Facebook continues to work on building out its Messenger business options – Messenger chief David Marcus recently noted that he remains confident Messenger will be a ‘game changer’ for digital transactions.
And while not everyone’s as enthusiastic as Marcus is, and Messenger Bots, in particular, haven’t resonated as Facebook would like, there’s still plenty of time, and plenty of opportunity in Messenger business.
Really, all it takes is a few great bots or brand experiences that inspire people to share with their friends – a few ‘must-use’ processes, and you can imagine that the popularity of the option will expand quickly. And with the rise of digital assistants in the home, consumer expectations are shifting. Messenger could very well become a critical component yet.
As Facebook continues to build on their Messenger tools, this week, they’ve announced a new set of tags which can be used by businesses to help maintain connection with their audience.
Messenger tags are essentially reminders – Facebook needs to be careful when allowing brands to send messages to consumers that they don’t open the door to spam, which will quickly ruin the experience. But having the ability to stay in touch on relevant updates is a key element of the Messenger process, and as such, Facebook’s added in a range of non-promotional tags brands can use to send messages to users who’ve already initiated contact.
The new tags being added are:
- Account Update: The ACCOUNT_UPDATE tag may only be used to confirm updates to a user’s account setting. For example, when there is a change in account settings and preferences of a user profile, notification of a password change, or membership expiration.
- Payment Update: The PAYMENT_UPDATE tag may be used to provide payment updates to existing transactions. For example, it can be used to send a receipt, out-of-stock, auction ended, refund, or a status change in an existing purchase transaction.
- Personal Finance Update: The PERSONAL_FINANCE_UPDATE tag may be used to confirm a user’s financial activity. For example, it can be used to send notifications on bill pay reminders, scheduled payments, receipts of payment, transfer of funds, or other transactional activities in financial services.
These are in addition to the existing Messenger tags, which include shipping updates, reservation details, appointment updates and game events.
Again, to limit the possibility of spam, Facebook has very strict parameters around how such tags can be used, including time limits on response and frequency restrictions. The idea is that tags will help boost engagement at relevant times, with relevant information, making your Messenger business presence a more important part of your consumers’ lives – as opposed to an intrusion.
Getting that balance right is obviously very difficult, but these tools provide increased capacity to improve the utility of your Messenger presence, helping to solidify your performance.
In order to improve that utility even further, Facebook’s also adding in a submission process for proposed new tags which could add functionality.
The new tags are being added today, worth considering in your Messenger process.