# The Marketer’s Guide To Social Media Chatbots

Over 2 billion messages are sent to businesses over Messenger every week. The days of sitting on hold listening to Opus Number 1 on repeat are quickly becoming a thing of the past. Today’s savvy customer wants fast, efficient service they can use on the go. That’s why more and more people are using social media and messaging apps to connect with brands to help get their burning questions answered. Does this all affect your bottom line you ask? You betcha. A recent study shows people are 21% more likely to buy services from a company if they are reachable on social media. It’s a daunting task to be expected to have lightning fast, accurate responses ready to go at any minute of the day, especially if you’re a small business. Luckily, this is where chatbots come in to save the day. 

## What Are Chatbots?
Chatbots are software applications that are designed to communicate with humans. While most chatbots are used to assist with customer service, these friendly applications can assist with a wide variety of functions including product recommendations, booking appointments, assist with generating leads, and even act as a companion if you’re having trouble falling asleep. They’re not just limited to social media either; chatbots can be used on your website, mobile application, or at your check-in counter. 

## How Do They Work? 
When you get down to the nuts-and-bolts of it all, there are two types of chatbots: rule-based and AI chatbots:
### Rule-Based Chatbots
Rule-based chatbots have limited capabilities and interact with users based off of a predetermined script or decision tree. Typically these bots only allow users to choose from a limited menu of options or need to be told a very specific command like “Location and Hours.” These types of chatbots typically don’t require any type of prior IT knowledge, are quick and easy to set up, and best of all, inexpensive. 
### AI Chatbots
AI chatbots use artificial intelligence and machine learning to understand, learn, and interact with customers. These types of chatbots can simulate natural human conversation and can help solve more complex queries. While these chatbots offer a better experience for you and your customers, they do require a significant amount of time, money and resources to implement. 

### Best Practices To Using Chatbots  
1) Define Your Expectations and Goals
It’s easy to get carried away when making dialogue-trees or looking at the sparkly list of features a chatbot developer can offer. Make sure you have a clear vision for the role your chatbot will play in your organization.
2) Analyze Your Customers
Be thoughtful and analytical about how your customers interact with you online and in-person. What are the most common questions you get asked? How do they ask them? What’s often misspelled? If you don’t have data at your fingertips, make a list over the course of a few weeks of every message, phone call, and in-person interaction and go from there. 
3) Be Transparent
Have you ever tried to tell a joke to a robot? It’s awkward. No one likes to feel tricked into believing they are talking to a human. Be up front and honest about who your customer is talking to from the get-go. 
4) Have a “Talk to a Person” Option
Technology has come a long way, but everyone still needs a little human TLC here and there. Always have an option to get in touch with a person, whether that’s automatically connecting to a live representative or sharing your businesses’ phone number in the chat. 
5) Find Balance
Have fun and give your chatbot a name, personality, and tone of voice that makes sense for your brand. But, don’t go overboard to the point it’s distracting or annoying for a less-than-happy customer. No one likes the feeling of being approached by an especially peppy person when you’re having a bad day. What innovative ways could your business use chatbots? For inspiration, take a peek at these 50 Innovative Ways Brands Use Chatbots. If you’re interested in learning more about setting up or maintaining social media chatbots, reach out to our team! 
Lets rock some chat bots together.

Chatbots can make your brand even more accessible to customers. Learn what social media chatbots are, how they work, and best practices for using them.

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The Marketer’s Guide To Social Media Chatbots

# How iOS14 & iOS15 impact your digital marketing campaigns

With Apple’s iOS14 update earlier this year - and a recent iOS15 update - we’re seeing a lot of changes to marketing efforts across platforms. These updates have largely impacted data collection, requiring companies to be more intentional about the information they collect. Here’s what you need to know about the iOS14 and iOS15 updates, and how they impact your marketing strategy.

## What Is The iOS14 Update?
Before the iOS14 update in April 2021, apps had the ability to track users across various apps and websites for advertising purposes. Under this update, however, apps must explicitly ask users to opt-into data tracking, with users receiving the following message: “X would like permission to track you across apps and websites owned by other companies. Your data will be used to deliver personalized ads to you.” Users then choose between “Allow Tracking” or “Ask App Not To Track.”
### How Did The iOS14 Update Impact Marketing Strategy?
The biggest impact was felt with Facebook Ads.Companies saw a decrease in the amount of data they’re able to collect. This impacts the ability to create efficient, custom audiences - and therefore, conversions may decrease and will likely become more expensive. Additionally, the attribution window moved from 7-day click-through and 1-day view to 7-day click-through only. Finally, reporting became more delayed, aggregated, and limited.
### How Can I Limit The Impact Of The iOS14 Update on Facebook Ads?
While the iOS14 update certainly presents a major challenge to your Facebook Ad strategy, there are some concrete steps you can take to limit its impact. For example:
**Verify your domain.** If your domain is not verified, you will not be able to edit your domain’s conversion event configurations
**Set up your conversion events.** Users are now limited to tracking up to eight conversion events per domain. Choose which events you want to prioritize and stick with them

- Prioritize ad sets. Review and consider replacing ad sets that are outside the top eight selected events
- When setting up landing pages for ads and tracks, stick with a single domain. Existing ads will be paused if Facebook is unable to determine the advertiser’s preference or if advertisers do not choose the domain on which to track events
- Enable value optimization. Allow advertisers to bid for the highest-value users, or those who are most likely to complete a desired website action

### How Does the iOS14 Update Impact Google Ads?
Here’s some good news: Google isn’t as directly impacted by the new iOS policies! Still, advertisers should be prepared for some changes:
- **Performance fluctuation:** You should probably expect fluctuations in delivery and performance on ad campaigns that run on iOS. Search ad performance should not be affected, but Google Display, Discovery, and YouTube campaigns using interests-based targeting will see a data loss and performance decline
- **Enhanced conversion modeling:** To mitigate the effects of these changes, Google will be enhancing their ‘modeled’ conversion metrics. Google already models conversion events for some cross-device and view-through conversion

Ultimately, the iOS14 update presents some significant changes and challenges to companies. But by taking a few concrete steps to bolster your marketing strategy, you can help limit the impact of the update.

## What Is The iOS15 Update?
The iOS15 update expands upon the user privacy protections implemented in the iOS14 update. But whereas the iOS14 update presents a challenge to marketers by limiting mobile app tracking, the iOS15 update could significantly impact email marketing. Among other features, the iOS15 update implements a free Apple Mail privacy feature that will prevent senders from knowing when someone opens an email. Additionally, the update masks IP addresses, so users can’t be linked to other online activity. 

### How Will The iOS15 Update Impact Email Marketing?
While Apple Mail users will be given the option to opt-into these new changes, chances are nearly every user will choose not to do so. Upon updating, users will receive two options from Apple: “Protect mail activity - hide IP address and privately load all remote content” or “Don’t protect mail activity - show IP address and load any remote content directly on your device.” So it’s safe to assume that a huge majority of your email list will be impacted by this update. And that’s going to impact a major email marketing metric: open rate. With the iOS15 update, Apple will now measure open rate by the number of emails received, not the number of emails opened. What does this mean for your email marketing? Mainly, that you’ll have to find another metric for measuring email engagement. 

### How Can I Limit The Impact Of The iOS15 Update?
The iOS15 update definitely presents a hefty challenge to email marketing. However, there are a few steps you can take to mitigate the impact of the update, including:
- **Leveraging different data:** While you might now struggle to tell which subject lines are working or who your active subscribers are, you now have an opportunity to reimagine your email engagement metrics. Sure, open rate was previously a great measurement, but you can still leverage clickthrough rates, size of your email list, survey data, and visitors to your website to determine email engagement.
- **Rethinking subject line A/B testing:** Previously, you could test two different subject lines and measure for open rate, then proceed with the best performing subject line. But since you can no longer measure open rate in a meaningful way, it’s probably time to rethink how you use A/B testing for emails. You can still use A/B testing for email content and measure clickthrough rates to determine which content best resonates with your subscribers.
- **Gathering more first-hand data:** Since you’ll have to rely less on data collection from open rates and activity tracking, you might want to consider collecting more information on individual subscribers. For example, you could collect more information at the point of sign-up, the better you can cater to a subscriber’s individual preferences. 

The iOS15 update presents a pretty big challenge for email marketers. But by rethinking metrics and reimagining data collection, you can adjust to the update and possibly improve both deliverability and engagement. Concerned about how the iOS14 and iOS15 updates will impact your marketing efforts? Reach out to the marketing team at Fruition! Our marketing specialists can help you develop a strategy that will weather the proverbial iOS update storm. 


Learn the nuanced changes that Apple's iOS14 and iOS15 updates brought to digital marketing. Equip your strategy to cope with new data collection and user privacy norms.

Strategy & Research

Digital Marketing

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Terrence Dobbs

Social Media Specialist

More articles by Terrence Dobbs

The Marketer’s Guide To Social Media Chatbots

Navigating the Impact of iOS14 & iOS15 on Digital Marketing Strategy