🔔 Recurring notifications, Meta’s new feature

This new feature is great for businesses, but I believe it will somewhat be a ‘spike and crash’ feature. There is a high likelihood of these new notifications getting annoying for users. That being said, you are extremely early to the game. Very few people, creators, businesses have even heard about this feature and even fewer are using it. You can capitalise on the early opportunity.

Put simply, the new “recurring notifications” feature allows businesses to send newsletter-like (mostly automated) messages direct to leads/customers.

This is particularly powerful because Messenger, WhatsApp, and Instagram open rates are significantly higher than the average email open rates. WhatsApp have a 98% open rate & a 45-60% click-through rate, not to mention their 2.7 BILLION monthly active users. It is like email newsletters just coming into existence, but consumers already ubiquitously use it and you are the first business to have thought of it - if you use Meta’s ecosystem within your business, this is worth implementing.

This is a big deal. From Meta’s own studies, Outer Aisle, a health foods company, sent promotions and product alerts through Recurring Notifications. Customers were excited - Outer Aisle saw a 20x increase in notifications CTR versus email. ChicMe, a womenswear retailer, drove a 13x increase in revenue per customer versus email campaigns.

With Recurring Notifications, businesses can:

• Send tailored and timely messages that drive action: Businesses can create personalized messages about their chosen topic, for example automatically notify customers when their size is back in stock:

  
  

  • Discovery: Product discovery recommendations, brand inspiration content, newsletters

    
    

  • Consideration: Product alerts, behind-the-scenes news, pre-sale alerts, recommendations based on past purchases

    
    

  • Conversion: Discount codes, promotional content, loyalty rewards, partner offers

    
    

  • Engagement: Tips, community stories, cross-sells, product service reminders

    
    

• Message across the customer journey: Messages can be sent daily, weekly or monthly so businesses can reach customers at any moment in their journey.

  
  

• Initiate messages that deepen relationships: To help ensure a high quality experience, customers are shown the topic and frequency in advance and must opt-in before businesses can send recurring messages. Also, they have one-tap access to opt-out at any time.

  
  

While recurring notifications is a new feature that Meta has openly announced that it intends to charge businesses for in the future, it is currently available to all businesses using Messenger Platform as part of a free trial period. The feature is available in WhatsApp too via the API, but it is paid. Both are good, probably worth starting with the free messenger version but the price of the WhatsApp use is more than worth it.

Important: being early is a big advantage, but it doesn’t give you a free pass. You still shouldn’t spam or misuse the feature. While that almost certainly will happen and will ruin it for everybody eventually, you shouldn’t add to the problem. It is counterproductive long term, shortening the life of the benefit of the feature and undermining your relationship with leads/customers. Use it responsibly.

💡 Quote I'm pondering

"Luck is the residue of design” - John Milton

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I shared this in my Work Smart Wednesday newsletter. Want the full set of related insights? You can read them here: https://worksmartwednesday.substack.com/p/work-smart-wednesday-august-30-2023

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