Hey Product Hunters, it's Emanuele from ⚡HEROES, I'm excited to be here and launch our first product today!
⚡HEROES allows social media Influencers to engage their audiences with direct messages on Facebook Messenger.
Think of it as a parallel channel alongside Instagram or Youtube, but entirely chat-based, where Influencers can directly broadcast content to their follower's Messenger, be it a private video or a voice message.
Influencers are able to schedule their broadcasts and even segment their audience, and we are working to create richer and more interactive experiences both for them and for their users.
We believe that messaging apps are going to be the next channel for audience engagement and in particular for the influencer marketing space.
Happy to answer any question here or at
emanuele@heroes.ai
Thank you!
Emanuele
@_selcukahmet thanks for the feedback, we're onto fixing it! In the meantime, check the main product at https://m.me/heroesai
Any feedback is appreciated!
Really interesting to see this released @immanuelkapa - I have added it to my curations - I tried to post some questions to via your page on Messenger but it is not accepting live chat so I will post them here:
- Can I have multiple pages?
- Do you offer growth tools such as if people comment on a post can you send a response in Messenger?
- What if I have another bot connected to the page - do I have to uninstall that and can I bring the subscribers with me?
- Do you have any video tutorials?
- What will your pricing be?
- Will we be able to have live chat or just broadcasts?
- Is the start menu able to be customised and is it branded with Heros as you see in Manychat and Chatfuel?
- Is there a limit to the number of broadcasts you can do? Do you have the option to send out a sequence of messages?
Thanks
@krishnade Hello Krishna, thanks for the impressive list of questions! Really on point! I'll answer them here for everybody to see :)
- Can I have multiple pages?
Not at the moment, but it's on our product roadmap, good catch!
- Do you offer growth tools such as if people comment on a post can you send a response in Messenger?
We will release growth tools including integrations (including auto-posting on comments) for Facebook, Instagram and Youtube very soon.
- What if I have another bot connected to the page - do I have to uninstall that and can I bring the subscribers with me?
Right now we handled few cases were people already had a bot attached to their page. In that case, we are able to privately migrate your users to your new bot on HEROES, but we handle this case by case.
- Do you have any video tutorials?
Not for now unfortunately, but definitely on our to-do list.
- What will your pricing be?
Free, now and forever. We will never charge users for using the product. We are although planning on releasing monetization tools for content creators and influencers, like the possibility to get donations or subscriptions from your audience, and in the medium term, to directly connect you with brands/ agencies in need for a sponsored messaging broadcast. Our business model will rely on small transaction fees in these scenarios.
- Will we be able to have live chat or just broadcasts?
The product we are releasing today is actually a v2. The first version had a live chat feature with even automated FAQs. However, after testing it with multiple influencers, we decided to strip down our first public version and focus on broadcasting. However, the live chat feature might be integrated again in the future.
- Is the start menu able to be customised and is it branded with Heros as you see in Manychat and Chatfuel?
Right now we are reducing customization to the minimum to not overload users with too many options. Compared to other bot platforms, HEROES is aimed at the general public, who is not really keen on bots. Menu customization will definitely come though, I can assure you. As for the branding watermark, yes for now every channel released on HEROES will be branded, but there will be soon ways to remove that.
- Is there a limit to the number of broadcasts you can do? Do you have the option to send out a sequence of messages?
No there is no limit to the number of broadcasts. The only limit is common sense, meaning: nobody wants to receive too many messages. We usually recommend to send 1-2 broadcasts per week. We will make it easier in the future to send broadcasts only to target groups who have not received a broadcast in a certain timeframe.
As for sequences, yes we are also planning to introduce them, in a similar way to how drip campaigns work for email.
Again, wow, thanks for the amazing questions! ⚡
@immanuelkapa Thanks so much for the comprehensive reply. I hope you will keep in touch with everyone who registers on your site re updates on features.
For me having the option of live chat is really important as are growth tools so I am not going to take the next step to install it on one of my main pages at the moment - though I may test it on a page as I am interested to see the interface. Live chat is especially important as people usually come to my page to ask questions and I don't want to frustrate them if they have no way of doing that.
As I teach marketing and PR professionals about digital comms including influencer marketing, a couple of other suggestions for you:
- be ready to be able to confirm to any European users that you are GDPR compliant and have a help page on your site about that
- you may want to have some reminders on the dashboard to advise people to comply with FTC guidelines (or whatever country they are in) re disclosures. I see a lot of people failing to do this in their bots at the moment.
Looking forward to seeing how your platform develops as it looks like a tool that will be of interest to people who don't want to invest in developing a fully fledged bot.
@immanuelkapa I just tested you app and clicked create anew page and I am left with a white popup so you might want to check that out in terms of your app - I am working on FF as a browser
@krishnade Sorry to hear that, thanks for reporting it!
You can create a new page from this link:
https://www.facebook.com/pages/c...
Then once done, proceed normally to connect your newly created page.
@krishnade Privacy is definitely a big topic for our platform, so thanks for these suggestions.
We will definitely keep everybody updated with new features, all your previous questions match our vision and roadmap, so it's in our interest to get back to you once we have them ready!
As for the live chat, point taken. We have had mixed feedback from that one, so I'm definitely open to find a way to putting in back in the product.
By the way, launching a bot on HEROES doesn't kill your chat, you can still message back users from the Facebook Page Manager, the bot will not interrupt :)
Facebook Messenger is the strongest influencer channel right now (extremely engaged users, private messaging, rich media like audio, video up to immersive VR gaming within web views is possible, huge potential for personalized messages, …).
Yet almost no one is using Messenger effectively yet. I expect this to change now with ⚡️ HEROES.
Great job @immanuelkapa with the product, already went a long way, product development pace is impressive.
Wow, really well made.
It's super easy to set up and self explanatory. I especially like the Analytics section, it gives valuable insights. And the best thing is, everything works right in Messenger 👏
heroes for messenger is super easy to access, I dont need to build a habit for a new app / website to enter. I can handle the bot just through messenger. Great Work!
It's so easy to setup and use; I've really enjoyed connecting with my audiences via HEROES on Facebook Messenger and I'm the type to abandon products if they are too complicated or time consuming - I got this set up really fast and it's really effective.
Looking forward to new features :)
Pros:
The simplicity!
Cons:
This can't be blank but I can't think of any Cons right now.
@immanuelkapa can you share a bit of information on your tech stack / infrastructure? I expect that this will have to scale up quite fast once the first influencers with million+ followers start to broadcast.
@__tosh Thanks for the question!
All the backend infrastructure is based on a serverless architecture based on AWS Lambda + DynamoDB. This allows scaling up and down to handle peaks and broadcasts to several thousands (if not millions) users at once.
The same infrastructure handles all web requests for webviews, which are based on Vue.js, a reactive framework which is getting quite a good traction lately.
Going serverless has been a little bit of an hazard at the beginning, but now it's definitely paying back!
Congrats on the launch. I have not dove in yet, but what is the main differentiator(s) for influencers to use your solution vs. using Chatfuel, or ManyChat for messenger marketing.
@joshbarkin thanks for the question!
I would say that there is one main difference: Focus.
Manychat aims at a marketer audience, Chatfuel as well but is more general in the approach.
We focus on Influencers, that's it. This means that our product is entirely mobile-oriented (everything is done through Messenger), and that every feature is thought for and tested by Influencers.
Our Broadcasting tool is essential, it doesn't have 1000 different options to optimize your campaign like in traditional email marketing. It's meant to work on-the-go, with the simplest possible interface, and the bare minimum to work well.
This also means that anything that comes in the future will follow the same path, from monetization to integrations. Influencers first.
I always recommend Manychat to my marketer friends, and always recommend Chatfuel to anybody who wants to try bots, however an Influencer aka the common guy who doesn't have a marketing/ tech background, will find them impossible to use. That's where we step in :)
Hey Emanuele,
Really love this and the approach here to creating a more direct channel for influencers.
A few questions/comments:
1) First, I really love the idea and execution here - you guys are onto something here. I think it could even be interesting to explore how this fits into the Patreon/Kickstarter Drip model. Does an added benefit of being a paying subscriber for a creator mean you get more often, direct access through Messenger?
2) Do you feel like most influencers who have built their audiences elsewhere have strong followings on their Facebook pages? I would assume that most do, but curious.
3) Do you offer analytics beyond the off-the-shelf Facebook Messenger analytics? In particular, I've played around with their analytics dashboard and haven't been able to find ways to easily see when people mute messages, etc. which drastically change the impact of messenger from an engagement perspective.
Thanks - and great work, really excited to see this grow!!
@benmlevy Thank you for the great questions, I'm really happy to see this kind of comments!
To answer your questions:
1) The Patreon model is in fact one of the first experiments that we will launch, for a couple of reasons:
a) it gives Influencers a great incentive to use messaging as a tool compared to other more indirect social media,
b) it enables them to directly monetize their audience and performance without third parties, which a lot of them have been asking to us from day 1.
Our idea is that if you become a paid subscriber, the influencer will be able to retarget you and share exclusive content, just with you. I think that's a way more personal solution to engage your audience!
2) Influencers always have a "main" platform. I would say that lately Facebook is losing traction in this sense. BUT the great thing is that to be an Influencer on Messenger, you DON'T need an audience on Facebook, because it's two separate channels. So it's a new world for everybody!
3) Yes we do, right now we track broadcast related metrics such as impressions, reach, clicks and so on, but we plan to expand this by allowing Influencers to directly poll users for data. You could eventually ask users if they like "cats" or "dogs", and then based on this metric, retarget them with broadcasts.
Thanks for the questions!
@immanuelkapa Awesome - really like the vision here.
From a tracking perspective, are you able to track notification preferences? I.E. Muting messages? I ask because I'm working on a sports game in the space and haven't been able to figure out how to view that on the backend.
Thanks!
Ben
@benmlevy We give an option to users to mute notifications, both in sound and to unsubscribe at all from them. So yes, that can be tracked, but only if you use your own system and don't rely on Messenger's own muting. For that, there's no way at the moment.
@unclejessy4real Great, please let me know if you have any question. You can get in touch directly with me at emanuele@heroes.ai, would be happy to help you get the best out of HEROES!
tested it on one of my pages. I like the flow, but already see ways I want to change it, still trying to determine how to do such. This part doesn't seem to be so user friendly.
Pros:
The onboard is simple.
Cons:
They don't make it easy to access and edit once setup.
Hey Brian, thanks for the feedback! Would you mind getting in touch at emanuele@heroes.ai? I'd like to understand better what's your experience so far and what would you change? I would really appreciate!
To be honest I cant see any fit for this product and doubt that any effort went into stakeholder research. The traction of new tools getting released is starting to get out of hand.
@christophs6 thanks for the feedback, could you elaborate more on this? We had a first version of this product already months ago but decided to spend more months iterating on user feedback exactly to get a fit. Curious about why you don't see any fit! Thanks!
@stephenaltrogge Unfortunately it seems like it's a bug that comes from the Messenger platform. We have filed a bug report, will get back to you asap! Sorry for the inconvenience!
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heroes for messenger is super easy to access, I dont need to build a habit for a new app / website to enter. I can handle the bot just through messenger. Great Work!
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Looking forward to new features :)
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Who is the audience you can broadcast messages to? Who has put like on your page? Or who has already interacted with the chat?
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