What is Facebook’s One-Time Notification and how you can use it

Recently, Facebook changed its policy of Facebook Messenger, in which you become more restricted in building your chatbot flows. If you aren’t ready for these changes yet, I published a ready-to-use free cheatsheet for it, so you are 100% compliant with their new policy.

But of course, the Facebook community was not happy with this new policy, so Facebook launched the One-time Notification, which gives you more possibilities within Facebook Messenger.

In this post, I will talk about the One-time Notification, what it is and how you can use it to deliver a better user experience on Facebook Messenger!

Why is Facebook launching One-Time Notification?

So for a quick introduction to the new policy changes:

Basically, when a user interacts with your chatbot, you get a 24-hour window in which you can send any promotional message. But after the 24-hour window, you can only send a message that has one of 4 specific tags. If one of the messages you want to send outside 24-hour window doesn’t have any of those tags, it will not be delivered to the user, or you need to pay for it.

So as you can read, you get a lot more restricted in sending promotional messages to users in Facebook Messenger.

But as Facebook noticed through their community, people were not happy:

We’ve received feedback from our community that some messages like price alerts, back in stock alerts, and tickets now available for sale, are valuable for people and businesses. That’s why we’re planning to launch a new API, which would support use cases where someone has explicitly requested to receive a one-time notification from a business – notifications that are time sensitive and personally relevant.

What is the One-Time Notification?

The One-Time Notification allows you to send a single message per user request outside the 24-hour window.
So if a user requests to get a message for a certain goal, you can send them a promotional message outside the 24-hour window.

So some quick thoughts on the One-Time Notification:

1. You need to get permission from the user
   You need to get permission from the user to send the message, otherwise, you are not allowed to send it.
2. You can send a promotional message
   If you get permission from the user, the message can be promotional.
3. The message must be really specific
   I walk talk about that a little bit later…

The benefit is, is when a person engages with your One-Time Notification message, the 24-hour window will reopen. And then you have again 24 hours to send promotional messages.

One-Time Notification message must be really specific

So can I just ask the user to subscribe to my updates and send them a message every time I put out a blog post? No, you can’t.

As I said before, the One-Time Notification allows you to send a single message per user request. So, 1 request = 1 message. This means that it is really specific. You cannot ask a user to get every update, because then it is 1 request, but multiple messages. So that won’t work.

To give you more insight, here are a few examples:

• Is it all right if I send you a message every time I post a new video?
• Is it all right if I send you a message if I upload my video about shoes next week?
• Is it all right if I send you a message if these 3 products are in stock again?
• Is it all right if I send you a message if the Adidas SL13 is in stock again?
• Is it all right if I send you a message when we have discounts?
• Is it all right if I send you a message when the discount for this December is there?

How can we use this?

First, I advise you to read my free cheatsheet on the new policy changes of Facebook Messenger, which is still really applicable.

Next, you need to create a message that is tailored to the user.

With the One-Time Notification, you have a one-time chance to get a potential customer back. This means that you need to make a message that is so tailored to the user, they cannot resist it.

To make such a message that your customer cannot resist, you need to understand your customer extremely well. You need to know what his/her problems are and how you can provide a solution for it.

But not every customer is the same. So how do you make a message which applies to every kind of customer? User segmentation!

User segmentation

It makes no sense to send out a coupon for white wine to someone who is mainly interested in red wine.

So you need to make sure you make a message that is tailored to the customer. Research shows that:

91% of consumers are more likely to shop with brands how recognize, remember and provide relevant offers and recommendations

How do you do that? In most chatbot software you can add tags to certain actions. For example, when a customer looked at the white wine collection in your chatbot, you can tag him with “interested in white wine”.

And you can do that with all kinds of actions. Based on those tags, you can send specific messages to users, instead of general messages to all kinds of users.

So for the one-time message you can send outside the 24-hour window, you could make a different message for white wine lovers and a different message for red wine lovers! The chances of interacting with that message are way higher because now the message is tailored to them and more personal.

How to apply for One-Time Notification in Facebook

Currently, you have to get permission to make use of the One-Time Notification.

To get permission, just follow these 5 simple steps:

1. Go to your Facebook page you try to get permission for
2. Click on “Settings” on the top-right corner
   
3. On the Settings page, click on “Advanced Messaging”
   
4. Scroll down to “Requested Features” and click on “Request”
   
5. Then a pop-up comes up and then you need to hit “Confirm”

That is all you have to do.

How many times can you use the One-Time Notification?

The One-Time Notification can be used as many times as you want.

Every time you ask for a One-Time Notification and the user clicks on the “Notify Me” button, you can send them one message outside the 24-hour window.

So if the user clicks 5 times on that button, you can send 5 messages outside the 24-hour window.

The key here is to make sure that every time you send a One-Time Notification message, you immediately ask for the next One-Time Notification.

If you do this, the user stays in a loop and you can always send a message outside the 24-hour window (because the user opted in for it).

Can you use the One-Time Notification as of December 16th?

As of December 16th, 2020, Facebook will restrict the use of Facebook Messenger because of privacy rules of the European Union.

Because of these rules, you cannot use the One-Time Notification if:

• Your Facebook Page is located in Europe
• Your Facebook Page has an admin that is located in Europe
• Your Facebook Page talks to European users

If you want more information about the changes to Facebook Messenger because of the privacy rules of Europe, click here.

Conclusion

• The policy changes of Facebook Messenger come into effect on March 4th, 2020.
• To comply with these new policy changes, I made a free cheatsheet, you can get here
• Facebook introduced the One-Time Notification
• This allows you to send a single message per user request outside the 24-hour window
• Use user segmentation to create a single message which is tailored to the user and personal

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