Congratulations, you’re officially looking to get started on your Chat Marketing journey. In this blog post, we’ll show you how to get started with a Chatbot by connecting ManyChat with your Facebook, Instagram or WhatsApp account.
Choose your Chat Marketing Program
To be able to scale your conversations and perform many of the profitable chat marketing behaviours, you need to connect to a third-party program.
The good news is that there are dozens of programs to choose from and we’ve tested them all to find the best one for you.
If you’re looking for a cost-effective recommendation that has been backed by resources then we use ManyChat. They have a freemium model to help you try chat marketing risk-free. Prices then start from $15 per month for up to 500 subscribers and it scales from there.
NB: There are some additional charges for WhatsApp messages. Refer to their pricing guide here for more information.
To begin with, you need a Facebook, Instagram or WhatsApp Business Profile. Personal profiles are not able to be connected to automation programs.
Sign Up for ManyChat
Begin by heading to manychat.com and signing up for an account.
You will need to signup via Facebook login (you can add additional sign-in options later) so ManyChat can find the Facebook or Instagram accounts that are able to be connected to your ManyChat account.
Below are some key points and FAQs to help with any troubleshooting:
- You must be an admin for the Facebook page or Instagram account to be able to connect it.
- If your page has been connected to ManyChat before, you will be prompted to join that ManyChat account. If you’d like to start a new one, you will need to find the person that originally connected your page to ManyChat so they are able to disconnect it.
- The page itself should not contain any age or country restrictions. If you restrict your Page to certain ages or certain countries, ManyChat will not work properly.
- If you’re choosing to connect to Instagram, you will need to connect your Instagram account to a Facebook Business page to access those features. Refer to the article here for more information.
- If you’d like to begin with WhatsApp, there are some extra steps and verification processes required. Follow this in-depth guide here for more information.
Connect your account to ManyChat
Visit https://manychat.com/addFbAccount to connect your Facebook page, if you have followed the steps above correctly it will appear in the list of pages for you to connect.
Common issues or questions if you can’t connect ManyChat to your account:
- If you can’t see your Facebook page in the list of available pages. Go to https://www.facebook.com/settings?tab=business_toolsand edit the ManyChat settings to access your page. You can find more information on the process here.
Fill out the ManyChat onboarding questions
One of the great things about having over 2 Million businesses using your platform, is that you gain some amazing insights on how to best serve them and make sure they’re getting the results they’re looking for.
ManyChat has a thorough onboarding process that suggests the best places to start based on your industry, business size and goals.
You can use ManyChat’s suggested templates or browse our range of free templates here.
Set ManyChat as your ‘Primary Receiver’
This might sound a little technical but it’s a really simple step that people often overlook when setting their chatbot live.
To allow ManyChat to reply to your customer’s messages, it needs to be the first (or primary) program that replies to messages. To do this, you need to make one simple setting adjustment in your Facebook page.
To change the primary receiver you need to adjust the handover protocol on your Facebook page.
To enable Handover protocol,
- Head to FB Page Settings
- Go to Advanced Messaging
- Find the Handover protocol section
- Click Configure for the channel you want to change
- Choose ManyChat in the dropdown options
