Summer 2018


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New Best Friend? Why Everybody Is Chatting about Chatbots


If artificial intelligence and machine learning are today’s tech terms being tossed around the boardroom, chatbot is the buzzword coming up during creative brainstorming sessions. The most advanced chatbots are fueled


by artificial intelligence and machine learning for increasing levels of personalization. They are often more intuitive for customers and more cost-effective for companies than a 1-800 service line, especially for simple queries such as order status updates. But in addition to customer service, there’s an entire world of chatbot-use cases for marketing—and it’s on the cusp of becoming the next big thing. Before rushing into this relatively new


technology, however, it’s important for marketers to learn how to effectively deploy bots in a way that will not only boost ROI, but


BRANDS USING BOTS As algorithm shifts—which are notoriously subject to the whims of the gods that be in the social media universe—make it increasingly challenging to organically reach customers via traditional newsfeeds, bots provide a beacon of hope. According to an article on the Social Shake-Up blog, the normal open rate for marketing email is about 20 percent; however, for Facebook Messenger bot conversations between brands and customers, that rate rockets fourfold to 80 percent. Click-through rates on Messenger stretch into the double digits, while for email they’re typically around just


3 TIPS FOR BUILDING A BRANDED CHATBOT


Pick a service that makes sense for your company.


Thanks to a variety of user-friendly


platforms for building bots, you don’t need to be a prolific coder to create a chatbot that’s bespoke to your brand. Free platforms such as ChattyPeople and Chatfuel come highly recommended to those with limited coding abilities. If you’re confident in your programming skills, services such as Facebook Messenger and Telegram also have their own application-specific, open-source APIs that anyone can experiment with.


Make your bot unique, user- friendly, and understandable.


Whatever service you select to build your brand’s chatbot, the bot should


have a unique, relevant name, and users should be able to interact with it easily. Accessible AI has advanced by leaps and bounds in the past few years, but today, most bots are still fueled by canned responses written by a human. This means that the responses your bot will regurgitate can only be as witty, effective, and on brand as the creative team that crafts them. Keeping responses concise and conversational is key.


Pair chatbots with other marketing tactics.


Raise awareness about your brand’s chatbot with CTAs via other


marketing avenues, such as a direct mail or email campaign that includes a call to book an appointment and instructions on how customers can chat about their specific needs.


Are Chatbots a Marketer’s


also add real value to customers’ experiences. A few big brands are already getting inventive with this exciting and engaging tool.


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