The Chat Bubble

Atmssg.com is a site that shares news, best practices and case studies about everything messaging. The idea is to build community around people running messaging campaigns and to provide information for those looking to launch messaging at their organization.

Please check it out and signup for the email newsletter (yes, I get the irony of that).

Facebook announced big changes with the Messenger platform. These changes greatly affect how organizations can use Messenger in the future. This has created a lot of uncertainty in the space and frankly a lot of worry. 

The good times are definitely over. Facebook Messenger is no longer a channel where you can build and activate a subscriber list. But this doesn't mean that FB Messenger is dead.

In this episode we talk through what's still possible with Facebook Messenger and the type of interactions that organizations should focus on in a post-broadcast world.

Facebook announced that only verified news Pages can send broadcasts. I personally don't know what it takes to become a verified news Page, but I imagine that less than 1% of Pages doing Messenger can be verified. So any Page that has built a subscriber list on Messenger will be losing the ability to freely connect with those subscribers in January 2020.

This is a big deal. There are organizations out there that have built lists of millions of subscribers and they are losing those subscribers because of this change.

As an alternative to broadcasts, Facebook is pushing Pages to use Sponsored Messages. Sponsored Messages are ads, sent as a message. It's easy to understand why Facebook is doing this, but the Sponsored Message product falls very short of what the messaging platforms offered. As far as I've seen segmentation, timing and personalization are completely lacking from Sponsored Messages. This idea is a round peg being sold to fit a square hole.

All of this is a major change in the (micro) messaging space. Like everyone should have expected, the real winner here is Facebook. The change is devastating for Pages that built subscriber lists, and even worse for the platforms that have been powering messaging campaigns on Messenger. If there is a bright spot, Messenger (and Facebook) could change the entire digital landscape in terms of how businesses think about converting mobile "visitors". IMHO that's been the place to start all along.

This episode talks through the big ideas around how messaging can reach it's full potential for organizations. Spoiler alert - we're not there yet. 

This is a more advanced episode that talks through the best practices for collecting user data in an SMS conversation.

I'd suggest that when it comes to messaging, non-profits have launched the most interesting and successful campaigns. In this episode we talk about why that might be the case. 

This episode details why messaging is such an exciting channel for non-profits (and businesses). The ideas behind this podcast are also posted at 101fundraising.org. 

In June I'm presenting a virtual session focused with the Resource Alliance talking about non-profits using messaging channels for acquisition and fundraising. This podcast is the background on that session.

If you're interested in messaging, please register for the free conference and check out my session.

WhatsApp provides some new tools for non-profits and business to communicate on using their app. Here is an overview of the basics as to where an organization can start with WhatsApp.

Derek Johnson is prolific, talking about SMS, RCS and the messaging space on the Tatango Youtube Channel and LinkedIn. He chats with me today about changes to how the carriers plan to manage shared short codes and long codes.

Derek provides valuable information, echoing what the carriers are saying about shared short codes and providing insight on where he thinks the space is heading.