How Can You Humanize Messenger Automation? ManyChat & Mari Smith

hello friends greetings Mari Smith here I am so happy to be with you today I've been looking forward to this broadcast for quite a while and I am honored to team up with the good folks at mini chat we are going to be talking all about how you can humanize your messenger automation your chat BOTS I know there's a lot of mixed opinions out there and I have a very special guest with me today we're gonna dive in and talk about how to bring that more human element please welcome Setzer II he's the CMO of many chat and many chat I said good morning hey good morning my and many chat is the number one chat bot platform on the messenger platform did I mix and mix that up the number one bought platform attractive yeah so and I've been a big fan of you

guys for several years and you guys have been actually pioneering messenger marketing for a couple of years which I've really enjoyed the journey that you've been on because there's it's kind of an interesting arena and with this whole year now we're eight months into 2019 and Mark Zuckerberg kind did this whole pivot earlier this year and said the future is private and so they're absolutely doubling down on messenger marketing of course bringing in Instagram direct and whatsapp but predominantly talk about messenger today or just messaging automation and so I know that in your experience as CMO of many chat said that you've had a lot of different questions and different like conversations that come up around what is this whole thing with chat bots and AI and messenger automation so let's dive into our discussion here yeah absolutely no you're spot-on you know the Mark Zuckerberg f8 Kino was super exciting I mean as a messenger marketing company I don't think I could have written that note for him any better like if somebody had said hey could you write marks keynote for f8 I would have said okay the future Facebook is messaging and that's what he did it was amazing you know for those of us who have been beating the messenger drum and the messaging whether it's whatsapp Instagram direct in the future SMS and an iMessage for those of us who have been essentially saying the world is going to mess up a the world is already in many market you know it was a great validation and really you know just a great you know sign of things to come so the were super excited mini chat we're gonna continue to sort of you know filling a great product and you know watching the excitement of as well but you don't grieve if I just interject right quick there so folks watching so FA does some of you probably know about it some might know f8 is Facebook's annual developer conference and it's held around April May every year and as Sid is talking about immediately following sucks keynote they brought up Asha Sharma who's a now head of messenger and they're doing all kinds of things was messenger they're literally talking about rebuilding it from the ground up so it's the world's fastest lightest messaging platform and they're building what they call a social network around the messaging platform so marketers pay attention this is where it's at this is the future we're going to be talking about right here so yeah and this is a great segue into our first

question because I think the most common question we get is hey where's this messenger thing going where it's messenger marketing going should I invest in it you know nobody sort of asks those questions and email came around because I think email had just a very natural sort of translation to the mail that they always knew I get mail I send mail I put it in the post office it takes three days to get there but whatever I'm familiar with the concept now there's email it sort of flies over the wires and gets to somebody instantly so people didn't touch in it as much but with messenger and Messenger marketing you know people are asking he's this thing here to stay what's it all about where is it going I would say that's probably one of the biggest questions we see you know amongst people were maybe not as familiar with it yet and I'm just wondering is that something you're your community and what would you say to that yes said I think honestly it's very early days I know many chats been around for a few years and you guys have a wealth of experience being the number one platform here but the thing is that it's there's a big kind of shakeout going on between consumers and businesses because those that are actually getting it right the marketers the businesses the brands they've got this really perfect balance between providing solutions like answers speedy real-time answers right via BOTS and then all the conversations element of it bringing in the human beings as soon as necessary as soon as the person as may be needing a more complex answer or just wants to talk to a human and I think that's the downfall where marketers are maybe and we're going to get into this in a little bit just you know maybe like kind of treating messenger as like oh great I have another channel that I can just push like don't do that because I tell you what don't subscribe the subscribers will unsubscribe in a heartbeat if we overdo it you know so anyway to your question if where's it going to really anchor this point that Zuckerberg is on this mantra beat knees drum the Futurist private just yesterday we saw that they're now gonna be bringing an Instagram direct to the messenger platform that this was already announced like in the beginning of the year with that whole interoperability so folks that don't know what that is it's basically if you prefer messenger and you want a message someone who prefers Instagram or whatsapp it's like it's all inter intertwined and you can you know message people in whatever app you want so that's really going to be starting to happen very soon so yeah this is it this is the future right here this does privacy focused future that zach is

building yeah absolutely I think the tagline he gave was to move from the digital town square to the digital living room I think that's super exciting for marketers because on one hand you know anybody can go and start get their microphone and start shouting in the count square or the digital Time Square and walk Square in San Francisco you'll see a lot of shopping going on but the digital living room really exciting concept because you are now essentially getting access to the very intimate the very private sort of emotions and conversation that people have and there it's not going to be for everybody I don't think every marketer wear the bullhorn is going to be let in but if you've got something valuable to offer that they care about you actually have a much better forum if Zuckerberg vision is sort of realized so it's super exciting from that standpoint you know what are you reminding I've said here is that so in my book I wrote many years ago now the new relationship marketing as a term has been around since the 1980s and that's where it's focused on the long term relationship of a customer that as opposed to traditional sales and marketing is more transactional focused right close the deal get the sale move on so the new part that I put in my book is this digital component is how do we do relationship marketing through digital transactions through digital channels I mean and that's the main key right there as you say that the marketers are really going to win the day is that they're not losing that human touch and that really kind of having that intimacy you're absolutely right that it's like it okay if we're now going into the living room we're going into the one-on-one communications with their mobile device and I say a messenger conversation is like having somebody's cell phone number and being able to text message don't because it's that intimate all right so what would

you know just building on that theme about intimacy and sort of one-on-one what would be your vision for a great experience like how do you like if you could design the perfect marketing experience what would it be okay all right so glad we're gonna talk about this SID because I gotta say that I personally in all Jon's parents my friend I am like working now what is Mari Smith's brand of messaging looked like and I've had a few different goes at it and I personally am kind of right there with a lot of folks are like ooh you know how's this really gonna work and I am I just no way I'm gonna use it for like just broadcasting so my vision and this is for me everybody's gonna work out for it's good for their own brand is a highly engaging interactive to the nth degree fun I was entertaining even a little bit of humor idea that my audience would actually look forward to interacting with my bar and they would come to messenger and go I wonder what cool tips and ideas and hacks and breaking news and fun stuff mari has for me today buh buh oh that there she is and it's like they wouldn't dream of unsubscribing now it did my vision for my brand and of course it's gonna be different for every company you know yeah a lot of what she said has you know

it's all about having some invaluable to say hey if you have something valuable to say do your research and who your audience is and what they want to hear from you then you're gonna have that great engagement and you're not going to get those unsubscribes then I think everybody can sort of learn from that from what you're already doing probably write it yeah well it's interesting because what's kind of being fodder for that vision is just really listening and looking and seeing like what kinds of questions are people asking me like all the time whether it's on Twitter or Instagram or Facebook is like private-public like there's so many areas where people want to maybe clarify some urban legends myths and some information that's going around it isn't quite accurate about Facebook or the family of apps or that we get a lot of requests for technical issues and you know people you know locked out or they're in facebook jail or lost a password or whatever it might be a lot of tech support they literally think I work for Facebook so I know that I can handle a lot of that with a very well program chat bot right if you're looking for tech support click here give them all kinds of answers and solutions but more importantly like you were saying as um like making sure that we're dialogue do you think we're talking about this in the green room about dialoguing with the people who are your prospects who are your customers and but still being nice and giving value to those who will probably never be your customers like in my case people looking for tech support I can just you know provide as much as I can guide them go over here to the Facebook help and then you know move on so yeah that's that so you know I get

asked a lot from people you know Oh what are you doing these days where you working and I tell them and a lot of people will they're like oh a chatbot I don't want to talk to a robot I person and there are a lot of people that sort of get annoyed or they have a little maybe a mental resistance to well because this thing really helped me or is it going to be able to answer my question maybe they've had a bad experience in the past you know all technology evolves with those people over what would you say to sort of there's a population out there that are just not ready octa you know in a more automated way mmm-hmm yeah I'm seeing some great comments here our good friend Molly here she says know your community that's so true it's very important please bring back I said there we go put the comment in the screen and I lost it for a moment okay so love this question here I said you're right because I know like behind the scenes people will tell me that I subscribe to you like half a dozen BOTS and then they're like I go overwhelming an unsubscribe right so and that's fine it's just like it's still we're still kind of in a very much a testing ground as marketers and businesses and I think one of the main keys and I've heard this a lot I've seen this a lot is the number one is to never pretend that it's not a bought don't pretend like it's a real human because people will sniff that out in a nanosecond right it's a setup for failure right there so be realistic just we were talking about this offline - just last night I was reading a David counsels book called conversational marketing and this whole very me they're close cousins relationship marketing conversational marketing they're just very much in the same camp and this caught this concept of like asking open-ended questions might be an area now obviously if you're set up for that if you've got the ability to then program in for some keywords and derive them to begin a conversation maybe it was a salesperson but really the thing is about elevating the experience someone else I want to cite is I just got back literally late last night from speaking at the impact live event and Brian Halligan CEO of HubSpot he was a speaker there as well and what I loved about his talk it's like oh my god everybody's talking about disruption disruption and he's like I think that word is like really overused seems like machine learning and AI it's like these they get overused and watered-down but what Brian did Halligan the CEO of HubSpot he talked about experience disruption and I put down my notes for this particular conversation because what if we could disrupt the experience of people interacting through chat BOTS such that as I mentioned earlier with my own vision for my bot which didn't take a lot of programming is to really have people feel like elevated and enjoyful and in love interacting with the bot and I just think that's a real key takeaway therefore for marketers to Danann is like how can you just stand out and really put the focus on the end user on the prospect the customer as opposed to making it about you pushing your message out I love that

experience if you think about that last night on your plane ride over nobody no rest for the weary for Mari I know my body clock was like went to bed at 3:00 a. m. oh my gosh well I don't worry what you're gonna do we appreciate the warrior spirit I love that I love disrupt the experience I think that's exactly what we're trying to do we're you know the experience till now has been a passive sort of blast you know I mean if you think about a website right it's just sort of one size fits all it's a blast experience emails are a blast experience landing pages aren't blast experience and I think you know I'd love to get your thoughts on this I think marketers have to some extent maybe being a little aggressive with aggressive but they've been sort of you know they've taken what they know with email and landing pages and they sort of put that into messenger so it becomes this sort of one size fits all you know let's just blast stuff out ya know and I know Facebook recently you know and I sort of clamped down on this stuff a little bit you know they've made this might be getting a little technical but I'll be quick know what's called subscription messaging but the ability to send regular content to your customers they've really clamp down on the rules around that they can do it in fact to it and they're just made it harder because I think they're trying to sort of push marketers away from this one-size-fits-all blasting and yeah you know given that you're sort of the good a little bit on relationship marketing room I mean what would your advice be to those folks and do you feel like marketers have become too aggressive yeah so I love this topic to said because there's a reason that Facebook really implemented that rule I believe it was as of July 31st if you don't know what we're talking about your friends is like you go into your Facebook page on desktop go into your settings look under messaging and you'll see there's a place there to apply to get permission to send what are called subscription-based broadcast no that's set up for let's say you have a an astrology daily tip or weather app or excuse me or something that would be non promotional is not that you know you have the permission from pays Facebook to actually just like hey sign up for my stuff that's actually the opposite of that and that's why in essence this rule is there because the last thing that Facebook was is to put anything in between the consumer the user's a billion plus one and a half billion that use messenger and businesses where there's revenue there and obviously there's also com commerce there's conversations that can really help more businesses want to use these apps in platforms and so it's a it's kind of a delicate area to manage that relationship so yes go ahead and sign up for your subscription messages but make sure that you use that very carefully the challenge here with the aggressiveness is I think that some marketers have come into the chat bot world and they're treating CHOP messaging conversations or broadcasts just like email and like you said earlier said that that's push marketing it's not an intimate experience email is not it's a little more infant intimate than you know a public group chat because it's just one-on-one but it's not interactive it's not two-way it's like here read my message but the last thing we want to do is that so I know Andrew Warner Academy I think it's a good friend of your guys mini chat and I quoting Andrew here that he says chat will eventually overtake email as the most popular way for businesses to reach customers I just think it's brilliant you know what because it's like we live in an instant gratification world universe people want short simple and I know that like the Millennials and the Jen's ease 21 and under they don't even bother setting up their voicemail they are all about the short text the short messages back and forth emojis you know so as businesses if we can adopt that kind of strategy that the more intimate and short way forward and I think really a way that people can get started here said is to start with a very simple bot just about like and like I was talking about earlier with my own audience study your inbox your current like Facebook page messenger and other areas maybe or Twitter DM your Instagram DM LinkedIn damn even and look at what are the frequently asked questions what is your audience your community your customer what do they already want maybe for a certain type of business they just want directions and pricing and product information that's super easy to program the set up maybe you have a more complicated business and people might want more in-depth discussions which is where you're going to go ahead and let lead them down a path that will get them to talk to a human quicker what do you think about

that no absolutely and that's something that we've always emphasized that you sort of need this smart blend of automation and human yeah you really can't expect the automation side to be this fix all for everything but at the same time you're never as a small business going to be able to scale if everything needs a conversation right you don't have a call center like those bigger companies with a thousand people waiting to answer chats or emails or phone call so you need that sort of something that can sort of go back and forth so you're answering the questions that matter and sort of automating the ones that are just building people up to the point where they need you I think that's definitely something we reach I do think that messaging will take or email much faster than we think our min well I mean internally here at mini chat we don't use any email like almost non-existent I emailed at you yeah because we're part of two different you know companies but internally 95 99 percent of my communication is on slack yeah and short messages and it's emojis and it's memes and if 10 years ago you had told me the future of American business or corporate communication is memes and emojis and short men the business I would have said you're crazy why should this stuff to my dad you be like what are you guys doing over there get serious like this is not work so and that's you know that's inside of like you know stock of course one of the fastest growing enterprise software companies a long time yeah and that is you know taking over corporate messaging taking over corporate communication so you know the roadmap is already there yeah you know it sort of it's a trail that's already been shredded on and I think it's not a matter of when sorry if it's a matter of when that has become the de-facto way we talk to businesses so I think we just all need to be prepared on our gonna facilitate those conversations for the best way possible I think you bring our credo you brought up a great point about humanizing and relationships I think that's maybe the next step it's not something I've not a ton about but so I would love to hear your perspective it feels like the next sort of step for marketers to up their game from sort of where we are today to sort of you know maybe ninja level of messenger marketing yeah you know what's interesting said I was really thinking about this um I really in some ways I wish we could create a different name than bought or cat bought or even AI or machine learning because it's not even artificial it's programmed by humans okay yeah and then it can learn but it's like right remember the old dating myself here but the old acronym guy go GI geo is garbage in garbage out you did good out right so the poor human experience on the if somebody's like not having an optimal experience through interacting with a chat bar it's not because of the BA like you know don't shoot the messenger haha pun intended right but it's like it's actually it's the humans that have programmed it like we need to go wait a minute how can we put ourselves and our customers shoes as I say I was really just mentioned a conversation of marketing terrific book just came out by David counsel and there was a part in there he says you know what the solution is simple that we we got we let ourselves just go a little bit crazy where we were all over and just obsessed with data and analytics and tracking every detail that we forgot about the people we're serving but the solution is simple and this goes for messenger marketing as well that we just need to get back to basics as marketers and sales people and we need to return to the core of what bought the buying process and the business process is it's a conversation between buyer and and that I think is one of the key takeaways here it's like not about you being a marketer in pushing that is so old-school it's like being an opening being a context being and being available for hey mr. prospect mrs. prospect how can I serve you what's on your mind today how can we solve your problems oh actually what we offer does all you tell of your problems let's help walk through that process

absolutely I love that so are there any examples out there people who are doing this well like are there what's the inspiration where you learn what's like oh my gosh I honestly said this is my goal is to have a list of amazing chatbot examples I've asked some of my community to submit some and instill really being in a shakeout there's what I was trying to find his name and I had subscribed him some time ago he does like real estate leads he does a really great job we were talking offline a bit about you had mentioned and ponds cream about interacting with a bot and its latent gonna make a recommendation based on your skin type I know Sephora cosmetics does a great job with like setting up a beauty consultation that's on the kind of the brand level I want to give a shout out to actually a couple of fellow speakers I believe that are coming to the conversations conference that will mention that in a minute is Callie noble Mirabella and Carrie goshawk they do a really great job of hopping in with real humans I've interacted with both of their BOTS excuse me and within a few seconds or like oh hey it's really me here and you know I do my best to do the same and sometimes with volume that can be challenging though and I think that's really the way of the future is if you specially if you're a personality based brand like myself is but regardless of the size of your business depending on how you want to scale right if messaging and messenger and we're going to include Instagram direct and whatsapp in this conversation if that's for sure the future which we already know it is then where you're going to have your sweet spot is deploying a team which you can eventually grow a very well-trained customers Sage's Oh could be our sales or marketing like they're all fused together that it's their customer-facing and they really understand your brand values and can interact with forward-facing interact with the audience so can you awesome well thank

you for bringing up the conference I think yes Kelly Integra coming before normally your company and delivering the keynote so we're super excited about that and we're super excited that you're a little bit of saying I know how busy you are and we're sort of traveling and speaking and learning and writing and Facebook live being and all the all thing we super appreciate it you know the conference just for the listeners is in Austin which is a wonderful and really fun city September 13th through the 15th and it's all about mr. marketing we're going to be talking about messenger marketing sort of big picture where's it going strategies tactics case studies you know all the way down from the big to the small lots of speakers yourself obviously we've announced all of these speakers already online but the you know the first date keynote the closing keynote sort of the celebrity keynote is going to be Randi Zuckerberg who happens to be sister with another song dr. Berger boots by the heard about he actually invented Facebook live which is kind of crazy and she's a really very vocal very outspoken sort of powerful women in tech and media and has done a great job with sort of evangelizing you know more responsible tech so where's the pretending to have her but yeah it's gonna be a great time and you know you're gonna be delivering a keynote and do you want to just tell people a little bit about what you're gonna talk about I sure will I just real quick sure there's Molly I shared my screen right quick here just to give folks a quick peek at the page and all the great speakers that are coming so I'm actually gonna be talking about Facebook marketing in a changing world and what marketers need to know and so we talked quite a bit today about Facebook's and well Mark Zuckerberg snoo mission of going private going ephemeral which means disappearing like stories and going encrypted now there are some key executives who've actually laughed the company cuz they don't buy into Zuckerberg vision and those include Chris Cox Chris Daniels former head of whatsapp certainly a Kevin Systrom and his partner Mike a co-founder of Instagram and the two co-founders of whatsapp so now this is normal usually in acquisitions you know they go on they're going to create something else but there's definitely been some shaking up going on behind the scenes and so how are we as marketers going to embrace this change and cope with or maximize moreover optimize a world without newsfeed its newsfeed really going away what are all the features that will still be public facing how do we lean into this whole privacy aspect around a messaging but also groups and stories were deceased live have its place I will be talking about all of that and dispelling myths and making absolute clarity out of any confusion perfect I think that's wonderful I think that you know you have the kind of insight and insider info and access that I think a lot of people don't add and you know I was talking to one of our agents partners and he was asking me hey what's going on with Facebook I can't get even you know anyone out there on an email friend let alone a phone call so for them to have access through you and through others to really understand what is going on with this company what are they up to what are they doing yeah I saw a lot of people have bet their sort of business on it right I mean it's their lives they've met their small business marketing they've bet they're you know they're part of the maybe just one of them you know we're a sort of Facebook ecosystem company so I think that's such a great so great that you're choosing that as your topic thank you so much yeah and it's just like I just think in there about how Instagram is hiding the likes or our testing hiding likes and when we think about it the engagement on stories is not facing so it's just like now they're taking the same kind of feature the same concept of private engagement from stories and they're applying it to public posts and there's many reasons why they're doing that we can get into it a little bit in the conference but it's definitely a part of this whole future is private so I'm really excited about it and I appreciate you having me I did have a mastermind that weekend and I decided to postpone it rearrange it I'm gonna go in the spring so that I can specifically come to the conversations conference and folks and you just go to conversations conference calm I will link you up with a special code and you can get some a little bit of savings on your ticket there really look forward to mark thank you 33 0 mari 30 and they get 30% off using the code oh good perfect a multitasking here and I popped it in there wonderful excellent well I know we have a lot of great comments and questions here and I don't know what we had allowed about 30 minutes for this so I'm gonna do my best to circle back if you've got any specific questions for mini chat or for myself contribute to this conversation tell us show us we want to see what's on your bot what examples do you have what would you love to see in the world of thoughts but yeah thanks so much for tuning in here and thank you said for taking the time first thank you it's always fun to talk to you thank you yeah all right thanks for being here everybody we'll see you again real soon I'll circle back and take your questions bye for now