As many of you now know, the Facebook Messenger Policy changes are coming up. As of March 4th, 2020, businesses will not be allowed to send non-promotional subscription messages. The only ones that will be able to are news feeds. Relevant pages should submit their application immediately to register with the News Page Index to allow sufficient time for review and approval before the new policies go into effect.
While many people are concerned about how the changes will affect their business, there’s a lot you can do to adjust your tactics and benefit from it.
Here’s a look at best practices from expert Messenger Marketers for tackling the changes.
New Messenger Marketing Best Practices
1. Provide Valuable Content for Subscribers
The best Messenger Marketing strategies are driven by communication, education, and nurturing engaged audiences. And doing it involves providing value to subscribers from the first interaction to the first sale, and beyond.
Manuel Suarez, CEO of AMG Marketing, speaks to this:
“Messenger is a platform to engage, to nurture, to educate, to provide value, and that gives you the right to sell. If you don’t do that, forget about it, you don’t qualify for messenger. The way that you make yourself special in the social media world is by having information that most people don’t have.”
Not sure where to start? Jump over to AnswerThePublic and find out what questions people are asking about your industry. Then create content to answer them.
Manuel advises:
“Give prospects and customers value inside Messenger. Something that’s going to make their lives better; about their style, real estate, the economy, news, brands they’re interested in. My Messenger strategy revolves around building engaged audiences with educational content.”
2. Determine What Tags to Use
You’ll want to find what Message Tags work for any non-promotional broadcasts sent outside of 24+1. There are 17 different use cases which typically revolve around sending notifications or updates.
Kelly Mirabella, Founder of Stellar Media Marketing, suggests:
“Our biggest weapon is knowledge. How we understand Message Tags and where our messages fall, then using those properly. Find what tags your strategy will follow. You don’t have to just use one. You can use different tags for different messages — that’s one of the most powerful things for Messenger Marketers to grasp right now.”
Mary Kathryn Johnson, Founder of Messenger Funnels, adds to this:
“If they [client] doesn’t meet those [subscription messaging] criteria, I rely on non-promotional tagging. eCommerce clients send receipts and order confirmations, all falling under non-promotional tagging.”
Read the full list of Message Tags for more.
3. Send Ads to Warm Audiences
Warm audiences are people who already know about your brand and your products and services. Sending Sponsored Messages or Click-to-Messenger ads to them is a great way to reduce costs versus going after cold leads.
Kelly adds to this:
“Cold lead ads are three or four times more expensive than they used to be — it’s crazy. But when you use a warm audience in your ad, it brings the price down. Remarket using your Messenger audience to get them back into your bot.”
John Preston, Director at Superstar Bots, tell us:
“It’s [the changes] really going to highlight your value [as a marketer]. If you send sponsored messages, you now have an opportunity to create super-targeted audiences. For $20 spend, 1000 messages go to the right people.”
Once a customer re-engages with your bot, you refresh the 24+1 cycle and can nurture them with a new sequence.
4. Create Engaging Organic Sequences
The more you learn about your customers, the better you can personalize your message to them. For Messenger Marketers, this means creating segmented, niche sequences that help subscribers reach their goals.
John started to shorten up sequences, and has seen higher engagement because of it:
“What I’m doing is making sequences shorter, three or five-day challenges with high engagement all the way through. So people are constantly clicking buttons and constantly doing something. We’re kind of keeping within that, so we can legitimately give an upsell at the end of it.”
5. Focus On Your Community
And last but not least, Kelly couldn’t have put it any better:
“Community should be the focus of everything we do. Marketing for big numbers is gone. Niches build riches. We need to start focusing on the user experience because it helps community and relationship growth. Marketers hate that it takes longer. But Messenger will speed the process up.”
What you can do
Whether you use subscription messaging or not, your Messenger bot goal should be providing valuable and educational information for subscribers. This approach will not only help improve your 1:1 marketing efforts, but also build a community around your brand.
Your next steps?
- Decide if you need subscription messaging, then apply for it.
- Check out top tips for your new Messenger strategy.
- Carry on marketing.
