What is ManyChat
ManyChat (https://manychat.com/) is one of the largest chatbot software platforms for Facebook Messenger.
Since 2016, ManyChat has been used by hundreds of thousands of businesses around the world to automate their Facebook Messenger experience for their Facebook pages.
With the ability to send SMS and email now directly through ManyChat, businesses can create complete automation sequences and reach their customers across multiple platforms.
In this post we look at the functionality of the ManyChat software platform.
How ManyChat works
Born as a platform to create Bots and related automated sequences with Facebook Messenger, ManyChat (https://manychat.com/) has recently evolved into a "chat marketing" platform, allowing you to automate not only Messenger but also tools like SMS. Let's take a look at its functionality.
Interfaces for ChatBots
ManyChat's dashboard is clean with a menu on the left side with different options and the contents of each section on the right side. It's a really simple and easy to understand dashboard. Now let's talk about the interface for creating a chatbot. ManyChat has two types of interfaces: Basic Builder and The Flow Builder. Let's see them in detail.
Basic Builder
With the Basic Builder, the content of your chatbot is more organized and all messages in a certain stream are presented in order.
Flow Builder
If you want a more visual approach to editing your chatbot, you can also opt for the Flow Builder. The flow builder is a visual interface where you can link messages and actions together. This type of builder gives you a more structured overview of your chatbot's content.
Normally, a disadvantage of this type of interface is that it can become more complicated when there is a lot of content in your chatbot, but you can switch to the Basic Builder at any time
Chatbot elements
ManyChat provides a full variety of chatbot elements.
Users
In ManyChat (https://manychat.com/) it's easy to add custom fields and tags to specific users. You can ask questions and save the user's answer in a custom field or add a specific tag. By filtering by custom fields and tags, you can also send messages to specific user segments.
In addition, users can also share their location with a ManyChat chatbot. This could give you more information about where your audience is, while also allowing for geolocation-based profiling.
In ManyChat you can view all the users of your chatbot in the "Audience" tab, which gives you a good overview of all the people who have interacted with your chatbot.
Automated sequences
Manychat (https://manychat.com/) provides the ability to organize automated sequences by triggering or interrupting them.
You can see the complete sequence in a general overview and you can also see which message is being sent and at what time.
Also, with ManyChat you can use a feature called "Conditions", where you can use modal logic to send users through a given stream.
You can also create a chatbot in any language, but you can't easily translate this chatbot to different languages (you have to do it manually and copy your whole chatbot complete).
AI & NLP
The AI&NLP of ManyChat (https://manychat.com/) allows you to group certain keywords and provide a certain answer. However, automatic intents and synonyms are not supported.
The AI & NLP feature allows you to filter between various conditions, for example:
- A message is equal to the keyword
- A message contains the keyword
- A message contains the entire keyword
- A message begins with the keyword
- A message is positive (a standard feature in Facebook Messenger)
ChatBot for Messenger, SMS, Email
With ManyChat (https://manychat.com/) you can create a chatbot on Facebook Messenger, SMS and Email.
This allows you to create an omnichannel chatbot experience for your users. So, for example, when someone provides a certain response on Facebook Messenger, you could send an email based on that response.
With SMS, you can only send text messages to users in the US and Canada. If you want to send text messages to other countries, you need to use the Twilio integration available in the ManyChat App Store.
Marketing Tools & Landing Pages
You can embed a Facebook Messenger widget on your website, create a landing page, link to Facebook ads, use One Time Notification, automatically reply to Facebook comments, create buttons and create custom URLs for your chatbot.
ManyChat and Facebook Comments
In addition, ManyChat (https://manychat.com/) has an automatic response to Facebook comments.
Usually, with Facebook's automatic comment reply, you create a post on Facebook, people comment on it, and then you send them an automatic message in Facebook Messenger.
In addition to sending a message in Facebook Messenger, with ManyChat you can automatically like the comment and reply with your comment.
ChatBots Analytics
ManyChat (https://manychat.com/) provides analysis basics in the dashboard. When you log into the dashboard, the first thing you see is a complete overview of all your subscribers. It also provides analytics for each block in your chatbot. For each block, ManyChat provides the number of people the message is delivered to, the open rate, and the click-through rate.
This also applies to automated sequences. For each sequence, the number of subscribers, open rate and click rate are presented.
ManyChat Pixel
ManyChat Pixel is a snippet of code that you can insert into your website to track conversions coming from your chatbot. When someone clicks a link button in Messenger and then performs the conversion on your website, this pixel assigns that conversion to the specific stream.
Shopify integration for eCommerce
ManyChat provides direct integration with Shopify (https://manychat.com/product/chatmarketing-with-shopify) so that we can:
- recover abandoned carts;
- Inform customers about orders and shipment updates;
- Collect reviews and feedback after purchase;
- generate repeat purchases to optimize customer LTV and improve the Retention.
The integration does not allow you to purchase a product from your Shopify store within the chatbot, but you can receive payments within your chatbot and allow users to pay directly within the chatbot using the Stripe or Paypal integration.
ManyChat does not have an integration with WooCommerce. But it is still possible to connect with WooCommerce, with an integration Zapier o Integromat.
Templates
ManyChat offers 19 template that you can install directly to create your own chatbot, which include free templates and templates available only to Pro users.
With ManyChat, you can create a chatbot template and share it with others. This is really useful when you create multiple chatbots that do the same thing (e.g. the Lead Generation).
Also, you can duplicate chatbot streams and chatbot elements.
CRO
You can run A/B Test in ManyChat, but the feature is not available in the free plan but only in the Pro plan.
Support
ManyChat provides tutorials on how to create a chatbot and all the features of their platform and provides proper documentation and good customer support.
ManyChat also has a great Facebook community (80,000 people) where you can ask all kinds of questions and learn more about the platform.
Benefits of ManyChat
ManyChat (https://manychat.com/) provides the ability to:
- Create your own chatbots for multiple channels (Messenger, website, email and SMS) with predefined templates and a simple visual builder;
- Build and add automated sequences to the Messenger bot without coding;
- communicate with your contact list via Messenger, email or SMS directly in ManyChat, thus offering instant customer service;
- capture and better manage contact data both manually and automatically (subscribe to automated sequences, add values to custom fields...);
- Promote your products via AI chatbots;
- Track and analyze the effectiveness of the chatbot.
Integrations
ManyChat has built-in live chat integration. The following are available integrations also for:
- Zapier
- Integromat
- Google Sheets
- ActiveCampaign
- MailChimp
- ConvertKit
- HubSpot
- Walletly
- Botsheets
- Janis
ManyChat also provides an iOS app and an Android app, so you can respond to user queries from mobile as well.
In addition, ManyChat has its own App store that allows third-party developers to create their own integrations with ManyChat. Currently, the App Store has 38 apps.
There is currently no official plugin for WordPress, but ManyChat is easily implemented in the CMS.
Alternatives to ManyChat
The panorama of software that allows you to create ChatBots for Facebook Messenger and automated sequences is vast, but among the most used alternatives we can point out ChatFuel and Mobile Monkey.
ManyChat Reviews
ManyChat has a structured and flexible interface, several advanced features and integrations to create chatbots, used by over one million companies worldwide,
You can read the comments of people who already use ManyChat on the official website https://manychat.com/ and https://www.g2.com/products/manychat/reviews.
ManyChat: prices
Free & Pro version
ManyChat provides a free version and a paid version, ManyChat Pro, with numerous features: (https://manychat.com/pricing).
ManyChat Pro starts at 10 $ per month and is charged based on the number of subscribers in your account. Prices increase after 500 subscribers.
As for payment methods, ManyChat accepts most major credit cards including Visa, Mastercard, American Express and Discover.
The only drawback is that there is no trial period (trial) for the Pro plan, but there is a 30-day money back guarantee.
