Conversation Starters, also known as Ice Breakers in Facebook Messenger, are a valuable feature designed to help businesses engage with new users effectively. These prompts appear during a user’s first interaction with your page, providing users with a list of frequently asked questions and encouraging them to initiate a conversation with your business.
By offering clear and relevant options, Conversation Starters eliminate the uncertainty of "what should I say?" and create a smoother path to meaningful interactions.
This is especially important as some users hesitate to click the Get Started button, often unsure about what will happen next or concerned about sharing personal information after seeing the Facebook disclaimer.
Conversation Starters play a crucial role in improving the click-through rate (CTR) of organic traffic by providing an easy and intuitive way for users to engage with your page. They also act as a shortcut to relevant answers, reducing the time it takes for users to navigate through automations.
In this article, we’ll explore how to set up Conversation Starters in Manychat, why they’re essential for user engagement, and how they can help streamline interactions and boost customer satisfaction.
| Note: Conversation starters appear only when there’s no active conversation between the user and your Facebook Business Page. If you’ve already interacted with a user before, they won’t see conversation starters when they open Messenger. |
How to set up Conversation Starters
- Open your Manychat account and click on Settings in the sidebar.
- Then select Messenger from the list of channels.
- Scroll to find the Conversation Starters section.
- Click Edit to add new conversation starters or edit the existing ones.
- Next, click + Add Question to create your first conversation starter. You can add up to 4 questions in total.
- Type the question in the field that appears and click the conversation icon to add a response to this question. You can either create a new one by clicking the + Create New Message or select an existing automation.
- If you select to add a new message, Flow Builder opens, where you can edit a message node by adding text, links, or any other useful information.
- For the conversation starters to work, don’t forget to enable the automation by clicking Set Live.
- Once you do so, go back to Settings > Messenger > Conversations Starters > Edit and preview how the conversation starters look on your Facebook Business Page.
- Switch the toggle next to the Publish button, and then click Publish to go live with the automation.
You can also configure conversation starters for Facebook Messenger by clicking the Automations in the sidebar, switching to the Basics tab, and selecting Conversation Starters from the list of automations under the Facebook Messenger section.
| Note: When a user opens Messenger via a Ref URL and selects a Conversation Starter, the automation linked to the Conversation Starter will run instead of the one assigned to the Ref URL. This happens because Conversation Starters take priority over the Messenger Ref URL trigger. |
To test your Conversation Starters, open Messenger and start a chat with your Facebook Business Page from your personal profile. Keep in mind, they only appear during the first interaction. If there’s already a conversation, delete it and start a new one to test properly.