First, let’s cover what flows are and what they do, and it’ll be clear how these can drive more value for your brand.
ShopMessage Flows are messages that are automatically sent to a customer based on a specific action they take while shopping on your website.
Flows are effective because they are timely, contextually relevant messages based on a customer’s specific shopping experience.
ShopMessage Flows are timely because they respond when customer actions are detected. They are contextually relevant because they pull on data from your customer’s behavior on your site to serve relevant content.
We hate to brag, but we can objectively say that ShopMessage flows are the most flexible and powerful in the industry for e-commerce companies. (Okay, in this case, we love to brag 🙂 What makes them so effective? Glad you asked!
Three Primary Reasons That Messenger Flows Are So Effective
1. ShopMessage flows are designed for all aspects of the customer lifecycle, from welcoming a first-time visitor to engaging a long-time loyal customer. That means you can segment and automatically reach the right customer at the right time in their journey.
There are many touch points along the customer journey for brands to engage via Messenger.
2. ShopMessage flows support custom events so you can trigger messages based on any activity that your customers engage in. With ShopMessage there are no limits for when and how you automatically trigger a message to a shopper.
3. ShopMessage supports custom data so you can send the right message with the right context. For example, you can send a different coupon based on high or low cart values. Or, if a user adds a subscription box to their cart, you may want to send a special flow containing popular items from previous boxes.
While a flow can be set up to trigger on any event, we recommend that brands start by setting up these five flows. They’ve proven to drive revenue, engagement, and long term customer loyalty.
An abandoned cart flow is triggered when — you guessed it! — a customer abandons their cart. The flow is similar to its email-based cousin but is even more effective (most of us ignore our email inbox, while we live in Messenger). ShopMessage abandoned cart flows see over 80% open rates, 35% click rates, and on average drive $9 per recipient messaged.
Listen as Abandoned Cart flows are discussed by Arjun Ohri and the team at Facebook Blueprint.
Order confirmation flows are a polite way to stay in touch and keep your customers updated.
2. Customer Thank You & Order Confirmation Flows
The simple gesture of saying “thank you” goes a long way to establishing long term loyalty with your customers. Thank you flows are message sequences that are triggered and sent after a purchase is completed. A thank you message can automatically include the purchase details, which doubles as a convenient order confirmation. Many brands choose to offer a time-bound discount on a follow-up purchase, which is an effective way to increase average customer value.
Browse Abandonment Flows remind customers what they were browsing earlier.
3. Browse Abandonment Flows
Ah, the art and science of converting browsers to buyers. Sending a Messenger flow to a customer about items they recently viewed can be an extremely effective tactic to close the sale. Browse abandonment flows are set up to trigger when a customer browses a particular product or section but leaves without completing a purchase. The flow is compelling to customers (after all, they were just shopping for that sweet new jacket). Brands can optionally choose to include discounts or other incentives to increase sale conversions.
Customer Win Back Flows are a great way to tell them about all the cool stuff they’ve been missing out on lately.
4. Customer Win Backs
If you are wanting to win people over again, this flow is for you. Customer win backs are directed to customers who have previously purchased from you but have lapsed since their last purchase. The purpose of this flow is to build up brand loyalty and help people remember why they love your brand.
Product Discovery Flows help customers whittle down a wide catalog into the most relevant products for them based on their choices in the conversation.
5. Product Discovery Flow
One of the best parts about shopping in a physical brick and mortar store is there are employees on staff to help you find exactly what you’re looking for. They’ll ask you questions and suggest products based on your responses and taste. That’s where ShopMessage product discovery flows come in. The product discovery is a chatbot that helps the customer browse your catalog and discover the most relevant products.
Welcome Flows get your relationship with your customers off on the right foot from the first time they visit your store.
6. Welcome Flow
So someone just signed up to join your Messenger list. Welcome them to the crew by automatically triggering a conversation. You can choose to send a discount code or simply ask them some questions to better get to know your customers — data you can later use to send personalized campaigns.
These flows are just a taste of how brands can make Messenger THE revenue-driving channel of 2019. The important thing is to have a well-rounded messenger marketing playbook to have better quality conversations with your customers.
Have you checked out ShopMessage Smart Pop-ups yet? What are you waiting for? Our new Smart Pop-ups are built to help you quickly grow your Messenger subscriber list and we’re already seeing an average of 8% opt-in rates. That’s more than double a standard email opt-in! ​
Example Strategy: ShopMessage Promotion on Arrival
That said, you’ll need to think about alternative ways to build your Messenger subscriber list. Luckily, we just launched some really cool new tools to help you quickly grow your Messenger subscriber list. We can objectively say that they are WAY more effective and feature-rich than anything out in the market. ​
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💬 Smarter pop-ups for smarter marketers
We’ve taken a proven opt-in method and brought it to the next level. Now, you can grow your list without hassling existing contacts. Our pop-ups only appear to users who are already logged into Facebook and have not already opted in. We also auto-detect other pop-ups so we never interfere with your existing email capture promotions.
Not only are they smart, they’re beautiful. Thanks to a talented design team, we offer hundreds of customizable templates so promotions are always “on brand”. We also let you choose exactly when to display your promotion with the option to immediately send a follow-up Message!​
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💥 Email is declining while Messenger is exploding
ShopMessage clients have seen ~81% open-rates and 34% click-thru rates. Take a moment to compare that to your current email open and click rates. Convinced yet?​
Brands must choose the right growth marketing strategy when they are getting started with Facebook Messenger Marketing.
A question we get a lot is how a Messenger marketing strategy fits into the picture when email modals are already involved.
The goal is to avoid creating a conflicting, confusing experience for your customers. Messenger opt-in growth plugins and email capture modals appear and behave similarly. The last thing you want is getting poor performance from both channels by using them in tandem poorly.
When considering the right Messenger Marketing strategy, there are three to keep in mind:
Customers don’t want to be annoyed while browsing.
You want to maximize your Messenger opt-ins.
Understanding The Steps of Your Customer’s Journey
To choose the right messenger marketing strategy to grow your brand, you need to take a look at the various points in your customer’s journey with your brand. Some common events include:
Discovering your brand
Landing on your website
Browsing your site
Adding an item to their cart
Completing their purchase
Becoming a happy customer.
ShopMessage’s team has identified the most common scenarios that a merchant would want to offer their visitors a promotion. The best part is a merchant can use more than one!
If you understand the scope of possible customer engagement points, you can identify where your existing email capture strategies fit into the larger puzzle.
You’ll be able to spot the gaps where you are not engaging with your customers. These are the opportunities where you’ll want to deploy your Messenger growth plugins.
What to Consider When Choosing a Messenger Marketing Strategy
First, you’ll need to determine whether there are any existing modals on your site that you need to take into account.
What to Do If You Have No Email Modals
If you don’t have an existing email capture modal, then this choice is easy. Display your promotional plugin upon arrival with a slight delay.
We also recommend using the exit intent and post-purchase promo strategies for good measure.
In general, you want to maximize your opportunities to capture opt-ins by using multiple strategies that hit the visitor at various steps in their customer journey.
What to Do If You Already Use Email Modals
If you already have email capture modals, they will likely display upon arrival and/or when exit intent is displayed.
The alternative is to find a new step in the journey to prompt your visitors.
Along the customer journey, a majority of brands that are using email capture modals have them deploy upon arrival, or when the visitor has displayed exit intent.
Choose the Persistent Offer strategy if you want your growth plugin to coexist with an email modal.
This subtle pill keeps your opt-in promotion visible, without competing with the arrival or exit-intent modals for attention.
The Post-Purchase Promotion is unique because it displays to visitors that have already converted into paying customers.
Use this time to celebrate your customers and encourage them to turn into repeat buyers.
You can balance your email and messenger plugin displays by targeting your visitors at different sections of their customer journey.
Use Multiple Strategies To Grow Your Messenger Marketing Contact List
Every customer is unique, and every store experience is unique, which is why we’ve put together multiple Growth Plugin strategies to make sure there’s a tool in there for every situation.
Each messenger marketing strategy determines a set of rules governing the behavior of your Growth Plugin and will pre-populate a certain set of messaging into your preset that is appropriate for the timing of your promotion.
Across all of our strategies, you will have the ability to customize every aspect of your Growth Plugin, including:
overlay type e.g. modals, flyouts, and full-page takeovers
background image
messaging
typography
colors e.g. buttons, text
discount
your own logo
The Arrival Promo
Maximize your impressions by presenting all eligible visitors an offer moments upon arriving at your store. You can set this to display immediately upon arrival.
An arrival greeting is a great way to guide your visitors’ first impressions of your site. We recommend adding a few seconds of delay, so your promotion benefits from the added surprise/delight of popping-up.
A promotion that displays immediately, or very shortly after, a visitor arrives on your site.
The Purchase-Intent Promo
Use this strategy to strike a balance between your customer’s ability to browse the site and maximizing your opt-in rate. Purchase-Intent is defined as viewing the page for X-seconds, scrolling down Y% of the page, or adding an item to their cart. You can customize the timing and page scroll percentage delays based on your typical customer’s behavior.
A promotion that displays when a visitor exhibits purchase intent. This can be defined by time spent on a page, the percentage of the page scrolled, or adding an item to their cart.
The Exit-Intent Promo
Wait to display your promotion until your customer appears to be navigating away from your store. Catching them on their way out could mean the difference between an abandoned cart and closing the sale.
A promotion that displays when a visitor appears to be navigating away from your site.
The Persistent Promo
This is a subtle, yet visible way to build your Contact list that doesn’t take up a lot of space. This hybrid promotion will render as a pill in the bottom corner of your page until your customer engages with it, or an Intent rule is triggered. When this happens, the pill will expand into a modal, a flyout, or a full page takeover depending on what design you chose.
A subtle, yet persistently accessible pill in the bottom corner of your site that visitors can engage with at will. A great way for your growth plugin to co-exist with an email capture modal that may already be in place.
The Post-Purchase Promo
This strategy is different because it targets the customer after they have completed their purchase. Use this to ensure opt-in collection by celebrating your customer with an offer they can save for their next visit.
Promoting at this stage lays the foundation for building a repeat customer while they are still feeling the joy of their purchase. Strike while the iron’s hot!
A promotion that displays after a visitor has completed a purchase. A great way to celebrate your customers and re-engage them for repeat purchasing.
Bottom Line
The customer journey is complex. There are many steps where a visitor can decide they love you or don’t care. You can engage visitors to your site with a well-timed modal overlay to build a connection with your brand’s customer.
Already using email modals? No problem. ShopMessage is designed with Smart Logic to work around existing modals and maintain a positive experience for your customers.
ShopMessage’s Growth Plugins can be powerful tools in your messenger marketing strategy. Conversational brands that engage their customers at the right time in their customer journey will be the ones that win the future of digital marketing.
The ShopMessage team is proud to announce our new suite of Growth Tools for building your list of Facebook Messenger contacts!
Throughout this blog, we use Growth Tools, Growth Plugins, and Promotions pretty loosely.
They all refer to the same thing, and they all help you launch your Messenger Marketing strategy.
Who is this guide for?
We believe e-commerce merchants everywhere should have a strong Messenger marketing strategy. We wrote this guide for businesses that are in various stages of formulating their Messenger strategy:
Businesses that need help deciding which Facebook Messenger Marketing platform to install.
Marketers trying to collect Messenger opt-ins on their site and landing pages.
Brands that are even thinking about getting their feet wet with Conversational Commerce.
Also! We integrate with almost all platforms including Shopify, Magento, WooCommerce, Prestashop, and Salesforce Commerce Cloud to name a few.
Why Every Business Needs a Messenger Marketing Strategy Now
Email is declining
We built these growth tools for e-commerce merchants big and small because now is the time for businesses to get started building up your list of Messenger contacts.
Email engagement is declining as inboxes saturate and recipients are afflicted with email fatigue.
Typing in an email address is a high-friction experience for today’s modern shoppers. It just takes too much time.
So where are they going if they’re not opening their emails?
Messenger. It’s exploding!
More than 1.4 billion people are actively checking their Facebook Messenger inboxes every month. Mark Zuckerburg himself reported at Facebook for Developers’ F8 Conference that over 20 billion monthly messages were sent between people and businesses as of 2019, which is 2.5 times more YoY (as compared to Q2 2018).
Not only are people online, but they’re engaged! ShopMessage clients have seen ~81% open-rates and 34% click-thru rates. Email just can’t compare—take a look at Mailchimp’s benchmarks!
Infographic comparing Facebook Messenger and email engagement rates.
However, if you want to engage with your (potential) customers via Messenger, you’ll need their consent to be messaged. You’ll need them to opt-in to receive messages from your page.
Some brands who are veterans in the Messenger space may have been lucky enough to have their checkboxes pre-checked but…
Facebook’s pre-checked checkbox widgets went away — Here’s what you should know
How ShopMessage’s Growth Tools Will Help Make You a Messenger Marketing Pro
The challenge: how to start a conversation with customers.
Our solution: create a growth tool for building your Messenger Marketing list. We gave a nod to email capture modals, with a small but major difference: one-click opt-in.
No more typing! But there’s a little more to it than that.
Choose from a range of strategies for promoting to your visitors and collecting their Messenger opt-ins.
Our tools make every effort to respect the tenets of human-centered design by creating a frictionless experience for your customers.
Here’s what you can do to make that a reality for your customers.
Leverage ShopMessage’s Smart Logic to create a pleasant customer experience
We spent hundreds of hours thinking through what would make a Messenger opt-in experience an awesome one for your customers.
Optimize Opt-Ins by Only Displaying to the Visitors That Are Likely to Opt-In
Increase your success rate, and avoid wasting impressions on people that have a low probability of converting.
Logged In To Facebook
Your promotions will only show if we have detected that your site visitor is already logged into Facebook on their browser.
Users shouldn’t have to exit their purchase flow to log into Facebook Messenger. This would risk them abandoning your site and their cart.
Not Yet A Messenger Contact
We also don’t want to spam your existing contacts. We’ll only show your promotions to visitors that are not already in your list of contacts.
Once you’ve collected your customers opt-in, we won’t bother them with future pop-ups so they can focus on browsing your store.
ShopMessage will only display plugins to visitors that are most likely to opt-in.
Works in Harmony with Existing Email Capture Modals
A Messenger boom doesn’t have to cost you your existing email strategy. In fact, ShopMessage is proud to call several of your favorite email capture tools our partners.
We’ve built smart logic into your promotion’s display rules that prevent our plugin from competing with any of our partner’s plugins. No need to worry about flooding your customers with too many offers all at once.
A well-rounded marketing strategy will need multiple customer touch points to build a lasting relationship. ShopMessage wants to help you get there.
Device & Page Display Awareness For Advanced Visitor Segmentation
We’ve built in the ability to target customer browsers, UTM sources, and specific pages using string matching.
This allows you to create alternate experiences depending on which advertising channel they came from.
You can also target broad categories of pages across your site, such as your /collections/ or /product/ pages.
ShopMessage allows you to target people based on the device they are using, the page they are on and the traffic source they came from. You can specify what frequency you want to display your overlays to the same user.
Create Beautiful Opt-In Capture Modals in 3 Clicks With The Flexibility to Fit Your Brand
We looked at hundreds of modal experiences used by the biggest brands in e-commerce to figure out what makes for a great experience. Here are a few things we learned:
4 Tips for Creating Beautiful Overlays
Tailor your message to the particular point in your customer’s journey that you are engaging them.
Branded Flyouts, Modals, and Full Page Takeovers are great ways to catch your customer’s attention.
Keep things short and sweet. Use 2-3 lines to avoid a cluttered looking promotion.
A simple background can add a lot of life and texture, without distracting from your main message.
We took these learnings and worked with a team of designers to create hundreds of professionally designed templates. Our goal was to help brands get started collecting opt-ins right away.
Instead of a clunky, freeform email input field waiting for a typo, brands can use one-click Send-to-Messenger buttons to follow-up seamlessly.
We’ve created hundreds of preset overlays to help businesses hit the ground running.
All of our presets are plug and play—easy to use. We wanted you to be able to get started with Messenger Marketing without getting bogged down on design. The only thing you need to upload is your logo!
However, we also know that customization is important. We gave you the ability to customize just about anything in your overlay.
You can edit the background imagery, upload a logo, change the colors, edit your copy, and include a promotional offering to fit the needs of your brand.
ShopMessage’s overlay design tool allows you to customize layout, fonts, backgrounds, call-to-action text and more. The preview updates in real time.
Different Strategies To Grow Your Contact List
Every customer is unique, and every store experience is unique. We put together multiple Growth Tools strategies to make sure there’s a tool for everyone that can cover their bases.
Each strategy determines a set of rules governing the behavior of your Growth Tool. The strategy chosen will pre-populate specific messaging into your preset that is appropriate for the timing of your promotion.
Growth Plugin Customizations
overlay type e.g. modals, flyouts, and full-page takeovers
background image
messaging
typography
colors e.g. buttons, text
discount
your own logo
The Arrival Promo
Maximize your impressions by presenting all eligible visitors an offer moments upon arriving at your store.
You can set this to display immediately upon arrival, although we would recommend a few seconds of delay.
This way, your promotion benefits from the added surprise/delight of popping-up.
A promotion that displays immediately, or very shortly after, a visitor arrives on your site.
The Purchase-Intent Promo
Use this strategy to strike a balance between your customer’s ability to browse the site and maximizing your opt-in rate.
Purchase-Intent is defined as viewing the page for X-seconds, scrolling down Y% of the page, or adding an item to their cart.
You can customize the timing and percentage delays based on your typical customer’s behavior.
A promotion that displays when a visitor exhibits purchase intent. This can be defined as time spent on a page, the percentage of the page scrolled or adding an item to their cart.
The Exit-Intent Promo
Wait to display your promotion until your customer appears to be navigating away from your store. Catch your on their way out could mean the difference between an abandoned cart and closing the sale.
A promotion that displays when a visitor appears to be navigating away from your site.
The Persistent Promo
This is a subtle, yet visible, way to build your Contact list. Best of all, it doesn’t take up a lot of space.
This hybrid promotion will render as a pill in the bottom corner of your page until the visitor engages with it, or an Intent rule is triggered.
When this happens, the pill will expand into a modal, a flyout, or a full page takeover depending on what design you chose.
A subtle, yet persistently accessible pill in the bottom corner of your site that visitors can engage with at will. A great way for your growth tool to co-exist with an email capture modal that may already be in place.
The Post-Purchase Promo
This strategy is different because it targets the customer after they have completed their purchase. Use this to ensure opt-in collection by celebrating your customer with an offer they can save for their next visit.
It’s important to lay the foundation for building a repeat customer while your customer is feeling peak joy about their purchase.
A promotion that displays after a visitor has completed a purchase. A great way to celebrate your customers and re-engage them for repeat purchasing.
How to Choose the Right Growth Plugin Strategy for Your Brand, or What To Do If You Have an Email Modal On Your Site Already
Messenger opt-in growth tools and email capture modals appear and behave similarly. Take care to avoid creating a conflicting, confusing experience for your customers. The last thing you want is to create a poor experience with both channels.
The good news is, we thought a lot about this problem. While we were debating our solutions three things kept coming up:
The customer journey on your site comprises of multiple touch points.
You want to avoid annoying or over-saturating your customers.
You want to maximize your Messenger opt-ins.
Understanding The Steps of Your Customer’s Journey
To choose the right growth strategy, you need to take a look at the various points in your customer’s journey with your brand. Some common events include:
Discovering your brand
Landing on your website
Browsing your site
Adding an item to their cart
Completing their purchase
Becoming a happy customer.
ShopMessage’s team has identified the most common scenarios that a merchant would want to offer their visitors a promotion. The best part is a merchant can use more than one!
It’s important to understand the scope of possible customer engagement points. This will enable you to identify where your existing email capture strategies fit into the larger puzzle.
You’ll be able to spot the gaps where you are not engaging with your customers. These are the opportunities where you’ll want to deploy your Messenger growth plugins.
What to Consider When Choosing a Strategy
First, you’ll need to determine whether there are any existing modals on your site that you need to take into account.
If you don’t have an existing email capture modal, then this choice is easy. Display your promotional plugin upon arrival with a slight delay.
We also recommend using the exit intent and post-purchase promo strategies for good measure.
In general, you want to maximize your opportunities to capture opt-ins by using multiple strategies that hit the visitor at various steps in their customer journey.
What to Do If You Already Use Email Modals
Do you already have email capture modals? If so, they will likely display upon arrival and/or when exit intent is displayed.
You should decide if you want to replace any of your existing email modals with one of ShopMessage’s Messenger growth plugins.
The alternative is to find a new step in the journey to prompt your visitors.
Along the customer journey, a majority of brands that are using email capture modals have them deploy upon arrival, or when the visitor has displayed exit intent.
Choose the Persistent Offer strategy if you want your growth plugin to coexist with an email modal. This subtle pill keeps your opt-in promotion visible. It won’t compete with the arrival or exit-intent modals for attention.
Our Post-Purchase Promotion is unique. It displays to visitors that have already converted into paying customers. Use this time to celebrate your customers and encourage them to turn into repeat buyers.
You can balance your email and messenger plugin displays by targeting your visitors at different sections of their customer journey.
What to Do with Your New Growth Tool & The Contacts You Collect
So if you’ve gotten this far, then you’ve successfully created your first of many Growth Tools.
The contact opt-ins are rolling in! Awesome! But, we promised you this would feed into your larger Messenger Marketing strategy!
Just follow these steps.
Create a Welcome Series Message Flow to Greet Your New Contacts
It would be rude not to welcome the new additions to your brand family. We recommend connecting your Growth Tool to a Welcome Series flow.
It doesn’t have to be long-winded or complex. Even a simple “Hello! Thanks for stopping by!” goes a long way. It’s easy to make sure your customers know you care about creating a relationship with them.
The first step to building a lasting relationship is to start! Enroll your growing list of contacts into a welcome series flow that greets them as soon as they’ve accepted your promotion.
To create a flow for your promotion, navigate to the Follow-Up tab of your Growth Tools editor. Then, click the Create Flow button.
Next, you will be taken to the familiar flows message editor. You’ve most likely already encountered this while setting up your abandoned cart flow.
Once you’ve set up your tool, the next step is to get a flow set up to start engaging with your new contacts.
To make things easier, we’ve created a nice, warm default that you can get started with.
The welcome flow comes with all the customizability you’ve come to expect from our product. After all, branding is important!
ShopMessage has created a default flow that you can use to hit the ground running with engaging your new contacts.
Advanced Scenario — Visitor Properties
We also allow you to set unique visitor properties for contacts collected via your Growth Plugin.
You can use these visitor properties to identify this specific segment of your contacts list for specific campaign targeting.
Are you running a special Warehouse Sale promotion? You may want to send follow-up content to these users about similar deals.
You would need to specify the visitor property associated with this promotion as your inclusion rule in your campaign targeting set-up.
Bottom Line
Building a customer relationship that generates a high LTV for your business is hard.
You’ll need to meet them where they are, and that’s in multiple places. Some customers prefer email, others prefer Messenger, and some like a little bit of both.
Facebook Messenger offers a rich, interactive space to engage with your customers and prospects. ShopMessage’s Growth Tools was designed with the end customer, your customers, in mind.
We placed an emphasis on creating a great experience for everyone.
