If you’re running B2B campaigns through chatbots, you’ve probably heard that tracking ROI is “easy.” Spoiler: it’s not. Especially if your sales cycle is longer than a few days and real conversions happen offline. This guide is for marketers and sales teams who want to get past vanity metrics and actually prove their Manychat campaigns are making money—not just generating clicks.
Let’s cut through the noise and get real about tracking ROI with Manychat. I’ll show you what works, what to skip, and how to keep things simple enough that you’ll actually track results (and not just build dashboards for your boss).
Why B2B ROI Tracking with Manychat Gets Messy
First, some honesty. B2B sales cycles are complicated. Unlike B2C, you’re not selling $29 sunglasses in one click. You’re nurturing leads, qualifying them, passing them to sales, and maybe—if you’re lucky—closing a deal three months later. Manychat can automate, capture, and track a lot, but it can’t magically tell you which chatbot message closed the deal.
Here’s what usually muddies the waters:
- Long sales cycles (weeks or months, not minutes)
- Multiple touchpoints (email, LinkedIn, phone, carrier pigeon)
- Offline conversions (demos, calls, contracts signed via DocuSign)
- Multiple stakeholders per deal (one chatbot opt-in, five decision makers)
If you’re expecting a perfect, end-to-end attribution model in Manychat alone, prepare to be disappointed. But you can get a lot closer than “I think it’s working.”
Step 1: Get Your Goals Straight (Before Touching Analytics)
Don’t let tools drive your strategy. Figure out what actually counts as ROI for your business.
Ask yourself:
- Are you optimizing for demo bookings? Qualified leads? Closed deals?
- Is a “win” a chatbot reply, calendar event, or a signed contract?
- Who needs to see the numbers—yourself, your boss, or the sales team?
Pro tip: If your answer is “all of the above,” pick ONE conversion you can actually measure. Tracking too much will just muddy your data.
Common B2B goals tracked in Manychat:
- Demo or meeting bookings
- Qualified lead handoffs to sales (think: MQLs, SQLs)
- Downloads of gated content (whitepapers, case studies)
- Direct product sign-ups (rare, but possible)
Once you’ve picked your “money event,” you can map everything else backwards.
Step 2: Set Up Manychat for Real Tracking (Not Just Clicks)
Manychat’s built-in analytics will happily show you how many people clicked, replied, or opted-in. That’s fine if you’re running a simple campaign. But for B2B, you’ll want to get more granular.
What to set up:
- Custom Fields: Tag users with info such as lead source, campaign, or qualification status. You’ll need this for filtering later.
- Goals: Use Manychat’s “Goal” blocks to track when a user hits a key milestone (e.g., books a demo).
- UTM Parameters: If you’re driving traffic to your site, use UTM tags in links so you can tie bot activity to Google Analytics or your CRM.
- Zapier or native integrations: Push qualified leads to your CRM, calendar, or email tool so you can close the loop later.
Skip: Tracking every message open or emoji reaction. No one closes deals based on a thumbs-up.
A sample B2B Manychat flow
- Lead capture: Chatbot asks qualifying questions.
- Scoring: Tag users by answers (budget, authority, urgency).
- Conversion event: User books a meeting, downloads content, or asks for a sales call.
- Sync or export: User details (plus tags) get sent to CRM or Google Sheet.
If you can automate the data handoff, you’ll save hours and avoid human error.
Step 3: Use Manychat Analytics—But Know Their Limits
Manychat’s analytics dashboard gives you top-level stats:
- New subscribers
- Open rates
- Click rates
- Goal completions
That’s enough to spot obvious problems (like everyone dropping off after the first message). But it’s not magic, and it won’t tell you much about what happens after the chatbot.
Here’s what’s actually useful:
- Conversion rates between steps. Are you losing people at a specific question or offer?
- Goal completions tied to a specific campaign or source.
- Drop-off points: Where do good leads bail and why?
What’s less useful:
- Raw subscriber numbers (unless you care about list growth)
- Open rates (nearly always high in Messenger, can be misleading)
- Counting “engagement” as ROI (unless you’re getting paid by the click)
Honest take: Use Manychat analytics for troubleshooting and quick wins, not for final ROI reporting.
Step 4: Connect Manychat to Your CRM for Real ROI Data
This is where it gets real. If you want to track actual revenue, you need to connect Manychat to your CRM or whatever system tracks closed deals.
How to do it:
- Native integrations: Manychat has direct integrations with HubSpot, Salesforce, Pipedrive, and others. Use these if you can—they’re less clunky than Zapier.
- Zapier or Make: For everything else, use Zapier to send lead data (with tags and source info) to your CRM. Make sure to include campaign and UTM data.
- Manual exports: If all else fails, export from Manychat as CSV and import into your CRM. Not fun, but it works.
What to track in your CRM:
- Lead source = Manychat (plus campaign name, if possible)
- Date of chatbot interaction
- Downstream actions: meetings, sales calls, proposals, closed/won deals
When a deal is closed, you can trace it back to the original Manychat campaign. That’s real ROI, not just clicks.
Pro tip: Set up regular reports (weekly or monthly) so you don’t have to dig for data when someone asks, “Is this bot actually working?”
Step 5: Calculate ROI—For Real
Now that you’ve got conversion and revenue data, you can actually measure ROI.
A simple formula for B2B campaigns:
ROI = (Revenue from deals sourced via Manychat – Campaign costs) / Campaign costs
- Revenue: Closed/won deals that started with a Manychat conversation
- Campaign costs: Ad spend, bot building time (if you want to get fancy), software fees
Watch out for:
- Attribution fights: Sales will want credit for deals, marketing will too. Be transparent about how you count “sourced by Manychat.”
- Multi-touch journeys: If a lead comes from both a webinar and Manychat, don’t double-count.
- Tiny sample sizes: One monster deal can skew your data. Look for patterns over time, not one-offs.
Skip: Calculating ROI based on “engagement value” or assigning fake dollar amounts to likes and clicks. Stick to real revenue.
Step 6: Report Only What Matters
When it’s time to show results, keep it simple. Fancy dashboards might look cool, but busy teams want to see:
- How many real leads did we get?
- How many turned into meetings, opportunities, or sales?
- How much revenue can we tie back (reasonably) to Manychat?
If you’re getting lost in metrics, cut back. Most execs care about pipeline and closed deals, not how many people replied “Yes” to your chatbot.
A simple report example:
- Leads captured through Manychat: 73
- Meetings booked: 22
- Opportunities created: 8
- Deals closed: 3
- Revenue from closed deals: $27,500
You can always add more detail if someone asks, but start with the basics.
What Works, What Doesn’t, and What to Ignore
Works well:
- Tagging and tracking user journeys with custom fields
- Integrating with your CRM for closed-loop reporting
- Using goals to measure key conversion events
Doesn’t work so well:
- Relying on Manychat analytics alone for full-funnel ROI
- Tracking “engagement” metrics as a proxy for revenue
- Hoping for perfect attribution (it doesn’t exist)
Ignore:
- Vanity metrics (“Our open rates are 98%!”)
- Overly complex multi-touch attribution models
- Month-long data deep-dives that don’t change your next campaign
Keep It Simple and Iterate
The best B2B marketers I know don’t spend all day building dashboards. They pick a conversion that matters, track it in Manychat, sync it to their CRM, and check if it’s moving the needle. If it’s not, they tweak and try again.
Don’t chase perfect data. Get just enough info to make decisions, then run your next campaign a little smarter. If you stick to what matters—real leads, real sales, and numbers you trust—you’ll be ahead of 90% of B2B teams out there.
Now go track some ROI that actually means something.