How to Respond to the Arrival of LINE Official Account 2.0
In the past two years, due to the gradual disappearance of traffic bonuses from Facebook, declining engagement rates, and rising advertising costs, more and more people are choosing to gravitate towards the LINE@ Community, with the number of LINE users surpassing that of Facebook. According to LINE's official statistics in November 2018, the number of LINE@ Communities and LINE Official Accounts in Taiwan has reached 1.3 million and 180 respectively.
The biggest benefit of using the LINE@ Community is that for just NT$798 per month, you can send unlimited group messages to friends (customers) who have joined the LINE@ Community, leading many businesses relying on SMS marketing or Facebook marketing to flock to it and encourage fans and customers to join the LINE@ Community.
Good times always feel short-lived; LINE Corporation announced that starting April 18, 2019, the LINE@ Community will transition from an "unlimited plan" to a "pay-per-use" model, and at the same time, the LINE@ Community and LINE Official Accounts will be integrated under a unified name of "LINE Official Account" or LINE Official Account 2.0.
Upgrade Schedule
According to the LINE@ Community blog, after April 18, 2019, new applications or any plan changes will automatically upgrade to Official Account 2.0, with new pricing. A full upgrade to Official Account 2.0 will occur on October 1, 2019, with the latest date for the buffer or migration period being September 19, 2019.
From August 19 to September 18, 2019, free LINE@ Community accounts will undergo an upgrade, and from September 19 to September 30, 2019, paid LINE@ Community accounts (for businesses with promotional plans) will be upgraded.
As long as there are no issues with credit card payments and there is no change in promotional plans before September 19, 2019, businesses can still enjoy unlimited group messaging services.
Upgrade Schedule Update
Perhaps due to insufficient preparation, or perhaps LINE Corporation feared a potential exodus triggered by the upgrade (from unlimited to per-message charges), LINE Corporation announced on August 12, 2019, adjustments to the LINE@ Community upgrade schedule.
The upgrade schedule for existing LINE@ Community accounts has been adjusted to occur gradually from January 14, 2020, to February 28, 2020, with a full transition to the new Official Account 2.0 on March 1, 2020.
If businesses wish to upgrade to 2.0 as soon as possible, they can see the upgrade option in the backend starting May 22, 2019, and simply click to transition from unlimited to pay-per-use.
Understanding One-to-Many Messages (Group Messaging)
- The calculation for message counts is based on (number of sends) x (number of target friends) = (total message count).
- In the computer backend, each time a message is sent, you can send up to 3 dialog boxes; through the Push API, you can send up to 5 dialog boxes at a time.
- The target friends are those receiving the message, so those who have blocked the account will not receive messages and will not incur charges.
Below is the price rate table for LINE Official Account 2.0 (screenshot from the LINE@ Community official blog).
Differences Between Old and New Plans and Rates
- Official Account 2.0 removes the previous limit of 80,000 friends.
- Official Account 2.0 no longer uses "number of friends" as the basis for monthly fees, but instead charges based on message counts.
- Official Account 2.0 opens all backend features; current LINE@ Community plans require fees for graphic menus, advanced video messages, targeted push notifications, and other value-added services, which can be used in the free low-usage plan of Official Account 2.0.
- In the past, LINE@ accounts had to be on the NT$3,888 or NT$8,888 plans to use the Message API feature; previously, Official Accounts also required separate applications for the Business Connect service to use the Message API. After the revision, all features will be available to users for free.
- API integration features (chatbots) are open to all users in Official Account 2.0 without the need for review to activate.
Below is the feature list and account types for LINE Official Account 2.0 (screenshot from the LINE@ Community official blog).
Features Not Affected
- Official Account 2.0 only charges for "one-to-many" message sending.
- Welcome messages, one-to-one chats, and bot replies (Reply API) are not subject to charges (for message counts). However, the Messaging API applies.
Features That Will Be Suspended
- After upgrading existing LINE@ Community accounts to Official Account 2.0, survey pages will be suspended.
- Promotion pages (PR Pages) and mobile website menu items (Account Page Menu) will cease after November 13, 2018.
- Sales of LINE@ Community in-store promotional items will be suspended after December 31, 2018.
Unknowns
- Will there be a limit on the number of posts per month on the homepage (dynamic news feed)?
Clarifications to Make
- What customer data do you have on hand?
- Which channels can you currently use to actively contact customers?
- What are you using LINE@ Community for?
Below are various strategies suggested by Teacher Mantou for businesses to respond.
1. Businesses That Can Only Continue Using LINE@ Community
If you previously added the majority of your customers to the LINE@ Community and have no or very few customer data aside from LINE@, and if customers have no opportunity to join other social platforms, it may already be too late for you to migrate given the large number of friends in your LINE@. Accept the reality; you can only painfully continue using the LINE@ Community while reducing the frequency of group messages, which may impact revenue or marketing effectiveness. If you wish to achieve previous performance levels, you will have to increase your marketing costs.
2. Utilize Targeted Messaging for Specific Conditions
Last year, LINE introduced a targeted messaging feature. As long as you are on the advanced promotional plan at NT$1,888 or above, you can use this feature. Administrators can target messages based on five attribute combinations, including the time added as a friend, gender, age, operating system, and location. Official Account 2.0 has made this feature available for users with more than 100 friends to use for free, claiming that targeted messaging can enable more precise marketing and save costs.
However, LINE has quietly informed users that "user attributes are inferred based on their sticker ownership, friends they have added, and other behaviors," which means these targeting attributes are guessed by LINE. Many tests online have shown that the accuracy is actually not high.
Therefore, even if everyone uses targeted messaging based on specific conditions given by LINE, they may not achieve precise marketing and thus save money.
3. Develop or Rent a LINE@ API System Integration
LINE hopes that everyone moves towards developing chatbot-related applications based on the Messaging API to achieve targeted marketing, sending messages accurately to those truly interested in the business. LINE's API is indeed excellent and can lead to the development of many applications that meet business needs.
However, businesses cannot write programs themselves and will have to outsource development or rent systems, which means that in addition to paying LINE, there will be another cost. Unless there are already a significant number of system integrators in the market with many application bots, costs will likely only increase, not decrease.
We also observe that there are companies in the market that focus on LINE API development applications, requiring only a one-time payment for lifetime use. This type of chatbot has several issues. First, the service needs to be continuous, so it cannot be just a one-time fee for lifetime use; emphasizing a one-time payment for lifetime usage might indicate that this service only profits during its early days, as it will not be long before competitors offer cheaper or free services. In the past, email service providers used similar marketing tactics, and when free services like Gmail appeared, email service providers lost their income.
Second, the chatbots being developed are not intelligent "chatting" robots but are more like answering machines, where customers enter specified text, and LINE outputs pre-set content, similar to the previous keyword replies—just that it can now respond with more diverse content rather than just text, fundamentally not differing.
Third, these companies emphasize targeted group messaging, which still requires payment based on the number of messages. The targeted approach is to surface friends who joined the LINE@ Community, entering a one-to-one chat, and then businesses can set "tags" for these customers, such as previous purchasers or event attendees. Then, during group messaging, messages can be sent specifically to friends with certain tags. But shouldn't this feature be provided by LINE itself? Or will LINE@ Community soon offer similar features? Businesses may rush to sell now, thinking they should charge a monthly service fee, but knowing that LINE will eventually launch similar features, they charge a one-time fee instead, substituting sales for responsibility, because once it's too late, there's no more to sell.
4. Position LINE@ Only as a Tool for Regular Customers
Filter customers to achieve targeting, guiding VIP customers or customers of different values to different LINE@ Communities, reducing group messaging to unrelated individuals, which can save message transmission costs.
5. Use LINE@ Only as a Customer Service Tool
Only use the one-to-one chat function of the LINE@ Community, actively notifying (group messaging) on other platforms or apps.
6. Switch to Facebook Fan Pages
Facebook fan pages currently do not have group messaging capabilities; you must first post, and then you can reach all fans through Facebook advertising. The cost of reaching through Facebook advertising may not necessarily be cheaper than LINE Official Account 2.0 (up to NT$0.2). However, Facebook has the advantage over LINE@ Community that Facebook ads can reach fans' friends and family or specific audience segments, which LINE cannot currently do. Advertising on Facebook is very suitable for developing unfamiliar customers; although you cannot actively message fans, you can still achieve similar effects.
Managing a fan page is essential. In terms of social effectiveness and unfamiliar customer development, Facebook is still superior to LINE@ Community.
7. Switch to an Instagram Business Account
IG business accounts currently do not have group messaging capabilities; you must post and then reach fans through IG advertising (similar to Facebook ads). Additionally, IG ads can reach fans' friends or specific audience segments. IG ads are more suitable for developing unfamiliar customers, and the cost of reaching out via IG ads may not necessarily be cheaper than LINE Official Account 2.0 (up to NT$0.2).
8. Switch to Email
In the pre-LINE era, email was a very important communication tool. If you have many customers' emails, using mailing software or renting email newsletter services can also achieve group messaging. The cost per single email for sending newsletters is between NT$0.4 to NT$0.14, which is similar to LINE Official Account 2.0. However, it's unfortunate that modern individuals (especially those under 30) use email less frequently; mass emails are also often categorized as spam, leaving customers with no opportunity to open them. In contrast to LINE's 100% delivery rate and high open rate, the importance of email newsletters (EDM) in marketing may continue to diminish.
9. Switch to SMS
SMS is the most traditional yet effective communication tool, with high delivery and open rates being its advantages. However, compared to LINE@, SMS costs (NT$1.0) are higher than LINE@ costs (NT$0.2). SMS primarily uses text, and multimedia messages (images, videos) are even more expensive. Using SMS still does not compare to using LINE@.
If Taiwanese telecom operators could significantly lower SMS costs, reliance on LINE would not be so severe. Now, people use LINE for calls and messages, while telecom operators suffer revenue loss due to LINE's impact, and in their short-term maintenance of vested interests, they have not considered market trends, ultimately losing out on a larger market.
10. Switch to Other Apps
LINE's absolute advantage lies in the fact that almost every smartphone user in Taiwan has LINE installed and frequently uses it. If a business switches to another app, customers must first search for, download, and install the app, then start learning how to use it. After all, it is unfamiliar software, and switching to another app may significantly reduce customers' willingness to use it.
Unless such apps are specially designed for your industry, like an electronic contact book app for tutoring centers or a resident management app for property management companies. Since mass notifications are just one push notification feature of these apps, while they can solve one-to-many messaging, you still have to rent such apps, with membership numbers being a common charging method (number of users x days = monthly fee). If it is simply to replace LINE@, the costs of such apps may not be cost-effective, especially for businesses with a large number of customers.
11. Develop Your Own App
Can we hire someone to develop a similar app to LINE? Unless you are a large enterprise, developing an app similar to LINE@'s functions is not cheap. A simple app could cost hundreds of thousands, and a fully functional app could cost at least a million in development fees, not including future maintenance costs. The speed of updates for mobile operating systems is faster than that of computer operating systems; when a new version of the operating system is released, the app must be immediately corrected and updated; otherwise, some customers who upgrade to the new operating system will be unable to use it, leading to ongoing costs for modifications and maintenance. Unless it is a company with a sufficient budget, small and medium-sized enterprises find it challenging to afford the costs of developing their own apps, and it does not have economic feasibility.
12. Use LINE with Group Messaging Software
You can switch to using LINE instead of LINE@. Although LINE has a limit of 5,000 friends, if we categorize customers, join different LINE accounts, and then use AUTOS group messaging software for message transmission, we can also achieve the group messaging effect of LINE@. Moreover, LINE allows direct voice or video calls with customers, which is very helpful for regular customers or in customer service management.
However, it is worth noting that some LINE@ features are not available in LINE, such as multiple management and point card features.
13. Switch to Other Apps Similar to LINE
There are still many instant messaging apps in the market with features comparable to LINE, and some even have more users than LINE. However, if you cannot persuade customers to install and use them, these apps cannot replace LINE.
Final Reminders from Teacher Mantou
Never concentrate or limit customers to a specific social platform. The true key is having real customer data on hand, including names, phone numbers, addresses, emails, LINE IDs, Facebook IDs, etc. Establishing your own CRM (Customer Relationship Management) is the way to sustainable operation!
LINE@ Community is not the only software or application service with group messaging features on the market; there are many alternatives. However, LINE@ Community has many advantages. We should focus on managing the community, especially those formed by customers, groups, or clubs. Teacher Mantou suggests that businesses using LINE@ Community should focus their efforts on "mindful management," rather than merely group messaging or randomly sending advertisements.
知識學院
蘊藏許多助人的知識與智慧。