Hi everyone!

I recently built an A.I. side project that writes your emails and more for free and in seconds (and it is REALLY good at it). I originally made this for myself, but once I started showing it to people it was clear that I should release it for everyone to use.

So here we are!

It’s called Octie, and you can sign up for free here: https://octie.ai

Over 1,000 brands have already signed up for Octie, some that are small, and many that I bet you saw in a grocery store, or on TV, within the past 24 hours. They have used Octie to write thousands of emails, product descriptions, and more, and these have already been emailed and distributed to millions of people.

All of this has happened within the past 7 days, it’s been very wild to watch.

I hope you get as much value from Octie as I have been.

Thanks,
Matt Schlicht (MattPRD)

Early Access: This A.I. bot will write your emails for free was originally published in Chatbots Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Everything you need to know.

Becoming famous on the internet has historically been like getting struck by lightning. As someone without an existing large following, and no money or connections, you can’t mastermind fame, you can’t force it. Going viral just happens. Sometimes. Maybe.

It’s a right time right place kind of thing.

TikTok, the machine learning social video platform from China, is changing that completely. TikTok has found a way to give you an infinite number of chances at getting hit by viral lightning, and it’s like nothing you’ve ever seen before.

While writing this article, I spent a month on TikTok. I created an anonymous account, I told nobody in my social circle, and I started creating content. In the last 28 days, my TikTok videos were viewed by over 2,300,000 people and received over 280,000 likes. I achieved this growth mostly by posting videos of post-it notes, bananas, and playing cards.

If I can do this, you can do this.

What is TikTok? How does TikTok work? How do you get views, likes, and followers on TikTok? How are brands using TikTok? What’s next for TikTok? How can you become a TikTok expert?

Let me explain.

“If Instagram Stories and Vine had a baby and then infused it with music, that’s TikTok.”

— Ryan Fiore, Vice President of Marketing at MANSCAPED, Inc. (Actively advertising on TikTok)

p.s. Want to know my TikTok username? Want to get regular insights into TikTok from viral creators and brands? Sign up for theforyoupage.com, the newsletter all about TikTok :)

What is TikTok?

TikTok is the culmination of all social content platforms leading up to today — its mobile first, short form videos, with a heavy emphasis on music, comedy, dancing, intimacy, and trends. You can follow people, you can browse popular videos, and you can explore hashtags.

“TikTok isn’t just for kids. It may seem so now… but “cool kids” are trendsetters as we all know… and then others follow. At minimum, for any brand that wants to hang out/understand/target the “cool kids” and their followers… they should be on TikTok.”

— Niko Bonatsos, Managing Director of General Catalyst (Invested in Snap)

“Ok, Matt…this sounds like Instagram, YouTube, Vine… it sounds like everything. What’s special about TikTok? Why are you telling me about it?”

I know, I know, on the surface TikTok sounds exactly like the different content apps you’re already familiar with, but TikTok is so much different. Let me try to explain.

“People are so much funnier and more creative on TikTok than any other platform. TikTok for the memes, Snapchat for the shitty photos, Instagram for the highly curated scrapbook of your life, Twitter for the witty jokes.”

— Tiffany Zhong, CEO of Zebra IQ

There are two reasons that TikTok is incredibly unique: The type of content you post and how posted content is distributed.

“You don’t need to play the guessing algorithm game like other platforms, TikTok basically just hands it to you, while keeping it fun and entertaining. I love how easy they make it to find trends and get discovered by participating in them.”

— Jenna Ezarik, Internet Celebrity with 100,000,000+ views

1. The Type of Content on TikTok

On TikTok everything revolves around “sounds”. Sounds are little clips of audio, usually between 15 and 60 seconds long, which can range from music to tv shows to clips of conversations, that are overlaid on top of your TikTok video. When you record on TikTok you can first choose the sound you want to use and then as you hold down the record button the app will play the sound so you can lip synch, dance, or further choreograph your video to the words and beat of the sound. When you stop holding down the record button, the sound and the recording pauses, allowing you to record different shots but continuously make sure they sync to the sound.

The reason a sound will start to go viral is because someone on TikTok will shoot a video out of it that has a repeatable format so that other people on TikTok can create their own versions.

“One of the things that is so disruptive about TikTok’s experience is how they pull people in to participate themselves with hashtags, memes, and duets.”

— Sarah Tavel, General Partner at Benchmark

For example, if we go look at one of the sounds from the screen shot above, here are all the most popular videos people have made using the sound:

“When I was a product manager at Facebook and Instagram, building a true content-first social network was the holy grail. We never figured it out. Yet somehow TikTok has cracked the nut and leapfrogged everyone else.”

— Eric Bahn, General Partner at Hustle Fund & Ex Instagram Product Manager

Examples of TikTok video formats:

• Filming yourself doing a specific dance to the song.
• Using the song clip to shoot a short video of you telling a joke. Everyone’s joke follows the same format but the jokes are all specific to the video creator.
• Using the song clip to shoot a short video of you telling TikTok something about yourself, for example what reasons you think people have for not wanting to date you. Not everyone’s reasons are the same but the format of each video is the same.

“TikTok shines light on the values and behaviors of this emerging, powerful generation of genzers. They have grown up with digital tools at their fingertips, making them more creative than millennials. They value originality, creative expression, and recognize that difference is to be celebrated. They’re more in touch with the many shades of their identity and are unafraid to share it.”

— Natalie Dillon, Senior Associate at Maveron

What ends up happening is that 99% of the most popular videos on TikTok are always people doing the exact same thing as everyone else, and then over time the types of videos change as the TikTok trends change. You would think that this would be really boring, but its actually absolutely fascinating and captivating.

“TikTok is an extremely powerful product because it seamlessly combines fun, short-form video and an endemic contest element — all overlayed with sophisticated artificial intelligence — to endlessly entertain its customers. As attention spans continue to compress, lightweight experiences like TikTok will only grow. I never thought YouTube could look old but TikTok has changed my opinion.”

— Brian Norgard, Ex-CPO Tinder & Investor in SpaceX, Lyft & more

Up until now everyone on social media has strived to create unique content, so your newsfeed may have different content coming from different people you follow, but on TikTok everyone is making the same content so instead of the content being changed by the person, the person is being changed by the content. It’s almost like living in a world where you get to see what everyone would look like if they all posted the same thing every time. Like.. imagine if you could take your favorite TV show and then watch it multiple times but every time there is a different cast, and the cast could be anyone you wanted, but you only watch the ones that you already like. It’s like that except for short snappy 15–60 seconds videos.

It’s weird. It’s super weird. But it’s also strangely addictive.

“Brands that want to reach a young demo should think about a funny challenge that incorporates their product, even offering a nice prize, and should get a few influencers on the platform to help get it going. TikTok has a huge copy cat culture, you just need to give them something easy to do and replicate.”

— Mazy Kazerooni, Celebrity Strategist

Why is it so addictive? That brings us to point #2, how content is distributed on TikTok.

“Most people don’t realize that TikTok at its core is about fun and truly random things. Unlike other social platforms, where the primary function is to share with friends and family, TikTok is about sharing with anyone–and doing it in a way that’s more casual and less filtered as it is on social platforms. It’s where you go and end up filming something in your PJs and that’s ok.”

— Ann-Marie Alcántara, Retail Reporter at Adweek

2. How Content is Distributed on TikTok

Imagine if you created a new account on a social network, you had zero followers, and you posted a piece of content, and then you went viral. That would be ridiculous right?

Right, it would be ridiculous. But, that’s how TikTok works.

On TikTok you don’t need followers to go viral. You don’t need existing clout, or distribution, or anything. On TikTok you can record a 15 second video, upload it into the TikTok void, and you will start getting views, likes, comments, and followers.

How much engagement will you get you ask? Exactly as much as you deserve.

What sets TikTok apart from anything else you have ever experienced, is that TikTok uses AI to determine precisely just how good your video is, and it ranks you on a scale of ten views to tens of millions of views.

This means that right now you can download TikTok on your phone, upload a video, not tell anyone about it, and within an 1–24 hours you will know just how good that video is, and if you’re lucky you may even become “TikTok famous”.

Here are the stats for my most viewed video — in a 24 hour period it was viewed by over hundreds of thousands of people, mostly from the US (and in the first week it was viewed by over 1.2 million). In one week people spent 3.39 years of time watching this video.

Crazy, right?

How does this work? TikTok uses machine learning to evaluate the quality of every video uploaded. Although the specifics of the algorithm are not shared publicly, it very likely follows something like this:

• When you upload a TikTok video TikTok shows the video to a handful of TikTok users. Your video will be shown in between strings of popular videos, so the user does not get bored (For example they will see popular video, popular video, popular video, your video, and then back to popular videos).
• TikTok measures the percentage of your video this initial group watches, as well as how many likes, comments, shares, and downloads, the video receives. One thing I have noticed from my own personal experience, is a video will continue to grow if it has a 1/10 conversion from a view to a like (1 like for every 10 views). With my videos, content that gets less than 1/10 like to view ratio will stop growing, ~1/10 will grow slowly, and then if you can maintain better than 1/10 it will grow a lot.
• The higher percentage of video completion your video gets, and the higher velocity of likes, comments, shares, and downloads, the more people your video will be shown to in the same manner it was before. It is likely that every time your distribution grows the velocity metrics your video needs to achieve to keep growing increase — meaning that it is much easier to go from being shown from 10 people to 100 people as it is to go from being shown from 50,000 people to 100,000 people. It definitely feels like your video will get “waves” of views, almost like you are passing certain levels and then graduating to a large audience.
• With over a billion people on TikTok, the number of people your video can be shown to is massive. (Bonus fact: More people downloaded TikTok in 2018 than Instagram)

If you don’t already have a TikTok account, maybe now is the time for you to check it out.

“But Matt, I don’t know how to create content for TikTok!”

Not a problem! I will walk you through the top tips for creating content on TikTok right now.

“People and brands that can ‘speak the same language’ as TikTok’s users by participating in these trends authentically, will be far more welcome than those that don’t.”

— Ryan Hoover, Founder of Product Hunt & Investor at Weekend Fund

12 Tips For Getting Views, Likes, and Followers on TikTok

There are a lot of different ways to grow an audience on TikTok, some may work for you, and some may not, so be sure to spend some time deciding which you think fit your skillset best.

“TikTok is quickly becoming the great equalizer, where anyone, regardless of age, can check out the platform and watch videos or even try their hand at making one. Brands should definitely take the move fast approach and think about TikTok, and either set up an account to test and iterate or even just to consume content on the platform. Brands should think about TikTok that it’s not an easily gamified platform — it’s way more authentic than any other social platform, and mistakes, as well as less polished videos are the type of content that users want to watch.”

— Ann-Marie Alcántara, Retail Reporter at Adweek

These tips are for individuals and brands who are looking to dedicate time to growing on TikTok.

“The best way to grow an audience is to find a balance between staying up to date with the current trends while creating things that people haven’t seen before that make them connect with you as a person. You can grow slowly by following the trends, but if you can be the one to set a trend, that’s the way to instant success. Of course, starting a trend isn’t something that can be easily forced. Which is why, in my opinion, authenticity is always the most important.”

— Ryan Beard (@ryanbeardofficial), 420,000+ followers on TikTok

Tips for going viral on TikTok:

1. Use good lighting, a tripod, and make sure your video quality is clear.
2. Shoot your video to be perfectly in synch with the sound you choose (AKA make sure lip synchs, transitions, and movements are all happening to the beat and words).
3. Post new TikTok videos 1–2 times a day.
4. Create original content. Be inspired by what others are doing but don’t copy them exactly, put your own spin on it.
5. Look through the For You page to see what dances, jokes, and sounds are trending. Save sounds and like videos that you may want to use or reference later.
6. Find a trending dance and practice doing it yourself. Practice until it is as perfect as you can get it, and film yourself doing it to the sound associated with that dance.
7. Find a trending sound that people creating joke videos for. Create a joke of your own and shoot a video. Keep in mind that even if they don’t look like it, the best TikTok videos are planned out before shooting.
8. Create a video that has an elaborate build up, but before the video climaxes tell people to follow you to find what happens next. For example if you were to shoot a video creating the largest water balloon ever, then holding it above an unsuspecting person’s head as if you were about to drop it, and then telling your audience to follow to see what happens next.
9. Do duets with popular videos. Duets is a feature on TikTok that allows you to take a TikTok video that you find and then film yourself split screen with that TikTok video. Your new video you are filming appears on the left half of the screen and the original appears on the right. For example imagine the original TikTok video has a person giving a high five to the side of their screen, and now imagine that you did a duet with this video, putting your video next to theirs, and you gave a high five to the side of your screen making it look like you are giving each other a high five. You have now created a new piece of content by creating a duet.
10. Use hashtags relevant to your content. Search on TikTok for hashtags you think are relevant to the type of content you are creating. TikTok displays the number of videos and total views each hashtag has, making it easy to spot large and growing audiences to distribute your content.
11. Advanced: If you are really advanced, you can shoot a video with your own audience and then get others to use your audio as a sound. Every video that is shot with original audio becomes available on TikTok as a sound. This is the most difficult strategy to master, especially if you aren’t a musician, but it can be the most viral if you do it right. Your audio doesn’t just have to be music, it can be noises of any kind.
12. Last, but not least, have fun. TikTok is not a place for people to make fun of each other, its not a place to talk politics, it is a place to be yourself and have fun. Embrace it!

Like every other content platform, TikTok is an evolving ecosystem where the tactics and strategies are evolving all the time. Take these tips with a grain of salt, and watch TikTok content yourself to get ideas and inspiration. (To get even more tips, checkout theforyoupage.com)

“TikTok is designed for participation. Its most popular videos are often driven by trends that quickly and organically evolve with the community. Features like duets further encourage remixes and collaboration.”

— Ryan Hoover, Founder of Product Hunt & Investor at Weekend Fund

In the first few weeks of my time on TikTok, my videos would only gets hundreds of views, and then sometimes thousands. Towards the end of my first month I had evolved my video styles to the point where I started consistently getting tens of thousands of views per video and even a few that got hundreds of thousands of views. I believe if I keep posting I could consistently get hundreds of thousands of views if not millions.

“Promotion on TikTok is about building a participatory social phenomenon, not just audience impressions and sales conversions.”

— Tay Zonday (“Chocolate Rain), Internet Celebrity with 200,000,000+ views

If your video isn’t getting more than 100 views in the first hour, it’s probably not going to grow any more. Experiment with different formats and don’t give up because things aren’t working. You got this!

“TikTok throws you right into the action. There’s no choice or scrolling, it’s a lot more like Tinder. It is also like Reddit and Pinterest, except instead of boards and subreddits content is grouped by audio/song. Pretty powerful.”

— Sahil Lavingia, CEO of Gumroad

“Matt, thank you for these tips! But I’m wondering, what are brands doing on TikTok?”

Great question! Here’s what I’ve seen so far.

“TikTok is the new Instagram. It’s different than Vine or Snap in its stickiness. The brands that are adopting TikTok and building their audience NOW are the ones who are going to be hailed as genius two years from now.”

— Ben Parr, President and Co-Founder of Octane AI

How Brands Are Using TikTok

With over a billion people, you would think that brands would be all over TikTok.

But they’re not. Not yet at least… and I think this is a huge opportunity.

“When Instagram celebrated their one-year anniversary in October 2011, they boasted over 10 million users. In comparison, TikTok was pushing 800 million by year one and is continuing to climb. Not only should brands be creating their own original content, but there are millions of influencers salivating for sponsored posts. As such, brands should be aggressively looking for ways to support and sponsor user generated content. The barriers to entry are low and the engagement rates are faster, cheaper, and higher than ever before.”

— Cameron Manwaring, Viral Strategist

“Since I’ve been on TikTok (Feb 2019), we’ve seen a dramatic mainstreaming of the app. Many more celebrities and brands have made their first TikToks, and businesses have become eager to figure out how to capitalize on the TikTok audience. Ads have morphed from being about obscure random social apps, to being able Apple (Apple advertised its new 3 camera phone).”

— Carmel DeAmicis, Editor at Figma

I spent some time looking up random brands that I thought might be posting content, and here’s what I found: A content ghost town.

This isn’t going to last though. At this very moment there is likely a brand reading this article deciding to start creating TikTok videos. Brands are going to be all over TikTok and it is going to happen fast. I can sense the rise of TikTok gold rush, and first mover advantage is going to be real.

“TikTok has a unique audience reach that’s virtually untapped by brands. We have a transparent relationship with the TikTok team and they support the MANSCAPED brand tremendously. TikTok Ads drive positive brand equity, unique website visitors, and direct response sales conversions.”

— Ryan Fiore, Vice President of Marketing at MANSCAPED, Inc. (Actively advertising on TikTok)

If you are a brand and you’re not on TikTok yet, I encourage you to create an account and experiment with the suggestions in this article. You might not nail it the first time, but I know a bunch of you are ridiculously creative and you’re going to catch on quick.

“Ecommerce companies need to think about TikTok right now as a top of the funnel strategy and introduce a younger generation to the brand. For some younger-leaning companies, they can start to think about it as a middle funnel approach, where users might know who they are but might relate to them more or develop brand loyalty if they see a fun video or challenge they can participate in.”

— Ann-Marie Alcántara, Retail Reporter at Adweek

There are three main ways your brand can engage on TikTok:

1. Pay TikTok for advertising. TikTok will show your ad when people load the app and when scrolling through the endless feed.
2. Create video content that is original, uses sounds, and follows trends.
3. Pay TikTok influencers to create content that includes your product or tags your brand TikTok account.

“When I talk to friends and clients who have six-figure followings on Instagram or other social media platforms, and I ask them how they got there, the #1 answer is ‘by getting in early.’ Don’t dismiss TikTok as ‘just for kids’, because in five years, TikTok will have grown up, and its early adopters will have six or seven-figure followings. I registered for my account last week. It’s early days, but brands should use TikTok as a way to present their personality with behind the scenes content and humor. Don’t try to sell, focus on engagement.”

— Kurt Elster, Host of The Unofficial Shopify Podcast (over one million downloads)

“Brands should explore building a TikTok account — not saying it’s for everyone, but you will have first mover advantage since not many brands are on TikTok yet. You just need to understand the vibe and culture of TikTok really well if you want to produce content on there, since TikTok is unlike any other platform.”

— Tiffany Zhong, CEO of Zebra IQ

Everyone is now a content creator. Everyone can go viral on TikTok — it’s a level playing ground (vs algorithms on other social networks).

“Instead of thinking of influencers as an attention, awareness, and acquisition play … frame it as a collaboration. Certainly, there may need to be left and right limits to their creative freedom. But by unleashing TikTok’s creators to actually create and paying them as creators, the work becomes invested with their brand and spirit. Sharing for them becomes a natural extension of that. Moreover, that content can then be leveraged by you across not only social media but in and through other touchpoints with your audience.”

— Aaron Orendorff, Founder of iconiContent (Previous Editor in Chief of Shopify Plus)

TikTok is working on an improved advertising platform as well as a way for users to shop without leaving the app.

My recommendation? Do what you can now to grow your audience before every brand is on the platform trying to vie for eyeballs.

What‘s Next for TikTok

TikTok isn’t about friends, or social circles, at least not in any way that we’re used to. TikTok is about content. The TikTok AI is trained by the billion people watching, liking, sharing, and commenting, and then the AI trains the creators on how to create content that the viewers will engage with.

“It took me awhile on TikTok before I fully understood the extent to which the AI was shaping my experience. Here was my epiphany moment: I told the CEO of the company I work at (Figma) that I wanted to pitch a story about how TikTok was normalizing the trans experience, because I’d become fascinated by all the trans people I’d seen harnessing the meme formats to share trans jokes or trans stories or things like that. (I used to be a tech reporter.) And Figma’s CEO said, ‘What trans videos? I haven’t seen any of those.’ He told me he was seeing a lot of ‘ball in cup videos,’ and I had no idea what he was talking about. He opened up the app, and sure enough there were all these videos of people chucking balls into cups from amazing angles or to the beat of music or things like that. As far as I knew I had never seen a single ball in cup video in my time on TikTok. And that was a wake up call for me about just how MUCH content is on TikTok, and how the app’s AI is endlessly personalizing and feeding you things it thinks you’ll like. So each TikTok experience is a micro universe unto itself. But you wouldn’t guess or know that just from using it.”

— Carmel DeAmicis, Editor at Figma

TikTok is a pure system that seems to work really well. Because of this, I believe it’s nowhere near done growing.

“TikTok is setting trend across music, fashion, and slang. This year Lil Nas X ‘Old Town Road’ broke the Billboard top 100 record of being the #1 song for 17 weeks straight, breaking a record that was set over 22 years ago. This virtually unknown artist (he was quite literally living out of his parents house 12 months ago), leveraged TikTok to create a meme out of the song to make it a viral, record setting hit.”

— Natalie Dillon, Senior Associate at Maveron

In the future I think the following things are likely to happen on TikTok:

• Every brand will have a TikTok strategy.
• TikTok will be used by people of all ages.
• TikTok will become a hub for ecommerce transactions.

If we look at Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok (owned by the same $75 billion+ company ByteDance), we can glimpse what a potential future of TikTok looks like. On Douyin, videos are commonly tagged with products that viewers can purchase by tapping the shopping cart tag on the video.

This will then take the viewer to that brand’s product page where the purchase button then takes you to the Alibaba owned shopping app taobao where the purchase is then completed (Thank you to Wilhelmina Yan for sending these screen shots to me and walking me through the Chinese version of TikTok).

“Douyin gives people the opportunity to become overnight sensations. It has created an entirely new marketing channel for small businesses by giving them continuous waves of new influencers who can who can direct targeted clientele to their businesses and product online. If TikTok follows the business model of Douyin the next step would be for the app to collaborate with websites like Amazon and Yelp to provide multi-purpose interface for its users.”

— Mina Yan, Managing Editor of beijingkids

With the rise of deep fakes for video and audio (where AI can make any face look like its doing and saying anything the computer wants it to) I also expect that more and more content in the future will not only be curated by AI but will be created with the use of AI. We’ve only begun to scratch the surface of this type of content where apps use AI to show you what you would look like old or as a different gender, in the future this could be a part of every piece of content you consume. I could see TikTok playing a big role in bringing AI created content tools to the world.

If you’re not sure what I mean when I say deep fakes and AI created content will completely change the face of content, watch this video. This is going to blow your mind. This is just a glimpse into the future.

“I was invested in the platform when it was musical.ly, and it is incredible to see how it has evolved and is seeing new traction. As more creators come on to the platform, I’m eager to see how can we create sustainability for the entire ecosystem where we can be creative and authentic to the space and we can earn sustainable revenue.”

— Shira Lazar, On Air Personality, Host / Founder of What’s Trending

I’m excited to continue playing around with TikTok and seeing how big I can grow my account. Posting the videos is fun, and getting the real-time indications of whether the video is resonating with TikTok’s audience or not is addicting.

Follow along as I grow my account, and learn from other TikTok creators and brands on the platform.

If you are interested in learning more about TikTok, whether you are a creator looking to monetize, or a brand looking to grow an audience, I invite you to subscribe to my newsletter.

I send regular updates with behind the scenes information and advice from top TikTok creators, brands growing on the platform, and my own experiences as a TikTok creator.

As social networks evolve, and more people in the world are connected online, channels like TikTok are enabling humans and brands to go viral faster than ever.

I am completely fascinated by the impact on culture, business, and humanity, that TikTok is having and will continue to have. I think we are only at the beginning of what this platform will become and I am excited to be on this journey with you.

If you’re not on TikTok yet, I challenge you to see what happens when you download it and start scrolling it’s “for you” page. I bet you won’t be able to put your phone down.

Subscribe now.

That’s all for now!

I wish you luck on your journey to grow an audience on TikTok! If you want to learn more, subscribe to my newsletter to follow along with my journey on TikTok, or contact me here, or follow me on Twitter!

Are you a brand on TikTok or thinking about being on TikTok? I would love to hear from.

Are you a creator on TikTok? I would love to hear from you.

❤ A special thank you to all the amazing people who helped contribute to this article: Aaron Orendorff, Ann-Marie Alcántara, Ben Parr, Brian Norgard, Cameron Manwaring, Carmel DeAmicis, Eric Bahn, Helen Situ, Jenna Ezarik, Mazy Kazerooni, Natalie Dillon, Peter Hollens, Ryan Beard, Ryan Fiore, Ryan Hoover, Sahil Lavingia, Sarah Tavel, Shira Lazar, Tay Zonday, Tiffany Zhong, Wilhelmina Yan

p.s. When I’m not on TikTok I spend all of my time building automation technology for brands as CEO of Octane AI. You can learn more about what we do here and here.

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The internet is a magical place.

Right at this moment, anyone in the world can create a global brand and sell a product. You don’t need to know how to code a website, or even how to make a product. Fidget spinners are popular and you want to sell fidget spinners in your online store with your own branding? No problem, you can set it up in minutes.

This is completely changing the next generation of entrepreneurs.

Let me explain.

“But Matt, where are the six hilarious meme videos you mentioned?”, I know, I know, I’m getting to that, stick with me here!

When the internet first came out, it enabled us to talk to everyone, it evolved and we started to form connections with our friends, which inevitably lead to some of us making a lot of connections and becoming internet famous, and then not too long ago we built platforms that enabled anyone to become super globally famous.

All of these stages of the internet have been powered by technology.

• Early Communication = Email, AIM, Text Based Websites
• Friends = MySpace, Facebook
• Internet Fame = Twitter, YouTube
• Global Fame = Instagram

And what did this do to society? Everyone suddenly wanted to become famous. Kids are doing everything they can to become influencers so they can work for themselves, from wherever they want, selling other people’s products via sponsored posts and eyeballs.

But really, what are these influencers doing? They are building a brand, and then selling someone else’s product. Sure, maybe the influencers are generating revenue, but their sponsors are generating more.

The new entrepreneurial wave is building a brand on social media and selling products though your own store.

This is how technology like Shopify is inspiring 800,000 entrepreneurs and counting. Entrepreneurs like Kylie Jenner who have now generated over a billion dollars in value.

Shopify is an online platform that enables anyone, without coding, to set up an online store.

In minutes you can connect your own brand with your own store. You don’t have to sell someone else’s product, you can sell you own. You don’t need to just amass eyeballs for someone else, you can grow them for yourself. This is changing everything.

People all around the world are changing their dreams from becoming influencers, to building their own ecommerce brands. It is especially exciting, because due to the ease of setting up something like a Shopify store and an Instagram account, even young people with little to no capital, like students, can be successful if they work hard, smart, and have a bit of luck. Over $41.1 billion worth of products were sold through Shopify stores in 2018.

At the same time, most of the 800,000 are still in a constant daily battle to figure out how to make any of this work. They gather together in Facebook groups, private forums, and chatrooms, to try and learn from each other as quickly as possible, so that they can become the next ones to build a successful ecommerce brand. Some succeed, a lot are still trying.

Andy Batuchi, a internet marketer from London, has been able to capture this specific struggle. These videos tell a tale of business strategies gone awry, mistakes, and the daily struggles of trying to crack the code to ecommerce success.

“There are so many opportunities out there that it can become overwhelming. It’s amazing but it can also be scary at the same time, that’s why it’s easy to lose focus. Shopify is definitely a tool entrepreneurs can leverage, but you need to focus on building a brand.” — Andy Batuchi

If you have ever tried to start a Shopify store, or you are a student looking to earn a living, these videos are going to feel really familiar to you.

I hope you enjoy these videos, and that they make you laugh. I am so excited for this new entrepreneurial wave of the internet, and I can’t wait to see what happens next. And of course, if you haven’t already, you should try and create a Shopify store and go through the struggle first hand.

If you already HAVE a Shopify store, I’d love to check it out, who knows, maybe I could be your first sale. Send me a message here.

1. Coming Out To Your Parents As A Shopify Entrepreneur

2. The Tragic Tale of Your First Sale

3. The Wolves of Webinar Funnels

4. Entrepreneurs Be Like…

5. Shopify Gurus Be Like…

6. When All You Want To Do Is Entrepreneur

We have created a 39 page playbook that covers all the most successful and advanced techniques ecommerce brands are implementing on Facebook Messenger. These have never been published before, and I am so excited to finally share them with you.

To get your copy of the playbook, go here: https://join.octaneai.com/playbooks/ecommerce-messenger-playbook-2018-holidays

Here is an excerpt from my intro to the playbook:

“Imagine a world where your customer has a real 1–1 relationship with you. Not just getting responses to customer support questions within a 1–3 hour period, but much deeper than that. When they want to talk to you and ask a question, they don’t hesitate because they know you’ll respond quickly. When their order has been shipped, you send them a quick message to give them a heads up that it’s on the way. When there’s a new product you know they’ll love, you always have time to let them know first. This type of relationship is two way, interactive, and collaborative.

Dunbar’s number, a scientific observation of primates done in the 1990s, suggests that humans are only able to manage 150 stable relationships. This causes a huge bottleneck problem in the world of ecommerce. You do not have enough brain power to maintain quality 1–1 relationships with all of your customers, and it’s going to be too costly to hire the army of people required to do so.

This is why the future of ecommerce — and customer relationship management — relies on chatbots. These bots take the automations you already do over email and turn them into interactive conversational messages. Instead of you needing to personally message each of your customers, you can manage a conversational bot AI that learns about each of your customers as it talks with them and intelligently pings them throughout their customer journey.

With over 1.3 billion people communicating on Facebook Messenger every month, and growing, it is clear that the future of communication is not just in email, but in 1–1 chat. Over the next 5–10 years, your bot will become the number one way you communicate with customers, because unlike the limitations of a human, your bot can manage millions of relationships at the exact same time.

In this playbook, you will see the many ways in which a Facebook Messenger bot can impact your ecommerce business today. I invite you to join us in this journey to bring AI to the ecommerce workplace. We have only just begun.”

Full playbook: https://join.octaneai.com/playbooks/ecommerce-messenger-playbook-2018-holidays

Thanks,
Matt Schlicht
Founder of Chatbots Magazine, CEO of Octane AI

[39 page PDF] Ecommerce Facebook Messenger Playbook was originally published in Chatbots Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

At Octane AI (Chatbots Magazine’s parent company), we have created a bots platform focused on ecommerce, and it’s taking off. In the past 30 days alone, Octane AI bots have generated over $300,000 in sales (and we’re only just getting started).

We have worked closely with platforms like Facebook and Shopify, brands like Kiehl’s and GoPro, and celebrities like Jason Derulo and Cardi B, to build a bot platform that is more effective than email and has measurable ROI. Every brand selling products online needs this technology.

Octane AI is looking for a highly driven out-of-the-box thinker to run marketing. You need to understand SaaS marketing and be passionate about bots and the impact they have.

This is a full time position that includes equity. Octane AI is a completely remote company (you can work from anywhere).

If you are interested, apply here: https://jobs.lever.co/octane/77851147-cedc-48b6-9673-579afc4e0f35

Looking forward to meeting you.

Thanks,
Matt Schlicht
Editor of Chatbots Magazine (and CEO of Octane AI)

Unique Job Opportunity: SaaS Marketer was originally published in Chatbots Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

What is Messenger marketing? What tactics should Shopify merchants be using? How are Shopify merchants using Facebook Messenger to increase revenue by over $100k a week?

These are the questions answered in my recent guest post on the Shopify blog.

Read the full post or learn more about Octane AI, our Facebook Messenger bot platform designed to help Shopify merchants send abandoned cart messages, create custom flows, and increase revenue.

It has been amazing to work with the Shopify team to better educate the world of ecommerce about the power of chatbots. I’m looking forward to continuing to push the industry forward with them.

If you are working on any new initiatives in the world of chatbots, or you have a big announcement, we’d love to hear about them and feature them in upcoming newsletters. Let me know here.

Have a great weekend everyone!

Thanks,
Matt Schlicht
Editor of Chatbots Magazine

p.s. I’ve started posting stories on Instagram about chatbots! I’ve previously been pretty horrible at posting on Instagram, but I’m spending more time there and I’d love to connect with you.

Shopify Merchants Are Using A Bot We Made to Earn $100k a Week was originally published in Chatbots Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

I am excited to announce that my newest guide is out: The Complete Guide to Conversational Commerce.

Link to read the guide: https://chatbotsmagazine.com/the-complete-guide-to-conversational-commerce-e47059293efa

To share the article go here.

I would love for you to read it and share your thoughts with me. You can do this by:

• Highlighting sections of the guide and leaving a comment!
• Tweet at me and let me know what you thought!
• Hit the clap button on the article (you can hit it more than once).

This guide was put together by experts from:

• Shopify
• Google
• Facebook
• Teespring
• YOTPO
• Hawke Media
• …and a lot more

This guide covers:

• An introduction to conversational commerce.
• Why conversational commerce is such a big opportunity.
• Complete breakdown of how conversational commerce works.
• Extensive examples of conversational commerce using chatbots and voicebots.
• How artificial intelligence impacts conversational commerce.
• What the future of conversational commerce will look like.

Thank you for the countless people who helped put this guide together. I’m excited for the future of this technology and I can’t wait to see what this community creates with it.

Thanks,

Matt Schlicht

Founder of Chatbots Magazine

It’s here. was originally published in Chatbots Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

What is conversational commerce? Why is it such a big opportunity? How does it work? What does the future look like? How can I get started?

These are the questions I’m going to answer for you right now.

Ready? Let’s do this.

“It seems pretty obvious now that the first inclination of most people when they want to talk to a friend or a family member is to text them. It’s crazy this hasn’t come to businesses yet. The first businesses that are able to fully embrace this and be as responsive and communicative as a friend will be able to drive significant new relationships with their customers and ultimately increased business. This isn’t a matter of if, just when. The technology is coming along fast.” — Josh Elman, VP Product at Robinhood and Venture Partner at Greylock

What is Conversational Commerce?

First off, people have been using conversation to drive sales and make customers happy since humans first began trading. From asking the store owner about which wine you should buy to messaging a boutique on Instagram to find if they still have that custom necklace left, conversation has always been — and always will be — a core part of commerce.

Today, conversations can be automated, and it is this automated experience that we are referring to when we use the term “Conversational Commerce”.

Definition: Conversational commerce is an automated technology, powered by rules and sometimes artificial intelligence, that enables online shoppers and brands to interact with one another via chat and voice interfaces.

Conversational experiences can add value to every part of the customer journey, ranging from when a customer makes their first order to answering a product-related question instantly.

“I think the first place we’ll see chatbots really take off in eCommerce is in customer support. Yes/No and other intent based filtering will make eCommerce support WAY more efficient.” — Ezra Firestone, CEO of Smart Marketer Inc.

Conversational commerce is possible on any platform that supports chat or voice bots (Facebook Messenger, Amazon Alexa, Google Home, Apple Business Chat, SMS, WeChat, LINE, Telegram, etc).

“I think chatbots and voicebots may become the future of commerce, as it relates to Gen Z. We optimize for efficiency and grew up on on-demand services, such as Uber, Lyft, Postmates, etc. Therefore, we expect the same when shopping. What better way to do that than interacting and shopping via chatbots and voicebots? That completely changes the game. It’s a whole new experience. It makes online shopping less tiresome and interactive and fun again!“ — Tiffany Zhong, Founder & CEO of Zebra Intelligence

Conversational commerce will even be able to read your thoughts. (… We’ll talk about this later.)

If you haven’t wrapped your head around conversational commerce yet, don’t worry. Here’s an example to help you visualize what conversational commerce is.

Example:

If you were to purchase something from Nordstrom online, after a week or two, you would receive an email encouraging you to leave a review about the product you purchased.

In order to successfully leave the review after being emailed, you will have to:

• Open the email.
• Scan through all the different call to actions. (I see at least 15 in the example email below.)
• Click the review call to action.
• Wait for the webpage to load.
• Fill out your name and information.
• Fill out your review.
• Hit submit.

It’s a lot of work.

If Nordstrom were to use conversational commerce, which I’m sure they will, this experience would be 10x easier:

• Open message.
• Respond to message.

“As consumers increasingly adopt conversational UX, stores that adapt to this trend will have an advantage over those that don’t.” — Chris Woods, Sr. Software Developer at Liberty Mutual

Instead of sending you a bloated email, Nordstrom could simply message you on Facebook and ask what you thought of your new boots.

“We’re seeing businesses large and small drive tangible results using messaging as a marketing channel — from acquiring new customers to driving repeat sales. Businesses are turning to Messenger to help their customers find the perfect gift, book appointments, get personalized deals, receive shipping updates and so much more. Messaging helps businesses and their customers connect in a personal and productive way — all at scale.” — Andrew Kritzer, Product Manager, Messenger Platform.

Conversational commerce is powerful not only because it makes the automated interactions between the brand and the consumer feel so much more human, but because it reduces the number of steps the customer has to take to complete an action.

“This all looks cool Matt, but how big of an opportunity is it really?” you might be thinking. “Why should I be paying attention to this now?”

Great questions. You’re going to want to know the answers.

Conversational commerce is a huge opportunity. MASSIVE. Scroll down and I will explain.

Why Conversational Commerce Is Such a Big Opportunity

I know, ecommerce has been built on the back of email. It’s used for marketing, customer support, sales, retention, all of it. So…what benefits could conversational commerce possibly have over email?

I’ll tell you right now.

“All of the big trends in commerce over the past couple of decades have been in moving to where your customers are. Rather than forcing your customers to come to you, you go to where they are. The next generation of that is conversational commerce. It is inevitable that everyone is going to have to incorporate conversations inside of Messenger, and into social media platforms, in order to sell things more effectively.” — Phil Libin, Founder of All Turtles and Evernote

This is why high growth stores are implementing conversational commerce:

• Conversational commerce enables two-way communication with the customer. It doesn’t just tell them things, but also learns from them, hears their questions, and builds a relationship.
• Connect with 2–5x more customers than you’ve previously done over email. (You’re probably thinking “How the heck can you do that??”, don’t worry, I will explain this later.)
• Stores using conversational commerce, in the right way, are increasing annual revenue by 7 to 25%.

These stats are amazing, and they are only the beginning. The future of conversational commerce is very bright.

Why? I’ll tell you right now.

Over 2,000,000,000 people are using messaging apps.

• Adoption for messages apps is growing faster than social networks.
• 37% of the world’s population is using messaging apps.

The massive distribution of this technology, and the emergence of conversational commerce, gives businesses the ability to communicate with each of their customers in a private, personalized, and two-way environment

“Our chatbots are already performing better than email, when comparing organic growth, read rates, and click-throughs. We know that fans want to feel close to their favorite artists, and this solution helps us connect them in a way that’s authentic. Email just doesn’t provide the same opportunity to show off your personality.” — Jeremy Kutner, VP of Web & Mobile at Warner Music Group

This is huge shift from the non-personalized mass marketing that social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook have popularized over the past decade.

On top of the adoption of messaging apps, did you know that over 40 million people own a smart speaker (like an Amazon Alexa) and that that number is expected to double in 2018?

Voice-enabled devices don’t stop there. 2.5 billion people are expected to be walking around with smartphones by 2019.

Conversational platforms are exploding, and it makes perfect sense. Conversation as an interface is the most natural way for humans to interact with technology.

“After a life of sitting at a desk my whole adult life I finally got a hemorrhoid. When I went to the pharmacy to pick something up, I couldn’t understand the differences between all the options. I was too embarrassed to ask the pharmacist about it, so I walked out. I went to Amazon and bought the first thing that looked right. It was totally wrong. We idealize human interaction, but for some things a bot is better.” — Andrew Warner, Founder of Mixergy and Bot Academy

Conversational commerce represents a paradigm shift in how brands and customers interact, and it will have major impacts on the entire customer journey. This is why conversational commerce is such a big deal.

“[Conversational commerce] will make it easier for businesses and customers alike, by removing the hurdles of having to use web sites or apps.” — Trond Stroemme, Technology Strategist at Nestlé

But how exactly does conversational commerce work? What are all the possibilities of conversational commerce?

I will explain that right now. Better yet, I will show you.

Scroll down to see.

How Conversational Commerce Works

When thinking about conversational commerce and how it will apply to your business, you need to think about four different types of experiences.

1. Proactive / Automated. Example: A customer makes their first purchase ever, and the next day the store automatically sends them a nice message thanking them for shopping at that store.
2. Reactive / Automated. Example: A customer just bought a new camera, but it’s not working correctly, so they message the store asking for assistance. The store automatically recognizes their question and sends them the correct guidance.
3. Manual / One to Many. Example: The store just opened 10 new locations and they want to notify people in nearby areas. They send out a custom message to a targeted segment of customers that live within 10 miles of the new locations.
4. Manual / One to One. Example: Sending a thank you message, and a coupon, to a customer who just shared a positive review and photo on Twitter.

“By analyzing shoppers’ habits, a conversation can be sparked regarding new deals or complimentary products.” — Dennis T Elder, Director of Technology at Bigfish Creative Group

Now that you know the four ways in which conversational commerce can be included in the experience, you need to figure out which parts of the customer journey would benefit from a targeted conversational commerce experience.

Here’s a brief example of a customer journey (Challenge: Can you imagine how you could pair these steps with conversational commerce?):

• Visits the store online for the first time.
• Adds a product to their cart.
• Looks at a product.
• Places order for the first time.
• Order is shipped.
• Order arrives.

⏰ Take a second to think about how you could use conversational commerce to improve the customer experience during each of these steps.

“Ecommerce services should consider building shopping experts that help guide the user towards the right purchase. This can work well when there’s a wide variety of options (e.g. in fashion) or when there’s complex products (e.g. calling plans).” — Ofer Ronen, General Manager of Chatbase at Area 120 (incubator operated by Google)

Done? “No Matt, I want to see some real examples of conversational commerce!”

Okay, OKAY, I hear ya!

Here is a list of conversational commerce experiences, and integrations, every store should have.

Ready? Scroll down for examples of chat and voice based conversational commerce.

Examples of Chat-Based Conversational Commerce

These are a few examples of chat-based conversational commerce. (“I’m looking for voice based examples, Matt!” well alrighty, I hear ya, just scroll down a bit more to see the voice examples!)

“Talking to virtual employees will play an increasingly pivotal role: customers don’t want to wait for answers to simple questions. And business don’t want to allocate resources to answer the same questions over and over.” — Phil Vanstone, Program Manager at Shopify Plus

Index of chat-based conversational commerce examples:

• Seamlessly connect with the customer on Facebook Messenger.
• Chat with the customer directly from the online store.
• Touch base with the customer after they leave the store.
• Let the customer know that their order has been made.
• Let the customer know that their order has shipped.
• Thank the customer after their first purchase.
• Confirm with the customer that their package arrived and ask for their opinion.
• Recommend products based on purchase history and customer data that’s been collected conversationally.
• Ask the customer if they are ready to reorder a replenishable product.
• Troubleshooting.
• Answer a question.

Seamlessly Connect With the Customer on Facebook Messenger

The first thing you are probably wondering is, “How the heck do I message my customers on Facebook?”, the answer is quite simple: You need to implement the Facebook Messenger Checkbox.

What does the checkbox do? Here is the high-level explanation:

• The checkbox automatically detects a customer’s Facebook profile when they view your store, even if it is the first time they have ever been there.
• Stores place the checkbox next to the “Add to cart” buttons on product pages or during the checkout confirmation screen.
• Customers who go through a flow involving the checkbox are able to give the store permission to send them future messages on Facebook.
• Once the store has permission to send messages to the customer on Facebook, the store can start to send conversational experiences when they are trigged during the customer journey (like sending a message when a customer doesn’t complete an order).

Most stores currently collect email addresses during the checkout process, meaning that most shoppers who add an item to their cart are never connected over email with the store.

An implementation of the Facebook Messenger Checkbox moves the ability to connect with a customer to the top of the funnel. You have the potential to increase the number of customers you can talk to by 2–5x.

Chat With the Customer Directly From the Online Store

When someone walks into your physical store, they can ask you questions, point out products, tell you about what they are looking for, etc., and an employee at the store can help in real time.

How do you provide this same level of service for customers shopping online? By installing an automated on-site live chat.

“Integrating chatbots can dramatically enhance the pre and post sales customer experience. For the ecommerce store owner, she can free up time by delegating repetitive FAQs and product questions, for example, to the automated chat system.” — Mari Smith, Facebook Marketing Expert and Author of The New Relationship Marketing

If you’ve never seen one before, this is what it looks like:

You can personalize the chat experience to send the customer messages based on multiple data points, like their purchase history or what product they are currently looking at.

By using conversational commerce, you can automate conversations about questions, deals, and product discovery, helping the customer throughout their journey.

“But Matt! What if they need to talk to a human?!” Great question my dear reader! In this situation the customer can automatically be connected to a human support agent or directed towards a phone number or email where they can get in touch with a real person to solve more advanced inquiries.

Touch Base With The Customer After They Leave The Store

When a customer adds a product to their cart and then doesn’t complete the purchase, the store can send a private message 1–4 hours later to the customer asking if they would like to complete their purchase or if they have any questions.

By using the Facebook Messenger Checkbox, and an abandoned cart conversational commerce experience, stores have already started increase revenue by 7–25%.

Let The Customer Know That Their Order Has Been Made

Making sure that the customer knows the status of the order is important. After spending money online, customers want to know that the order was made and that it will be shipped soon.

“Virtual employees will likely become essential on the eCommerce front lines as companies scale and become more global, when around-the-clock assistance, multi-language fluency and deep product, pricing, and inventory intelligence will be expected by consumers worldwide, on demand.” — Tomer Tagrin, CEO of Yotpo

By sending customers messages on conversational platforms like Facebook Messenger, you can keep them in the loop and enable them to request future notifications related to their order.

Let The Customer Know That Their Order Has Shipped

Similar to the order confirmation message, the shipping message keeps the customer in the loop and reduces the amount of times they will need to ask a human at the store for the status of their order.

Thank the Customer After Their First Purchase

After a person has completed their first purchase at a store, it is a good idea for the store to send out a personal note thanking them for their business.

“Fundamentally, email is a channel that brings people back to the website or app to complete the user experience. However, chatbots and voicebots present new user flows that can be potentially handled natively. It’s very likely you will be able to complete an order, provide payment or authorization without ever going to the website or app. This is where chatbot and voicebots will go beyond the capabilities of email and make the user experience not only more efficient, but almost magical.” — Joseph Hsieh, Ecommerce Advisor

Doing this over conversational platforms enables the interaction to be more personable and meaningful than over email. Not only does the language sound natural, similar to how a friend or family member would talk to you, but it enables the relationship to immediately strengthen by allowing the customer to continue the conversation.

Confirm With The Customer That Their Package Arrived and Ask For Their Opinion

This message can be sent after the package has been detected as delivered, or an estimated 14 days after an order has been made (depending on which data is available to the store).

Stores can collect data such as:

• Satisfaction with the product on a scale of 1 to 5.
• Detailed written review of the product.
• Pictures or videos of the customer using the product.

Recommend Products Based on Purchase History and Customer Data That’s Been Collected Conversationaly

If a customer walks into a store, they can get help from an employee. They can tell them what they are looking for, their preferences, the purpose of the purchase, etc.

Replicating this type of experience online hasn’t been as straightforward, especially over platforms like email.

Conversational commerce makes this very easy. Instead of just getting sent recommendations based on what is trending, stores can message customers questions that enable them to make very precise recommendations.

Help Reorder a Replenishable Product

There are certain types of products that customers will want to purchase over and over again, things like: hand lotion, face cream, food, and paper towels.

Using customer data related to each of these items, it is possible to predict how long it takes someone to consume a good, and then automatically send them a message asking if they need to reorder that item.

This is helpful for the customer and the business.

Troubleshooting

It is common for a customer to have questions about a product they recently purchased.

• “Can I wash this in cold water?”
• “How do I shoot wide angle video?”
• “It won’t turn on, what do I do?”

Instead of requiring a person at the store to manually answer each of these questions, conversational commerce can be used to automatically detect the question and immediately respond with the correct answer or guidance.

Answer a Question

When a person walks into a store to look at a product, they have the ability to ask an employee questions.

• “Does this come in a small?”
• “Can this camera go underwater?”
• “Do you carry red shoes?”

Stores can use conversational commerce to answer this pre-purchase questions.

“[I think virtual employee’s, like chatbots and voicebots will play an important role in the future of ecommerce] because the product questions are usually the same ones over and over, which is a core use case for chatbots.” — Larry Kim, CEO of Mobile Monkey and Columnist at Inc and CNBC

“But Matt! Show me the voice examples!”

Yes, great idea! Let’s do that right now.

Scroll down to see conversational commerce examples for voice platforms.

Examples of Voice Based Conversational Commerce

These are a few examples of voice based conversational commerce. Keep in mind that voice bots cannot currently send customers proactive messages; they can only talk to a user after they have initiated a conversation.

“Personal assistants such as Alexa, Siri, Google and the use of voice will become increasingly popular. Brands need to integrate skills and technologies to stay relevant with customers’ expectations that they can simply ask a personal assistant a question.” — Anju Sharma, Artificial Intelligence Product Manager at HP Inc.

Index of voice based conversational commerce examples:

• Deal of the Day
• Finding Nearby Stores, Classes, Events, and Rentals
• Product Recommendations
• Check Order Status

Deal of the Day

Stores can enable their customers to ask Alexa, or another voice bot, to check if there are any current deals that store is offering.

Finding Nearby Stores, Classes, Events, and Rentals

Stores can help their customers locate nearby stores, classes, events, and rentals.

Product Recommendations

By asking the customer a few simple questions, stores can help recommend products that the customer is likely going to be interested in.

Check Order Status

Customers can ask their voice bot to check on their recent order.

Now that you have a pretty good concept of how conversational commerce can be used over chat and voice… let’s dive into something even more interesting.

Let’s look at examples of how artificial intelligence can be used to supercharge conversational commerce.

Let’s do this!

How Artificial Intelligence Can Improve Conversational Commerce

What is artificial intelligence? How can it be used to improve conversational commerce? What are examples of artificial intelligence being used with conversational commerce?

Don’t worry! I will answer these questions right now.

“I think we’ve already seen some forms of machine intelligence have a massive impact on the e-commerce industry. The fact that Stitchfix can form opinions on customer’s preferences without ever meeting them should scare brick and mortar retailers who believe their in-person relationships provide valuable insights to their brands. They do this through scaling the effectiveness of their stylists, but they also do this through proprietary machine intelligence algorithms, that in theory could also begin to inform new product creation in the same way Netflix uses their customer data to seed the ideas behind blockbuster hits.” — Lee Edwards, Former CTO of Teespring

If you already have a good grasp of what artificial intelligence is, or more specifically machine learning, then you can skip this part. If you are new to artificial intelligence, and you’re not exactly sure how it works, then spend the next 9 minutes watching this entertaining and extremely educational video that has over 2 million views:

Definition: Machine learning is an application of artificial intelligence (AI) that provides systems the ability to automatically learn and improve from experience without being explicitly programmed. Machine learning focuses on the development of computer programs that can access data and use it learn for themselves.

Artificial intelligence can be used to improve conversational commerce in two categories:

1. Understanding exactly (or at least very closely) what a customer is saying or asking, and passing this data in the correct format to the bot so that it can respond accurately. (Example: The person says “Do you have dresses in my size that are good for summer?”. The bot can then use artificial intelligence to detect that the person is looking for a “dress”, it can translate “in my size” to the size the store has on file for the customer speaking, and it can look through reviews of the dress to see if sentiment shows that this dress is “good for summer”.)
2. Predicting what a customer most likely wants to say or do next. (Example: The person just added a pair of shoes to their cart. The bot recommends another product that they will likely also purchase.)

Artificial intelligence is one of the fastest growing fields in technology, and it is expected to improve rapidly over the next ten years.

“AI is going to continue to change ecommerce in a big way. Due to the speed in which AI can react and be detail oriented, you are able to both service customers, as well as market to them in a way that feels one on one, but in a very scalable way. As AI progresses, you will be able to run ads to someone very specifically for example ‘I see that you are traveling to Seattle today. It is currently raining there and I notice you have not purchased a rain coat in a couple of years. Would you like one delivered to your hotel room?’ The experience will be better for both the consumer and the brand.” — Erik Huberman, CEO of Hawke Media

If you feel daunted by the complexities and unfamiliarity of artificial intelligence, don’t worry. Not only is artificial intelligence going to become more advanced, it is going to become integrated into easy to use products that enables departments like customer support, sales, and marketing to apply artificial intelligence to their daily tasks and decisions.

You might even be using artificial intelligence at your business today and you don’t even know it.

But, forget about today! Want to hear what crazy things will be possible in the future?

I’ll tell you all about it right now.

The Future of Conversational Commerce

“Matt, if all of this stuff is already happening, what could the future possibly look like? It’s going to be crazy!”. Yes! You are very astute in your observations, the future is going to be crazy.

Here’s what’s happening:

• Within the next 10 years, over 80% of people in the world will likely own a personal computer (maybe it’s a smart phone, maybe it’s something else).
• Every device will support both text and voice-based bots.
• Artificial intelligence will be able to understand and remember everything you say, or ask, no matter how simple or complex. Talking to a computer will be as natural as talking to a human.
• You will have a rapport with artificially intelligent entities that you can talk to.
• You will be able to see digital interfaces (augmented reality) overlaid on top of the world around you (like looking at someone’s shoes as they walk by and instantly seeing their price as it hovers in space).
• Computers will be able to read your mind (and you will be able to read theirs).

Yes, you read that correctly — computers will be able to read your mind. Instead of looking at your phone, or opening your computer, or even asking Alexa something out loud, you will be able to simply think “buy that jacket he’s wearing” as you walk by a stranger with a cool jacket, and the transaction will go through.

This is going to change everything.

The line where you end and the computer starts will disappear; It will be like your conscious being suddenly connected to an internet connection.

You will be able to think directly to a store. “What’s she wearing?”, “How do I wash this?”, “Send me new socks”, “What time is my package arriving today?”, etc.

You should start building the groundworks of your conversational commerce strategy now, because the immediate applications are hugely valuable, and honestly this future technology isn’t that far off.

And you know how I know? Because people have already started to build mind reading devices.

As an example, look at AlterEgo, a mind reading device MIT’s Media Lab.

AlterEgo is a closed-loop, non-invasive, wearable system that allows humans to converse in high-bandwidth natural language with machines, artificial intelligence assistants, services, and other people without any voice — without opening their mouth, and without externally observable movements — simply by vocalizing internally.

How crazy is that?

The world is changing at a rapid pace, and as always the most exciting technology is right around the corner.

The stores of the future will be built on top of these platforms, the jobs of the future will be based on managing them, and this transition has already started.

The only question now, really, is are you going to put in the work to adopt conversational commerce and thrive, or are you going to wait until someone else shows you what success in this field looks like?

Not sure how to implement conversational commerce into your business? Again, don’t worry, I can point you in the right direction.

Let me show you how to start using conversational commerce right now.

How to Implement Conversational Commerce Today

This is no secret, but my team and I have spent the past few years building Octane AI, where we have been entirely focused on designing conversational experiences for brands like Kiehl’s and GoPro, and celebrities like Maroon 5, Poppy, and Jason Derulo.

And guess what? We are focused entirely on conversational commerce, and it’s been working very, very, well.

How well? Let me walk you through it.

Our Conversational Commerce Experiment

During the first four months of 2018 we quietly ran an experiment with 25 up-and-coming ecommerce stores using Shopify. These are stores that individually make $10k to $1mil a month in revenue.

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ “OctaneAI is HUGE success! In just 90 days I’ve seen almost 3x as much engagement from my abandoned cart messages compared to my AC emails.” — Sweat Tailor

Here’s What Happened

• The 25 stores made over $750,000 in additional revenue from Octane AI’s conversational commerce technology.
• Most stores increased their monthly online revenue by 7–25%.
• Over 15,000 products were sold as a result of a customer talking to a store’s Octane AI bot.

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ “This product is a new sensation for e-com conversion. Incredibly easy to setup and requires no real management. The conversions are 2–3 times higher than we’ve seen in the past on our platform and a no-brainer for any of our future installs.” — Aerosmith Store

How Octane AI Works

Octane AI enables stores to turn on conversational commerce with the click of a few buttons (no programming). It connects with your store, your conversational platforms (like a Facebook Page), and all the third party applications you use to power email, rewards programs, reviews, support, and more.

Easy, right?

If you have a Shopify store, you can get started with Octane AI in minutes by going here.

If you are using Magento, Woocommerce, or another ecommerce platform, sign up for early access here. We would love to help take your store into a more profitable future.

Thank You

Thank you to everyone helped put this article together, especially to the Octane AI, Chatbots Magazine, and Ecommerce Magazine communities, and to all the amazing experts that provided exclusive quotes. This technology is evolving quickly and it’s exciting to play a roll in it.

• If you are interested in chatting with me, reach out here (or email me at matt@octane.ai), I would love to hear from you.
• If you want to use Octane AI for your Shopify store, go here. For other types of stores, or if you are an agency, go here.
• If you want to learn more about chatbots, go here and read my beginner’s guide (over 600,000 views).

I hope that this guide helped you understand the power of conversational commerce today, where it’s going tomorrow, and maybe even inspired you to start experimenting with it.

Keep doing amazing things, I’ll be keeping an eye out for you ❤

The Complete Guide to Conversational Commerce was originally published in Chatbots Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

I am currently finalizing a comprehensive guide of all things related to conversational commerce. My last guide, The Complete Beginner’s Guide to Chatbots, has been read over 600,000 times, and I expect this one to similarly be widely read.

Conversational commerce is an automated technology, powered by rules and sometimes artificial intelligence, that enables online shoppers and brands to interact with one another via a chat or voice interface.

Are you interested in Converational Commerce?

If you are interested in conversational commerce, I would love to share my guide and research with you early and get your feedback. Go here to request access.

Here are a couple opportunities for those interested:

• Get access to an early draft of the guide, give feedback, and I will list you at the bottom of the guide under the thank you section.
• Provide your opinion about conversational commerce and I will potentially include it as a quote in the guide itself. I will link your name to the social media profile of your choosing.

I would especially love quotes and feedback from the following:

• Engineers, product managers, and experts working on conversational commerce at large companies.
• AI developers and designers.
• Store owners, or employees at businesses that sell online.
• Venture capitalists and angel investors.
• Anyone deeply interested in the concept of conversational commerce.

[Request Access] [Provide a Quote]

The world of chatbots, smart speakers, artificial intelligence, and conversational platforms is evolving quickly. I am excited to be on this journey with all of you.

Thank you for continuing to help this community thrive,

~ Matt Schlicht, founder of Chatbots Magazine

Get Early Access: Complete Guide to Conversational Commerce was originally published in Chatbots Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.