The ultimate guide to Messenger’s recurring notifications 

What is it

Recurring notifications in Messenger are now available to all brands! This long-awaited feature corresponds, essentially, to subscriptions: brands can collect opt-ins to send regular messages to their customers on a daily, weekly or monthly basis, outside of Messenger’s usual 24-hour window. Already available on WhatsApp, we had been looking forward to a Facebook Messenger alternative! It’s now here – and will soon be joined by an Instagram Direct version.

And even better, the feature is ready in Alcméon: as a Meta launch partner, we have already tested and implemented the feature with clients 😉

Why it matters

On the 19th of May 2022, Meta publicly rolled out recurring notifications on Messenger. Why is it revolutionary? 

• With this feature, for the first time, brands can message people outside of Messenger’s 24-hour reengagement window. 
• It’s free on Meta’s side. Whereas WhatsApp already permitted collecting opt-ins for marketing and promotional campaigns, they charged for the messages, which Messenger does not. 
• Everything you can do by email (newsletters, promotional offers, and much more), you can now do in Messenger, with much better open rates. Brands can even think about switching to messaging a part of what’s currently being sent by email (think conversational newsletters!). With a tool like Alcméon, a simple notification to your opt-in base can trigger a whole other series of messages, like carousels, lists, and other rich features!
• Recurring notifications are carefully monitored by the Messenger teams, which prevents any spamming and therefore guarantees a very wholesome experience for users.  Moreover, the business feature integrated into Messenger lets the user manage his subscription. Easy, unambiguous and 100% GDPR-compliant, users can opt-in and opt-out with a simple tap.

Retrieving opt-ins: how to collect them and build an opt-in base? 

• How does the opt-in collection take place?
  • Use Alcméon to integrate a recurring notification opt-in box in your scenarios (see the customer’s experience in the middle screenshot in the visual above). The customer clicks on the opt-in button to accept the notifications over a specified period. The opt-in box is the only way to collect opt-ins.
• How can you form an opt-in base? 
  • Include the opt-in box in your organic scenarios 
  • Create links that send users straight to the opt-in box in your Messenger bot so that your customers can subscribe directly, without going through the entire scenario. Include them:
    • In Ads that Click to Messenger: for instance, have a Facebook or Instagram ad that reads “Brand new: receive our best promotional offers every week in Messenger!” and leads users to a subscription scenario
    • In your customer service and marketing emails, as well as in texts
    • On your brand’s website and mobile app, like in a chat plugin
    • On QR codes
• Why not set a few different audiences? Create bots and conversations that lets you gather the customer information you need to create multiple recurring notification audiences.
  • As Alcméon can create connectors with the marketing automation tools that your brand already uses for emails, you can for example send specific content to customers that are both loyalty cardholders and Messenger opt-ins.

Campaign frequency and reopt-in

• Set a campaign cadence by choosing among the available frequencies:  
  • Send one message a day for 6 months
  • Send one message a week for 9 months
  • Send one message a month for 12 months 
• What happens when the opt-in period is about to expire? 
  • Messenger automatically sends a message to the user, asking if he wants to continue to receive these notifications. The customer reopts in for the same length of time by tapping the “Continue Messages” CTA.

A few great recurring notification use cases

• Retail: let your opt-in base know about upcoming sales and new product drops
• E-Commerce:

• • Send product alerts to your customers, such as back-in-stock products and pre-orders
  • Let your customers know about upcoming promotions, like early access discounts and sales. Recurring notifications provide a great alternative to distributing print promotional catalogs, which are driven out across Europe by rising paper costs, environmental concerns, and new legislation like France’s “oui pub”.
  • Send your newsletter on Messenger to boost your open rate
  • Share tips corresponding to your brand’s vertical: styling advice (fashion retail), make-up tutorials (cosmetics), recipes (food retail), …
• Events: sent event reminders and pre-sale alerts to your opt-in base
• Media: give a boost to your weekly news digests or newsletters by sending them on Messenger

The Alcméon expert’s quote

“The ability to collect optins and to send updates to customers in Messenger has been a long-awaited feature for the clients of our solution. But it was worth the wait. The experience is very simple and very smooth for the customer. At Alcméon, we think that for our clients the potential use cases are really countless. This new feature is game changing and it will bring business messaging to the next stage.”

– Charles Doxuan, CMO & Chief Evangelist at Alcméon, at Meta’s Conversations conference in May 2022

F.A.Q. 

• Is it mandatory to use all of my messaging “slots”? 
  • No, but in that case, the unused slot is lost. For instance, for a customer that is a weekly opt-in, you could decide not to message him on week 3.. Missing a “slot” does not prolong the opt-in period to let you catch up: the opt-in would still be set to expire precisely 6 monts, 9 months or 12 months (depending on your chosen campaign frequency) after it was collected.  Of course, we advocate for regularity but the feature is very flexible! 
• If my customer is a weekly opt-in, can I message him on Friday and then on the following Monday?
  • No. There is a delay to comply with between two campaigns:
    • Daily campaign: 24-hour delay
    • Weekly campaign: 7-day delay
    • Monthly campaign: 30-day delay
• What can I do to avoid having my customers opted in on both Messenger and email? 
  • As customers opt in on Messenger, give them the option to unsubscribe from your brand’s emails by including an unsubscribe link in your opt-in confirmation messages.
• Can my customers opt out? 
  • Yes. As shown in the experience below, the user has full control over its opt-in, opt-out and reopt-in within the conversation. Messenger registers the changes and prevents bad practices to avoid user spamming.

Want more information about the Messenger recurring notifications?

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🎉 Special launch offer 🤑

To help leading brands leverage the power of this new feature, design their first experience and opt-in collect campaign, we have designed an exciting launch offer for Messenger subscriptions, available to a limited number of brands. Contact us quickly for more information!