Click-to-Messenger ads are used to drive traffic to Facebook Messenger. When a customer clicks the ad, they are redirected to the Messenger chat of the Facebook page used to create the ad. Before using Click-to-Messenger Ads you need to enable messaging for the Facebook page. Keep in mind that when enabling Messenger you are committing to responding to your customers' messages. Enabling Messenger for your page allows you to communicate directly with your customers.

Two most common use cases for Messenger ads

• You have a team of people to take the lead with monitoring and responding to the messages and you want to get new leads or customers to contact your team through Messenger
• You have set up a Messenger bot to answer the messages and you want to get more customers to use the bot

After clicking a Click-to-Messenger ad, the customer will be redirected to Messenger and will receive an initial message configured with the ad. The customer can respond and continue that conversation if they prefer, or act on whatever information is given to them.

When creating a Click-to-Messenger ad, you can use Link Clicks, Messages or Conversion as your campaign objective, and Desktop News Feed, Mobile News Feed, Messenger Home and Instagram Feed as the ad placement.

What initial message can I send to users?

Content

Plain text message with an optional call to actions: Buttons and Response options

Call to action

Buttons (max 3) that open URLs, make calls, and more. Read more about available button types for Messenger in the Messenger documentation.

How do I create Click-to-Messenger ad?

1. Set campaign objective

The only supported campaign objectives are Link Clicks, Conversions and Messages

2. Choose ad placements

Supported placements include:

• Desktop News Feed
• Mobile News Feed
• Messenger Home
• Instagram Feed

2. Select Messenger as a link destination

1. Set creative type as Page Post Ad.
2. Select Link as post type.
3. Select Messenger as link destination.
4. Configure your initial message

Creating a page welcome message using JSON

With the full JSON editor, you can make use of the most advanced Messenger features and compose a page welcome message consisting of multiple messages. In the examples below the blue highlights show the key points in the message template. Red highlights are for you to edit the content shown to your audience.

Basic message structure

A basic message must contain text or attachment or both. The first example is a message with plain text content.

{
  "message": {
    "text": "Hello! This is the message text."
  }
}

Here is a message with an image attachment. For more information about generic templates, see the Messenger documentation.

{
  "message": {
    "attachment": {
      "type": "template",
      "payload": {
        "template_type": "generic",
        "elements": [
          {
            "image_url": "https://example.com/url-to-your-image.png",
            "title": "Title shown under image",
            "subtitle": "Subtitle shown under title"
          }
        ]
      }
    }
  }
}

Here is a message with both text and an image attachment.

{
  "message": {
    "text": "Hello! This is the message text."
    "attachment": {
      "type": "template",
      "payload": {
        "template_type": "generic",
        "elements": [
          {
            "image_url": "https://example.com/url-to-your-image.png",
            "title": "Title shown under image",
            "subtitle": "Subtitle shown under title"
          }
        ]
      }
    }
  }
}

Personalizing message text

The text of a message can be personalized with the recipient's name using the following templating variables:

• {{user_first_name}}
• {{user_last_name}}
• {{user_full_name}}

To greet the user by their first name, use the following code:

{
  "message": {
    "text": "Hello {{user_first_name}}!"
  }
}

Note that Smartly's preview does not currently fill anything in for the template variables.

Using multiple messages

Click-to-Messenger ads can also be configured to send multiple messages. You can add up to 5 messages. Below is an example of a page welcome message with two plain text messages. Note the blue highlighted parts of the JSON necessary to configure multiple messages.

[
  {
    "message": {
      "text": "Hello! This is the first message..."
    }
  },
  {
    "message": {
      "text": "...and this is the second message"
    }
  }
]

Quick reply options

Any type of message can have quick reply options. See below for an example on how to set it up for a text message. More about quick replies in Messenger documentation.

{
  "message": {
    "text": "Do you like dogs?",
    "quick_replies": [
      {
        "content_type": "text",
        "title": "Yes",
        "payload": "YES"
      },
      {
        "content_type": "text",
        "title": "No",
        "payload": "NO"
      }
    ]
  }
}

Buttons

Buttons can be used with text messages and images. Videos do not currently support buttons. Note that there are differences in the process for creating buttons for a text message and an image attachment. You can add up to 3 buttons.

Note: Buttons in Click-to-Messenger ads do not support app links (or deep links), because link clicks from Messenger will open the in-Messenger web view. See Facebook's documentation for possible button types and values.

Here is an example of using a button template with text message.

{
  "message": {
    "text": "Do you like dogs?",
    "attachment": {
      "type": "template",
      "payload": {
        "template_type": "button",
        "text": "Message before buttons",
        "buttons": [
          {
            "type": "web_url",
            "url": "http://your-url-com",
            "title": "Button title"
          },
          {
            "type": "web_url",
            "url": "http://your-url-com",
            "title": "Button title"
          }
        ]
      }
    }
  }
}

With images the buttons will be added inside the generic template under "elements".

{
  "message": {
    "attachment": {
      "type": "template",
      "payload": {
        "template_type": "generic",
        "elements": [
          {
            "image_url": "https://example.com/url-to-your-image.png",
            "title": "Title shown under image",
            "subtitle": "Subtitle shown under title",
            "buttons": [
              {
                "type": "web_url",
                "url": "http://your-url-com",
                "title": "Button title"
              },
              {
                "type": "web_url",
                "url": "http://your-url-com",
                "title": "Button title"
              }
            ]
          }
        ]
      }
    }
  }
}

Carousel

A Carousel ad can be created by simply adding more items under the "elements" section of a generic template. The same template is used for adding images. Just like with a single image, you can add buttons to every element in the carousel.

{
  "message": {
    "attachment": {
      "type": "template",
      "payload": {
        "template_type": "generic",
        "elements": [
          {
            "image_url": "https://example.com/url-to-your-image.png",
            "title": "Title shown under image",
            "subtitle": "Subtitle shown under title"
          },
          {
            "image_url": "https://example.com/url-to-your-image.png",
            "title": "Title shown under image",
            "subtitle": "Subtitle shown under title"
          }
        ]
      }
    }
  }
}

Creating a message for a Bot

If you are using a Bot, your Intro Message needs to be a button message in order to initiate the bot. See the instructions above on how to create a button message. 

In order to initiate the Bot, the type of the button needs to be defined differently. Instead of using type: web_url you need to replace each button with the following information: 

 "buttons": [
          {
            "type": "postback"
            "title": "Button title"
            "payload":"Payload from your Bot"
          }
        ]

An example could look like this:

Note: The JSON editor is space-sensitive. If you are certain that your JSON is syntactically correctly, please consider using a tool to format or "prettify" the JSON code to fix the spacing for you. 

Spectrm Messenger Bot JSON Starter

The value below can be copy-pasted into your JSON Editor:

{

    "message": {

        "attachment": {

            "type": "template",

            "payload": {

                "template_type": "button",

                "text": "your text here",

                "buttons": [

                    {

                        "type": "postback",

                        "title": "your button text here",

                        "payload": "your payload value from the Spectrm platform goes here"

                    }

                ]

            }

        }

    }

}

Note: The "=" symbol at the end of your payload in Spectrm needs to be included. Do not omit it.