Many students transitioning from email marketing struggle with Messenger. They attempt to replicate email newsletter strategies within Messenger — copying lengthy essays into a platform where messages are read and answered within seconds. This approach fails because each platform has unique rules and norms.

The Core Philosophy

“With Facebook Messenger, or any chat app, the general philosophy is to write copy as if you were texting a friend.” This means avoiding lengthy messages and instead using images, GIFs, and emojis for engagement. Short sentences. Multiple bubbles. Conversational tone.

Understand Your Avatar and Communicate in Their Language

Understanding your target audience is fundamental before writing a single message. You need to know: Who is your target audience? What problems are you solving? What are your primary business goals? What messaging has worked or failed previously? Without this, any copy lacks meaningful context.

Teaching Through Stories

Storytelling drives retention and behavior change. The Subway/Jared campaign is a perfect example — a memorable story about eating sandwiches to lose weight. Within chatbot sequences, every message should tell a captive story while balancing two goals: achieving business objectives and solving subscriber problems.

Use Curiosity to Drive Engagement

Low open and click rates typically indicate content lacks specificity or relevance. Bot Academy’s own messaging demonstrates this — messages that end with “Can I tell you what it was??” drive 16% engagement on their own, and full sequences achieve 94-97% click-through rates when curiosity is maintained throughout.

Key principles: understand your avatar, teach through stories, and use curiosity for engagement. Technical features matter less than foundational marketing strategy.