Meta Rolling Out Enhanced Business Messaging Tools
Meta is rolling out a number of features aimed at making it easier for businesses to manage communications via Messenger, Instagram Direct, and WhatsApp.
As part of the inaugural Conversations event—Meta’s new “business messaging” conference—a number of new features have been announced. Each is meant to help streamline the way businesses use Meta’s apps to manage customer communication, “whether it’s DMing brands, browsing product catalogs, asking for support, or interacting with stories.”
Each feature aims to help businesses:
Start conversations with customers.
Scale through conversations.
Delight customers with a seamless experience.
The updates and new products include:
Recurring Notifications on Messenger – A feature that lets you send Recurring Notifications on a topic, and a frequency, a user has opted-in to. The feature aims to help businesses engage people with tailored messaging at the best time. Note: This feature is currently free but Meta’s Developer website says that they intend to charge businesses to use it in the future.
Cloud-based API on the WhatsApp Business Platform – A product for larger businesses and developers to build custom services on top of the WhatsApp platform along with free secure cloud hosting.
Click-to-Message Ads – This already popular ad format does not seem to have chanced, but it is getting renewed attention and promotion. The ads “help customers to immediately start conversations with business with buttons that click over to Messenger or WhatsApp.”
Why it Matters
The existence of the new Conversations business messaging conference is itself a sign that Meta is investing heavily in making messaging interactions a key part of the way businesses interact on their social apps.
According to Social Media Today, this is all part of a larger push toward integrating all messaging platforms into one dashboard for businesses:
“Eventually, all of your various Meta inboxes (Messenger, WhatsApp, IG Direct) will be integrated into one, so you can carry on your private discussions in any app you choose. Meta has delayed that process till 2023 at least, so that it can address regulatory concerns about the expansion of messaging encryption, but this new integration is another small element in that larger push.”
The Facebook/Meta team closed their $1B acquisition of CRM provider Kustomer in February, so it makes sense that the focus on customer management is becoming more clear.
“The trend is clear – messaging represents a new digital frontier, and similar to the shift to mobile 10 years ago, businesses need to prepare. ”
How this directly impacts marketers today may depend on the nature of your social media strategy. If direct messaging isn’t part of it currently, you may be well served to take a fresh look at how your audience uses DMs and whether or not your brand should be interacting in these spaces.
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