#3 - Messenger Marketing for Amplifying Your Customer Relationships for More Profit w/ Rutger Thole

This was a great chat with our friend Rutger Thole AKA The Botfather - which started in a different direction than we expected but thought it would be valuable to leave in.

We started talking about the mindset impacts 2020 had on all of us as entrepreneurs for about the first 15-20 mins before getting stuck into how Messenger and Manychat can be effectively utilised to improve your customer service and relationships, which ultimately leads to more organic growth and higher profits.

Join Rutger’s Bots + Beers Facebook group for free ManyChat training, peer support, and exclusive live webinars and hangouts with the whole community!

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Full episode transcript & chapter markers for this episode are available on the Growth & Greatness eCommerce Podcast Buzzsprout page! 

Transcript

0:00 - 0:27 - Episode Intro
This is the Growth & Greatness eCommerce Podcast, powered by Right Hook Digital, with your hosts Scott Seward & Raymond Johnston. If you’re an eCommerce brand founder, entrepreneur, or marketer looking to accelerate profitable growth for your business, then listen in ‘cause this is the podcast for you.

0:27 - 1:19 - Introduction of guest Rutger Thole
Scott (0:27 - 1:19) - Welcome back, all! And in this week’s podcast, we got a very special guest, really good friend of ours, Mr. Rutger Thole AKA The Botfather. Now, if you’ve been in the Messenger marketing space for a little while, you probably know of Rutger. He’s very active in a lot of the larger groups around Facebook and commonly known as one of the most creative and combined technically-minded people when it comes to ManyChat, in particular, and utilizing Messenger in a way to really improve your customer relationships for eCommerce brands, specifically. So we started this call with that in mind, but we actually went into a little bit of a different direction at the start. Got into a lot of entrepreneurial mindset, the dips and the impacts we had from 2020, and some of the journey that we went through collectively, so we decided to keep that in there. If you wanna skip past that, that’s fine, but I’m sure there’s some valuable takeaways that you’re gonna be able to get from it. Enjoy!

1:20 - 17:26 - Review of 2020 performance - Learnings for business owners and entrepreneurs
Scott (1:20 - 2:00) - Super excited to have a good friend of ours, the Botmaster, or the Botfather I should say, Rutger Thole, joining us. We were just talking before we jumped on here. It’s been a weird year, it’s been like a year since we last spoke, and the last time we spoke and jumped on a call, we were talking about going on a diving trip to Palau. That was going back February last year, that obviously didn’t eventuate. It’s been an interesting year. What’s been happening in your world over the last 12 months, mate, and then just give us a little bit of background of yourself, as well, and how you got into the Messenger marketing space and chatbots.

Rutger (2:00 - 3:34) - Yeah, dude, it’s been a crazy year. What’s been going on? When we jumped on this call, there’s never been a time where a year felt so long. You sort of get stuck in your one big slur. To be bluntly honest with you, it’s been rough, the last year. The first months of 2020 where just normal, regular. I mean, we had this whole COVID thing going on, all good, and nothing, no big deal. But moving on, into the year, and getting deeper into it and everything happened and all the negative feedback, the negativity all around the world, blunt honest, it almost got the best of me, sort of on a mindset level. With that, there was some… it’s easy to jump in business, you know, it’s easy to jump in… business got hit and we made less revenue, but let’s just take a quick other route. Ray and I spoke about this often as well and I think it’s something that should be easier to talk about, that stuff. It’s not good for the mind. It’s not good for the mind and with that, that sort of pulls you into a whole different level of entrepreneurial journey. Yeah, what can I say?

Scott (3:34 - 4:12) - I can second that, man, I can second that. It was, I reckon, March-April, I was okay. And then, I reckon June-July, I definitely had a dip. That’s when it started hitting home, it was getting tough, and took a lot more just out of it. I think not being able to go to the gym and get outside and exercise and those things, and the pressure of the agency… by that stage, everything was still going well, but there were still a lot of unknowns and a lot of pressure and that’s, the couple of month period in the middle there was probably the hardest I’ve had for a while.

Rutger (4:12 - 5:36) - Yeah, exactly, and I think, not the sweet spot, but I think at that point, there were so much negativity going on in the world and so much unknowns that it just creeps up on you or it crept up on me at least. The good thing, what I’ve learned about that, sort of in the months of Q3 or Q4, is I started venting it to people. One of them was Ray, when we’d talk about it, and quote unquote the funny thing I learned there, the same thing that happened a second ago, a lot of people recognized it, a lot of people recognized it, and they’re running in the same kind of issues. I had beautiful conversations coming out of that and, with that, that helped me bounce back and resetting the mindset and trying to let go of it. I’m now, sort of, at a point where like, okay, we need to let this thing go, this whole COVID thing, we need to be grateful that we’re sane, healthy, and what we just discussed, that we’re not into brick-and-mortar businesses where there is sort of nothing we can do. We’re still flexible, we’re still able to do what we want to do, run our businesses, and be proactive. That said, beyond that…

Scott (5:36 - 6:14) - So lucky, so lucky, man. If you think about people in spaces outside of ours, and we were just talking about this as well, especially in Australia where so much of our economy is driven by tourism. Our states are still closed and borders and not letting anyone in, there’s no international travel. There’s businesses that just have had no cash flow for a year and we’re talking about how tough it is, with eCommerce exploding and everything else that we’ve got going on. Being in those spaces, we did have clients in the travel space, lost 80% of revenue overnight.

Ray (6:14 - 6:15) - That were smart enough to pivot.

Scott (6:15 - 6:38) - Yeah, that were smart enough to pivot and try and find other products that they could move towards and focus on domestic travel and short-term travel, as opposed to luggage and things like that. But, there’s just so many people that have been hit so hard. I think you gotta acknowledge how hard it’s been, but also focus on, try to focus on the good stuff.

Rutger (6:40 - 7:13) - Definitely focus on the good stuff and I think, the only thing sort of, it’s hard if the question is, ‘hey, how was your year?’ It’s sort of in a stage now where it’s hard to say, ‘Yeah, man, it’s awesome and business is great’ and all that. A key takeaway for me, for this year, was just talk and be honest about what’s going on in your head because a lot of us agency owners, entrepreneurs, we have sort of a… it is a lonely life. You gotta be honest.

Ray (7:14 - 7:54) - It is. I would say a lot of us, like we’re, either before agency life or entrepreneur life, we were often, I wouldn’t say loners as if we didn’t have a family or a circle, but like because we have that drive. It’s a lonely path. I think, going back to what you said, Rutger, previous conversations you and I have had is, with so much negativity that’s happening, and there may be a lot off problems in the news, news has all this negativity. I think talking, but also like, you have to find things that you can get excited about like hope. Hope is really powerful, I know it’s like woofoo for some people, but if you have hope, it’s like here’s an opportunity, here’s something that can make my business better, make me better. Like focus on that and find the grateful things. It can completely transform you.

Scott (7:56 - 8:49) - Blocking out the noise. For years, I just haven’t watched news on TV or anything like that. I really try to not listen to it because you know it’s hype, it’s clickbait, it’s fear-mongering. You know what’s going on so I don’t see any value in trying to keep that front of mind and have that feeding your head with negativity all the time. It’s not doing anything, you can’t control it, so I think really controlling your environment, that was a big thing. When this was all going on at the start, it’s hard to sort of drown that out or block that out, but as the year got on, I was just like, ‘I’m not gonna listen to any of it.’ I know what it is, we can’t do anything about it, and just focus on what’s in front of you. I think that was probably a big thing from a mindset standpoint that I really tried to focus on the back-half of last year. I felt a whole lot better for it.

Rutger (8:49 - 10:00) - Yeah, 100%. Reach out, just talk about it. If somebody asks you, how’s it going, and if it’s not that good, just say it. You would be surprised, the feedback you get on that answer. 9 out of 10 times, at least what I learned, is like, ‘yo, dude, I feel the same or I ran into this or I ran into that’ We have beautiful, beautiful conversations that didn’t go necessarily into business, that were sort of like a business meeting or whatever it was, but you just had completely different conversations about mindset, life, people running into, and then that sort of, that is, that makes you lighter, that helps your mindset. I think the biggest learning for me in 2020, also a partner in a travel business, we got a scuba diving resort in Palau which is shut down, which is sort of a big deal, but also there. We need to find our way and how to move forward. We found our way, we found our groove, and that’s what Ray said, as long as there’s hope, as long as you’re able to be creative and keep thinking forward, there’s always a way out. That said…

Ray (10:00 - 10:04) - That’s the perfect segway, Rutger, creative!

Scott (10:04 - 10:08) - Now that we’ve got our therapy session out of the way, let’s move on.

Rutger (10:09 - 10:15) - I think, either way, you can cut it out or not, but I think it’s important…

Scott (10:15 - 10:20) - It’s good to talk to people about it.

Ray (10:20 - 10:47) - The thing about it, our audience is eCommerce owners. What’s more lonely than starting your own eCommerce brand. It’s a lonely road and there’s lots of ups and downs. Depression is a real thing when you’re starting an eComm brand. The unknown, also, things don’t go well day-to-day. There’s a lot of volatility and having to handle all of your own customer service and bad complaints and things like that, which is a great segway to this as well, but it’s a lonely road and they need all the help they can get.

Rutger (10:47 - 13:15) - It’s crazy. So one short sideway into there. In the last couple of years, I invested, sort of, decent amounts of money in travel and going to a conference here and there. It was always fun, it was always good. Recently, two weeks ago, I decided to invest in personal development, in coaching sessions and all of that. That sort of, that came to be an output of the elements that I just sort of sketched, the mental, the mindset and that sort of aligned. And, dudes, what happened, I sort of pulled a trigger on that one, I ran into some kind of coach and from there I found another one and started talking and I had a really good connection with this guy, with this team actually, and I pulled the trigger on a 14-week whatever program, awesome. Decent chunk of money, it was scary, but at the moment I realized that this was an investment in myself, it felt like such a relief. I paid it, gonna start in two weeks, and dudes, guess what happened, I just got instant clarity without even joining one freaking session. Nothing. So just making this decision to invest in yourself, going for a solution, whatever that solution, and this is 13 weeks, it’s not therapy but it’s more, a breakthrough session and all kinds of stuff, it should be pretty interesting. What was super interesting for me is the fact, the moment that I pulled the trigger, I just felt relief. I had mindspace, I had sort of that, glass ceiling was gone, and business turned around as well. That was sort of interesting because, I saw that I changed because there was sort of relief, because I changed, things in my personal life changed, and because of that, other things in the business changed as well. More business came in, people started reaching out again, and woowoo or not, the fact that all of these things are interconnected and I thought that was pretty interesting to see.

Scott (13:15 - 14:32) - I’ve kinda been on a bit of a similar journey, like the last couple months, diving more into.., this has totally turned into a mindset podcast, hasn’t it? Maybe we can have another standalone. But going back, rereading essentialism, ultra learning, just kind of looking at my mindset from a foundational standpoint and frameworks as to how I’m learning. Exactly what you’re saying, it’s helped me just get clear on, I think, just also asking yourself regularly what’s important right now. Helping you get that focus, what’s important in my life, both on the personal side and on the business side. I think coming back to what you’re talking about, Rutger, I’m gonna go do it, a course, it’s almost like what are the bottlenecks in my personal life? How can I remove those? Where am I best investing my money right now? If you’ve got time, if you’ve got health, you’ve got family, if you’re gonna invest anything into areas of your life, focus on those. What are the bottlenecks in those areas? What resources and support can you get that’s gonna improve those areas? Because the flow-on effect’s gonna be the outputs in your relationships, in your family life, in your business. 

Rutger (14:33 - 14:58) - Exactly. The stupid thing is, I didn’t realize it, I didn’t see it. It sort of happened. It was sort of an epiphany after I made the decision. Holy shit, it was a relief, I feel more relaxed, whatever. It was interesting, I just wanted to share that with you guys and whoever’s listening is that it works, it helps.

Ray (14:58 - 16:13) - I was reading, there’s a book I like to turn back to a lot of times, 15 Invaluable Laws of Growth, but it’s funny, what I’m about to share is also in the book Essentialism, Scott, that Scott really turned me on to, that I’ve really been going through. Ask the hard questions, get rid of things that truly aren’t important like what Scott said, but is, you’re more likely to act yourself into feeling than to feel yourself into acting. You said that it was after you made that decision, Rutger, everything just cleared up. Your motivation’s back, you feel your drive crushing, and I think that’s, I don’t know how we can digest that, not digest but how you can unravel it, but the mental block of, if you just act, things often become clear. Just like the analogy of when you’re driving down the road, you wish you can see the entire road at night, but as you drive down that road, things become more and more clear. If anyone’s like, especially listening, maybe Rutger, you can maybe dive into why you had that mental block, if you know. I don’t know. I know sometimes, even the agency world, dude, there are some days that maybe the feeling’s not there, or there’s monumental mountain of a project or tasks to get through, it’s like after you take that first step and you act on it, not only does feeling but things become more clear the more you act on it.

Rutger (16:15 - 17:03) - Nothing to add, nothing to add to that. And it’s true. It’s not that it’s not that obvious, but it’s true. There’s no, sort of, now you need to act and then all your problems will be solved. That’s not what it is. It happened for me and I think the key takeaway here is, Ray, what you said is act on it. Sort of how we kicked this off is Scott asked is how have you been in 2020? Well, the other answer could have been, ‘dude, it’s awesome, it’s great and business is good and we moved to a new house and it’s pretty good and we got a new dog and still healthy.’ That. So, what are we gonna talk about? No, vent, be honest…

Scott (17:03 - 17:04) - Get real.

Rutger (17:05 - 17:12) - Get real, just be real, and that helps as well. Now, we’re sort of in a 30-minute therapy session here, sharing.

Scott (17:14 - 17:17) - That’s awesome. I can give a pre-warning at the start of the podcast.

Rutger (17:24 - 17:26) - If we wanna get back on track…

17:28 - 27:14 - Rutger’s connection to ManyChat/Messenger and what led him to these tools
Scott (17:28 - 18:04) - Let’s pivot back to the Messenger side. Let’s go back. 3-4 years ago, we were in Hawaii together. I reckon it was about then that, I’m not sure if it were the conversations, that was like the first one as well around then, the conference I think you guys both went to. Messenger and ManyChat were just becoming a big thing, it was the discussion, it was a hot topic. Around then, Rutger, you were, that was around when you sort of pivoted to focusing on that 100% in your agency?

Rutger (18:04 - 18:48) - I ran into this thing called, it was literally shiny objects syndrome. The short story is I ran into ManyChat and did a new tool, looked at what it was, started playing around with it. After a couple of days, this is actually pretty cool. I fairly, I sunk my teeth into it, started playing around with it. This was 3 years ago, this isn’t by no means the ManyChat or the chat tools we know now. I was just playing around with it and what I learned then, fairly quickly on, is that my brain functions so much better on building these automations.

Scott (18:48 - 18:51) - Kinda got that engineer tendency.

Rutger (18:50 - 20:14) - That’s where I learned I got this automation brain and I’m not, I don’t have the analytical brain that sort of the top media buyers have. I have that, sort of, creative automation brain that the creatives have, I don’t know what it is. What I learned as well is that I enjoy solving problems through automations. That’s sort of how I got into it and what happened, talking about acting, was when we were in Hawaii, there was somebody in the room there, I was talking about Messenger bots, and I was sort of dabbling into it, ‘listen to that story,’ and I don’t know who it was so excuse me, long story short, I was listening, I’m sorry, this doesn’t make any sense. This story doesn’t make sense, this is not how we should do it. I don’t even remember who it was. When I jumped up, it’s probably better to do this. We did a breakout session and we had the pizza and beers and everything and I was like let’s do a breakout session, see what happens. There was a bunch of people going into the jacuzzi and there was a bunch of people that actually came into an impromptu breakout session…

Ray (20:14 - 20:16) - Wait, breakout session in a jacuzzi, just so I’m clear?

Rutger (20:18 - 20:21) - There was a breakout session in the jacuzzi and there was a breakout…

Scott (20:20 - 20:22) - There was a breakout from the jacuzzi.

Rutger (20:23 - 21:54) - There were actually people in the room, holy shit, this is actually pretty cool. I was sort of barefoot, which I loved, and then started talking about bots. This is actually pretty cool. That’s when I realized that there is something going on there, sort of in terms of Messenger. Long story short, i never forget, that evening, where I was sitting up somewhere upstairs and I was with Dee there and Dee & I were just playing around and like, ‘holy shit, we should do a group.’ That’s how the whole bots & beers thing started. Next day, created the group bots & beers, trying to build up a whole community there. Long story short, sort of fast forward two years on, my main focus is Messenger bots, building automations, conversational marketing with all the elements that sort of come with that where Messenger’s on the forefront, but Messenger is nothing more than a tool to create conversational experiences with the objective, especially now, with the objective to take people off the platform, with the objective to build lists in email, SMS, with the objective to use those tools to actually sell to them and segment so you can better sell to them. That’s sort of the sales part of it where Messenger… on the other part, on the other spectrum, is by nature, conversational tool which is perfect, absolutely perfect to offer pre- and post-purchase customer support on your website.

Ray (21:55 - 22:41) - Going back two years, Rutger and I, we were at the Conversations, ManyChat’s first-ever conference, Conversations 2018 which was a fantastic time. It was actually my first introduction to, and then Rutger, I remember at the conference, and he was sitting next to Rutger, and Rutger, if you don’t know anything about him, is he’s really big on playing by the rules ‘cause otherwise you’re gonna get your Facebook page banned, which you can go into the next second, Rutger. And he was correcting what people were saying onstage. He was like, ‘Nope, that’s not right.’ This isn’t right. I think it will be interesting, Rutger, if you can give a synopsis on how does that evolve? What we learned in 2018 to now, it’s a totally different game, totally different sphere. I think it would be really helpful to go through that.

Rutger (22:43 - 23:20) - What’s funny, because I remember that... Messenger is pretty new. I think Messenger API opened up in 2016, April 2016 or 2017, so that’s where Facebook opened up the Messenger API for developers to actually build tools on the platform. That’s when it started. It was literally a wild, wild west. What happens when platforms like these open is marketers jump on and try to see how they can use the tool to abuse it.

Scott (23:20 - 23:25) - Everyone’s looking for a hack, right? Everyone’s always looking for a hack.

Rutger (23:25 - 25:31) - Great, this is the next email, so let’s see how we can… Awesome, it goes directly to the mobile phone, it goes directly to the mobile device, and look at these open rates and look at these click rates. What will people do, they will use it for sales, they will try to sort of use it as how email has been used and is still being used and, early on, that still worked but Facebook, as we know Facebook, is there to protect the users, not the advertisers but its users. So fairly on, there came rules and restrictions and those rules and restrictions only became stricter and more rules and more confusion around the rules and the terms & conditions and all that. When you think about it, if you think about it, and actually take the time to read the manual, you will understand why Facebook puts in these rules and then it’s still an amazing platform. Long story short, Messenger is a great tool for, it’s a conversational tool by nature, let’s start with that. The conversation, in general, the conversation is sparked or started based on the interaction from a subscriber, from a user. So Scott, you’re going to a website, you see the chat icon or bubble in the bottom-right corner, you click on it, you start a conversation. Maybe you comment on a Facebook post and you start a Messenger conversation. The initiative is on your side. Now, a business should leverage that conversation to learn more about this customer, to learn more about Scott, but first to fulfill Scott’s needs. Why did Scott reach out to the business? Because he’s got a question. Now, let’s now make sure that through automations and through chats, we answer that question. When that question is answered, let’s see how we can keep the conversation going to learn more about Scott...

Ray (25:34 - 25:47) - You’re building out these flows to anticipate, or at least, building out the flows to anticipate based on the needs, questions, comments, FAQs, is that a better word, that these customers are asking. How’s that work?

Rutger (25:48 - 26:05) - There are multiple ways to go about this, but sort of, in general, if we take a step back, we need to ask ourselves the question, what is the reason that somebody reaches out to a shop? What is the reason that somebody reaches out through chat? ‘Cause they have a question, they have a problem that needs to be solved…

Scott (26:05 - 26:57) - That’s high intent. It’s super high! If I’m go through the effort to click that button, and I’ll give you a live example, this is from yesterday. I was going to my crypto-broker to buy more ethereum and I couldn’t get in because my 2AF wasn’t working and there’s a chat bubble. I clicked on that to try and get in touch with them and I had to wait 30 minutes and I was frustrated as hell. I think, for anyone who’s on a website and wanting to make a purchase, timeliness is so critical, and if you’ve got instant chat and people are actually manning that real time, your conversion rate’s gonna be higher, so much higher. If people don’t get an answer, it’s gonna be a point of frustration and negative emotion with it.

Ray (26:57 - 26:58) - They lose a sale too.

Scott (26:58 - 27:14) - Or if that’s the case and there’s no one there making it clear that they’ll get responded to via email. I think it’s gonna be because it can either be really positive or it can add negative sentiment to the experience.

27:17 - 35:41 - Can chatbots help make businesses more consumer-centered?
Rutger (27:17 - 29:32) - 100%. Let’s deviate from ManyChat or Messenger in general, sort of chat in general, and it doesn’t really matter which tool you’re using, but as a business, these days, whatever business, whenever we’re talking eComm, an eComm business should have a chat available on their website. They should focus, it should be more consumer-centered. We, as humans, we, as consumers, we, the majority of the people, expect to be able to chat with a business these days. I mean, Scott gave the perfect example there. It could be super simple, obvious questions, but that doesn’t really matter. If I had a question as a consumer, that is blocking me from taking the next step, then you as a business, you better make it easy for me as the consumer to get that question answered, to get that blockage and go for the sale. A well laid-out, it doesn’t have to be rocket science, but a well laid-out chat experience, I hate the word experience but, will help. And it can be as simple as the chat icon at the bottom-right corner of the site where somebody clicks on that button and where the shop then, not even programmed, but sort of dragged, created a simple FAQ flow where somebody comes in, Scott comes in, he’s got a question, my 2FAs aren’t working oh shit, I got the chat. I click on the chat, the flow opens, the chatbot says, hey welcome aboard, how can I help you today? Click below to see our FAQs or click here to go to our FAQs. This is what I coined customer self-service support. Scott is smart enough to figure out the answer on his own. He doesn’t want to call a business, he doesn’t want to send an email, he doesn’t want to wait for it. If he sees sort of a proactive message that says hey, check out our FAQs, he’s probably clever enough to figure out that he needs to click on that button FAQ and where your FAQs are laid out. 

Scott (29:32 - 29:37) - But do I want to? But do I want to, or do I want someone to fix the problem for me?

Ray (29:37 - 29:48) - I was gonna say that, if FAQs, it’s like a little box or a circle… what if something outside that circle, how would you handle that?

Rutger (29:48 - 31:35) - There are multiple options for that. It’s sort of a learn to crawl before you walk, is that the right sort of sequence? You need to crawl before you walk. You can make it rocket science, but start with the basics. Having that chat bubble or having a path that allows a visitor to start a conversation with your business is step one. The most obvious next step would be rule-based chatbots. The rule-based chatbot is, ‘Hey Scott, click on one of the options below to find out what you’re looking for,’ but Scott doesn’t want to click or Scott doesn’t want to read, he doesn’t read it, and he starts typing a random message to that chatbot and there’s two things that can happen. If you have an advanced chatbot, the chatbot is powered with NLP, natural language processing, and when the NLP, AI, NLP, we can argue about the terminology there but you can get to just, when Scott starts typing a random message to the bot, and the bot is enhanced with NLP, natural language processing, and it’s trained to understand Scott’s input, the bot should be able to reply with a relevant response. If Scott says, ‘hey, my 2FA isn’t working,’ if the bot is trained to understand the intent behind 2FA not working problem, then it will be able to fire off a relevant response.

Scott (31:35 - 32:04) - I remember just thinking a little bit as well. I’d say the 80-20 principle really applies there in terms of the inquiries that come through, it’s probably like 20% of all your inquiries and you know what they are are probably gonna drive 80% of the responses that are required anyway so you get so much leverage there to remove friction quite easily if you just focus. You know what the most common questions you’re gonna receive for your business are. 

Rutger (32:04 - 33:12) - I can tell you what those common questions are because we run to them on a daily basis, but I know where Ray’s going, but the thing is, crawl-walk. You don’t have to have an NLP-powered bot to create a better customer service or a better experience than your competitor does. If we keep it simple, the majority of shops do not have a proper build up, sort of customer chat in place. Those businesses that take the effort on setting something up that is able to respond timely, even if the bot isn’t able to give sort of, ‘hey yeah, if your 2FA isn’t working, then you should do this,’ even just sort of acknowledging the fact that somebody reached out and a customer service rep is gonna get back to them within sort of x time, and then the customer rep is actually responding to them, that is already building a great customer service, building trust, building rapport, and setting the way for repeat purchases.

Ray (33:15 - 33:53) - I was gonna ask that question, Rutger. Based off all the data, all these builds that you’ve done with ManyChat and building customer service flows and bots, if the common FAQs isn’t what the person is looking for, do you have any kind of insight, from a consumer perspective, what they prefer? Is that a rep to reach out via email, via Messenger, via phone call, via text? Is there any kind of data or any kind of information you guys have from an eComm perspective? They prefer to be reached out by this within this timeframe if they can’t be answered by that bot?

Rutger (33:53 - 35:40) - The basic or standard setup, standard operating procedure for this is when the Messenger bot isn’t able to respond to a question, a hand-off to a human will be made. Hand-offs sort of happen in the back-end. ‘Hey, Scott, sorry you were running into an issue. Sorry I’m not able to answer your question right now, but our customer service team… between service hours, our average response rate, response time is 1 hour.’ They can all be programmed. The bot could then ask, how would you like us to get back to you? By default rate, what we do is somebody reached out through Messenger. Within that time frame, the live chat agent or the customer service rep should respond through that specific channel, if the bot already has other data points. It can also be done through the chatbot, they are handed off through SMS because, maybe, in previous interactions, the user set their notifications settings or preferences to SMS, then great. With a tool like ManyChat, you can send them a text message or you can even send them a text message to ‘is this whatever the name of the business here? Please check your email. We sent you a response to your inquiry.’ And now we’re using those different tools to, sort of, work together to create that great experience, great shopping experience.

35:45 - 42:34 - How chatbots enable customers to make the right purchase decisions through helpful information
Scott (35:45 - 36:57) - I was just saying, from a consumer standpoint, it’s really just people getting the information they want to be able to confirm that they can make a purchase, right? That’s all they’re trying to do, they’re just trying to get information from you to make sure that they’re making the right choice. I got another example, earlier this week, I was gonna buy a particular bottle of whiskey. Obviously, different years have different flavor profiles. I ask them, ‘is it a 2020 or a 2019’, instant response 2020, then I made a purchase. Otherwise, I would’ve gone to one of the other 10 vendors. They got the sale purely because of that. It was actually probably 15% more than what it was on the site, but I was struggling to find this particular bottle. The speed in how you can respond, I can’t emphasize, now that we’re talking about it, I’m thinking back to more of my personal experiences recently where I do use it and where that’s converted to me buying something, whereas they would’ve lost that sale to a competitor otherwise.

Ray (36:57 - 37:44) - During Black Friday, for example, we’re in Q1, Q4 just happened. We see this all the time, and Rutger, I don’t know if you see the same thing. During high volume times from an eComm brand perspective, a big bottleneck we see that leads to a lot of lost sales is when there’s something that’s not clear or there’s an issue or a code’s not working, if a person can’t get in touch with someone from the business or get an answer to what they want fast enough, we’ve actually seen the big difference. For example, when a brand, maybe the owner’s responding by hand for example. When they weren’t responding, sales aren’t doing good, but when we told them, ‘hey, you gotta be answering these questions,’ when they did that, things magically turned around. I’ve seen the impact firsthand during Q4. Do you see the same?

Rutger (37:44 - 39:06) - Of course, but the whole thing is, we’re in the human business. We’re not just selling products. I mean, we’re dealing with consumers, we’re dealing with people, with humans like you and me. As soon as a business starts thinking about, thinking more from a consumer perspective, things get clear because… when a shop owner, product owner starts thinking about how they would react when they would start buying stuff online and what if they are on a business page, your shop’s page, and they have a question which then gets sort of answered immediately, whether it’s with a live reply or an automated reply, it doesn’t really matter. What does that do with the trust and rapport building? Take out the bottlenecks to make a purchase. Yes, 100%, the stats are all over the place, you can find them anywhere. Live chat, on a website, helps build trust, helps build rapport. The people, we expect instant gratification and instant replies, and those businesses that are able to do that, they will win the sale over their competitors who are not doing it or are not paying attention.

Scott (39:06 - 40:17) - I think that mindset shift is so important. I think that’s almost the trap of eCommerce, right? For business owners, and especially for media buyers, you’re looking at screens of data all the time and you lose perspective of the fact that it’s actually people on the other side of those numbers. It’s so easy to be looking at Ads Manager or Google Ads or GA or Shopify and just thinking data, data, data, without enough emphasis or understanding of the fact that it’s still customer relationships compared to, you’ve actually gotta be talking to people in your brick and mortar business everyday. It’s probably easier to have that understanding. You know what I mean, it’s like, you get people who put so much time and effort into creating their brick and mortar store to be beautiful, but then their website looks like crap. It’s exactly the same thing - this is your online brick and mortar store. It’s the representation of your business, it’s the representation of your brand. Everything that’s communicated is exactly how you would communicate to a person in a retail store, but I think there needs to be some, not everyone obviously, but a lot of people sort of lose focus on that and need that mindset shift.

Rutger (40:18 - 42:34) - If you break it down to what does one need before they trust a business enough to purchase something online - so I don’t know you, I’ve never been on your site, your site looks pretty good, you have a product that I need, but I know that other stores sell the same products… and we’re not taking Amazon into account here. It’s super difficult for a brand. We’re not talking about the Coca-Colas, but sort of the main layer there to differentiate on price, on product. We see a lot of businesses try to compete on price, which isn’t necessarily a good thing. If we take a step back and see, okay, how can a business create a competitive advantage by understanding what a consumer needs before they actually make a purchase? If I’m on the website, and everything looks good, but I have a question and that question cannot be answered, poof! I go somewhere else. And if the question there cannot be answered, poof! I go somewhere else. In the end, I buy it on fucking Amazon because I know and I trust Amazon. But that business that is able to at least offer an entry point to start a conversation with the objective to get the answer, that is the business that has the biggest chance to win the sale. When you then, sort of, follow up, as in follow up, when you then fulfill properly, send post-purchase order update messages, when something goes wrong, I mean shit can go wrong, it doesn’t really matter if something goes wrong. It is how a business then acts on it. If I get a package that is broken or whatever, I don’t wanna call you, I don’t wanna send you an email. I just wanna go to the website or I wanna scan the QR code in the product insert and send you a message whether it’s through chat or through SMS and I want to, sort of, I want the problem to be solved from there.

42:35 - 50:59 - How enabling chatbots for your business can improve and strengthen your customer service
Scott (42:35 - 43:36) - I also don’t want that problem to become my problem to have to go and ship that back to you. When I had my brand, we made round towels, quality was excellent. I knew the returns were super, super low. Someone sent me an email saying that there’s an issue with the stitching or whatever. I knew that I couldn’t sell it or resell it, I wasn’t gonna do anything with it, I just sent them a new one because I knew my return rates weren’t that low anyway. The customer experience from their part was they didn’t have any hassle, they didn’t have more friction, they didn’t have to go to the effort of printing off the return label, going to the post office. That to me is making their problem my problem. I think that’s super important and it’s just removing that as an additional friction point as well. That comes back to the product quality, right? If you have consistent issues with your product quality then that might not be feasible, but that’s an issue you should probably be looking at. That’s not gonna fix the problem.

Rutger (43:33 - 44:53) - Any message or ManyChat isn’t gonna solve that problem for you, 100%. It’s all those little things and I say this often, and we discuss this previously as well, in sort of, and this is my sort of personal view on this, a lot of people in our bubble always talk about scaling and ROAS and all that. Guys, correct me if I’m wrong, but it might not be the most sexiest subject, but I don’t see or hear a lot of people talk about customer service. ‘Cause you can scale to the moon and back, but what happens on the back-end of that? I mean, if you’re a medium business that’s doing a decent volume, then you will probably have a decent number of inbound customer service inquiries. Great, you can handle that. As soon as you start scaling, are you still able to handle those inbound customer service inquiries. As soon as you drop the ball there, it will bite you in the butt. Negative feedback will spin out of control. We’ll get on Facebook, we’ll get on Google, we’ll get everywhere you do not want it. That’s where a chat in general, not Chad. Chad is the other guy who can help you, but chat…

Ray (44:54 - 44:56) - You don’t want any Chad working for you, trust me!

Scott (44:56 - 45:04) - You want Chads buying your media, smashing that increase budget button!

Rutger (45:07 - 45:49) - Chat is then a great tool to help you scale that customer support as well and take a sort of, and chat is then able to answer all those recurring, repetitive questions. And give you, as the business owner or the customer support team, sort of giving you the air or the freedom to focus on the stuff, the customer support inquiries, that actually make money, instead of answering questions, ‘Hey, where’s my package?’ or ‘Hey, it’s broken! How can I return it?’ or ‘Will I get this before Fathers Day or insert any random sales event?’ That’s the stuff your customer service team shouldn’t be focusing on.

Ray (45:50 - 46:33) - I have a question. I remember, back when we were hanging out in Conversations conference, since then I’ve seen a few brands of ours where, thankfully, they’ve stressed customer service to just give amazing, top-quality customer service. They’ll send personalized handwritten notes or videos, just give them a really great experience which, good customer service. I’m thinking through some of those brands and other conversations that I’ve had is, they feel like when they try to make a bot or try to get over that hurdle, cause they know they need to scale that customer service, they think they’re gonna lose the personal touch or the flavor or the seasoning that makes their customer service so special.

Rutger (46:36 - 48:31) - Probably, I think that’s sort of letting go, lesson 101, in general, it’s difficult to let things go but a Messenger bot should reflect the tone or voice of your business. Let me rephrase that. A Messenger bot isn’t here to replace humans and a Messenger bot shouldn’t be built to spoof a human. Is that proper English? I’m not sure. I mean, going back to us as consumers, I’m happy to chat with a chatbot, I don’t really care, as long as it’s able to give me a relevant response. If it’s not able to give me a relevant response, then it shouldn’t pull me into some kind of infinite loop to keep me asking the same questions because that’s where you sort of get awkward experiences. If the bot isn’t able to give me a relevant response, ‘Hey Scott, I’m Rutger the virtual assistant, the chatbot for whatever the name of the business is, I’m here to help you. Please click on the buttons to help me find what you’re looking for.’ And then, if I get stuck at some point or I type some random stuff, which the bot isn’t able to respond, ‘Hey Rutger, I’m sorry, I’m not able to understand your question now, but I’m gonna loop in Ray, our customer service rep, who’s gonna get back to you within 1 hour because it is 4pm on a Wednesday afternoon, business hours, standby, Ray will be here. In the meantime, check out this video we got for you.’ And then Ray is gonna pinged and then Ray jumps on, ‘Hey Rutger, it’s Ray here, I noticed you had some issues with XYZ, how can we help you?’ Boom! Full circle, great customer experience.

Ray (48:31 - 48:35) - It’s got to be an intentional design to make sure that you stay consistent with your voice and tone and experience.

Rutger (48:37 - 50:59) - Yeah, and the beauty of that is, that is sort of what they forget because the bot is not gonna change its responses. The bot is gonna be as consistent as it's gonna be. It’s always gonna reply with the same consistent answer. If you spend some time, as the business owner, to craft that tone of voice and get started, here we go, get started! You said in the beginning of this call, you just need to get started, get over that hurdle. Doing something is 100% better than not doing anything. As soon as you get started, you start learning, you get data and you see how people interact with your initial build, and then you learn. Overtime, you will see that the bot you iterate, the AI, the NLP you train, is gonna get smarter and is able to interpret more questions and therefore able to take more pressure off of your customer service team and start answering those repetitive questions. And now, what you can do, this is where the fun starts, off the back of that, I just want to be clear that Messenger bots are a great sales tool as well. They’re absolutely a great sales tool, but it’s not the direct sales tool like maybe text messaging or email or ads are. It is a conversational tool first, transactional tool, but as soon as we get into those conversations with our subscribers, with our customers, we aggregate data, we learn from them. Based on the data we aggregate, based on the questions we ask, based on the answers they give, we create segments, and you know what we do with those segments? We create segments in email and in SMS. And based on those segments, we can create laser-targeted, laser-targeted marketing messages. From an agency perspective, when you guys are setting this up as an agency for your clients, you can actually manage the segment building or you can steer it which you can then use in your email address or your SMS blasts as well.

51:01 - 1:01:27 - Increasing customer LTV and likelihood of repeat buyers with automations & chatbots
Ray (51:01 - 51:32) - It’s like a big ecosystem. When you’re planning this out, not only am I gonna try to help their customer service, but you almost have to go do it with, like, internally within our team, I say killing several birds with one stone. Building this project, building this flow, but what are the other uses that I can do? I’m gonna capture their data here, send it to here, try to build custom fields and data points based off what they’re interested in, right? And then, do you also tie into how you, repeat buyers and the LTV of clients as well?

Rutger (51:33 - 52:47) - 100%, yeah, of course. Let me give you an example. Let’s say, Scott goes to the website and he’s got a problem with something. He engages with the chatbot and he gets a response, whether it’s automated or whether it’s from a customer support rep, doesn’t really matter. But there’s an open conversation. Now, the chatbot can now re-engage Scott after his needs are fulfilled, and his needs were answering the question. Now, not getting into the terms of service and 24-hour window here, but there is something called the 24-hour window. Just a quick one because the 24-hour window, Facebook’s lever that says within a 24-hour window, the 24-hour window opens as soon as Scott engages with the Messenger bot, with the chat bot. Scott takes initiative to send us a message, great, 24-hour window is open. Within the 24-hour window, the business can send any type of message to Scott. When Scott replies, great, sort of the 24-hour rule…

Scott (52:48 - 52:49) - How many? Is there?

Rutger (52:50 - 53:38) - No, there’s no, we got a conversation going. You sent me a message, I reply 3 hours later, you reply 5 minutes later, and then it keeps rolling. But if Scott doesn’t reply for 24 hours, which is sort of normal behavior, I mean, conversations stop at some point. The 24-hour window closes and that is where Facebook says a business should not send any, keeping it simple, not send any non-transactional messages after the 24-hour window. That’s the lever that Facebook put in place to prevent spamming because, if that 24-hour window was not in place, it could keep sending you as much messages as I wanted. Where were we going with this point again?

Ray (53:38 - 53:45) - But LTV, how do you build in the LTV component after you get that data and in order to get them to subscribe?

Rutger (53:45 - 56:04) - The scenario here is Scott reaches out, we answer his question, we got the 24-hour window open, but what we wanna do is we want to do is to learn more about Scott, we want to leverage that 24-hour window because when I am able to learn more about Scott, I’m able to offer him, I’m able to market to him more clever because if I know what type of shoes Scott likes or what type of whiskey… I know he’s a whiskey lover, or he likes a good bottle of wine, if I am able to run a couple questions by Scott, sort of a gamification little thingy, a fun conversation, and I learn which types of wines he likes, is it red or white, is it Cabernet or something else, is it Scottish whiskeys or Japanese-style whiskeys? If I learn, if I’m able to run such data, get such data sets from Scott, I might be able to create those segments. I can create those segments in the bot. I can create those segments in a database. I can create those segments all at the same time in website custom audiences, in SMS, and in email. And guess what? The next time we have a sale for specific whiskeys, I’m going to target Scott with specific copy that taps into what I learned about Scott, what he loves about his whiskeys, so the outcome of the email campaign or the SMS campaign is buy my whiskey. That’s the outcome for everybody, but the headline and the intro to that call-to-action, buy my whiskey, will be different for the different segments. Scott is in segment #1 ‘cause he likes smokey Japanese whiskey, so he gets targeted with copy and call-to-actions that tap into smokey and Japanese whiskey where other people maybe said they’re more of, help me out Scott here....

Scott (56:05 - 56:08) - Sherry casks, sherry casks.

Rutger (56:09 - 57:00) - Sort of a more fruity and others. Doesn’t make sense here, but we’re actually leveraging the conversational nature of Messenger to learn more about subscribers, learn more about their wants and needs, and we’re using that to build segments in the different channels that we’re using to create, just to be better and smarter marketers. Now, what does that do for LTV? I mean, you can fill it in. If we know more about our subscribers, we can be more relevant marketers, which will result in more sales and a higher lifetime value, and therefore more repeat customers, higher conversion rates, higher open rates, because Scott sees smokey Japanese whiskey in the headline in his email.

Scott (57:00 - 58:31) - Good customer service is really the gateway to opening that customer relationship right? I posed this question on Facebook yesterday. If you couldn’t rely on traffic anymore and you can only grow in the future through referral marketing or referrals or repeat purchases, what would you do? Not one person mentioned customer service. Customer service is the lowest hanging fruit here. It’s exactly what’s gonna build that initial relationship with people that they’re going to naturally go and refer people by word of mouth. You don’t need to set up, there’s a lot of tactical stuff that makes a lot of sense in here, but if you wanna get natural word-of-mouth referrals, good customer service is what’s gonna… I remember turning customers around who had bad experiences when I sold them something. My whole objective was to turn them around to the point that they would go and speak positively about and I was able to do that nearly all the time, whether that was fully refunding them, whether it was this or that ‘cause the flow-on effect is they would go and tell 1 - 4 people of what their experience was with my business. You can’t beat that. Everyone knows, that’s the most powerful form of marketing, when it’s word of mouth from someone you trust. That starts with customer service. It was just an interesting insight that I didn’t see one person mention, customer service, in terms of increasing referral marketing or referrals and repeat business.

Rutger (58:31 - 59:37) - And just to tap onto that, good customer service doesn’t necessarily need a Messenger bot. I mean, at some point, it will be, it will just be the best practice, but it is just one of the elements that make up the whole 360 that customer service is. There’s so many elements - it’s email, personal touch, follow-up, it’s all those things. I think, in general, we need to start, a business should start thinking more, or at least, allocate more time and resources in thinking about how can we improve customer service and is what we’re doing now, is that up to standard for 2021? Is this what consumers these days are expecting? How can I use customer service to create a competitive advantage over my competitors, obviously? How can I differentiate on customer service versus on product and or price?

Ray (59:37 - 59:56) - We talked about some tactics today. I’d love to just break it down. This is where, Rutger, if you had an eComm brand today, and you want to go ahead and build a bot and have a good customer experience, and provide good customer service, what’s the easiest and simplest path to start this?

Rutger (59:56 - 1:00:01) - In terms of building it or tools?

Ray (1:00:01 - 1:00:11) - In terms of building a bot. For example, another question I thought of was, is it easy to build these segments and these flows and send them to email and SMS? Like, where would you start if you had an eComm brand today?

Rutger (1:00:15 - 1:00:46) - Well, that’s a great question, man. For me, I built these things on a daily basis so, yeah, for me it’s easy to whip this up, but I also understand, and that’s probably why a lot of businesses do not have this in place because it is, there’s a learning curve and there’s a risk of messing up, breaking the rules and…

Scott (1:00:47 - 1:01:20) - I think this is where the automated solutions come in for people, especially during the early stages of an eComm brand. You’re trying to conserve costs. If you don’t know how to do it and have the time to figure out how to map out ManyChat, you’ve either got to pay someone, someone who knows what they’re doing, not cheap as usual. That’s just part of it, so maybe what’s the point of entry in terms of automated solutions that work, just to get things moving before getting into a more advanced solution?

Rutger (1:01:23 - 1:01:27) - I don’t think there are really automated, out of the box solutions available.

1:01:28 - 1:15:15 - What can eComm brand owners do to implement chatbots & automation flows into their business?
Scott (1:01:28 - 1:01:47) - Let’s move on with some actionable takeaways for our listeners. What are 3 things that anyone with an eComm brand listening right now can come away from this podcast and should be looking to implement and sort of take action right now that’s gonna improve their customer service and customer relationship with their customers?

Rutger (1:01:50 - 1:05:27) - Let’s start with the most basic thing. Start, talk with your customer service team or with the person, persons, responsible within the business for customer contact, customer service. Get a feel about the type of questions that are being sent to the business, whether it’s through email, through Messenger, through text, just get a feel of what’s the, what are the top questions people ask and then create segments, again segments, of what type of questions could be answered, could be automated. Which types of questions can we create an automation for, so our customer service team doesn’t have to answer those type of questions and a customer, a human, that actually answers that question gets to reply immediately. Do that first. We got that. Start thinking about how or which tool, and I’m a ManyChat guy, I’m not affiliated with them, I just like their platform, I’ve been working on it for a while, and for me it’s a whole different podcast why, I’m a ManyChat guy, whatever. Go to ManyChat, whip up a ManyChat account, and create what’s called a growth tool. The growth tool would then be a, the chat, the customer support chat, I’m not sure what the actual name is but the customer chat and the customer chat is the pretty straightforward, the first straightforward entry point, a user will see, who’s on your website, and they, it’s sort of the international sign of click here to get help. Everyone understands it. When you have those questions, when you have filtered out those questions, you can create a basic flow in ManyChat that will then fire when somebody clicks that chat icon on your website. That is pretty easy, somebody clicks on that button on your website, the customer chat, the chat window opens and the first thing they will see is ‘Hey Scott, welcome! Click here to get to our FAQs’ or ‘Are you reaching out because you’ve got a question about 1, 2, 3, 4, then you can sort of pre-populate certain questions. If you already know that these are the top questions people have, there’s a fair chance you’re just gonna immediately take… you can do a reroute a bunch of questions from your customer service team automatically, being answered by the bots just by simply creating buttons with copy in there that then link to, maybe even a page or a simple reply in the chatbot. That’s the most basic form. To build something like that, ManyChat has some free content available where they will walk you through the set of that process. It’s basic, but what Ray said in the beginning, get started. Get started now, get your head around it, there is a learning curve to do this right, but you cannot go wrong if you keep it super simple. As long as you keep it simple, you will do good, 100%.

Scott (1:05:30 - 1:07:23) - Going back to that question that I posed earlier around repeat purchasing and referrals, if you’re in the mindset of, okay right now if I’m acquiring 100 customers a month, but, and for every month in the next year, but at the moment, only 10 of those 100 customers each month are buying again within the next 12 months, what will it do to your profitability and your ability to acquire more customers if you increase that to 20, to 30? And customer service is gonna be the lowest hanging fruit there, to improve and increase the likelihood of that happening. It’s gonna, absolutely, make an impact to your bottom line and profitability. I think that’s just a real mindset shift for a lot of eComm owners that needs to happen, especially with the change in the advertising environment that’s likely ahead of us. We’ve done the podcast with Dee and dived into the iOS14 updates and all that coming up. It’s obviously gonna be a topic touched on regularly and in the coming episodes as well. Just for a light touch on it now, it’s obviously this side of things, the customer relationship side of things and owning your assets and list-building, it’s only gonna become infinitely important going forward. Data is going back to the users and ownership so, as business owners, you gotta figure out, how can I get data and assets that I do own? Because that’s what the, we’ve gone full circle with the values and the lists, right? Going back to the Pixel for a while and it’s come back.

Rutger (1:07:25 - 1:09:07) - That’s exactly what it is and chat and we sort of discussing your Messenger but let’s be… there are other tools out there. There’s web chat, there’s other tools than Facebook, so whatever tool you choose, it will be the right tool for your business. Use that tool, use that chat, and we’ve been talking about Messenger and ManyChat, but again all the things we discussed here can be used with other tools as well. As long as it’s conversational, as long as you give your clients the option to get in touch with you, as soon as they get in touch with you, it also allows you to take them off-platform. And maybe not in the first engagement, but maybe in the second one, and the third one, and the fourth one - it’s an ongoing thing and, yes, customer service, but with that also, start thinking about how can I use this conversational tool to build my list. How can I do quizzes, how can I do some gamification, how can I do giveaways, how can I push or distribute coupon codes versus how can I distribute coupon codes via Messenger first instead of email first? If I do it through Messenger first, great, I can start a conversation. I can ask, ‘Hey Scott, do you want to have this coupon in email as well?’ Yes, of course! Great, give us your email address.’ Boom! Now I have you in Messenger and in email and I can start the conversation with you about your favorite color or your favorite whiskeys or whatever to get all those data points.

Ray (1:09:07 - 1:09:17) - Hey Rutger, do you have any guiding principles or rules of when’s the appropriate time to capture that data?

Rutger (1:09:17 - 1:09:46) - That’s a great question. It depends a little bit on how the engagement and where the engagement started. If Scott reaches out because he’s got a customer service question, then make sure you fulfill that need first. Make sure that the need is fulfilled, make sure that if Scott took specific actions where we can assume or know that the question was answered, then do whatever you want to do after that.

Scott (1:09:47 - 1:09:50) - Law of reciprocation, right?

Rutger (1:09:53 - 1:12:07) - Yeah, exactly, 100%. It may be, sort of, the bot wasn’t able to answer Scott’s question, the hand-off to a human was done, great! That process is now close. Scott knows that the bot wasn’t able to answer that question, not a big deal, the business reached out, as in the business set expectations, the Messenger bot started the first work, now Ray’s gonna respond to Scott. ‘Scott, sorry I wasn’t able to answer your question. Ray’s gonna get back to you anytime soon. In the meantime, can I ask you a couple of quick questions.’ ‘Yeah, of course, I mean, why not? This has been a pretty fun and cool experience already.’ ‘We got something going on and we want to know more about your taste of whiskey,’ just to keep that example. I think that is sort of a, natural flow, intuitive flow. But on the other hand, you can also run paid traffic to your Messenger bot. Let’s say, Scott, everything is done on the Messenger bot, he hasn’t been in the site for a while, he didn’t engage with the Messenger bot, but Scott is still a Messenger subscriber, still a subscriber in our Messenger bot. What I can do, as a business, I can run, for example, sponsored messages. Ray, you know this. We got a sale going on or we fired up a VIP club. I want to leverage the database I’ve built up in Messenger of people who reached out to my business to re-engage them, get them into those segments, to get them subscribed to our monthly draw or our product launch we’re going to do. Now, I’m gonna leverage sponsored messaging inside of Ads Manager to slip a direct, not a DM, to slip a message to Scott from the page and those messages typically cost cents. They’re dirt cheap.

Ray (1:12:06 - 1:12:07) - Yeah, they’re pretty cheap.

Rutger (1:12:08 - 1:12:12) - And the system works. And they convert crazy.

Ray (1:12:13 - 1:12:16) - Higher quality than a Facebook lead ad.

Rutger (1:12:16 - 1:12:38) - Absolutely! And then I can re-engage with Scott for whatever that may be. That’s not customer service but that is sort of sales-driven. I can fire off specific messages to specific segments based off what I learned in the conversations I had with Scott before. Automated, not personal.

Scott (1:12:39 - 1:12:41) - Good way to re-engage with people, if done the right way.

Scott (1:12:44 - 1:13:14) - Man, that’s been such a good conversation that’s gone in a few different directions, but always good to catch up, brother! It’s been really good. Let’s tie things up. We’re, if someone’s looking to learn a bit more about ManyChat in particular and building out bots & flows, where’s the best place to connect with you, find you, and any resources that you recommend in diving a little bit deeper in this area?

Rutger (1:13:14 - 1:13:41) - Yeah, cool. The group Bots & Beers, that sort of originated in Hawaii, which we’ve touched upon earlier in this call. That’s still there, alive and kicking, we’ve got a pretty awesome community there. That’s also the group where I share tutorials, videos, templates, that kind of stuff. It’s open for everybody. See it as more of your local pub that’s probably closed now. You can come in to the group, Bots & Beers. We do our occasional beer there on Fridays as well.

Scott (1:13:42 - 1:13:45) - We’re due for a beer. We’re definitely due for a beer.

Rutger (1:13:45 - 1:13:46) - 100%!

Ray (1:13:46 - 1:13:47) - When things open up.

Rutger (1:13:48 - 1:13:49) - Sorry?

Ray (1:13:49 - 1:13:50) - When things open up.

Rutger (1:13:50 - 1:13:56) - When things open up, 100%, we go scuba diving, man! We go scuba diving! That was still a good idea. 

Scott (1:13:58 - 1:14:00) - It’ll happen, it’ll happen.

Rutger (1:13:59 - 1:14:00)) - It’ll happen.

Scott (1:14:00 - 1:14:01) - I look forward to it.

Rutger (1:14:02 - 1:14:04) - Most definitely. Good to see you guys! Thank you for having me!

Scott (1:14:05 - 01:14:07) - Rutger, thank you very much! And you have an amazing week!

Rutger (1:14:07 - 1:14:09) - All good! Thanks guys!

1:14:11 - 1:15:05 - Episode Outro
Scott (1:14:11 - 1:15:05) - Thanks again for tuning to this episode of the Growth & Greatness eCommerce Podcast. We hope you got a ton of value out of this episode and if you did, we’d love for you to leave us a review on your platform of choice and help us reach as many people as we can. Now, if you’re a brand founder, an eCommerce entrepreneur, or an in-house marketing manager looking to accelerate your growth this year, reach out to us at Right Hook Digital. We’re a performance branding agency and we specialize in partnering with eCommerce brands to help them hit their growth goals with maximum ROI. Now, if this sounds like a solution that you need, check us out at righthookdigital.com and schedule a call with our client partnerships team. They’d love to have a chat with you and see how we can help you grow in 2021.