uh, I don't know, spectrum, um, there is this, uh, We have one client, it's a music label, a record label. They sent out one broadcast every week, so a weekly broadcast, uh, with a, uh, uh, 32nd preview of an upcoming single from their record label, and it's an electronic dance music label, so they put out a lot of singles out.

AI assessment note: “Like, health-related content for, uh, young people... do you want to get two daily tips”

Q Even websites. You're saying instead of interacting with a company on the web, I'm going to choose to go through chat?

A I think if you were, it depends on where the interaction starts. So if you're looking for something, for sure you're going to use Google or, like, apps that you're used to, um, but if you're starting an interaction from inside, from offline, um, that will, I think, for sure go through Messenger. So Messenger codes, just like we were in F-A-T, um, a few weeks ago, and, uh, Facebook did some, uh, really cool announcements. Uh, one of them was the introduction of parametric codes, and the parametric code reader that is embedded inside the camera, uh, that is accessible right now with just a swipe inside. So a parametric code, I, I'm sure that a lot of people heard about QR codes. Those are like Those, uh, square barcodes that you can scan and go to, like, contain some information. Um, parametric codes inside Messenger are, like, Messenger-owned proprietary, uh, QR codes, and basically what they do is they start an interaction with a bot, uh, but, uh, the beauty of the code is that it contains a payload, like, kind of like a ref, uh, Um, variable, uh, inside the URL. So every time you see, there can be multiple codes. Imagine, like, you go into a retail store. There is, uh, five, uh, posters, and each one of them promotes, like, some, um, product, and they have all parametric codes, so you can just scan the code, and that code will take you to the correct, uh, to the same bot, but …

AI assessment note: “it depends on where the interaction starts. So if you're looking for something”

Q they know where I am, et cetera. But can't you basically get that stuff on the web today? They may not know my name. Which is fine, but they say, they know I'm in San Francisco if I'm in San Francisco by my IP address, and they know my address because I'm gonna use Apple Pay and all the, and not all the phone, but Android's doing something similar, right?

A Sure. So, so, uh, the, the correct, like, if you're trying to, like, um, I'm not trying to say, like, that bots are gonna replace websites. That's not the point that I'm trying to make. I'm trying to make a point that, of course, businesses will need websites because there is a lot of traffic, organic traffic, and, like, um, the whole infrastructure works this way right now. Uh, but what I'm trying to say is that, Businesses will start, you'll see much more conversations between customers and businesses in Messenger, and that is going to become one of the, um, normal ways to communicate with businesses, uh, throughout, like, in, in, in five years. You're gonna expect a business to be on Messenger, and to be able to reach it, and to be able to do basic stuff inside their bot, uh, that are, uh, Um, business related to them, and to reach their customer support through bot, to reach their sales through the bot, etc. It's gonna become, like, the way that you're right now perceiving the phone, that you can phone basically any business, um, it's gonna become the same for Messenger. That's, that's the vision that we have.

AI assessment note: “I'm not trying to say, like, that bots are gonna replace websites.”