Skip to content

How to Use Chatbot Marketing to Increase Revenue, Engagement, and Customer LTV

Mackensie Liberman, Founder of chatbot marketing agency Orca Marketology on chatbot marketing.
PODCAST » EPISODE 2

Summary

In our second episode of One to One: the Conversational Marketing Podcast, we speak with Mackensie Liberman, Founder and CEO of Orca Marketology, a chatbot marketing agency focused on getting businesses leads, sales, and raving fans through Facebook Ads and Messenger Bots. ‍

Topics discussed

  • The backstory behind Orca Marketology and how Mackensie went from a Cytogeneticist to a chatbot marketer. 
  • What initially made Mackensie so excited about chatbots when she first discovered them in 2017 and why she’s so excited about where the industry is headed.
  • The current state of chatbot marketing and how it has evolved over the past few years. 
  • Lessons Mackensie has learned from working with businesses of all sizes to leverage the power of chatbot marketing. 
  • Understanding the critical role chatbots play in re-engaging customers who have already expressed interest but have since dropped off. 
  • How to use quizzes delivered via chatbots to better understand target customers. 
  • 3 tactical tips for marketing teams getting started with chatbot marketing. 
  • What’s in store for the future of chatbot marketing.


Guest biography

Chat bots came into the mix and automation, I mean, that was the first thing I thought of was like, wow, I can actually automate a lot of these FAQs and get people through this whole process a lot smoother and in a conversational style. What I didn't realize at the time, which has been a huge game changer for my clients, is being able to have everything done within the chat bot, where I don't even have to utilize landing pages a lot of times for lead acquisition or for sales. It can all be done within a chat bot and through conversational marketing.

Mackensie Liberman

Founder and CEO
Orca Marketology

  • Mackensie Liberman is the Founder and CEO of Orca Marketology, a chatbot marketing agency focused on getting businesses leads, sales, and raving fans through Facebook Ads and chatbots.
  • Before entering the world of digital marketing, Mackensie was a clinically certified Cytogeneticist for over a decade analyzing chromosomes for abnormalities. She knew she could have a greater impact on the world outside of the laboratory and found her passion in Messenger Marketing with its perfect mix of tech and science.
  • Mackensie is one of the top experts in the field of conversational marketing utilizing the ManyChat platform and has worked with a wide range of clients in a variety of niches, from brick and mortar stores to multi-million dollar e-commerce businesses. She has also been featured on the Perpetual Traffic podcast, spoke on numerous stages about bots, including at Digital Marketer’s WarRoom Mastermind and ManyChat’s Conversations Conference, and has helped thousands of others learn how to create chatbots for themselves and/or their clients.

Company overview

We harness the power of conversations to develop chat marketing strategies for businesses! Having an online marketing strategy that puts your business in front of your ideal customers will not only bring in new business, but it expands your brand’s footprint.

Industry: marketing | www.orcamarketology.com

Subscribe to the podcast newsletter

Transcript

00:00
Welcome to One to One: The Conversational Marketing podcast dedicated to helping modern marketing teams succeed in a messaging first and privacy first world. In each episode, we’ll interview a marketer who is winning with conversational marketing to distill best practices, lessons learned, and actionable takeaways. Here’s your host, Ben Gibert, VP of Marketing, Spectrm. 


00:01
Ben Gibert
Hey, everyone, and thanks for listening to One to One: the Conversational Marketing podcast. Today I’m speaking with Mackensie Liebermann, CEO of Orca Marketology, a chatbot marketing agency. Mackensie, thanks for chatting with me today. I’m really excited to have you on the podcast.

00:27
Mackensie Liebermann
Yeah, thanks for having me. I appreciate it. 


00:30
Ben Gibert
Yeah, I hope you enjoyed Memorial Day weekend here in the States. I know in Brooklyn it’s been very hot, but our audience is international. It’s always nice to come back from a long weekend, I think. Before we get started, why don’t you tell us more about yourself, your background and the type of work that you do. 


00:52
Mackensie Liebermann
Yeah. My name is Mackensie Liebermann and I started my chatbot agency, Orca Marketology, back in 2016. When I first started, it was technically just a Facebook ads agency. It was the infancy of chat bots, so Facebook hadn’t quite yet even opened up their API for messenger. Once I found out more about chatbots in early 2017, I dove in more about my background. Before I started, that was I was a clinically certified cytogeneticist, so I was analyzing chromosomes underneath a microscope. I did that for about a decade, but decided working in the windowless lab away from my family on the weekends, no doubt it was not ideal. So that’s why I started my agency. It also relates to my chaplain agency and just my agency in general because with the way that I think that I love science, I love stats experiments, marketing really was an easy jump for me just because of the ability to analyze and build different things within the chatbot realm with conditions. 


02:11
Mackensie Liebermann
It’s. Just being able to make things and have the stats was something that really was simple for me to start to implement in two and 1017. Early on is when I started my agency. I’ve worked with a lot of number of different clients and businesses from small brick and mortar stores, little restaurants, to things like big name Fortune 500. Companies also influencers. Yeah, it’s just a huge gamut of different clients, but with the one reoccurring theme of utilizing a chat bot to get the business more customers and to connect at a greater level with their customers through chat marketing. 


02:56
Ben Gibert
Nice. Yeah. Thank you for the background and excited to dive into the kind of range of customers you’ve worked with. Some of the use cases, the impact that you’ve seen. I’m glad you mentioned the cytogeneticist background. I saw that and it was one of the things I might ask you as well, because it’s quite a leap, but I think yeah, that totally makes sense. I think what is so exciting and kind of so enjoyable about marketing day to day is kind of applying that test and learn mindset, that rational framework that definitely just comes from science. So, yeah, thanks for also addressing that before I did. 


03:34
Mackensie Liebermann
Oh, yeah, it’s a common question. People are like, how did you get into marketing from being a cytogeneticist. I’m like, well, think about it. Science is just experiments and so is marketing. Lots of numbers and tests and trials. So it was perfect. 


03:48
Ben Gibert
Yeah, and I guess the switch to more family time and out of a windowless room is definitely a big value add as well. 


03:56
Mackensie Liebermann
Yes, definitely nice. 


03:59
Ben Gibert
I mean, you mentioned kind of the start of messaging back. You got into it in 2016 and that was when the Messenger API was just opening up. I’d love to you said you were excited then. There was a lot of momentum then. Can you maybe walk me through ? Like, what got you excited in this space? Like this niche of marketing in particular. 


04:23
Mackensie Liebermann
Yeah, so, like I said, when I first started, I was doing Facebook advertising for local businesses. I remember vividly one of my clients was actually a junk hauler and with his Facebook ads, I was running a special for like $37 for taking away a large item or whatever. People of course would see the Facebook ad. Well, they would have questions. They were messaging the Facebook page and then I was having to respond to all of these messages. People are like, well, does it disqualify? They didn’t read the ad necessarily, they didn’t read the specifics. Or they had maybe just a slight different question about, well, does this qualify or do you deliver or do you pick up in this area or what would it cost to do this? It was a lot of back and forth that I was having to answer these questions. With me agreeing for my client to be running these ads, I was like, okay. 


05:22
Mackensie Liebermann
I’ll also respond to people asking questions. There’s a lot of back and forth, me finding out, hey, what’s the answer to this? Chat bots came into the mix and automation, I mean, that was the first thing I thought of was like, wow, I can actually automate a lot of these FAQs and get people through this whole process a lot smoother and in a conversational style. What I didn’t realize at the time, which has been a huge game changer for my clients, is being able to have everything done within the chat bot, where I don’t even have to utilize landing pages a lot of times for lead acquisition or for sales. It can all be done within a chat bot and through conversational marketing. Plus, on top of that, the ability for follow up, I mean, there’s a lot more capabilities using conversational marketing with a chatbot that is just not possible, especially now with the joys of iOS 14.5 and making Pixel and retargeting almost nonexistent. 


06:22
Mackensie Liebermann
Being able to have a lot of that capability within a chat bot, the momentum, like you’re saying, it just was exciting then and just continues to prove to be a very important piece of marketing for a lot of different businesses. 


06:37
Ben Gibert
Yeah, absolutely. Actually, there’s so many important points that you touched on there that I would love to unpack . I think one, you mentioned that engaging customers in high intent moments that might have questions and dealing with those FAQs, but then also providing a very seamless experience. I think another one I want to pull out is the not needing landing pages, almost streamlining that entire user acquisition experience into chat that is so powerful because I think one thing a lot of companies feel is the pain of constantly building landing pages creative, relying on engineering resources, that thing. I think another third one I really want to point out is you mentioned retargeting, right? IOS 14 pixels, losing a lot of that audience data, the ability to reengage customers that might not convert the first time through. Can you maybe just talk to those three points? 


07:36
Ben Gibert
Because I think our listeners would love to hear you expand on what you’ve seen as you worked with businesses on those points. 


07:44
Mackensie Liebermann
Yeah, definitely. Just remind me again what was the first part like? First point, I remember the second. 


07:49
Ben Gibert
Oh yeah. You mentioned that it all started really when you saw that customers like in those high intent moments when they clicked on a Facebook ad, they might have follow on questions before they actually made a purchase. I think FAQs kind of dealing with customer queries or objections immediately in that high intent moment and how that leads to sales. The other two, one was just in terms of reengagement and then the other one kind of not needing landing pages to actually build a customer acquisition funnel. 


08:21
Mackensie Liebermann
Yeah, the part about the high intent moment and with conversation is huge. There’s a lot of times where and this also kind of goes to the landing page part but for example, with the landing page, you send people there, they drop off for whatever reason. A lot of times you don’t know necessarily why that is unless you have some other way to follow up with them. If it was through an email that they clicked that maybe did a survey later saying, hey, just wondering why didn’t you buy? Right? It could be something as small as just they were confused about one little piece or they weren’t sure some of those aspects. Utilizing a chat bot in that high intent moment is the ability and also, I want people to understand, or if they don’t already, that it’s not just a chat bot that’s automated, that there’s no person, there no ability to connect with somebody specifically. 


09:20
Mackensie Liebermann
You think of the frustration that you get sometimes when you’re trying to converse with a bank chatbot, or even when you’re calling and you’re just stuck with the stupid robot lady on the phone, and you’re like, no, I want to talk with the customer. They’re like, that’s not an option, or whatever. Wait, what? Come on. Being able to have that capability of in that high intent moment, providing the information they’re looking for right then, right there through FAQs or through also the combination of a real life person. If there’s something that maybe somebody has a question about that they can ask and a person can jump in if needed, if they can’t find their answer right then and there. So that’s a big piece of it. The other piece with the reengagement and that also kind of goes along the lines of being able to have that high intent moment is conversations with a potential customer is being able to reengage with people if they drop off. 


10:21
Mackensie Liebermann
One thing with a landing page is, yeah, you can create retargeting ads. The other piece I want to step back for a second and say is, should you not do any more retargeting? Should you not have a website anymore or anything? No, I’m not saying that whatsoever. These are the benefits of a chatbot that you can use alongside those items if you have them or if you like using them. Because also not everybody uses a chatbot. In terms of customers, some people shockingly don’t have messenger or Instagram DM or WhatsApp, right? It’s amazing to me at least. That way if your audience maybe isn’t quite on those other platforms, then of course having a website is super important. Plus, the other piece, and I hate to be adding more layers to this, but the other piece is having the ability to bring in potential customers that are visiting your website that weren’t from ads or whatever and bring them into the chatbot through having like a chat widget. 


11:22
Mackensie Liebermann
That way you’re also building your audience and being able to answer questions. If someone just googles your product and they find your website and they click on it and they have a question, oh, there’s a chat widget that they can get information from FAQs, things like that. It’s not just from Facebook ads necessarily, but obviously running paid traffic is super important, but being able to reengage people in that process. If it’s like a lead magnet, for example, that you’re doing through a chat bot instead of a landing page, then the ability, if you’re asking questions that if they drop off, they forget they’re distracted by their dog or they stopped at a stoplight when they started and that was green, and then they totally forgot. Utilizing the ability of a chatbot to send reminder messages is super beneficial to being able to get the lead through to the end of the call to action for what that is. 


12:16
Mackensie Liebermann
For example, you’re wanting to ask them their email and maybe their phone number or if you’re doing a quiz or whatever, that being able to have those follow up questions if they haven’t responded after a certain amount of time can continue to get those people through to that end. One example of me utilizing the reminder messages that was super beneficial was for just an orthodontist location in Miami and I actually did the stats and looking at it, the reminder messages alone brought in 30% of the overall leads to schedule an appointment. Without those they would have lost 30% of those leads just from people dropping off. That’s where that reengagement piece is really important and beneficial because yeah, everybody’s busy, everybody’s got attention span of a goldfish of 3 seconds. That way it keeps people on track and keeps them moving through where you want them to go. 


13:19
Ben Gibert
Yeah, absolutely. We’ve seen similar thing, I mean, 30% that can have a massive influence on your bottom line, especially when you’re operating at scale. I think reengagement through channels like this, like through messenger through WhatsApp is one of the most exciting things that we see in chatbot marketing as well. Right? The ability I think you touched on it either reengaging people almost, like, with context if they dropped off at a certain point in your flow and also maybe even using some of the data that they’ve shared with. You in Chat to kind of, like, personalize the reengagement message that you send. That’s obviously how you get to 30% influence on conversion rate and above. Right. It’s like there’s so much opportunity to use what happens in the chat as part of your reengagement as well to pull them back into the funnel and to really drive the outcome that you’re trying to get. 


14:16
Ben Gibert
I think that touches maybe on you’ve mentioned two examples. Can you walk us through a case study of A, B to C company that you’ve worked with in the past and some of the impact that you saw? 


14:30
Mackensie Liebermann
Yeah man, there’s so many different ones. Like I was saying earlier, a lot of different campaigns and strategies work across the board for a lot of different industries. Like I was saying, I’ve worked with so many different businesses and companies that something that works with a little brick and mortar store that’s down the street can work for a huge franchise or a publicly traded company. It’s just about how you position that and work and adjust it based off of what your needs are. For example, utilizing a quiz has been really beneficial for a lot of different my clients, one that I built was for Bark Box and that was to find out what type of toys would best for their dog. Right? It’s a really cute little quiz that asks questions about their dog and being able to then give them suggestions based off of their answers. 


15:27
Mackensie Liebermann
Not only that is it fun and engaging and that the customer is entertained with gifts and funny messaging, but it also serves as customer research for the company. Like you start to realize after you get a lot of people going through these quizzes or product surveys, that they are like, wow, okay. We have a lot of potential customers that have, in this example, like for BarkBox, that has two dogs and one of them is super active, where the other one’s not or likes to eat treats, but the other one doesn’t. Things like that, where you can actually pull some of this information and see, okay, a huge majority of our potential customers who went through this quiz, they have this potential need for maybe a new product, right, that they’ve been thinking about and that could help them make that decision. They know exactly who those people are that they can reach out to and said, hey, we’re releasing this new product that might be good for your dog named Rex. 


16:33
Mackensie Liebermann
This something that you’d be interested in getting when we release it here in X number of days or weeks or would you like a coupon or whatever, right? It also helps to a lot of these different campaigns to make things relevant and really personalized for the potential customer based off of what type of questions that you’re asking. So, doing a lot of different quizzes, like I said, for larger companies also including influencers and stuff, what type of elegant personality are you? Did that quiz for one of my clients, that’s a YouTube influencer. Again, finding out some of those answers and seeing what it gives them answer in the end. They can use that to help them with dress and what type of clothes to buy, things like that. Also provides my client the ability to have more details about what type of women are, what their results are. 


17:33
Mackensie Liebermann
That way she can say, okay, well, based off of these results, I have an X number of people, majority that are getting this result. Maybe I should create a lead magnet or another piece of content that is really beneficial for those type of people that have that type of result. Because then that way it’s giving her direction based off of what she’s seen in the past from those types of results. Those are a couple of or I guess one type of strategy using quizzes that has really helped, but also things like birthday campaigns. I mean, big ecommerce brands done a ton of different birthday campaigns where you offer something, it could even be something that you’re offering now, but you just put a spin on it and have it around their birthday and have them go into the chat bot and be able to get their coupon code or get whatever it is that you’re offering for their birthday and then you can be able to save that to their profile within the chat bot to then offer them something else the next year and have that information to help. 


18:45
Mackensie Liebermann
It shows that you’re personalizing it, that you’re also remembering their birthday. Like I said, it works for a lot of ecommerce, but also I’ve done it for even smaller places like local restaurants even also franchise locations. I did for a huge Waxing the City franchise doing a birthday offer. It’s a great way to introduce people to maybe a product or service that you offer that is a low hanging fruit to get people hooked pretty much and be able to get them in the door and be like, oh my gosh, I love this. Especially if it’s a product or service that has a reoccurring potential, ongoing maintenance aspect like for example, waxing or eyelash extensions, anything like in the beauty services industry. The birthday offer works really well with Too. 


19:38
Ben Gibert
I love that. I feel like I somehow slid you talking points for all the things I would love to hear you say. I promise our listeners there are no secret notes here. But yeah. Mackensie, I think you touched on so many things that are so valuable with conversational marketing in general. The quiz aspect, getting to know your customers through that one to one format, the very conversational you mentioned. Gifs like emojis, being very kind of approachable in your style as a way to get more information to personalize their experience, but ultimately also make it more engaging. Like we’ve seen exactly the same thing work so well. I think your points on customer lifetime value, right? Things that where you want to just upsell cross sell based on the things that you have learned about your customer. Right? I love the birthday example because it’s again showing this is a personal space, right? 


20:34
Ben Gibert
You can reach out to someone or you can build that connection, give them a personal offer. We know that people will respond much better to personal offers, particularly in these types of channels, than they might, unlike a public offer or a coupon code that kind of degrades your brand rather than building a relationship, which is what you can get with these types of personal offers. I think you touched on some really great use cases that you’re absolutely right. It’s a playbook that can be applied whether you’re a huge ecom company all over the world or whether you’re just starting out and kind of being just want to jump into this space. I think that those are things that you can get value of at different scales, but that ultimately run on the same premise, which is get to know your customers, understand who they are, use that to build a connection with them and then use that kind of private channel to really give them something that they want that is going to convert them. 


21:33
Ben Gibert
Thank you for hitting all the points I didn’t give you. 


21:37
Mackensie Liebermann
Of course. The other piece of that too, is this is an example of a campaign strategy that Facebook actually works really well with. A lot of times when you’re running Facebook ads, especially recently, you’re pulling your hair out and you’re like, why is my CPM so high? Why is my cost per lead just like Skyrocketing? Well, the cool thing is with Facebook, they actually have the ability currently. Who knows, maybe they’ll get rid of it, hopefully not, but the ability to target people whose birthday is within the next week. That way you have a new audience for your Facebook ad every week, so you don’t have to worry about frequency going too high where it starts going stale. It’s kind of funny, actually. One of my first chatbot Facebook ad clients that I got is a local restaurant to me, and I started running a birthday campaign in November of 2017. 


22:27
Mackensie Liebermann
I have not turned off that ad or changed that ad or done anything at all since I started running that in November of 2017. It’s been running in the background constantly at just only $5 a day. It’s the core of the chatbot campaign because that’s constantly bringing in new people all the time because people are so excited about getting a free meal for their birthday. Here’s the other thing is I can change the offer within the chat bot, so I don’t even have to modify the ad. I just say you can get this free meal and then in the chat bot I can give more specifics of like, oh, it has to be under $20 or it’s only for Dine in only, no delivery, things like that, right? So you can make those adjustments. During COVID this was running nonstop during COVID too, when everything was all shut down, where then I was able in the chat bot to say, yeah, takeout only. 


23:18
Mackensie Liebermann
Obviously we’re closed for Dine in. The ability to work in conjunction with Facebook ads for the birthday campaign is super powerful. 


23:27
Ben Gibert
Yeah, that’s so powerful. Again, I just love that it’s super tactical, really specific, something anyone can basically steal and apply tomorrow. It’s like, hey, you can build an evergreen Facebook campaign that is not going to be subjected to the rising costs that you see on all your other campaigns. You use this one basic targeting parameter and you can again, touching on that agility, right? You don’t even have to change the ad down the line. You could just log into your chatbot platform, update the creative there, personalize the offer over time. I think that is just like an amazing thing that people could apply straight away. You’re right again, it’s like personal connection, right? It’s like, oh, this is my birthday, I want to respond to this because it just feels like so relevant to me. Everybody loves free things for their birthday. 


24:19
Mackensie Liebermann
Exactly. Or close to free. 


24:21
Ben Gibert
Close to free, exactly. There’s no such thing as a free lunch, even at your local restaurant. Taking a step back from I love that. That was such tactical advice. I think at a higher level. Can you summarize what you see as kind of the current state of chatbot marketing today? 


24:40
Mackensie Liebermann
Yeah, and just from what I’ve seen over the past five years, six years now, almost, it’s crazy. Marketing in general changes a lot over short periods of time, but chatbots and chatbot marketing, I feel like changes even faster just because there is a lot of adoption that’s still going on. Right. There’s still a lot of businesses that have no idea about chatbots or that they could even use them. Also we’re playing in the sandbox of different social media platforms, specifically Facebook and Instagram, that they have changes as well that we have to adapt to. I think that chatbot marketing, just like a lot of other marketing, is getting more you have to be more tactical. It’s not as simple to just throw something against the wall and it’ll work. You have to gone are the days where you could just send as many messages as you want to all of your chatbot subscribers with any promotional information that you want. 


25:48
Mackensie Liebermann
Man, those were the good old days. Of course a few people ruined a few a lot of people ruined that and made a lot of people mad or annoyed that they’re getting all these random messages that they couldn’t turn off. Of course Facebook had to respond and reduce that ability. I think even though a lot of that ease has gone away, I think it’s also weeded out a lot of the players who are just doing it for a quick thing that maybe wasn’t as vital to them. They’re like, oh, this isn’t easy. More I’m just going to cut this out. I think though, it’s still super important, because it’s not going away, that people love to chat, that they love to text. People would rather text or message versus talking on the phone any day. I think what stat was it was from a year or so ago, but like 64% of people say they would rather chat with a business rather than call or even email. 


26:50
Mackensie Liebermann
It’s also wanting to make it super simple for somebody to actually take that next step to start that conversation. But yeah. The state of chatbot marketing I think the other big thing is, and I kind of hinted to this, is making sure also that it’s a multi channel approach, that you’re able to get people’s emails and or phone numbers if they’re conversing with you initially through a social media platform, that you are able to get their information from other platforms. Just in case, but also to give you more opportunity and ability to reach them on other channels. Because as we all know, we’re super busy. We might miss a notification through messenger or Instagram DM, but we’re looking through our emails or we get the notification through messenger, but then an email or an SMS reminds us like, oh yeah, that’s right, that’s what they said earlier, but I just forgot. 


27:48
Mackensie Liebermann
Right. The ability to reach people on multiple platforms, I think is going to just continue to be super important. 


27:56
Ben Gibert
Yeah, with you there. Completely. I think having almost like an omnichannel messaging strategy is so key to really understanding how you engage customers, how you meet them at particular stages of their buyer journey or where they happen to be on that day, what app has their attention, what particular channel has their attention. I guess it also calls back to what you mentioned a little while ago, that you can also use those multiple channels to drive larger audience volume into your chat bot. Right. Don’t just use the Facebook ad, but use your emails or use your website, whatever that might be. Would it be fair to say that summarizing the Wild West days are over and the industry is maturing and with that comes maybe a positive focus on something like better customer experience. You mentioned Facebook kind of removing that 24, the unlimited reengagement window to be 24 plus one. 


28:58
Ben Gibert
There’s some exciting upcoming things as far as recurring notifications, but they really hinge on getting customer opt in and providing that better customer experience. Is that where you see this going. 


29:11
Mackensie Liebermann
To yeah, and it’s funny, I’ve been on a few calls with the head of Facebook Messenger, just kind of giving them some insight with what’s going on or what my experience has been with creating chat bots, utilizing messenger for a lot of different businesses. One of the big things was, yeah, being able to reach people who want to receive these messages because it’s really interesting to see that where people are like, but I want to receive these messages. Why are you not sending these to me? It’s like, sorry, Facebook is not allowing us to. Surprisingly, it’s refreshing the fact that Facebook actually took some feedback and made some adjustments. True, yes. It also does obviously help the consumer of their product as well. And that’s obviously what is driving them. It was nice to see that they found, if you think about the Venn diagram, the middle ground to help not only their users, but also businesses who are spending money on the platform, to allow the platform to be free, that they were able to kind of find that middle ground. 


30:19
Mackensie Liebermann
They went one crazy. They had one end of the spectrum of allowing businesses to send unlimited messages to people all the time, to the exact opposite of really restricting that. And now they’ve kind. Of found a middle ground where they’re allowing businesses to ask their users to opt in for reoccurring messages, limited slightly where it could be daily for a little while. It’s not a daily, unlimited or weekly or monthly. Giving that flexibility I think is good because that goes to show that they are listening. I think yeah, to your point of the fact of it’s super important and for businesses to be able to utilize these platforms because that’s where they are. It’s also really great that Facebook, for example, is also listening to businesses and their users to make it so it’s a positive experience for everyone. 


31:21
Ben Gibert
Yeah, definitely. There’s so much potential to unlock more customer lifetime value too by using recurring notifications to kind of reengage people with the things that are relevant to them but that ultimately are driving value for businesses that are engaging with them as well. At this point, what excites you the most about chat bot marketing today? 


31:47
Mackensie Liebermann
Well, I think the ability of flexibility and being able to create a chat bot for whatever business needs. Pretty much some people ask me, oh, what can you do with a chatbot? I’m like, well I think the bigger question is what can’t you do with a chat bot? Because the use case of a chat bot, it can be so specific to whatever business use case and it does also boil down to pretty much getting opt ins, getting leads, getting sales, getting engagement with customers. I think the exciting pieces of chatbot marketing in general is it just continues conversations and people want to have conversations. If anything, if there is any silver lining amongst all the frustration with iOS 14.5 is, it does kind of then highlight how chatbots give the ability of engaging and getting them inside of the overall. Funnel to help increase sales and help to reduce the iOS 14.5 frustrations to make it so. 


33:02
Mackensie Liebermann
At least advertising isn’t a super sore point for a lot of different businesses. 


33:08
Ben Gibert
Yeah, I think we’ve talked to a lot of marketing teams that are feeling the pain of iOS 14 and just privacy updates in general. This is definitely an exciting channel to overcome some of those challenges and build a very direct relationship with your customers, not just from a data standpoint, but a retargeting and reengagement one as well. Having said that, what are maybe your top three pieces of advice that you’d have for marketers that are kind of just getting started with chatbot marketing? 


33:40
Mackensie Liebermann
I think first of all, to my point of saying anything’s possible with chat bots, try not to do everything with your first chatbot. If you’re just first starting with chatbot marketing, do something simple, lead magnet, opt in, make sure that it’s providing solutions and reaching the goals that you set it out to achieve. I definitely always tell people if you’re just first starting out, start with something small to get an easy win. Also that way you’re not spending days or weeks frustrated trying to put together the chat bot and then something’s not working. You get frustrated, you just like, no going back to the landing page. Definitely don’t give up on a chat bot. Start small. That’s definitely a big piece of advice for that. The other piece of advice is I guess the next piece would be try to have a big picture. You have all these smaller, I guess, campaign ideas we’re talking about like quizzes and birthdays or coupons, things like that, which are great. 


34:48
Mackensie Liebermann
Obviously those are things that you want to implement. Try and think of a big picture of how does that fit into the overall premise of your chatbot marketing, I guess realm. Thinking, okay, what’s your follow up going to be once you get their email? Are you going to add them to an email drip sequence? How else can you follow up with these people within the confines of Facebook’s follow up campaign rules and how does that look overall? That way you try to keep people engaged and you don’t fall off the face of the planet from them and then three months later come back and you try and send something. They’re like, wait, who are you again? Trying to have that idea in mind with a larger constructive overall marketing campaigns. The third piece would be personable. Making it like a conversation is ideal. Definitely do not take your email drip campaigns and copy and paste them into messenger or chat bots in general. 


35:55
Mackensie Liebermann
That is not how you converse with potential customers. That will be the biggest turn off because people will have to scroll for days to try and get to the top of your message and they’re going to be like, this is too long, I don’t want to read this. Making it conversational, making it engaging, making it fun, I think that’s also another reason why I love putting together chatbot campaigns so much is because they hate copywriting, long form copywriting for a sales page or for email marketing. That is just like nails on a chalkboard for me. I am not good at that. Hey, I can be so conversational and make things engaging and fun. That still gets the point across and shortened to the point that I could do that forever. So definitely email has its own place. Make sure that your chat bot conversations are that’s conversational. 


36:43
Mackensie Liebermann
Like you’re having a conversation with a friend and making sure that they’re engaging and not overwhelming to people. 


36:52
Ben Gibert
Yeah, I love those three pieces of advice for anyone out there, that’s great advice. Start simple. You mentioned like focus on a limited use case and have clear goals. Number two, don’t forget the big picture. Think about how your kind of tactical campaigns fits into the overall strategy. That the things you’re trying to achieve, like the brand connections that you want to build with your chat bot. And then three, just be conversational, right? This is don’t blast out your email newsletter once you start getting recurring notification, opt ins on messenger, that’s not what you want to be doing. You want to be much more conversational and really just leverage the format because that’s what’s going to be most engaging. Yeah, great. Three pieces of advice. Listen, Mackensie, this has been so interesting. Like, last question before we wrap up, five years from now, what will the future of chat bot marketing look like for you? 


37:48
Mackensie Liebermann
Oh, I think that it’s crazy to think because five years ago now is when I pretty much started. It was super new and there’s so many different features that I use every day now that I could not imagine not having at all. Five years from now, I really think especially because of Facebook’s big push with AR, VR, things like that chatbot marketing will have a bigger piece with that as well. Being able to have AR capability within chatbot, that’s already a thing. I think it’s going to be easier to adopt where you’re not having to rely on a developer or somebody. It’s going to be more cut and paste in terms of like, yeah, I want to have this type of AR thing and people can click here and just implement a filter or something. I think that’ll be a big piece. Again with VR and Metaverses and stuff where people will be able to be in a Metaverse and be able to go to your store in the Metaverse and click on chat now. 


38:52
Mackensie Liebermann
They’ll be able to voice chat or be able to do something along those lines where it’s still having a conversation with a business. It’ll just be on a different platform. I really think that’s where it’s going to go is much more tech centered. Of course keeping the foundations still going of text is a big piece of it and having a conversation with the business to make a sale that’s not going to go away at all, but it’ll just have all these other cool little bells and whistles on top. 


39:25
Ben Gibert
Yeah, I see that too. A future where there is like a much richer kind of immersive experience, but all within that chat and utilizing all the things that the thread of connecting with the business can. But with all these new exciting things. Look, Mackensie, it’s been such a pleasure to talk to you. I think you have a ton of interesting things to say. You clearly have a lot of experience running tactical programs and designing these strategies. It’s really great to hear you talk to so many of the things that we’ve seen at Spectrm too. I think that’s all we can cover for today. Before we wrap up, if people want to follow your journey. Learn more about what you’re doing. Where should they go? 


40:08
Mackensie Liebermann
We can check out my website orchamarketology.com or you can also follow me on Instagram, Mackensie Liebermann. That’s the easiest way to find me there. I also have a Facebook group called Marketing with messenger bots, even though we’re doing much more than messenger now, but when I created it back in 2017, that was the platform. Those are the main spots where I’m at currently. 


40:37
Ben Gibert
Great. Yeah. Thanks for sharing and definitely to all our listeners, go check out what Mackensie Lieberman is up to. Also, don’t forget that if you want to hear more great insights, like we just talked about today, to subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts spotify or wherever you get your podcasts, and to subscribe or follow Spectrm on LinkedIn. Mackensie, thanks again. I really look forward to seeing what you’re doing, the future, where you’re going to be running Holistic chatbots in the Metaverse with AR and VR and all those other things. Let’s definitely keep in touch. 


41:14
Mackensie Liebermann
Definitely. It was great chatting. Thank you for having me. 


41:17
Ben Gibert
Yeah, thank you. Thank. 

Talk to our team to learn how to automate messaging into your #1 retention marketing channel.