8 Benefits to Investing in a Chatbot Instead of An App

No matter what industry you work in, you need to offer your customers opportunities to interact with your business efficiently. In recent years, many organizations have developed their own apps for this very purpose.
However, apps don’t offer the kind of personalized or conversational service that comes from interacting with an individual. That’s why you should consider developing a chatbot for your company, instead of an app.
Chatbot technology has improved dramatically over the last few years. It won’t be long before bots can authentically recreate the experience of talking to a human. The following are just a few reasons to consider focusing on chatbot development for your business, instead of an app.

You Don’t Need to Convince Anyone to Download Anything

Here are a few of the major downsides of apps:

• Apps take up space on a customer’s device
• They can be expensive
• It’s not always easy to convince people to download your app, especially among the over 2 million available

With chatbot tools, that’s not a problem. You can create your own chatbot that’s accessible via a service your customers already use, like Facebook Messenger.
They’re much more likely to make use of your product if they don’t have to download anything first. According to a recent survey, 56% of current Facebook Messenger users expect to use the platform more frequently in the future, making it a very powerful tool for marketers.

Chatbot Technology Reduces Business Expenses

A strong chatbot solution can theoretically take the place of a customer service representative. By offering your customers this type of chatbot tool, you’ll be able to save money on hiring, while still offering the personalized experience individuals desire from customer service.
This is ideal for any company, but it’s especially smart for startups that need to grow quickly while sticking to a strict budget. Experts already predict that chatbot development will reduce business costs by as much as $8 billion per year by 2022.

Customers Can Use Chatbot Technology More Easily

Although a talented UX designer can build an app that’s intuitive and easy to use, nothing truly matches the convenience of interacting with another person. When customers open an app, they still need to click on the right icons or buttons to access key features. This can get confusing.
Chatbot technology is different. If you want to access a feature, you simply tell the bot to open it. It’s a much more human and conversational experience.
For example, when we developed VICE’s VICELAND chatbot, we made sure one of the key features included was a simply command to access a full show schedule. We also let viewers select their favorite shows, and our chatbot tool then reminded them when that show aired. The entire experience begins with a personal greeting from Action Bronson, one of VICE’s most recognizable hosts.

Create Your Own Chatbot to Help Develop Emotional Connections

Some of the most successful companies in the world, like Apple, brand themselves so well that customers actually develop an emotional attachment to the brand.
While this is possible to achieve with an app, it’s not easy. You need the right combination of intuitive UX and appealing UI to trigger a genuine, strong emotional response in a user.
Meanwhile, a chatbot platform is much more effective in this respect. If you take the time to give your bot its own “personality,” you can create a brand that truly resonates with customers.
Partnering with a chatbot agency will make the process of individualizing and branding your bot even easier. As experts in the field, they understand both how to build the most successful chatbots, and also how to market them effectively as a representation of your brand that encourages customer loyalty.

Bots Can Help You Learn About Customers

A typical chatbot will answer user questions. By keeping track of what types of questions people commonly ask, the chatbot could help you learn a lot more about your customers. This makes it easier to address their needs quickly. Additionally, it helps you optimize your marketing strategy to reach customers in the most effective manner possible. When you understand how to personalize the marketing experience, your campaign is likely to become much more successful.

Building Your Own Chatbot is Cheaper Than App Development

Although quality chatbot development isn’t free, it can be much less expensive than developing an app. Again, services like Facebook Messenger allow companies to host their chatbot technology on existing platforms. Thus, the process of creating your own chatbot takes less time and less money than building your own unique app.
A top chatbot agency includes a self-service chatbot platform, which makes the technology even more accessible, customizable, and affordable. With access to chatbot tools like these, businesses can more easily deploy the technology and begin leveraging the effectiveness of conversational marketing experiences.

The Tech is Improving

Chatbot technology is improving at a very fast rate. More and more organizations are going to embrace this software in the near future as conversational marketing becomes the norm. By developing a chatbot for your business now, you’ll have an advantage over the competition, and you’ll be able to easily implement new features as they emerge.

Your main goal should always be to offer customers the best possible experience at the lowest cost. While an app may have been the ideal solution for the last few years, chatbot development is the wave of the future. Get started on yours now.



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The Future of Messenger Marketing: What It Is, Where It’s Going, & Why The Future Is So Very Bright For Businesses

Find out what’s coming and how businesses are already deploying Messenger Marketing strategies to grow relationships with customers in this post.

If there’s one thing all business owners can agree on, it’s that you have to approach your customers in the places where they’re already hanging out.

If your customers are sports-loving guys who watch ESPN and the NFL Channel, you wouldn’t advertise to them on HGTV and Lifetime, would you?

Of course not.

You’d put your ads on sports networks where your target market will see them.

And that, in a nutshell, is why Messenger Marketing is set to become the world’s single biggest marketing channel in the next 5-7 years.

Messenger Marketing – noun – the act of leveraging mobile, chat platforms to facilitate conversations and commerce with prospects and customers.

There’s no denying the fact that we’re moving away from emails, SMS and phone calls. More and more we’re using mobile-friendly messenger apps like Facebook Messenger, iMessage, and WhatsApp to keep in touch with friends, family, and even businesses.

It’s the quickest, easiest, and most convenient way to reach someone.

Is it any wonder, then, why Facebook Messenger Marketing is the most exciting new marketing channel to come by in a long, long time?

Just look how quickly messaging apps surpassed social networks in monthly active users:

Source: https://blog.bufferapp.com/messaging-apps

The steepness of that curve should tell you something: messaging apps have a naturally huge appeal. They’re too easy and intuitive not to use.

So, what’s to come? In the next 1,700 words, I’m going to give you a glimpse into the future of Messenger Marketing and apps, along with a few hints about some of the sophisticated new tools we have in the pipeline for ManyChat.

Before we jump to the future of Messenger Marketing, let’s talk about what it is and why it’s so important for your business to start using it to connect with your customers.

What Is Messenger Marketing?

Messenger marketing is a new and increasingly popular way to communicate with prospects, leads, and customers.

As a marketing channel it boasts better engagement than any other channel out there, including…

• Email
• Direct mail
• Social media
• Push notifications
• Skywriting

…you name it.

So what does that mean? Very simply, it means when you send your customers a message on Facebook Messenger, more people will open, read, and interact with your messages.

And those messages can either be live (say, a real-time conversation between a customer service rep and a customer), or they can be automated using a chatbot (much like an email autoresponder series). But unlike email, which has come to feel like work for most people, Facebook messages are quick & easy to respond to.

As a result, they get sky-high open and click-through rates.

If it sounds a little bit like SMS marketing, you’re on the right track.

However, with Messenger Marketing, you can do a lot of things you can’t with SMS, like sending beautiful messages that come complete with clickable call-to-action (CTA) buttons, GIFs, galleries, and more.

Basically, Messenger Marketing combines the instant delivery & attention of SMS with the attractiveness and automation power of email. Messenger also feels more personal than email, but less invasive than SMS—striking the perfect balance for businesses looking to communicate with customers.

And thanks to more and more integrations (such as our new integration with Zapier), you can now easily and automatically add Messenger contacts to your email list, register them for a webinar, and much more.

What Can You Do With Messenger Marketing?

The beauty of Messenger Marketing is that you can still do all the stuff you’re used to doing in your marketing efforts…

…it just makes everything easier and more effective.

When someone sends you a message they’ll be automatically added to your ManyChat subscriber list. From there you can add them to your email list and continue to follow up with them via email.

You can send them content, sell them products, ask for feedback, and more—all within the native messenger app.

The ability to add clickable call-to-action buttons in messenger gives you the freedom to customize messenger marketing for any business.

For example, look how easy it is to register someone for a webinar:

Depending on which link you click, Derek’s chatbot can automatically register you for the webinar, give you the details on how to attend, or offer to send you the recording.

You can also use ManyChat to segment your visitors and find out what their interests are, so that you can present them with relevant and personalized product recommendations:

Or, simply use a chatbot to deliver deliver white papers and other lead-nurturing content:

Cutting-edge ecommerce companies are using messenger marketing to send transactional messages (whether on desktop or mobile) — sending purchase confirmations, letting people know when their product has shipped, and so on.

Look how Code&Quill, a brand that creates specialty notebooks for creatives sends all the information their customers need about their orders:

Of course, you’re already able to do all of this through email. But email feels cold and impersonal, and even the best email marketing departments in the world still get open rates under 30%.

In contrast, Facebook messages provide your customers with the personal, one-on-one interactions they want, with open rates currently hovering around 85%. And if they have a question, all they have to do is reply to your message—and someone from your company will be able to respond instantly.

And that’s what’s so great about Facebook Messenger Marketing. It gives you all the automation you could want, but in a way that’s also private and personal. As a result it provides less friction for the end user, helping you to develop a deeper relationship with your customers.

(RELATED READING: How to Build a Simple Facebook Messenger Bot with ManyChat)

It was that goal—less friction for the end user, helping businesses to develop a deeper relationship with their customers—that drove us as we built ManyChat; the platform can already accomplish those things. But in the near future you’re going to see companies doing even more remarkable things with Messenger Marketing.

The best is yet to come.

And for a glimpse into what the future might hold, let’s take a quick trip across the world—where the future is now for messaging apps.

The Meteoric Rise of Messengers: The China Case Study

I’ve said before that in the next 5-7 years, Messenger Marketing is going to capture 80% of all B2C communication.

It’s going to replace email, websites, phone calls, and SMS as the primary way businesses communicate with customers. It’s not going to be “just another channel.”

It’s going to be THE channel.

And if you’re skeptical about any of this, look no further than China—where this exact thing has already happened.

In China, over 900 million people use WeChat each month, making it the most widely used app in the country. It’s the dominant way people communicate, pushing SMS and email to the sidelines—even at work, where many employees use WeChat for business communications (instead of email). The app allows for free video calls, easy sharing of large files, and instant group chats. Instead of exchanging business cards, you simply use WeChat to scan someone’s QR code and snag their contact information.

It’s done more than that, though.

In many cases WeChat has actually replaced websites altogether. Many bloggers in China have turned to WeChat as their primary channel for distributing content, generating massive readership without ever even posting to a traditional blog.

Did I mention it’s also a revenue monster—largely replacing cash and credit cards? WeChat Pay is everywhere in China: you can use it to pay for purchases at physical and online stores, request taxis, order movie tickets, and even buy a drink from a vending machine.

According to the 2017 WeChat User Report, 87-94% of users in China pay for offline purchases using WeChat…compared to 38-51% using cash and 29-36% using debit/credit cards:

Source: https://chinachannel.co/1017-wechat-report-users/

Statistics like this are really cool because they give a glimpse of what’s possible, of what’s coming, in the rest of the world. And when you combine that with all the capabilities of Facebook…all the rich data and targeting options hiding in our profiles…

You can see why the future of Messenger Marketing is so exciting.

The Future of Messenger Marketing

Imagine you’ve just spent a night at a hotel.

After you check out the next morning, you look at your phone and notice a notification from Facebook Messenger. You check it, and see that the hotel has sent you an automated message asking, on a 1-5 scale, how your stay was.

If you respond with a 1-3, the chatbot automatically asks you if anything was wrong and what they can do to improve. If you respond by telling them about the cockroaches you found under the bed, a customer service rep immediately replies to your message and credits you with a free stay.

If you respond with a 4 or 5, the chatbot automatically thanks you and gives you a link to leave a review online. They also tell you that, in the future, you can book a room by simply sending them a message with the date and type of room you want.

Doesn’t that sound quicker, easier, and more convenient for everyone involved? (Especially compared to the nightmare of opening graphic-heavy emails and navigating a poorly designed website on your phone?) And of course, the hotel chain will be able to store the data from this conversation in a central system and use it to provide better service in the future.

In short, scenarios like this are what the future holds for Messenger Marketing.

You’ll be able to set up chatbots that automatically send a message based on the last interaction the person had with your company—whether it was watching a video, making a purchase, viewing a certain product page on your website…you name it.

When someone needs to contact you, they won’t go to your website. Instead they’ll send you a Facebook message. Messenger will become your single point of interaction with customers—the one place where they can easily reach you anytime they have a question, need help, or simply want to make a purchase (which they will also be able to do directly through Messenger).

Powerful New Features Coming to ManyChat

I can’t give too many specifics just yet…but let’s just say we have a LOT of really exciting new tools and features coming out for ManyChat.

First up is an all-new way to create your Facebook Messenger experiences with a versatile and easy-to-use builder that will help you visualize the setup of the logic and sequence behind your chatbots. Built into this new tool will come a suite of intuitive analytics that will simplify the process of optimizing your Facebook Messenger campaigns.

We’re also working on more sophisticated and robust ecommerce systems that will help online retailers to generate more sales while providing better customer service through Facebook Messenger.

Better live chat capabilities are on the way, as are a whole host of triggers and automations to help you maximize sales & revenue while providing a seamless user experience for your customers.

Stay tuned for more news on these coming features as we roll them out in the coming months!

Want to Grow Your Business With Messenger Marketing?

Make no mistake: Facebook Messenger Marketing is going to be a huge marketing channel for everyone—consultants, ecommerce companies, brick & mortar stores, public figures and celebrities, event organizers, and more—for the foreseeable future.

Everyone can benefit from integrating Facebook Messenger into their marketing strategy. And given how fast Messenger Marketing is growing, the sooner the better.

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Why Live Chat Usually Sucks

It’s the holiday season again, which yields at least four truths:

1. Huge uptick in cranberry sauce consumption (seriously, when ELSE is that eaten?)
2. Huge uptick in deck and patio fires, due to foolhardy and drunken usage of turkey fryers
3. Huge uptick in customer interactions with companies, as we agitate for the best Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals
4. Huge uptick in consumer frustration, as we encounter truly terrible live chat and chatbot experiences

I get it. I really do.

Every company is reading white papers and sitting in on webinars (some produced by me) that talk about the need for omni-channel consistency and customer-focused interaction mechanisms.

“If customers don’t want to use the phone, let them use chat!” say the white papers.

“Facebook Messenger is all the rage! It’s going to replace email! You need to build a bot!” bleat the webinars.

Consumers not only face a frenzy of navigation choices and special offers when they land on a retail website. Now they also must weigh the pros and consequences of using live chat, Messenger, phone, email, Twitter, Facebook, fax, or needlepoint as a contact mechanism when they inevitably have a question or problem.

For Whose Convenience?

Yes, I believe that companies should interact with customers in the fashion and platform of the customers choosing, rather than demanding customers use phone and email because it’s the company’s legacy preference. I talked about that a lot in Hug Your Haters.

That book was published 18 months ago, and the increase in live chat and chatbots has been remarkable. But here’s the problem:

If you’re going to add an interaction modality for your customers, shouldn’t you take that opportunity to ensure this new channel offers a BETTER experience? Unfortunately, I often find the exact opposite to be true.

I had a problem yesterday with a company I use routinely. I went to their website and decided to use the live chat so I could check my email during the “conversation.” The agent was incredibly slow and knew almost nothing about the product. Ultimately, after 35 minutes of painful back and forth, the agent gave me a phone number to call.

I called the number and had the problem fully solved in five minutes.

The problem is that companies rolling out live chat and chatbots do it for the wrong reasons. It’s not to offer an enhanced customer experience for consumers who prefer those channels. Instead, it’s to save money on a per-interaction basis. A chat agent can handle three to six conversations at once via chat, and a telephone agent can handle just one. And Messenger bots, once programmed, can handle infinite simultaneous conversations, bringing the average cost per interaction as close to zero as possible. “Hallelujah!” says the CFO, delighted at the cost savings provided by this new technology.

But the customer does not say hallelujah. They say a different exclamation that starts with “F.”

One Chance to Make a First Impression

If the company ultimately wants to encourage customers to use live chat and chatbots to save money, then why do they routinely put their very worst reps on live chat? Why are so many Messenger bots nearly useless? Consumers will behave in a way the company desires, if they are consistently incentivized to do so. A glance at the Cyber Monday phenomenon is all the proof we need of that point. Businesses decided to incentivize consumers to spend money online in a dedicated time horizon and discounted prices sufficiently to force the desired behavior change.

It’s realistic to believe that many customers will opt for low-cost interaction methods like live chat and chatbots, and that’s good news for business, ultimately. (Note that not all customers will do so, as some people really prefer phone and email, and that will continue to be the case until we have full generational turnover). But this gravitation from phone/email to chat/bots will only occur if companies commit meaningful resources to providing an outstanding customer experience via these new channels.

85 percent of Americans say they hate to wait on hold. That makes sense, and every time I hear that stat I wonder, who are the other 15 percent? And why do they have so much free time? Very few people want to call, and not many folks are hoping for more presents in their inbox, either. Chat and bots should be a huge hit among consumers.

But they are not.

My friend Ed Davies is a digital marketing consultant in the United Kingdom. His recent experience illustrates the core problem:

Ed needed to contact One.com, a web hosting provider, about a domain name issue. He chose live chat and was told he was #20 in line (for live chat support!). After a few minutes of waiting, the chat software sounded a chime and nudged him to find the answer himself on the website.

He was never given a sense of how long he might have to wait (something that is common on the telephone), and after 45 MINUTES, a chat agent logged on. With no acknowledgement of the wait, the agent dove into the issue.

During the subsequent interaction, the agent left Ed waiting for 10 minutes, with no message or input of any kind. Even on the phone, when you are forced to wait for a long time, agents typically pop back in every once in a while to apologize and make sure you’re not sharpening an axe.

As a result of this poor experience, Ed took his business elsewhere.

As Ed wrote to me when he told me this tale:

“Chats should provide a better experience for the customer—there are tools available that keep the customer informed, and not just saying ‘you are in position number 14.’ I found myself thinking I’d rather be on hold on a phone than a chat—I can stick the phone on speaker, dance to the tinny pop music they have playing, make a coffee, move around the house, etc. It comes down to not respecting my time in a world where I value it more highly than any other thing.”

Ed is exactly right. It’s about respect. Companies are patting themselves on the back after they check the “launch live chat” box on their strategic plan without realizing that the execution of this new option is actually driving customers away.

As always, just because you have technology doesn’t mean it provides a better experience. And in this case, the experience is often worse.

I know there are instances of great live chat and chatbots. I’ve experienced some myself. I don’t want to indict the entire category, as that is both unfair and untrue. But just about everyone I know has a disappointing chat/bots experience. How has your experience been?

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Is AI Capable of Creativity? 4 Fails, and 3 Successes

The robots are coming here.
We know -- we've been over this. Messenger and live chat are quickly becoming customers' preferred methods of communication. And for both, bots are often the first line of defense: the triaging system that connects the user to the right human being who can solve the problem ... if it even needs to get to that point.
In other words, bots are eliminating some level of need for human labor.
It's a hotly-contested point, one that's met with a lot of questions rooted in concern.
"Is my job in danger?"
"Will I be replaced?"
"A bot can't do everything -- what about the creative stuff?"
Aha. It's that last question that often sparks the most debate around here.

Learn more about bots and AI here.

Is artificial intelligence capable of truly creative work?
As it turns out, there's no truly definitive answer. There have been cases when the response is, "Of course," and those where attempts to make an AI-powered presence creative fell completely flat.
So, we sought out to find instances of both. There are quite a few -- some amusing, and some horrendous. Here are seven of the best examples we could find.

Is AI Capable of Creativity? 4 Fails, and 3 Successes

1. Microsoft: Tay
2. IBM: Chef Watson
3. Research Scientist Janelle Shane: AI-Named Paint Colors
4. Oscar Sharp and Ross Goodwin: Sunspring
5. Primordial Research Project: Hack Rod
6. Manny Tan & Kyle McDonald: The Infinite Drum Machine
7. Google Creative Lab: AutoDraw

The Fails

1) Microsoft: Tay

Oh, boy. Where to begin, with this one?
Here's the thing about machine learning: Typically, if it works properly, it's designed to function based on its users. Sometimes, that can be a good thing, like when Spotify's algorithm uses your listening behavior to curate playlists of songs it thinks you might like.
But in the case of Tay.ai, a Twitter bot designed by Microsoft to function like any "normal" teenage girl using the social media channel, things went terribly wrong.
The problem is that, as "smart" as it might be, AI isn't quite capable of establishing its own ethics. Its only sense of right and wrong is what's dictated by its algorithm, and even then, machine learning AI is still generally informed by the humans it's determined to engage with. That's why Russian ads on Facebook, for example, may have been so effective during the 2016 U.S. presidential election -- based on users' behavior on Facebook (likes, follows, comments, clicks, and more), its algorithm is "informed" enough for that content to accurately reach the people it was meant to influence.
Such was the case, somewhat similarly, with Tay. As the story goes, Tay began to emulate the behavior -- or in this case, the language used in tweets -- of the users engaging with it. Unfortunately, that language was charged with anti-Semitic and anti-feminist sentiment, causing Tay to tweet out such offensive content that Microsoft had to take it offline.

Source: Quora

2) IBM: Chef Watson

I like to call this one "The Great Chocolate Burrito Incident of 2015." That same year, Watson -- the IBM AI robot that once beat a reigning Jeopardy champion -- became "Chef Watson" and released its first cookbook. Watson developed the recipes almost completely independently using its flavor algorithm, with only a bit of help from Institute of Culinary Education human chefs to make a tweak here and there.
There was reason to be optimistic. Prior to the cookbook's publication, a few tech writers had been sent a complimentary bottle of BBQ that was also formulated by Watson, and earned positive reviews. But then came the Austrian Chocolate Burrito: a recipe with results that ranged from "a bunch of little balls of quasi-dryness in my mouth" to "so bad that I thought it had to be good."
(It wasn't all bad -- the Washington Post, evidently, had better luck with the same recipe.)
We have yet to test the recipes ourselves, but in the meantime, um ... bon appétit?

3) Research Scientist Janelle Shane: AI-Named Paint Colors

When someone pens an article about AI titled, "We’re Pretty Sure the Robot That Invented These Paint Colors Is a Stoner," our guess is that it's about an experiment that either went very well or very wrong.
In this case, it bordered on the latter. When research scientist Janelle Shane trained a neural network to create new paint colors -- which are already so interestingly named, like my favorite, Benjamin Moore's "Custis Salmon" -- the results were ... different. The AI was designed to create new shades, and assign names to them, but the two were often mismatched.
Case in point:

So, maybe that last one on the list is, um, fitting. But how does one explain the pinkish hue of "Grass Bat," or the bluish-purple one of "Caring Tan?"

Maybe we just don't have the artistic eye to appreciate these, but until we do, we'll go ahead and categorize this one as "not quite a success."

4) Oscar Sharp and Ross Goodwin: Sunspring

Have you ever wondered what would happen if scripts from classics like Ghostbusters and the original Bladerunner were fed to a neural network for the purpose of creating an original, entirely AI-written screenplay?
The results can be summarized by Sunspring, a short film that was acted and filmed entirely as the machine that wrote it intended. We'll let the work speak for itself ... 

SUNSPRING by 32 Tesla K80 GPUs

... as well as our team's response when it was shared over Slack:

The Successes

5) Primordial Research Project: Hack Rod

Self-driving cars, are making many headlines these days and are even the stuff of high-profile lawsuits. But before the likes of Google, Lyft, and Uber began fighting over who would reign supreme in the area of autonomous vehicles, there was Hack Rod: one of the first artificially intelligent automobiles that had people talking.
The project began as a research-based side gig that was rooted in co-founder Felix Holst's background at Mattel, where he worked on Hot Wheels toy cars. First, he and co-founder Mouse McCoy built a team to create a high-performance race car, which was later driven by a human through the Mojave Desert. That's where the cool part comes in: The team was able to capture the driver's brainwaves. That, combined with information collected from sensors placed within the vehicle itself, was converted into data that served as a foundation for the machine learning that would create what Fast Company once referred to as the car's "nervous system."
Hack Rod has been noticeably absent from recent self-driving headlines, but there's little doubt that it paved the way -- if you'll excuse the pun -- for autonomous vehicles to come. 

6) Manny Tan & Kyle McDonald: The Infinite Drum Machine

We've heard cases of AI-created musical composition, like Emily Howell, the classical-music-composing machine created by UCSC Professor Emeritus David Cope.
But we haven't come across as many examples of AI-powered musical composition that allows the user to create its own audible masterpiece. That's where The Infinite Drum Machine comes in: an AI experiment that uses machine learning to capture thousands of sounds we hear in day-to-day life, like a bag of potato chips opening or a file cabinet opening, and organizes them to create percussive patterns.
And thanks to Google's AI Experiments site, everyday tech nerds like us can play with it. 

7) Google Creative Lab: AutoDraw

Okay, the jury might be out on this one. We're calling it a win, because it makes for a fun way to pass the time, say, while putting off one's blog-writing duties.
AutoDraw, another Google AI experiment, helps novice artists -- er, those who like to doodle on the internet -- create better quality images with the help of machine learning.
For example, here's what happened when I tried using it to draw a picture of my dachshund-mix dog:

Cute! After about 50 seconds, AutoDraw figured out that I may have been drawing a dachshund. But here's what happened when I tried to replicate its own work:

Granted, I'm not exactly a brilliant artist -- but I did find it interesting that AutoDraw couldn't recognize the subject of its own work being copied.
So, is AI capable of creativity? Sure. But in terms of its ability to completely replicate what a human mind might do -- write a screenplay, accurately create and name paint colors, or emulate a teenage girl without offending the masses -- it's not quite there yet.
Are we on our way? Probably. But in the meantime, we'll be preparing our popcorn and watching Sunspring on repeat.



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5 Super Quick Ways to Get More Messages on Your Facebook Business Page

 You’ve probably heard some buzz about Facebook Messenger of late, but most brands still don't understand how to leverage it effectively. With 2.4 billion messages exchanged between businesses and people each month, it's time to make the most out of the channel.

After all, 53% of people who message businesses say they are more likely to shop with a business they can message. And 67% of people say they plan to increase their messaging with businesses over the next 2 years. And, messages you send through Messenger will appear on a user’s locked phone screen -- so your odds of reaching a user are greatly increased from sending a follow up email.

Click here to download our free guide to attracting customers with Facebook.

So, how can you make the most of this network? We're outlining five quick wins you can start using today.

5 Ways to Get More Messages on Facebook

1) Optimize your page for messages.

Having a Facebook page that encourages users to message your page is the first -- and easiest -- way to encourage visitors on your business page to message your brand. It seems overly simple, but just optimizing your page to point users towards messaging you can have a huge impact on the number of messages you receive from interested or curious potential customers.

Try:

1. Setting your default Facebook Page CTA to Message Us.
2. Prompting visitors to message your page with the copy in your business description.

2) Setup response assistant.

Response assistant is Facebook’s own version of a “baby-bot” and can help you field incoming messages -- even when you aren't around to catch them personally.

Response assistant allows you to: 1) set instant replies 2) stay responsive when you can’t get to your computer or phone and 3) set a messenger greeting. In each of these you can use personalization tokens and greet those who message your page with a personalized message. You can also include a link to your contact us page, FAQ, or even your phone number in these messages.

3) Comment on posts with your m.me link.

Facebook has a new feature that allows you to comment on posts with your brand’s messenger link. If you run a Facebook ad that people are asking questions about, be sure to reply with this link to continue the conversation within Messenger.

4) Run a “Send to Messenger” ad.

Messenger Ads are Facebook’s newest ad type. They allow you to target audiences just like any other ad, but you can encourage them to message you directly from the Ad. Keep in mind, you’ll want to have your inbox modified to ensure it is money well-spent. But, as this is a new Facebook Ad type -- the best time to experiment with these ads is now.

5) Commit to actually using it daily.

The best way to make the most out of Facebook Messenger is to monitor the channel just like you would monitor your own inbox, or your favorite Slack channel. The nature of the conversational channel encourages on-demand action, so the more responsive you can be, the better.

Finally, keep it light on the channel, after all, it is conversational. Messenger is a great opportunity to showcase your brand’s personality using GIFs and emojis that appeal to your audience.

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