We’re experiencing a transitioning period. By ‘we’, I mean all of us; marketers and entrepreneurs.
It seems like every day there’s a new tactic, a new channel, a new mindset that we need to follow so that our businesses will stand another year (or quarter, or month).
It’s easy to lose focus.
I know that I’m one of the people to blame for the situation; started as marketing consultant writing all about growth marketing, then I started preaching about referral marketing, and lately, I’m a Messenger marketing ambassador.
Being in this industry for some time now made me realize a very simple thing about marketing products and services; communication can’t be outmatched.
That’s pretty obvious.
It is, but I discover it again every time I hit the ‘publish’ button for a new article, or the ‘send’ button for every newsletter that I send (BTW, if you’re not subscribed in our newsletter you should do it. It’s a shame to miss my emails.)
The reason I wrote this prolonged intro about communication is evident from the title of this article. Email has been the flagship of our content distribution from Day 1, and Messenger- in the past year, has become a new way for businesses to deliver their message to their audience.
In this article, Email goes head to head with Messenger to find out which communication method is the best for you.
Enjoy!
Messenger marketing.
Messenger is Viral Loops’ latest obsession. We liked the idea of reaching people through this platform that we’ve built a template for running viral giveaways via Messenger.
There’s no point in directly advertising it, so I’ll propose you read our case study about how a small cosmetics brand generated 4K+ leads, and a few thousand in sales, by using the template.
What’s excellent about Messenger marketing is undoubtedly the Open rates and the Click through rates it offers.
Using a Messenger bot can give you Open rates of up to 90-95%, and up to 20% CTR, which is impressive.
People are used to receiving instant messages. They enjoy the ‘fast’ experience, and it’s true that whatever you do for your marketing funnel can be translated into bot-friendly content and put into a chatbot.
All you have to do to repeatedly get your message to the eyes of your users is to give it the appropriate format. That means that you have to structure it in a way that people that use Messenger are used to.
Even if the engagement rates of that Messenger marketing offers are high, what’s genuinely epic is the amount of data you can gather about your leads, just by having them subscribe to your Messenger bot.
While subscribing via email gives you just an email address, by subscribing to your Messenger chatbot people give you a ton of data entry points, such as their full name, timezone, gender, and profile picture.
This is an excellent chance for a business/brand to start a personalized communication with the user and gather even more data on the go through simple questions that can be answered by the press of a button.
While gathering more info about your subscribers, you can tag them based on their preferences (similar to the segmentation you can do to your email list), and then run to those tagged users Ads according to their interests with Facebook retargeting ads.
Email marketing.
Oh, I love email.
For me- I only send content-oriented emails. Sending a newsletter is one of my favorite activities. It feels like I’m journaling.
I feel that this is the biggest downside of Messenger marketing; you have to downsize your message in just a few lines. Sometimes it’s way too challenging to do so.
Truth to be told, most of the time, you need space to expand on ideas or new offers.
I mean, how can you possibly send a newsletter like this via Messenger?
On the other hand, if you decide to go with email marketing, segmenting your users might become a tedious task, as you’ll have to create multiple touch points to gather enough data; and you need data to nurture leads, or to retain customers.
That’s a point for Messenger.
The most significant advantage of email in comparison with Messenger is that email is an owned marketing asset. If Facebook decided to shut chatbots down, and you’ve put all your efforts in them, then you’re f**ked.
Seriously.
Having someone to give you their email address is a huge deal.
You can do everything that it’s possible through Messenger:
- Notify people about new products or updates.
- Send exclusive content.
- Ask for feedback.
- Offer customer support.
- Send seasonal offers, or offers based on interest.
- Run ads based on interest.
- Save abandoned carts.
The downside is that it takes more time, as it’s not as direct as a message on Messenger.
A match made in heaven.
I guess that if you read down to this point, you still haven’t made your mind as about whether you should use email or Messenger marketing for your business, or brand.
Am I right?
Let’s see the pros and cons of each medium.
Messenger Pros:
- High engagement rates (open rates & CTRs).
- Instant personalized communication.
- Access to lot more data without any touch points.
- Build audiences for Ads quickly and easily.
Messenger Cons:
- You can send bite-sized content only.
- Not an owned marketing asset.
Email Pros:
- It’s an owned asset.
- No need for bite-sized content.
- Build audiences for Ads.
- People are used to marketing newsletters.
Email Cons:
- Lower engagement rates than Messenger.
- We need more touch points to gather data.
- It takes more time to segment your users.
The title of this section gives away the point that I’m trying to make here; you don’t have to choose a platform over the other.
They are both powerful as marketing channels, so you have the option of using both. You need the instant communication, and data gathering that Messenger offers, but you also need to be able to communicate with your users on a deeper level, and send them your best content or offers in better (and longer) format.
I’ll tell you what to do:
- Start gathering Messenger subscribers.
- Ask those subscribers for their email addresses.
- Create content for both mediums.
- Distribute this content accordingly.
For the first 2 points, we have a solution (it’s time for promotion).
Start by creating a Manychat account and connect it with your Facebook business page. Then you have to download our Messenger Bot Giveaways template.
Inside the template, you’ve added a special flow for gathering email addresses from your Messenger subscribers.
Creating bite-sized content that sticks with people is an arduous task. What I propose is to send in Messenger a concise description of what you want to communicate to your audience, followed by a nice gif, or a looping video that fits the essence of your message.
Then, in the same message, you can add a CTA, that drives people to a landing page with your full offer, or the page of your blog post- if you’re trying to distribute your content.
Since Messenger offers you enough data, you can leverage them to create different variations of the same message to send it to users that fit into a specific demographic, e.g., females
Before you go.
At the end of the day, both Messenger and email are tools for communicating with an audience.
There’s no winner here.
You’ll have to harness the power of both platforms to maximize the result. Make sure to create content that fits the medium. It might be difficult in the beginning, but it will eventually pay you off.
Apostle Mengoulis
Apostle is a core member of the founding team at Viral Loops. He has worked closely with hundreds of referral marketing campaigns made with Viral Loops. Apostle has years of experience in growing and marketing companies and co-founded Growth Hacking University.