DECEN Muebles Infantiles is a small, children’s furniture business in Mexico that crafts cribs and cradles by hand from the highest quality woods available. The company’s mission is to design furniture that is safe for babies, robust for parents, and environmentally sustainable. Their bot was awarded the “Grand Prize” title in Chatfuel’s 2017 bot competition.
The Bot
Overwhelmed by an overflowing Messenger inbox, the brand built a Chatfuel bot with the goal of reducing time spent responding to customer inquiries. They did just that by designing a sales funnel that delights users with timely and relevant information, while simultaneously optimizing the business’ resources by deciding which users require 1-on-1 assistance from a human agent.
The Results
According to Omar Cortes, founder of DECEN Muebles Infantiles, the benefits of Messenger automation extend far beyond customer support alone. Previously he would only sell at expo shows throughout the year, but now he uses Chatfuel as a 24/7/365 e-commerce solution. “At my last expo, I used Facebook Ads and Chatfuel’s broadcasting tool to double my average sales,” he says. “Today 80% of total sales come from the bot.”
Cortes mentions that an unexpected advantage of deploying the Messenger experience for his business has been increased social proof and customer loyalty. “More users have started reviewing my Facebook page as an excellent service,” he says, “which was made possible by the chatbot.”
DECEN Muebles Infantiles’ most successful Messenger strategy involved a comment acquisition campaign asking soon-to-be mothers what month their baby is expected to arrive. Facebook users who commented on the post became bot subscribers that were entered into a giveaway for a high-ticket crib. The Messenger campaign doubled monthly sales, generated nearly 4,000 qualified leads, and — harnessing the power of the JSON API plugin — added another thousand subscribers to the brand’s MailChimp list.
The Recipe
DECEN Muebles Infantiles used the following Chatfuel tools to achieve these impressive results:
Sequences: Users who entered the crib giveaway received a follow-up message encouraging them to review the brand’s Facebook page. The result? Over 100 glowing reviews that “allowed me to sell easily,” says Cortes.
Gallery Cards: Showing off your products in Chatfuel is a piece of cake! Display a list of your best sellers with text, photos, and buttons (for buying, learning more, or sharing with friends).
Disable User Input: A little-known feature of Chatfuel is the ability to disable the composer, which will restrict users from sending free text inputs. It is extremely useful if your bot does not use AI or the User Input plugin because users will not be able to trigger the Default Answer message (which may distract them). Therefore, subscribers should convert more quickly.
So, what’s holding you back?! Start building your first Messenger bot and getting results like DECEN Muebles Infantiles! (Just promise you’ll let us feature you here… 😉)
Join the Chatfuel Community on Facebook for the latest tips, tricks, tutorials, and success stories!
This year’s 2018 Olympic Winter Games in Pyeongchang went down in history for debuting sports like Snowboarding big air and Alpine skiing team event. But these events were not the only “firsts” that viewers saw. Slovenia’s Olympic Team presented a Messenger chatbot under Foksi (Foxie) persona. Designed and built by the agency team at fbchatbot.si, the bot was unveiled a couple of months prior to Pyeongchang 2018 and landed in the spotlight during the Olympics.
The Bot
The Olympic Committee of Slovenia is one of the “youngest” Olympic Committees in the world but already has a rich history of great Olympic stories. Chatbot Foksi, of course, can tell users all those stories. In addition, using the bot people can find general information about Pyeongchang 2018 and the history of Slovenian Olympic medalists or take an Olympic quiz, browse the merchandise e-shop, and get support.
The Results
Foksi was the central channel for real-time communications with the Slovenia Olympic Team. During the Pyeongchang 2018 Winter Olympics, Messenger chatbot was the leading source of information about the Slovenian athletes, game schedules, results and more. More than 3.5K subscribed fans and supporters were the first to find out about the Slovenian medalists, and they received a daily event schedule with a link to past competition rankings. The open rate of the broadcast messages was 93% on average during the 2018 Olympic Games.
Foksi captivated users from the very beginning. It was clear that more users were active on the Team Slovenia chatbot than its official iPhone or Android apps. A couple hundred downloads of the official app was small compared to over 6,700 total bot users (over 50% of whom subscribed to receive regular updates).
As far as the user acquisition costs go, Team Slovenia ended up acquiring 33 times more users in the bot compared to the app downloads for the same promotion budget.
The decision was clear: Team Slovenia dropped its app, making Foksi the #1 source of information for the Slovenian athletes at the 2018 Olympics.
The Recipe
Text, Images, & Quick Replies: Olympic Quiz was one of the most popular features of the chatbot. The fun, lighthearted quiz asked 5 trivia questions by using text, images, GIFs and quick replies. Users could access it in two ways: either through the bot menu or by clicking on a Facebook Ad. The quiz was a big part of the strategy for acquiring chatbot users and subscribers.
Comment Acquisition: The most efficient, organic technique for user acquisition was offering prizes to users who commented on our Facebook posts. One comment acquisition campaign just before the Olympics brought nearly 1.2K subscribers to Team Slovenia’s chatbot in one week, without spending any money on advertising.
Paid advertising: The cost effectiveness of acquiring users in a Messenger bot proved worthy of the team’s efforts, especially in comparison to the mobile app promotion. Ongoing Facebook advertising helped maintain steady growth of approximately 1K users per month. The team also produced chatbot-exclusive content for these users, including interviews and Q&As.
Slovenia Olympic Team’s Chatbot was built and designed by the agency team at fbchatbot.si. Check out the rest of their chatbots at fbchatbot.si or contact their CEO Jure Doler at jd@fbchatbot.si
On 25 May 2018, the most significant piece of European data protection legislation to be introduced in 20 years — EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) — will come into force.
While Chatfuel is a company headquartered in the United States and does not have any physical locations in the European Union, we recognize that many of our users will be directly affected by the GDPR.
We’ve taken all the necessary steps to comply with both the legal and technical requirements, so we will issue an update to our Terms of Use (in the form of a GDPR-compliant Data Processing Agreement) before 25 May 2018.
Chatfuel will offer all its users subject to GDPR or contractual obligations to comply with the principles under GDPR to enter into GDPR-compliant data processing agreements. Such agreements are an important requirement for both our users as well as Chatfuel to comply with GDPR.
Our team is also hosting an educational webinar this Thursday (4/26) at 11:15am PST (2:15pm EST). Click here to register for the Zoom webinar and get your questions answered.
Argomall is an online, consumer electronics retailer in the Philippines that sells high-tech products at affordable prices. The company has a catalog of 3,000 products, ranging from TVs and tablets to laptops and smartphones.
First, the chatbot streamlines the sales process by letting users place an order without leaving their Messenger app. This is crucial in the Philippines because Facebook is free to use, whereas surfing an e-commerce storefront is not.
Second, Argomall’s bot improves their live chat support experience by enabling customers to ask questions at any point during the ordering process. This reduces the friction of converting ordinary visitors into paying customers.
The Results
“We have seen immediate growth in revenue[using Chatfuel],” says Holub. Argomall calculated over 23X increase in ROI in just the first few months of launching their Messenger experience, which is“unparalleled to our other tools we use” according to Holub. Product sales resulting from Messenger conversations have increased 10% since launching the Argomall chatbot as well.
The Recipe
Argomall used the following tools and techniques to achieve these impressive results:
Site Search: This plugin takes a user input(such as“dell laptop”), searches that keyword on the website, then returns the search results to the user in Messenger. Argomall found Site Search extremely useful for its product discovery feature.
User Input: Argomall uses this plugin to capture and export user data, such as a buyer’s shipping address. This feature lets you save data to a user-specific variable(aka user attribute) that can be reused later in the ordering process.
Live Chat: Human support agents can interact with users 1-on-1 without worrying about the bot interrupting their conversation. Similar results can be achieved by leaving the Default Answer block empty.
So, what are you waiting for? Click here to start building your first Messenger bot and getting results like Argomall!
Join the Chatfuel Community on Facebook for the latest tips, tricks, tutorials, and success stories!
HelloFresh is a weekly subscription box service that delivers fresh, locally-sourced ingredients to your doorstep. Subscribers enjoy all the benefits of healthy, home-cooked meals without the hassle of meal planning and grocery shopping.
The Bot
The company built a Messenger experience with the goal of reducing average customer care response time. Freddy (HelloFresh’s chat persona) can answer frequently asked questions and respond to common customer service inquiries, acting as the first line of defense before involving human agents.
The Results
“Since launching Freddy the FreshBot,” says Jordan Schultz, Team Lead of Marketing at HelloFresh, “we’ve decreased our response time by 32%, despite a 31% increase in incoming messages.” Powered by Chatfuel, this Messenger experience improves customer happiness and optimizes HelloFresh’s community management resources.
“As far as community management and customer service go, this was our biggest reduction in average wait time in a given month. Also, the Black Friday activation through the bot has generated 5x more daily users than average on Black Friday. The Black Friday effort had a 64% conversion rate.”
Another key feature of FreshBot is its ability to deliver seasonal content. During the Thanksgiving season, users took a fun quiz — built with user attributes — that matched them with personalized recipes or products. Results were based on whether the user was a host or guest, preferred to cook or not, and the number of guests attending.
The Recipe
HelloFresh used the following tools and techniques to achieve these impressive results:
Text & Quick Replies: The main structure of the bot is built using simple text cards and quick reply buttons, which combine to create a seamless user experience. Users can get answers to FAQs by tapping quick reply buttons with suggested topics. If live, human help is needed, FreshBot can instantly connect the user with a member of the HelloFresh support team directly within Messenger or via phone.
Comment Acquisition: The Black Friday Activation was possible using Chatfuel’s Acquire Users from Comments feature. This growth tool allows your bot to automatically respond to comments left under your Facebook post. Set it up to respond only to specific comments based on intent, or to every comment regardless of its meaning.
Gallery Cards: When it comes to seeing food online, we eat with our eyes! HelloFresh uses gallery cards to showcase mouth-watering photos of suggested recipes, in addition to using a ‘Get Recipe’ button that links to content hosted on their blog.
So, what are you waiting for? Click here to start building your first Messenger bot and get results like HelloFresh!
Join the Chatfuel Community on Facebook for the latest tips, tricks, tutorials, and success stories!
This new feature gives bot admins an overhead view of your subscriber list, allows you to create user segments, and also enables editing of individual users’ attributes. Most importantly, with the help of People tab, you can create custom lookalike audiences in the Facebook Ads Manager for precise user targeting.
Want to keep track of how many users come from a specific country, entered the bot from your website, and liked your latest product collection? Create dynamic segments and re-use them in other parts of your bot structure and broadcasting to increase conversions through personalization.
Looking for new users who will be more likely to convert to paying customers? Use the export functionality to create custom lookalike audiences in the Facebook Ads Manager for ultimate user targeting and to dramatically reduce your customer acquisition costs.
Have a special offer for a specific group of users and need to add a few people by hand? Add, delete, or edit attributes manually for ultimate flexibility. Then subscribe the entire group to a drip sequence of messages to ensure that your value proposition is delivered in the most efficient way.
Full functionality of People tab is available on all bots subscribed to the PRO Plan.
For a quick overview of all the main features of People tab, please refer to the short video below, as well as our help article. Then log in the dashboard and activate your PRO subscription to get unlimited access to People Tab.
People have been asking us for “Messenger-on-website” functionality for a while. Today, we’re proud to say that we are supporting the Customer Chat plugin in our dashboard the moment Facebook officially announces this feature. This means that our users can take advantage of this function out-of-the-box!
So… What is Customer Chat?
Customer Chat is a plugin that allows your website visitors to interact with your business through Facebook Messenger directly on your homepage. If you’re logged in to Facebook right now you should see the Customer Chat plugin in the bottom right corner of this article – go ahead and try it out!
Now, let’s explore some ways you can benefit from this new feature!
The end of the “Email Lists Era”
Let’s assume you’re marketing your product or service online. You run ads to drive traffic to your website. In order to re-engage your site visitors later, you ask for their emails. But how many people actually type their email address into that little popup window? Around 15% of all page visitors… at best. Anyway, let’s keep moving down the funnel…
So you’ve built an email list, sometimes without subscriber‘s names(who wants to fill out forms with multiple fields, right?).This leaves you with people like kitty1973@yahoo.com on the list. Awesome– what can you do with that? Typically, you would send all subscribers the sameemail follow-upbecause you really don’t know anything about each person individually. And how do people treat these impersonal emails? Correct– they don’t open them!(If you’re lucky, your email will pass at least some spam filters) So, how many engaged subscribers do we have remaining at this stage? Another tenfold drop would not be afar-fetched assumption. This leaves you with around 1.5% of all those initial visitors who are still paying attention. All that effort for only 1.5% engagement? Yikes!
This is what you get with email newsletters these days…
But hold on... Subscribers who only open and read your emails aren’t good enough! Youwant them to click your call-to-action! Of those who received your email, it’s safe to assume no more than3% will click through. That’s less than 0.5% of your initial visitors at this point. Crazy!
The reality is: most peopledon’t open emails orclick on links. That’s why the Gmails of the world create separate“Promotion” tabs so users don’t have to sift through messages that feel like spam:
Email’s high acquisition costs andlow conversion rates have forced businesses to bombard their audiences with more frequent and less personal messages. Unfortunately, this kind of behavior does notbuild meaningful relationships between businesses and their customers. We don’t like that, and neither does anyone else.
Chatfuel is the largest bot platformout there, poweringover 300,000live Messenger bots. So we feel compelled to step up and help shape the future of digital marketing and the ways in which businesses communicate with their customers. We want to see less of the messy, impersonal massmailings and more of marketers listening to their audiences, getting to know them, and then re-engaging in a personal, meaningful, and respectful way. This is why the Customer Chat plugin is an integral step in shaping this future. Here’s how it works…
There is a better way
Here are 5 reasons why Customer Chat changes the game...
You don’t need to ask for an email on your website. If people want to engage with you, they can just press one button, and boom– you’ve established a conversation thread in Messenger. It will never expire(unlike cookies), so you can reach back to these people with an answer, an offer, a shipment tracking update, or even a simple post-purchase survey– right in the Messenger app on their phone.
Remember that kitty1973@yahoo.com thing? Once a visitor presses the Chat Now button on your Messenger bot,you immediately get their full name, language preference, profile photo, time zone, and gender from Facebook.
Utilize your users’ details to engage them in a personalized manner right from the very first message.
It doesn’t stop there! When the conversation begins, you should start learning more about each user. Something important we’ve realized while building Chatfuel is that people LOVE answering questions in Messenger! Design the conversational flow, add Quick Reply buttons(those blue, rounded buttons with suggested replies), and now you have the power to easily qualify each visitor into a specific segment by saving and storing their responses.Utilize buttons, images, videos, free-form text inputs, and much more using Chatfuel’s drag-n-drop editor. The best part? You don’t need any programming skills to build a user-friendly experience!
When a user has become a warm lead by progressing significantly down your bot’s funnel, you can hand over the conversation to a human for the ultimate personal touch. Chatfuel features an easy-to-use Live Chat plugin that can integrate withIntercom, Zendesk, or any other CRM or customer service platform that supports Facebook handover protocol.
Live Chat is among the most used plugins on Chatfuel
Once you’ve learned about each of your customers with the help of your bot, you can add different customer segments to specific sequences of messages and re-engage with them using all the data points you’ve collected:
Compare these results with the email newsletter numbers above
Holy moly! Can you see this? You easily get 85% open rates and 35% CTRs in Messenger! People simply prefer Messenger as a communication channel over anything else. If they don’t call or email their friends, then why on earth would they want to do that with your business?
When you prioritize user experience and personalization, these numbers can soar even higher. Combine this with the frictionless user acquisition of the Customer Chat plugin–instead of asking visitors to type in their email– and you getsignificantly reduced costs and nearly a 20x efficiency improvement on your marketing efforts.
As a testament to the power of the Customer Chat plugin for digital marketers, one of our users–Jon Loomer– a well-known Facebook marketing expert, has already launched this experience on his website.
Oh, and one more thing! You can embed the Customer Chat plugin for free — no limitations. Watch the video below, then visitchatfuel.comto make your digital marketing and communication more efficient, personalized and responsive.
Exciting news! Further to our recent announcement, we have launched our PRO Plan! At this time, the option gives you the ability to remove the “Powered by Chatfuel” attribution from the bot’s Persistent Menu.
You can look up the pricing and subscribe to the plan by going to the PRO Plan widget under the Configure tab in the dashboard.
Note that in bots that had the “Powered by Chatfuel” attribution moved to the 2nd level of the Persistent Menu, the attribution will be forced to the top level, as we mentioned in our prior blog post.
Please refer to our FAQ page if you have any questions or concerns. For anything not covered in the FAQ, we welcome your questions: team@chatfuel.com
Chatfuel Team, May 5, 2018 
The Results
Utilize your users’ details to engage them in a personalized manner right from the very first message.
Live Chat is among the most used plugins on Chatfuel
