With ManyChat and Make, Anyone Can Build a ChatBot

There is so much buzz about chatbots these days that I am not even going to delve into the facts and figures to convince you that chatbots are becoming the new normal in the fields of marketing automation and customer support. 

As Facebook has become quintessential for marketing and support teams alike, every major brand has invested in one or more chatbots for Messenger. 

While there are several other platforms that enable one to deploy standalone bots for websites, I will keep this article focused on Messenger bots only.

Messenger bots are getting better

You may know about and agree with the plethora of benefits a well-built chatbot brings for any business. 

And the rapid adoption of chatbots by businesses and brands of all shapes and sizes has been expedited due to the ease of building a Messenger bot, the credit for which goes to not only the social media behemoth but also all the other amazing no-code tools that have made this possible.

ManyChat is one of the most popular tools that has democratized building Messenger bots and has carved a prominent place for itself in every marketer’s toolbox. 

If you’re not familiar with ManyChat, let me tell you that besides being a no-code tool that enables one to build and deploy chatbots for Facebook Messenger, it encompasses a suite of features that you can use to grow your audience, engage them with hyper-personalized offers, collect payments, gather feedback and offer support. 

And while in Beta, ManyChat’s Ads feature allows you to create Facebook ads with custom messaging to drive more targeted traffic to your chatbot, all without leaving the ManyChat dashboard. Sweet! 

Additionally, beyond utilizing ManyChat’s amazing inbuilt tools, one can connect to any third-party app or service via the External Request and Trigger Make actions.

While you can make an external request to your server to send all kinds of data, if you’re not a programmer, you may use the Make integration to send data to a CRM, a Google Sheet or any other cloud service that you already use, without writing a single line of code. Make’s free plan is sufficient for you to get started and explore the magic.

Rules of engagement

While using ManyChat or a similar tool enables you to skip the Messenger Platform’s review and approval process (which is a huge dampener), you must understand its possibilities (and limitations) and know the rules you need to play by. 

Besides those, you need to be able to write good content and design engaging conversations to find success with chatbots. And if you’re a marketer or run a social media agency, you are already designing conversations when writing ad copy, email sequences or video scripts, and hence writing content for a chatbot should not be difficult. 

While you may use one of the many tools like Draw.io to create a flow diagram of the conversation, ManyChat’s intuitive Flow Builder lets you visualize your conversation flow and test it at the same time, saving you tons of time.

If you’re wondering where to get started with ManyChat, here’s a free video course that will help you get to speed. 

If you’ve already begun building your bot and would like to give it superpowers by connecting it to other services with ease, check out this guide by Make and sign up for a free account. 

To learn more about bots, subscribe to the Chatbots Magazine and Chatbots Life publications on Medium.