The growth of chat marketing has led to a number of providers getting into the game. But even after three years, we still recommend ManyChat to our clients. Here are the reasons why.

Everyone has a favourite.

If we’re talking ice cream, you probably already have a flavour in mind. Most people have a favourite clothing brand, movie genre, and type of music.

When it comes to chat marketing, we have a definite favourite:

ManyChat.

We started using ManyChat three years ago. And since then, we’ve seen a bunch of competitors rise to prominence in the chat marketing sector.

Yet through it all, we’ve never felt tempted to make the switch. To this day, we still recommend ManyChat as the chatbot builder of choice to all our clients.

We’re not alone either.

Over 300,000 businesses use a ManyChat strategy. The platform sends more than 30 million messages per day. The simple fact is that it makes chat marketing easier. And to show you how, we’re going to look at some of its key features.

Feature #1 – Simple Bot Building

When they hear the word “chatbot,” many business owners instantly think they need in-depth coding experience to create one. After all, a chatbot can conduct a full conversation with a human. Plus it can gather data for use in marketing campaigns.

Surely, that makes them complicated to create.

Well, not if you’re using ManyChat. The platform allows you to create a chatbot in just five minutes. There’s no coding required and you have full control over the direction the bot takes. 

It’s easy to create a conversational flow and it’s simple to integrate the bot into Facebook.

ManyChat uses a drag and drop interface to help you develop your chat flow. If you’re not comfortable with that, it features a range of templates for specific business niches.

Feature #2 – Broadcasts and Campaigns

ManyChat gives you full control over the types of messages you send to your customers. If you want to broadcast to a targeted audience, you can easily do that. For example, you may wish to retarget a group of people who’ve purchased a specific product. You can use ManyChat to create a chat-marketing broadcast specifically for that audience.

It also allows you to create specific campaigns based on customer opt-ins. Let’s say your ecommerce store has a newsletter. You can send the details of the people who’ve opted into that newsletter to ManyChat. Then you can use the platform to plug the leads into a full campaign that sends a sequence of messages.

Feature #3 – Regular Updates

ManyChat has evolved over the three years we’ve used it. That’s because the team behind it encourages feedback from its users. And more importantly…they act on that feedback.

In their comparison of different chat marketing platforms, Bot Academy highlighted this as a key feature:

“We use ManyChat for Bot Academy and love their software. It’s so easy to use and the team actively listens to our feedback and actually builds the features we want!”

Chat marketing is a constantly evolving field. Without ManyChat’s commitment to keeping pace with the industry, we’d probably have started using a different platform.

However, they keep introducing new features. For example, the platform integrated both SMS and email messaging in September 2019. These new features offer you the opportunity to engage with prospects on the platform of their choosing.

Bear in mind that some prefer not to use Messenger as a means of contacting a business. This upgrade to the ManyChat platform makes it even more flexible. And it gives you more avenues to market consumers.

And that’s not the only reason we keep using ManyChat. Here’s another recent upgrade… 

Feature #4 – Accepting Payments Via Messenger

In 2019, ManyChat introduced the ability to receive payments from customers using Messenger.

There are all sorts of benefits to this feature, including:

  • The customer experiences less friction, as they don’t need to bounce between platforms to buy an item.
  • There’s less chance of the customer building a shopping cart only to abandon it halfway through.
  • You’re able to sell conversationally. This means you can use chat to answer key queries at the point of sale and pull customers over the line.
  • People trust Facebook, as it’s one of the largest social media platforms in the world. This means they’re more likely to buy within Messenger than they are to buy from a regular website.

With this feature, you’re building convenience into the buying process. That’s vital nowadays, since the world is moving towards instant gratification instead of long customer journeys.

ManyChat Free vs Pro

One of our favourite things about ManyChat is that it doesn’t force you into a paid commitment from the start. The platform offers Free and Pro variations. This means you can test it out before committing to the monthly fee.

The Pro package will vary in price from $10 up to $145. The exact price depends on how many subscribers you have. If your subscriber count goes up to about 25,000, the platform introduces custom pricing.
So, what are the key differences?

With the Free plan, you’re able to send out an unlimited number of messages to subscribers, just as you can in Pro. However, you’re limited to two message sequences. You’re only able to create 10 tags and three custom fields. And you’ll see the ManyChat branding on most of the growth tools the platform offers.

This means your customers will see the branding too.

Pro lifts these restrictions and gets rid of the branding. You also gain access to greater functionality, including an in-depth A/B testing feature. 

Finally, the Pro version receives superior support compared to the Free version.

We believe the Free version is a great way to test the platform out and send a few broadcasts. But the Pro version truly unlocks ManyChat’s potential as a chat marketing tool.

Why We Stick With ManyChat

We stick with ManyChat because of the key features we’ve mentioned above.

The user-friendliness of the platform allows us to introduce the concept of chat marketing to clients. If speed is of the essence for a campaign, there’s no better platform for getting a chatbot up and running as fast as possible.

We’d love to have the opportunity to discuss how ManyChat can give your marketing campaigns a huge boost.

Schedule a strategy session with our team today to learn more.