QUICK LINKS:

1. General categories of chatbots
2. Chatbot Development platforms
3. Chatbots Landing Page
4. How to create chatbot campaign to generate leads

Chatbots in today’s world

Chatbot is currently used by most people on instant messaging application for better marketing strategy and to help the growth of business. Many are using chatbots for better customer service, increasing sales and improved marketing.

Some people have had great and wonderful experiences when interacting with chatbots. This depends on how simple and interactive the bots are.

Chatbots are instant responsive automated system designed to mimic conversations made by humans. Human conversation is carried out through voice commands, text chats which include the use of smileys, emoticons or both. It is an online service system which responds to users by giving them automated replies.

Chatbots give instant response in a coherent manner when a request is made by a customer. Let us assume a customer wanted to make an inquiry about the availability of a product, the chatbot will respond automatically based on set of instructions that has been given to it.

There are examples of chatbots used such as Facebook bots, Cortana, etc. Currently, 14% of people on earth make use of Facebook-owned messaging platform showing that many people are using these platforms and more people are bound to use it as the year progresses.

Google shows the increase in trends of search of interest of people for chatbot over the last five years.

So there is a need for building a human-like conversational platform since there is high number of people using messaging apps, websites, social media and etc. to cater everyone’s needs in terms of assistance. Wechat says there is increase of about 67% from 2015 to 2016 on the number of wechat messages sent daily.

The messaging platform with the highest users is Facebook. Facebook has different communication bots. It will be easy for companies and businesses using the messaging platform to use it’s bot technology in rendering services to their esteemed customers. There are about 100,000 monthly active bots on facebook.

It has a bot store which is opened to developers in 2016. If a question is asked and the bot seems the question difficult to answer, it will pass the question to real humans which serve as backup. Users can use chat extension provided by Facebook messenger to introduce the use of bots in their communication.

According to Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft, he states that bots are like operational artificial intelligence. In 2014, Microsoft introduced chatbot Xiaoice in china, while in 2015, chatbot Rinna was introduced in Japan. These chatbots have bring emotional experience in their conversation interaction with users. In 2016, a conceptualized idea was launched by Microsoft to help developers.

With the Amazon’s Alexa, many developers and companies have used the platform to build their text or voice bots. This has been used for creating cat bots for messaging or chat services.

Google Allo incorporates in 2016, this creates a template for communicating directly with Google Assistant to get some questions answered. There are improvements brought to Allow for better user experience.

Though presently, chatbot can be considered to be at its early stage. It is believed in the coming years, a lot would have been integrated not just for doing basic chores, but will be smart and emotional level will be incorporated in it’s full design. A lot of major tech companies are spending a lot, so that users experience will be par excellence.

General categories of chatbots

There are different platforms for chatbots, one is the scripted bots which are primarily designed for marketing purposes. They are used in updating consumers of recent products, sending newsletters which can be daily or weekly, conducting surveys, interact with users, etc

Structured bots are based on set of instructions set for it to be performed. They have been programmed for certain questions and answers. Any question asked outside the programming will give a non-understandable response from the chatbot.

Questions which range from opening time of business, closing time of business, availability of a product, price range of goods, etc can be answered because it has been programmed.

NLP chatbots are used by companies which want to have a robust customer service bots. They have this AI integration which powers them for better understanding and learning brain. It is not compulsory for you to give a specific command because they are able to learn languages.

So they can still carry on with a conversation even if the questions asked are not straight-forward. The natural language processing chatbot improves over time the more they engaged with people.

What to know before using a chatbot

Purpose of using a bot: An individual should know the reason of using a bot. for what purpose am I using it? What peculiar task or process do you want the bot to assist you on? In what way will the chatbot add to your business? These are few questions that should pop up when thinking about the use of chatbot. Because chatbots must increase the customer experience.

Get the right provider:  Choosing a right provider helps the purpose of you using a chatbot. Assuming you want to use a chatbot for marketing platforms like giving your customers or audience an up to daily content or weekly newsletter, the chatbot required is totally different if you want a customer service bot.

Let it be concise and narrow: Do not try to base your sets of instructions on numerous areas. Especially, if you making use of a customer service chatbot. Let your programme be narrow and because this gives room for an in depth response on a particular topic. This will lead to excellent user experience and as time goes on you can expand the knowledge base of your chatbot.

Adequate preparation after starting your chatbot: Starting or launching a chatbot does not stop your required attention needed after. Your company/business must be ready to give all it takes for the improved user experience. Things to take care of will include; unanswered enquires or requests, user reactions and interactions

Get the maximum output out of your chatbot: Ensure that empathy is a tool employed by your bot. Customers and users must be seen that they are fully honoured, understood and complaints taken in good fate.

They must be able to offer guidance that is best. Users shouldn’t see the chatbot experience as a complete waste of time. They must have perfect memory to remember customer details. And should be able to give a dynamic conservation. The use of gestures that incorporates human conservation should be introduced.

Messages should be clear, concise and short. The use of emojis and stickers can be added.

Chatbot Development platforms

There are many platforms which you can use to develop your bots. These platforms are easy to use, it doesn’t require coding and programming. The development of the chatbots by these platforms is instant.

1. Chatfuel

It is a platform for building facebook bot without coding. It is featured in leading publications such as Bloomberg, WSJ, Forbes, VB, TechCrunch, etc. It provides a rich audience chatbot experience and a frictionless experience. It creates an automated answer to frequently asked questions about your business and provides a personalized chatbot.

It is easy to add and edit content with chatfuel. It seamlessly integrates with many favorite services of your choice, such as; instagram, twitter, youtube, AIM, messenger, etc. There are top companies that make use of chatfuel which include; Adidas, Volkswagen, MTV, Buzzfeed, CNBC, Uber, etc. Users using chatfuel has created more than 46,000 chatbots. This bot-building platform is free.

2. Botsify

This is a great platform for creating AI chatbot without coding, it is free. It offers several plugins which gives room to integrate your platform with chatbot. There is no need for programming but makes use of drag and drop interface which help you with template designing.

It’s Artificial Intelligence picks similar phrases and entities from user’s query and responds with the best answer. It teaches your chatbot new sentences, creates avenue for humans to take over when chatbot fails to address the question asked by the customer/client. Companies that make use of Botsify include; Apple, Shazam, GRIN, Travelex, Remote Interview, Unicef NZ, etc.

3. Flow XO

It provides 100 modules and integration which include both utility modules or integration and services as Google sheets. It’s chatbots is designed to work on various platforms which include facebook and web. It makes use of easy drag and drop tool with tons of pre-built templates

4. Bottr

It allows you to connect with your audience, email, website blog, etcnyc, using your personalized chatbot button created on it. It provides a fascinating interface for replies and responses. It has a digital currency, “bitcoin’’ for your activities on bottr. With time your bot will be able to learn quickly.

5. Motion.ai

It is a chatbot builder which creates a chatbot for your website or blog without coding. It is automatically connected with Hubspot CRM with in-built templates. Your chatbot is set within few minutes.

6. Chattypeople

It creates chatbots for small companies, e-commerce, and enterprise solutions. It’s chatbots are powered with text and voice. It has bot analytics to know how your bot is working and analyse user experience. It supports multi-platform such as FB messenger, skype, wechat and websites.

7. QnA Maker

A Microsoft designed chatbot. A FAQ Urls used in building a simple question and answer bot which comprises of editorial content. It creates a bot dialogue in the form of filling a table. Integrated Microsoft cognitive services for your bot to see, hear and have great user experience.

Chatbots Landing Page

There are many landing pages for managing leads, but the one that has a conversational interface with chatbot optimization is Landbot.

Landbot has chatbot builder and customized template. You can embed landbot’s HTML Snippet on your site with no effort. It stores all the information shared by your visitors from personal data to custom fields and allows you to send it to any other app using zapier.

You also receive a slack notification when someone needs help or sending an automatic and personalized email to a qualified lead that answers right. It is all about getting leads in your account, you can access a table with every detail on them. You can then export the data in CSV format and perform the right actions to take the most out of your visitors.

You can visit app.landbot.io to create your specialized account.

There are different plans:

1. Sandbox (which is free). It has the following features:

• Average of 100 chats/months
• Average of 30 messages/bot
• It has web embedding feature
• It has chat dashboard
• It has metric and analytics
• It contains persistent menu
• It has self notification (email/slack)

2. Starter (cost $23/month).

• It has unlimited chats
• It has unlimited blocks/bot.
• It has customized endings
• It has payment block
• It is advanced css & JS
• It has FB messenger integration
• It has conditional login block
• It has mailchimp integration
• It has capacity of file upload block (up to 1gb)

3. Professional ($70/month)

• It has web embedding
• It has zapier integration
• It has wordpress integration
• It has self-notification (email & slack).
• It has metric and Analytics
• It has chat/email support
• It has mail chimp integration
• It has hidden fields
• It has google sheets integration
• It has call back
• It has messages API
• It has Botlinking
• It has capacity of file upload block (up to 2gb)

4. Business ($175/ month)

• It has google sheets integration
• It has call back
• It has messages API
• It has Botlinking
• It has priority support
• It has concierge onboarding and whatsApp integration
• It has capacity of file upload block (up to 4gb)

Ways to automate Landboot

• You will make an additional row to google spreadsheet from new responses generated from landbot
• After that you will add new landbot submissions to the mailchimp list
• From the new landbot entries create Trello cards
• After that, make sure you add update Hubspot CRM contacts for new submissions on Landbot
• You make use of Gmail for sending emails for new entries on landbot.

Ways to automate Google sheets

• First of all save all new type form entries to a Google sheets spreadsheet
• Make rows on Google sheets for new Facebook Ads Leads
• Ensure that matching Gmail emails are saved to a Google Spreadsheet
• Then create Trello cards from new Google sheets rows
• Send an email via Gmail for updated spreadsheets

How to create chatbot campaign to generate leads

You can create your chatbot campaign to generate leads by making use of the following tools:

1. Landbots

It provides an interface and a landing page where products and service can be announced or promoted. So it builds audience which updates on your products can be pushed to. Information provided by the user on their conversational interface is used to generate lead.

Landbot helps you to determine the quality of the leads. Out of 1000 leads, 500 may not have interest in your product. It provides qualification questions to ascertain if the leads have interest in your product. Research shows that an average conversion rate of 2.35%  is being experienced by companies that doesn’t use landbot

2. Build a chatbot

There are two major ways of building a chatbot;

You can pay a developer to build one for you or build one for yourself using code and API.

You can make use of free platforms mentioned above. These platforms doesn’t require you to know how to write a code.

Write down your desired script for a chatbot. This is what the bot says during an engagement with a user.

Information provided by the user is directed to the landing pages.

In creating or building a chatbot, the following are used;

Build: This is done according to your planned script

SetUp AI: This has to do with sets of script instructions

Broadcast: It involves sending/broadcast messages to all users that engages with bot

Create a blank chatbot button you can connect with your landing page. Two built in blocks like welcome message and default message is used.

Create a block to extract the user’s phone number by putting a conversation forward. Start a text to let the user know what you need from her. Add a plugin that asks for the phone number and later save the phone number to a new variable called phone. After this you can add this contact to your Google sheets. To save your time, you can duplicate the entire block.

You will need to send data to zapier with webhook. You can now move it to Google sheets. JSON API is developed and designed to send your data to zapier. JSON API is a plugin.

3. Zapier

It is a powerful tool designed that connects more than 1,000 web apps. It automates tasks in the background. Zapier connects apps such as Gmail, slack, bots, mail chimps and etc.

It is easy to build your own app workflows.

Create your own zapier account by providing your name, email address and a password on their site.

After creating an account, you can login into your zapier account. You will find the explore page. It is on this page you can automate your favorite web apps.

Zapier  helps you in data entry so it saves your time.

Zapier has the trigger and action feature. The trigger notifies when a new email gets into your Gmail. The action push for the attachment in your Gmail to dropbox, then alert you in clack when a new dropbox file appears.

The unique URL provided by zapier is copied and pasted into chatbot platform plugin.

Move to create your spreadsheet.

You map your variables on the Google sheets.

Turn your zapier and zap on and that is it.

Your spreadsheet would have a row with the lead detail from your chatbot platform

By then, you have set a lead for your website.

Other ways to generate leads using chatbot

1. Facebook Ads

Since facebook has the highest number of social media users. You can drive your clients/customers from facebook ad to messenger. Your messenger will be integrated with chatbot. So there is instant reply for any question being asked on your messenger.

Your bot will engage with them to generate leads. Whenever a user clicks on your facebook ad, they will be directed to your business page. Customers finds filling of forms stressful or cumbersome, and those who supplied their email address don’t usually check their email box.

So the conversion rate is low compared to when a bot interacts with a user. People tend to respond more quickly on messenger, which gives the lead generated a higher success rate.

2. Facebook messenger Pop up

People may be driven to your facebook page when searching for a related business of yours. So when people visit or lands on your facebook page, a pop up window will appear.

Your chatbot will interact with them and use information collected for generating leads

3. Adequate response to customer feedbacks

Let us assume someone commented on your page, the chatbot may interact to thank them for the comments and tell them them if there is any help that can be further rendered to them.

An article on your facebook page may prompt a user to comment. The bot may continue to engage till the personal data of such individual is collected. And this can generate leads

4. Constant content sharing

Your chatbot may be designed to give daily content about your product to all your customers/clients. Even a link to other post of yours may be shared. Through this information can be gotten and this is a potential lead.

In conclusion, marketing will be made easier with the full engagement of chatbots. Also customer service will be par excellence with the full integration of chatbots on our websites.

There will be higher number of leads generated by using the bots. As years goes by, full integration of Artificial intelligence will be seen chatbots and this will make customer experience better thereby leading to higher number of leads

GET STARTED TODAY FOR FREE