TLDR

Manychat has more under the hood than meets the eye. I personally like using it as a complete entry level marketing automation platform. It’s very user friendly to create automations and sequences. There is a learning curve but compared to other systems it’s pretty low. It supports omni-channel automations with Text, Email, Instagram DM, Tiktok, and Facebook Messenger. If you have a business that leans more towards organic social media for marketing and outreach I would recommend it for the automations with Instagram and Facebook. Manychat combines the social media outbound automations with the ability to do outbound marketing with email and sms. For inbound it supports a live chat feature for Instagram, Facebook messenger, SMS (w/Twilio).

Insights

Instagram DM/Comment Automations:

Marketing trends change and update as technology updates and platforms come and go. As of writing this the “link in bio” is dead. The ability to add “comment SCALE” to get a free scale guide, where it will automatically send the instagram user a DM with your information, is in. This works for story replies, comments on posts, and direct messages. You can get really creative with this, creating unique campaigns and keywords for events. What I like about Manychat is that it's easy to start small. One automation with One key word and One message can take you pretty far. After you get started the growth becomes organic, you see how it’s used and come up with new ideas. The warning here is if you start to get too complex you can have keyword overload and end up with some epic failures.

Less is more. Keep it in control always and you can win big.

Tags and Fields:

As a software engineer of 15+ years I’m very opinionated about this. Designing data structures is one of the most critical parts of developing custom software. Data types are like labels on your storage containers in your kitchen, they define what kind of stuff can go inside. Just because you can keep milk in a zip lock bag, it doesn't mean yo.

How you choose to use these can set you up for complete success or failure. My starting point is to think ahead 5 moves and write out the “segments” that you need.

Leads/Customer:

Who are new
Didn’t buy
Did a call
Didn’t show up to a call
Purchased
Gave a referral
Gave a bad review

Possible Issues

Not collecting enough data
Using the wrong data structure
TOO many fields and tags

Sequences > Automations ? Broadcasts 8 - 10 minutes

IF you are trying to curate your email/marketing into unique experiences for your clients this is for you. If you are not familiar with this tool, or any drip marketing tool, you will be tempted to use automations for everything. DO NOT use an automation for what should be a sequence. Here are some guidelines to help from our experience. Automation = Manychat workflow, has your copy for your emails/texts/reply’s Sequence = A series of automations that can be strung together and “dripped” to subscribers Broadcast = Ability to manually trigger a Manychat workflow Rules = Gives you the ability to automatically tag, add/remove from sequence, based on actions.

Use sequences first and figure out how the automations fit into the sequences.
Sequences offer more flexibility to automagically subscribe/unsubscribe someone from an email series. If you need to move them from one series (cold outreach) to another series (new client), you will struggle to accomplish this with automations.
Automations that are smaller and more modules can reuse them easier to multiple sequences.

Possible Issues

Making large, non modular automations. Repeat all your work, all the time.
Automations limit the ability to pull a subscriber OUT of the automation, thus you build in a TON of logic into the automations creating loads of extra work.

Using Rules can pull users out of sequences if you need to move them from one sequence to another.

Key Features

Where we find this most valuable.

Social media automations, DM/comment automations
Easy to use: Drag-and-drop interface to design custom workflows.
Automates responses, queries, and workflows.
Limits Need For Other Tools: omni channel marketing (if the channels meet your needs)

Best Use Cases: Really only a couple groups here where this tool is most useful. Some others exist but maybe not that we have come across.

Smaller business with focus on organic and paid social media, use for inbound channels and email outbound. It IS, for now, your outbound marketing tool.
Larger businesses who already have an email automation/marketing tool in place. Use for SM inbound and drive people into other marketing funnels.

Missing features: Our missing features list isn’t really a list of what we wish it had, more so you know what to expect wont be in there.

Inbound email
Group SMS
SMS/Email Subscribers not linked to Instagram accounts
Web/chat inbound
Forms/embedding

Conclusion

Manychat is a powerful, well-integrated chatbot solution for businesses looking to automate customer interactions across multiple channels. While pricing and compliance risks may be concerns for some users, the platform’s automation capabilities and ease of use make it a top choice for growing businesses.