Since March 2023 Facebook Ads integration feature has been deprecated and is no longer supported.
What are Paid Messages and what they allow you to do?
Paid Messages is a super simple way of sending a message to a specified list of your existing subscribed contact via the Facebook Messenger channel. Paid Messages is a ManyChat adaptation of Facebook Sponsored Messages functionality that meets the needs of Chat Marketers who re-engage their customers in Messenger.
Being one of several compliant ways of messaging contacts who went beyond the 24-hour messaging window according to Facebook Messaging Policies, Paid Messages is truly an essential tool for customer re-engagement activities such as:
Customer reactivation by sending relevant offers, deals, or coupons, announcing new arrivals;
Promote a product or an event similar to the ones a contact expressed interest to;
Continue the conversation from the point where contacts left off.
What you need for the start and how it works:
How it looks: contact perspective.
Contact sees Paid Message in their Messenger Inbox as an updated and unread messaging thread at the top of the screen. They also get push notifications to their device provided it is not muted in thread/app settings. In the Inbox, the thread looks as if a regular message was sent by the Business Page but the message itself has a small header “Sponsored Message” with an option to report an inappropriate ad: see image here for reference.Since Paid Messages is essentially an integration of Facebook Sponsored Messages into ManyChat, an active Facebook Ad Account with a valid payment method is needed to create a message. Note also that this Ad Account should not be your personal Ad Account.
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Paid messages (as well as Facebook Sponsored Messages) by design can be used only to message someone who already has a connection with your Business in Messenger. This is not a Growth Tool by definition but a tool for messaging someone who you've contacted before.
Important! Paid Messages reach unsubscribed contacts by default. In order to avoid delivering messages to these contacts, you need to exclude them. You can exclude unsubscribed contacts by ticking the "Show only subscribed contacts" checkbox in Settings --> General. This way, unsubscribed contacts will not be available for selection in the targeting window.
Admin role on the Facebook Business page is required. Since Paid Messages use Facebook Custom Audiences Facebook requires you to be an Admin of the Facebook Page on behalf of which you publish a Paid Message.
A sufficient amount of contacts is required to populate your Custom Audience. The minimum number of contacts your bot should have is 200. To avoid the risk of experiencing poor delivery Facebook recommends Custom Audience to contain over 1000 subscribers.
Payment. Valid payment method should be available for the Ad Account that you select when creating Paid Message. Payment methods can be added in Ad Account Settings on Facebook.
Billing. For Paid Messages, Facebook bills you on impression basis (learn more here).
Pricing. In ManyChat Paid Messages Feature is available on Pro plan. All charges are made by Facebook on impression basis as mentioned above. Pricing would be different depending on the local Ad market prices of the country you’re serving Ads in. For instance, it is about 30 USD per 1000 impressions in the US. Please contact Facebook Ads Support to get the quotes for your country.
Note that for every Paid Message a Custom Audience gets created automatically along with the Ad Campaign and Ad Set. This is made to keep the number of manual settings to a minimum. If you feel that there are too many Custom Audiences in your Ad Account, you can safely delete them after the Paid Message finishes its delivery (for this go to the ‘Audiences’ section of your Ad Account).
Also, the starting step of any Paid Message must not contain variables like First Name, Last Name, etc. Inserting them manually would make them appear incorrectly on the contacts' end.
Note also that you typically would NOT want to delete Ad Campaign, Ad Set, or Sponsored message itself to be able to access its performance statistics later on.
How to publish your Paid Message step by step:
Go to Broadcasting --> Paid Messages.
If you have an Admin role on the Facebook Page, a sufficient amount of bot subscribed contacts, and granted ManyChat permissions to manage your Facebook Ads you should be able to see the “Create Paid Message” button. Click it to start creating the message.
Before you get to the message builder you will be asked to select the Ad Account with which you want to advertise. Select the Ad Account and click “Select” to proceed to message builder.
In the message builder, compose your message using available blocks (those are limited by Facebook to either text or single image + text). Draft of the message saves automatically.
After you finish with this step click the “Next” button at the top right corner of the screen which takes you to the Setting tab.
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At this step, you need to fill out all setting fields. Click “Select audience” to access the Audience picker where you can filter out the target Audience using any combination of ManyChat standard Audience filters.
Tip: you might want to keep only those people who are outside of the 24-hour messaging window using the “Messaging Window Segment” condition to save on Ad expenses (because other contacts can be reached with regular Broadcast at no cost). Like this:
After you finish click “Select” at the bottom of the contact list. Set the budget you’re ready to spend on this broadcast. The higher the budget, the more contacts are likely to receive your message. Only you can decide what budget is comfortable for you and will be enough for your marketing goals.
Set the sending period. Facebook recommends running Ads for up to 5 days to maximize the deliverability. Allow for the time needed by Facebook to check your content according to Facebook Ads Policies.
You’re now ready to publish your Ad by clicking the “Publish” button at the top right corner of the screen that should be active if everything was set up correctly.
After successful publishing you will be seeing a screen with the summary of the message sent:
To return to the list of Paid Messages click “Continue”. If you want to stop the delivery of your ad click three dots in the list view and hit the "Delete" button.
How to report problems or send a feature request:
Please use this Support form.
Ask your question in the official ManyChat Community.