Recently, WeChat officially issued two announcements in a row, and will carry out rectification and standardization of official account template messages.
As an important marketing center for official accounts, the template message has been rectified again. What impact will it have on advertisers, official account owners, and WeChat users?
1. What changes will be made to the template message in the future?
1) Advertising and marketing template messages are restricted from sending
On March 16, the "WeChat Public Platform Operation Center" issued an announcement, saying that in the template message scene, some official accounts used templates such as "points", "members", "events", and "rewards" to issue advertising and marketing related messages Content to induce user consumption. This will be rectified, mainly for the following two types:
▪Use points template to deliver marketing messages
▪Use activity templates to deliver marketing messages
Figure | Screenshot from "WeChat Public Platform Operation Center"
According to user complaints, the negative impacts of the above two types of template messages mainly include: random distribution of false marketing information, and forced push of harassing information. The official restrictions on this are as follows:
▪On March 16, 2023, began to restrict official accounts from adding templates that are easily used for advertising and marketing into "My Template Library"; ▪On March 27, 2023, began to restrict the
templates that have been added to "My Template Library" Template distribution used for advertising and marketing.
2) Standardize official account template messages
On March 24, the "WeChat Public Platform Operation Center" issued an announcement to further standardize template messages.
The platform found that the template messages issued by some official accounts involved but were not limited to product marketing, service promotion, etc. And use color/emoji to induce users to view and click.
▪Violation case 1: The message is mainly the notification content of the service certificate, but the tail/remark field sends marketing promotion content that has nothing to do with the service certificate, and combines custom colors and emoji emoticons to induce users to click.
▪Violation case 2: Using normal service templates to issue pure marketing promotion content, the actual content is inconsistent with the template service scene, and combined with custom colors and emoji emoticons to induce users to click.
Figure | Screenshot from "WeChat Public Platform Operation Center"
From March 30, 2023, the platform will further standardize the template message content, the rules are as follows:
(1) Restrict the display of some message content (the operator can continue to use it without modifying it temporarily, and the display of relevant content will be automatically filtered when sending.)
①The tail/remark field does not support display;
②Custom color content is displayed as the default color;
③Emoji expression The symbol is displayed as "□".
(2) Intercept the distribution of pure marketing messages
The platform will intercept template messages purely for marketing promotion.
(3) Increase restrictions on accounts that send pure marketing messages.
In addition to intercepting pure marketing messages, the platform will also take measures such as restricting the ability to add templates and restrict template jumps to accounts that send such messages.
2. Why did the authorities carry out the rectification?
What are the effects?
The official account is the standard configuration of major brands nowadays, and it has become one of the main marketing channels to distribute content and push event information to users through the official account.
However, the number of tweets on the official account is generally limited, especially the service account only has 4 tweets a month, which limits the opportunity for advertisers to show themselves to users. When the official account launched the template message function, many people found it. Can become an "advertisement space" of "unlimited times".
But this obviously violates the original intention of WeChat to develop template messages.
The official explanation of the official account template message is: "Template message is the interface capability to immediately reach the relevant service results after the actual interaction between the user and the official account business occurs."
That is to say, the template message is only allowed to push the notification message after it is triggered by the user's behavior. The necessary conditions for its reach must be the user's knowledge, authorization, and active participation, and the release style (title, keywords, and release content) must be consistent with the actual use. The scene matches.
As early as 2019, WeChat has rectified the abuse of customer service interface and template message interface for template messages.
In the beginning, many developers and advertisers used their own service account template messages for pop-up advertisements and event marketing. Users passively triggered and accepted marketing messages and the frequency was too high, which resulted in a large number of complaints about "over-marketing" template messages.
Recently, another group of advertisers have placed advertisements on official account owners, using template messages to push advertisements to users and release marketing information such as "points", "membership", "events", and "rewards".
Most of these advertisers are second-class e-commerce companies. Clicking on the template message will jump to the mall. Most of the products in the mall need to be purchased in the form of point exchange + cash payment. It seems cost-effective, but the actual value of the product may only be worth the cash part. , the price of the crossed-out original price is inflated.
Figure | Screenshot from a point mall
Regarding the frequent harassment of such false advertising marketing, after receiving a large number of user complaints, the official took this standard rectification action. So what impact will it have on advertisers, official account owners, and WeChat users?
▪For advertisers:
reduce marketing channels: After March 30, after the rectification of template messages officially begins, marketing content with sensitive words will be blocked and restricted, and this fast and direct channel to users will be cut off; increase operations and
development Cost: After the template message channel is cut off, advertisers are forced to return the message notification method to SMS, and the cost increases. Some advertisers will also choose to develop their own software applications, and the previous development costs for template messages will be in vain.
▪For official account owners:
reduce advertising revenue: some time ago, a large number of second-class e-commerce advertisers poured into the template message field to place advertisements, which brought considerable benefits to some official account owners. After the rectification, the account owners will reduce such advertisements delivered revenue.
Increase the risk of violations: Official account operators need to be more cautious and reasonable in the push of template messages, and the risk of violations increases, ranging from templates being blocked, to recycling template functions; service accounts that used template messages for drainage and marketing before need to find operations again The pattern caters to the platform rules.
▪For WeChat users:
the product experience has improved: many users are disturbed by the delivery of a large number of template messages, and there is also the risk of being scammed by clicking on unknown links; after the template message is rectified, users will receive fewer advertising and marketing messages , The reading experience for the official account will also improve.
3. Write at the end
At the same time, in the "WeChat Open Community", many developers are worried that it will affect their right to use template messages normally, and some even bluntly say that this rectification has a one-size-fits-all situation.
Figure | Screenshot from "WeChat Open Community"
With every rectification of WeChat, there are good voices and bad voices. What is the final result? Will it affect the rights and interests of normal users? How to use the template message to achieve a win-win situation for all parties? WeChat is thinking, and users are also exploring...