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Are Chatbots Really Worth It? | Ep. #308

Jun 13, 2017

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In Episode #308, Eric and Neil discuss if chatbots are really worth it. Since chatbots are still in its early days, the effectiveness and profitability of the tool is very much debatable. Eric and Neil discuss the tests that they’ve run and lay out the benefits as well as the weaknesses they’ve encountered. At the end of the day, the incredible open and click through rates from using chatbots is something that CANNOT be ignored.

Time Stamped Show Notes:

00:30 – Today’s topic: Are Chatbots Really Worth It?
00:41 – Eric was moderating a panel with a guy from Hubspot and Wordstream
- 00:53 – Eric’s open rates was about 80%, his friend was at 94%
- 01:07 – A broadcast through email can get you 20-30% open rate, with 5% click rate
- 01:14 – With chatbots 80-94%, at 50% click rates
01:40 – Neil says it’s about opportunity costs
02:21 – Neil was doing a test the other day and found that the opt-in rate was still quite low
- 02:38 – Open rates are great, but opt-in rate needs to be increased somehow—this may get better in a few months
02:56 – Send your bot to ManyChat or Chatfuel and you’ll have a URL to drive traffic to
03:12 – Eric runs a page post engagement ad where people leave a comment if they’re interested and he then gets their email
- 03:33 – You can get a subscriber for a couple cents
- 03:48 – You can also get people to click on a link that brings people to your landing page and then they can message you directly
- 03:54 – Manychat will help you make widgets and landing pages
04:16 – Eric ran a small test, received 300 subscribers and paid about 50 cents per subscriber
04:34 – Neil: The question is can you make them profitable?
- 04:47 – Eric shares a story about a guy who directed his traffic to his chatbots as opposed to closing them in a webinar—he was able to make $400K in sales that way
- 05:13 – Your mileage may vary in regards to sales from using chatbots, but it’s worth testing
05:21 – Neil says chatbots are still its early days and to not expect that these open and click through rates will stick; they will decrease over time just like everything else
05:46 – Eric and Neil will keep a close eye on this trend of using chatbots so stay tuned for future episodes
05:52 – That’s it for today’s episode!

3 Key Points:

Chatbots have the ability to get you email subscribers for a couple of cents an email—it’s worth looking into just for this reason alone.
Just like every other tool you use in marketing, test to see if chatbots will help you convert to real, profitable sales.
Direct your traffic from your webinars to your chatbots; using them in conjunction can play to the strengths of each tool.