New Prices, New Era: Personalized Traffic on LINE

Contents

1. Light plan
2. Standard plan
3. Pro plan

Since LINE 2.0 launched in 2019, LINE and its partners have been helping brands, e-commerce businesses and other clients with segmented marketing. From September 1, 2023, as LINE changes how push messages work, brands need to put the segmentation strategies that have matured over the past three years to work, make every push message from their LINE Official Account count, and add more valuable content to each one. Whether the goal is maintaining relationships, running a promotion or promoting content, every push message should have a clear objective, deliver a personalized service to a defined audience, and make the most of every touchpoint with LINE friends.

From September 1, 2023, LINE Official Account will update and adjust its pricing plans:

Light plan

Fixed monthly fee

NT$ 0

• 200 free messages
• No additional messages can be purchased

Standard plan

Fixed monthly fee

NT$ 800

• 3,000 free messages
• No additional messages can be purchased

Pro plan

Fixed monthly fee

NT$ 1,200

• 6,000 free messages
• Additional messages: from NT$0.2 per message, decreasing with volume

(Source: “2023 LINE Official Account plan price changes: the key points at a glance”)

LINE will also roll out more new back-office features, such as step message templates, assigned agents for one-to-one chats, API audiences for step messages, and retargeting audiences for rich menus.

With the shift to the new plans, and drawing on our experience serving clients, we’d like to share three angles for approaching the new plans.

Touchpoint 1: Strengthen segmented marketing and personalized service

As a LINE Tech Partner for enterprise applications, ESi Technology specializes in LINE integration solutions for businesses. We often advise clients to start segmenting from the very first contact with a LINE friend. The LINE Official Account back office offers this feature: it collects information on friends who joined from different marketing channels, making it an important segmentation tool.

A simple example: in the LINE Official Account back office, you can find friends whose source was LINE Pay, which means most of these users have already made a purchase. The brand can then send this group step messages, for example a satisfaction survey within 3 days of joining, or push messages about products this audience is likely to find interesting. Because these friends joined after making a purchase, we know they are interested in the brand’s products, so targeted push messages like these perform better than mass broadcasts and raise conversion rates. Segmentation is therefore a strategy you can start the moment someone adds you as a friend: it identifies users from different sources, and combined with step messages it creates a more valuable sales conversation journey.

Beyond the native LINE Official Account features, the AIM platform offers advanced tracking and segmentation. Brands can set up different entry points to match their needs, such as physical stores, Facebook, the official website or campaigns, to segment audiences more finely, and then use AIM’s personalized menus to deliver more precise service. For example, a fashion brand ESi is currently advising started using the reward card feature in the LINE Official Account back office this summer. They first did simple segmentation with AIM’s segmented rich menus, then pushed a weekend-only campaign to the audience of specific stores. The campaign had a simple stamp rule: shop in store and the staff gives you one stamp, shop again and you get another; collect both and you receive a discount on your next purchase. Within about a week of launch, nearly 3,000 member cards had been activated. This is online segmented push messaging driving in-store sales, a successful example of online-offline integration.

Touchpoint 2: Moving from the Standard to the Pro plan makes service features more important

The clients most affected by the change to LINE push messages are those on the Standard plan, because the most obvious difference between the old and new plans is that the Standard plan no longer allows additional messages. Brands will therefore ask how they can do more precise marketing once they move to the Pro plan.
When Standard-plan brands move to the Pro plan, they should start focusing on fuller service features. The most basic is member account linking in the LINE Official Account, which separates member marketing from general marketing messages more effectively. Then offer complete service features for members, such as member cards and points lookup. Service features like these make the Official Account the first place users think of when they need the brand’s services; they come to the account on their own to look things up or interact with the brand, which makes the audience stickier. Beyond upgrading to the Pro plan in response to this change, we suggest thinking a step further: help the brand better understand its audience’s needs, make every message more valuable, and strengthen interaction between brand and customer. In short, when moving to the Pro plan, brands should offer more complete service features to raise user stickiness.

Touchpoint 3: Build effective step messages and shorten the repurchase cycle by 30%

A retail brand started using the step message feature in AIM this May. After friends link their membership to the Official Account, they receive a coupon. Seven days later, the system automatically finds members who haven’t used the coupon and sends another message reminding them to use it. This automated flow segments members on one hand and prompts conversion on the other, segmenting members online and turning that into in-store orders. For brand e-commerce, marketing journeys built on step messages like this are now widely used in many situations. For example, users who regularly repurchase consumables receive periodic reminders for products such as health supplements or toilet paper; this strategy shortened the repurchase cycle from about 64 days to about 44 days. And brands that regularly message shoppers with abandoned carts can raise conversion rates by 10%. By setting up multiple touchpoints that give customers more interaction with the brand, brands can more effectively strengthen customers’ impressions and loyalty while creating more opportunities for orders.

Want to learn more LINE Official Account marketing secrets?

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