In an effort to help brands engage with their audience via DMs, Meta announced two new AI-powered tools for advertisers within the Messenger and WhatsApp apps. Let’s take a look!

1) AI bots focused on Q and As

This feature aims to automate responses to common queries, making interactions feel more human and active. By doing so, brands can potentially save time and increase orders with minimal human intervention.

The chats are initiated by users through a click to message ad or by clicking the “Send Message” button on a business’s Facebook Page. During a message, there is also an option to request a human. Businesses can manually jump into the chat when necessary, too.

Meta called out one small business, White Coat Manila, who were “able to save at least 20% on customer support costs” by using the new AI feature.

Once your brand has access, you can get started by sharing brand information and a product catalogue in the Meta Business Suite.

“We’re training AI on the most popular questions businesses receive on Messenger, built with Meta Llama 3, to understand and respond to customer messages about products in engaging and natural ways.”

— Meta

2) Messaging Promotion Option

Marketers will soon be able to create, organize, and send promotional messages via Ads Manager to users who have opted-in to receive them. This could provide brands with more opportunities to engage with customers on a more personal level.

Why it Matters

For many years, we’ve noted the shift toward private messaging and away from public posting. Meta's recent updates aim to tap into this trend and close the gap to help brands with innovative ways to reach customers where they are most active.

For social media marketers, these tools offer a unique opportunity to enhance customer interactions and streamline marketing efforts. The key aspect of these features is they toe the line and avoid being overly obtrusive: Rather than brands showing up in your DMs in a spammy way, users only get messaged proactively if they have opted in.

At the same time, the AI abilities of the user-initiated chats could provide a win-win for customer satisfaction and resource management—as long as the AI works as well as Meta says it will!