There’s an exciting new tool on the horizon for small businesses wanting to reconnect with their audience – messenger broadcast composer.
The tool will allow the user to effectively blast messages out to anyone who has previously connected with the business on Facebook Messenger for free (although we doubt that will be the case for long.)
Just months after Facebook announced it was internally testing this exciting new functionality, pilots have now rolled out to selected businesses in Thailand, Mexico and the US.
Just like Dominos send that tempting 2-for-1 text on a Tuesday, even the most technophobic small business owner will be able to quickly put a message or offer together to send out to contacts on the Messenger platform. Currently the builder appears to allow an image, title, subtitle and action buttons, but this could change before the rollout.
(Image source: TechCrunch)
We’re glad to hear there’s some segmentation functionality too, allowing the business to manually segment conversations into groups. For example, messages about men’s shoes, women’s dresses, sunglasses and so on for a store can be used to split the users into segments. This allows you to then send messages to specific groups of people based on their previous questions – perfect for retargeting people with relevant offers.
There is, as always, concern that with display ads, sponsored ads and now these broadcasts amongst what is seen as a private app, messenger is becoming too spammy. But as we’ve seen with the recent algorithm changes on the newsfeed, Facebook will be keeping a tight rein on this to protect user figures.
Currently standing at 1.3 billion users and with a jaw-dropping 330 million messenger conversations started in 2017, there is certainly huge potential for businesses to profit from this latest development.
Watch this space for further updates on the rollout….
