Challenge

The biggest problem was the infrastructure. The agency profited off Facebook groups as one of the primary sources of leads. The posts featured currently available offers, but a manager's contact would be placed in the comment section. Respectively, was no centralized inbox for the staff, thus if one of the customers contacted a travel manager, and the latter is not available, the company would potentially lose a client, which isn't quite the most lucrative approach.

Facebook leads were fairly expensive, and there weren’t too many, to begin with. We were content with the dialogue-to-lead conversion. However, we still wanted to increase the number of requests we received. This is why we decided to try a new approach and a different instrument.

Olga Karpova, SMM director, Onlinetours

The company has also promoted their posts, which inferred financial investments. Onlinetours has eventually arrived at a cost of $12 per acquired lead, which sounds reasonable, but the expenses could dramatically decrease once optimizing the current approach.

Solution

In June 2017 Onlinetours have started testing two new formats, using the BotHelp platform.

We recommended that the agency commences a Facebook Ad Campaign with Messenger as a destination. On the BotHelp platform we've created a bot that we then connected to the campaign. The bot qualified leads by asking needed questions such as preferred country for the trip, departure date and then directed them to a specialized travel expert.

Also, the company has incorporated a Comment-to-Messenger feature into the post, which would deliver a list of the best offers available at that particular moment. Additionally, the bot was programmed to provide a personalized quote to each customer that inquired one.

It didn’t work right away, we didn’t instantly get how to operate this new tool, but practice makes perfect. The CPL dropped, and even the leads themselves became a tad warmer. We’re really appreciative of the BotHelp team for having helped us with configuring the bots and for consulting us in a knowledgeable manner.

Olga Karpova, SMM director, Onlinetours

Additionally, we've added our travel-experts to the dashboard so that they can directly interact with any inbox activity. The centralized workflow resolved the issue of a fractured inbox, which helped deal with every customer at a quicker rate.

Results

The company has dedicated a budget of $745 for a 30-day time frame, which led to a total of 664 dialogues with potential clients, which eventually. At the very beginning of the campaign, we were closely monitoring the overall performance of the bot, and at some point, we've collected sufficient insight to make the necessary adjustments to make the campaign even more efficient.

Together with the BotHelp crew, we've analyzed the opt-in messages and the dialogues that followed. This way we could collect travel data from the potential customer before we directed him to the expert. That allowed us to classify our potential clients in groups.

Olga Karpova, SMM director, Onlinetours

And that was most certainly a success. After a close review of the bot flow and eventually changing the opt-in message, we were able to increase the conversion of the opt-in message from 9.8% to 44.1%, which is almost fivefold.

We’ve also optimized the bot’s behavior and introduced such options like phone number validation, question reiteration, in case the potential customer isn’t answering. Thus they were able to decrease the CPL from $12 to $3,5! Subsequently, the company was able to get 240% more leads out of the same allocated budget.

Another task that we had to accomplish is building a closed Facebook group that would highlight the best offers available at the moment, to eventually attract more leads from that source. We found an ingenious way to make that possible by creating the following progression of events:

1. We create a post that features the vacation packages currently available.
2. In the post, we mention that if the user wants to see more of these in the future, he should leave a “+” in the comment section.
3. The bot is configured to automatically send the user via Messenger a link to the above-mentioned closed group.
4. The bot will also offer a free consultation with a travel expert.

Needless to say, the post had received 317 comments within the first hour, which eventually quantified in 265 new group members. This healthy progression has followed throughout the day, and we've managed to get more than 1000 comments, 300+ likes, and 17 shares. Moreover, the fact that the bot was programmed to offer a free consultation resulted in another 70 leads.

It is truly a rewarding experience to see how our Messenger Bot was able to straighten out the company's use of Facebook and explore it's bigger potential to their benefit.

At this moment, Onlinetours is looking forward to tapping into Messenger Marketing to a newer and greater extent. At this moment, they are planning to introduce a newsletter via Messenger with useful information for all travelers.