Create Offer Software Within Manychat

After you have set the customer stages, it’s now time to set up the messages that will give the customer the coupon.

Go inside Manychat and create the conversation by going to Automation > Flows. Then on the top right, click on the blue button that says + New Flow.

Once you click that button, a popup will show and prompt you to create your new flow with a name. I usually name my flow the name of the offer followed by the word “Coupon.”

Your conversation builder will now appear, called a Flow Builder.

Shortcuts! If you want to take the shortcut and just copy and paste a template of the coupon flow that works for dozens of restaurants already, get the flow template here and get started in under 5 minutes: – https://manychat.com/flowPlayerPage?share_hash=115691945123820_eb9cc49321bda78e3cb48a4bb142c1d4e8e4dc86

If you want to fully understand how your flow works so that you know where you want to make adjustments, it’s best to follow along. In the case that you use the template and get stuck, you can always come back here and look at how the flow was built. Then you can still have the same understanding while saving time on setup.

When building a flow from start to finish, you want to know where the user will be coming from when starting the flow and where you want them to end up.

In this particular flow, we will be showing the user a coupon and give them the options to use the coupon in the restaurant or even order online if you have that setup.

So the start of the flow would be to view the coupon immediately upon entering the flow. Then the end of the flow would be to use the coupon in the restaurant or to finish their online order.

Since the very first thing we want the person to see when entering this flow is the coupon, that is exactly what we are going to show.

1. Create coupon

You can present your coupon in a couple of different ways. You can present it as pure text with details, rules and restrictions. You can also present it as a graphic using free tools like Canva. Don’t be intimidated when I mention making your own graphic. With Canva, it is super easy and here’s a short walkthrough with Canva.

For now, we are going to present the coupon as pure text and we can add a graphic later on.

First, click on the blank message after the starting step. Once you do, a text editor will slide in from the left side. In this text editor, you can type out the message that you want people to see immediately after entering this flow.

You can copy my coupon text template that is complete with details, rules and restrictions for general coupon use.

Here is your unique {{cuf_4150430}} coupon!

The coupon expires 14 days from the date you signed up.

1. Cannot be combined with any other offers.

2. Patio dining or online order only.

3. Other restrictions may apply.

4. Our patio dining is open for dinner.

5. Only valid at {{gaf_1521896}}

Choose ‘Use In Restaurant’ below if you are dining in and want to use this coupon.

Choose ‘Order Online’ below if you want to use this coupon for an online order.

Once you copy and paste that into the message into the text editor, you will see the the message box in the center of the screen will populate with the same text.

In order to save what you just did, click on the Publish button on the top right.

Let’s see what we just made:

Next to the Publish button, there is a white Preview button with blue text. Click on that. After you do, a popup box will appear and ask if you want to send the message to yourself on Facebook. If it doesn’t show up, try to login to your Facebook account first.

Then, a box will appear near the top right of your screen telling you that the preview has been started and showing you a button to Open Messenger. Click on that button to open up Messenger:

And then you should see that the message you just wrote was sent to your account. This is what people will see when they enter this flow!

Cool, huh? Automatic messaging that shows them a coupon.

If you’re logged in to Facebook Messenger on your phone or other devices, you should see your message there too!

[insert iphone notification]

Now that we know it works, let’s move on with showing customers how they can use the coupon.

Now that the customer has seen the coupon, you need to show them what ordering options they have. Depending on what you have set up already, you can tell them what options they have of ordering while also using the coupon/offer.

There are two options that you should definitely put here, no matter what kind of dine-in restaurant you are.

1. Use In Restaurant
2. Remind Me Later – you can set the next step of this to go into your reminder flow

The first option will allow the customer to continue the flow by showing the coupon to one of your servers or staff members in your restaurant.

The second option will allow the customer to choose when and where we should send them a reminder.

To include both of these options as part of the coupon, click on the + Add Button text just below your text editor area:

A box will appear where you can set the text of the button and what happens when someone clicks on the button. We are going to name the button “Use In Restaurant” and when someone clicks it, we will send them another message.

Since this coupon is 100% self-serve, the customer can accidentally press on the “Use” button while not intending to use it.

That means that we should implement a message that asks them to confirm using the coupon.

Create coupon confirmation

So in the next message we are going to put:

Are you sure you are ready to use this {{cuf_4150430}} coupon?

This is a one time use coupon. After you use this coupon, it can’t be used again. If you are ready to use this coupon, click ‘Confirm Use’ below.

Please show this coupon to your server before you order.

Go ahead and click on the message box that popped up after you chose the Message action as the action that will happen after the person presses the button:

Then you can copy and paste the message into the text editor box. This time, to continue the flow, we are going to use quick replies instead of buttons. There are differences between using quick replies and buttons. Basically, quick replies prevent duplicate replies while buttons can provide duplicate replies. See why it matters here.

We are going to label 2 quick replies. The first one is going to say “Confirm Use” while the second one is going to say “Remind Me Later” in case they are not ready to use the coupon yet.

Click on the + Quick reply button to make a new quick reply. Label one “Confirm Use” and label the other one “Remind Me Later.”

Let’s take care of this Remind Me Later option first because it will be a quick and easy continuation.

We want this Remind Me Later button to lead to the {Offer Name} Reminder flow that you created for this offer.

Click on the open gray circle next to the Remind Me Later quick reply, drag it towards an empty area, then release. Choose +Flow to start a new flow. Then choose your {Offer Name} Reminder flow.

Everytime someone clicks on the Remind Me Later button, they will be sent to your Reminder flow which will help them set up reminders for themselves.

Now, we need to create a message that will follow after the customer clicks “Confirm Use.” Since their intent was to confirm the use of the coupon, we need to now show a message and/or oa picture that will tell them their offer was used.

If you used a picture for your coupon, you can easily put a stamp on top of it to show that it is validated:

You can also include a message to let them know that the coupon was used already:

Thanks for visiting {{page_name|fallback:””}}

When you see that the discount has been applied on your check, please click on ‘Discount Applied’ below.

So, after your customer presses the Confirm Use Button, they should see a message that looks like this:

In order to make the above appear – when you are making your Confirm Use quick reply, click on the “Send message” action when the button is pressed:

After you click that, a new message box should appear. Do the usual which is to click on the message box to edit the next message:

Enter in my offer confirmation message template that I showed you and it should populate in the message box:

You now have a way to go from coupon to coupon confirmation in your restaurant.

But is that all we want? As a restaurant, I think not. We want to go further than just the purchase so we can get repeat purchases.

However before we ask them if they want to visit again, we have to know what they thought of their previous experience.

So, we are going to lead them to a feedback form where they can tell us what they thought about their experience.

The last message we sent the customer was a statement telling them to make sure that their offer was applied to their check.

Based on that last message, we then want to let the customer confirm that the discount was applied to the check. So let’s add a button that lets them confirm that.

In the message editor, click on + Add Button. Name the button ‘Discount Applied,” which is the exact button text that your customer will see.

After the button, we want to mark the coupon as used for this customer. We can do so by performing an action.

Click on the Perform Action button in the list of options just under where you typed in Discount Applied.

An Action box will appear connected to the Discount Applied button. Click on the Action box to choose what action you want to perform.

You want to choose the Validation tag that you made in the setup phase of this tutorial. The name of your Validation tag should be [Offer Name] Validated where [Offer Name] is the name of your offer.

One more action we want to perform is to notify any restaurant owners, managers, etc who want to receive a notification that a coupon was used.

We also want to notify our CRM that someone use the coupon so we can record the time that they used it and keep it for our records.

But we don’t want to perform these reminders in the same step. We will get to the reason why later. So let’s create a new Action step that will notify people that the coupon was used.

Once the next action box appears, click on it to choose the action. Then choose Notify Admin.

You can choose who you want to send the notifications to and what message you want the notification to send.

If you want to send the notification to someone and they are not on the list yet, you have to add that person as a user to your Manychat account.

Next you want to notify your Google Sheets Restaurant CRM.

Click on the same action box to open the action editor on the left side. Click on +Action in the action editor to add an action. Choose Google Sheets Actions.

Then click on Select action to start configuring the data transfer from Manychat to Google Sheets.

The data we want from Manychat is the time that the person validated the coupon. We want that data to go into the “Validated” column for this offer.

We also want to make sure that the data is matched to the person who validated. Here’s how you do it with the Google Sheet Restaurant CRM template I shared with you:

After you click on Select action, a popup box will appear asking you how you want to write data into Google Sheets. Select Update row since we will be updating the data for a person by matching with their ID # (every Facebook Messenger user has an ID #).

After you select Update Row, you will see a new popup box that will ask you to find your Google Sheet that you want to record to, and how you want to record to it.

Search for and select your Google Sheet. 

***Precaution: Before you connect your Google Sheet Restaurant CRM, make sure that the name of the tab is exactly what you want it to say before connecting. If you change the tab name after connecting, it won’t write anymore and you may have to start a brand new tab, then reconnect, which could be tedious.**

Then select the Worksheet you want to record to, the Lookup Column you want to match to, and the Lookup Value that you want to match it to.

The only difference between your screen and my screen right now could be the name of the Spreadsheet, replacing {Restaurant Name} with your restaurant name.

Next, let’s select the data that we want to record.

In the next section of this Google Actions editor, you will see a left side and right side. The right side shows the names of the columns in your Google Sheet. The left side should all be empty, waiting for us to choose what data to put into that column.

We want to record the User Id into the MCID column.

Then we want to record the Last Interaction into the Validate column respective to the offer that you are building. In the CRM, I put all the columns needed for up to 5 offers. Each offer has their own columns for each customer stage and data we are recording.

Make sure to record the validation time data into the correct column respective to the offer that you are recording data for.

Since this is the first offer that I am recording for, I will put the Last Interaction data into the Validate column for Offer 1:

Click save after you have copied the settings in my screenshots. Then you should see that there is a Google Sheet action in the same action box ast eh Notify Admins actions.

This action box will notify everyone (and thing) that needs to be notified!

Now we want your customer to go into a flow that asks for their feedback. Click on the Next Step 

After you do that, you now have a coupon that can lead to a feedback flow afterwards! Your coupon flow should look something like this:

So is it really this easy? Just a couple of messages in a row and we have a coupon that works?

Not exactly. Up next I will be going over what we need to prevent from happening in this flow and how we can keep our customers moving forward in this flow.

1. Tag & Record along the way

Remember, the whole purpose of creating this is so that you have visible data on how your offer is performing, and how that converts into how it affects your business.

So let’s set up some actions to export data from Manychat into your Google Sheets Restaurant CRM.

1. Prevent double distribution

The first feature we want to add to this flow is to prevent users from:

• Using the coupon more than once
• Being able to access the coupon if they used it already

These features will ensure that you only give out discounts once per customer (more profit for you) and that people who haven’t used the coupon yet can still come back to see their coupon at any time (more chance of coupon claimers to visit)!

We can implement these features by checking to see if each person has a specific tag applied to them.

For example, if someone has been tagged as a person who validated (used) the coupon already, then we will lead them on a different path of the flow that will tell them that they already used the coupon.

Let’s go back into our coupon flow and implement this feature.

Before anyone can even get back into this flow and see the coupon, we want to add a condition to check if they validated the coupon before.

So, let’s change the starting step to lead to a condition by clicking on “The First Step” on the Starting Step box, then dragging it to an empty area. This will open up a list of options.

Click on +Condition to add a condition. Your condition box should appear and the condition editor panel on the left should show up.

Click on +Condition in that panel to choose a condition. Choose Tag.

Another box will popup. Search for your offer validated tag that is specific to this offer and choose it.

After you choose it, you should see that the condition is populated with checking for the offer validated tag.

In the condition box, you will see that there is a green circle and a red circle. This is different than the other boxes that we have seen where there is usually just one gray or white circle.

Condition boxes are a little different. Each condition box has a green circle and a red circle. If the conditions are met, then the green circle will continue the flow to the next step that it is connected to. 

If the conditions aren’t met, then the red circle will continue the flow for people that don’t meet the conditions.

If your customer hasn’t validated the coupon, then we want them to see the coupon. Since are condition is checking if the offer validated tag is applied, then want people who don’t have the validated tag applied to see the coupon.

So, we want to drag the empty red circle and connect it to the coupon message.

Now, every time someone tries to go into this flow and check their coupon, if they haven’t validated it yet before, they will still see the coupon!

Okay, so now what about the green circle?

Well, if they did validate the coupon, then we want to let them know that they used the coupon already. Let’s drag the empty green circle on the conditions box to an empty area and choose Message to let it continue to a message.

A message box should appear and you can now type a message to let them know that they used the coupon already. The message I use is short and sweet:

You have already used this coupon!

Stay tuned for future coupons.

You can copy and paste that into the message editor.

From here, we want the customer to stay engaged with us, so let’s make a button that gives them the option to stay on the lookout for future offers.

Create a quick reply that says “Get Next Coupon.” And guess where this is going to go?

Well, we usually only want people to get the next coupon only after they provided us feedback about their last visit. So we are going to connect it to the feedback flow we already have in this flow!

Verify that it’s connected and you should now be preventing people from using the coupon again!

The next thing we want to implement is a way for people to get reminded about their last message in case they didn’t move on.

It would be awesome if we can send unlimited amounts of reminders to people if they didn’t continue the conversation. However, to prevent spam, Facebook implemented a rule where you can only send people a message via Manychat if they have engaged with you within the last 24 hours.

With that rule, we now have to set a reminder before the 24 hour mark hits.

1. Remind every 24 hours

We want to send a reminder message to people less than 24 hours later if they didn’t continue the conversation. We can do that with a delay and a condition.

Basically, we want to wait until the 20-24 hour mark, then check to see if they continued the conversation. If they didn’t continue the conversation, then we will send them a reminder message.

How will we check if they continued on with the conversation? We are going to make a very special use of tags that I actually haven’t seen anywhere. So you can say that I pioneered this idea.

Remember the tags you made for {Offer Name} Stopped?

We are going to automatically attach this tag to the user right after they see the coupon message. Then, if they click any button to continue the coupon use, then we will remove the tag. Clever, isn’t it?

So, to start, let’s add the {Offer Name} Stopped tag first:

Click and hold the open white circle, then drag to an open area to make the list of possible next steps show up:

Choose +Actions and you will see the actions box show up. 

Then you can see that the Actions editor pops up on the left side. Click on +Action to choose your action, then choose Add Tag. Type in your {Offer Name} Stopped tag to find it, then select it.

Now, everytime someone sees the coupon, they will automatically be tagged with “Stopped” so we know that they haven’t moved forward in the conversation.

To know if they moved forward in the conversation, we are going to add a step in between the “Use In Restaurant” button and the coupon confirmation message.

Now, everytime someone clicks on the “Use In Restaurant” button, we know that they continued the conversation. So we will remove the tag Stopped tag immediately after they click on the button.

We have easily differentiated between people who could be stuck in the conversation and people who have moved forward in the conversation.

Now let’s continue setting up the reminder message. The first thing we need to do is add a delay that is less than 24 hours.

Click and hold the white circle next to “Next Step” in your {Offer Name} Stopped Add Tag action.

Choose Smart Delay. You will see the Smart Delay box show up and the Smart Delay editor slide in from from the left side.

Choose any duration less than 24 hours. I usually like to go with 23 hours just in case I cut it too close to Facebook’s 24 hour timer.

After your smart delay, you want to check for conditions to see if the person continued the conversation or not.

In the Next Step circle on the Smart Delay, click, hold and drag it to an empty area.

Select Conditions and let’s set some conditions to check if the person has continued the conversation or not.

The first condition we want to set is if the person is still marked as Stopped. If they are, then we want to send them a reminder message.

The second condition we want to set is if the person has interacted with us in the last 24 hours. I know we put a smart delay of 23 hours already, but I like to put in redundancies just so nothing happens to my account (I believe if you send too many messages outside the 24 hour window, your account could get flagged or blocked).

Let’s put in these conditions on the left side window.

If the person is still marked as stopped after 23 hours and has interacted with us less than 1 day ago, then we want to send them a reminder message.

If they aren’t marked as stopped, then we will not send them a reminder message.

Remember that the open green circle on a condition box means that the conditions are met. So let’s click, drag and hold that open green circle towards an open area. Then release the click on the open area to see a list of possible next steps.

We want to send a reminder message, so click on Message. Then we are going to put a small reminder message and loop it back towards the coupon. Watch how this saves us from writing a whole other message on here.

Pretty awesome isn’t it? They will just get a short reminder message then it will continue back to the original message that they last saw before they moved forward.

You can apply this to any part of this flow or any part of your future flows and I guarantee you that this will help keep the conversation going!

In fact, over 20% of my Manychat subscribers have continued on only AFTER being reminded.

To apply this to any part of your current flow or any of your other flows, Manychat has a great copy and paste feature.

While you are editing the flow, you can select a group of boxes, copy them, then paste them anywhere else.

1. Test This Flow

Before we say that we are done with building this flow, we want to test the flow to make sure that it works exactly to our liking.

In order to test the flow, first click on the Publish button if it is blue. If it is not blue, that means you don’t have any unpublished changes. At that point, you can click on the white Preview button with blue text. Then you will see a popup box that will ask you if you want to start this flow for whichever Facebook account you are logged in to.

If you are not logged in to a Facebook account, you will be prompted to log in to a Facebook account so that this flow can be sent to the respective Facebook account’s Facebook Messenger account.

Once you have clicked on the “Send to Messenger” button, you might be prompted to accept terms to send yourself SMS messages. This is a precaution that Manychat helps you take just so you know you are going to be receiving SMS messages.

-see that the validation tag goes onto your facebook account

-see that the last interaction time goes into the google sheets account

-see that the notify admin action works

-try looking at the coupon then leaving the conversation idle for more than a day

-see that the flow continues on to your feedback flow

-if you need to retest, go into audience. Then search for your facebook profile. Remove tags and data as needed to “restart” yourself into the flow.

1. Conclusion

We are now done with the coupon flow and we have implemented some nice features for the coupon. 

We set up a feature where people can use the coupon only once. If they used it already, they won’t be able to see the coupon again.

We also set up a feature that will automatically remind the person about their last message if they haven’t continued the conversation.

This coupon should serve you much better than any other coupon/offer you’ve tried to distribute before.

So now, how do we get people to see this offer?

Next, we will be creating an offer signup system.