Facebook One-Time Notifications

Sofie Bird

23 July 2021 02:51

With most chatbot channels, you can only send a broadcast message or notification to users who have interacted with your chatbot within the last 24 hours. Facebook one-time notifications allow users to opt-in to receive a single message on a specific topic after the 24-hour messaging window has elapsed. For example, you can invite users to opt-in to receive a single reminder about an upcoming event.

The message must be either a single text bubble or a button template, and uses a special token that allows it to be sent to the opted-in user. The token cannot be re-used: if you want to send that user an additional notification outside the usual messaging rules, you'll need to ask them to opt-in again.

For more information on Facebook's one-time notifications, see the Facebook help.

Plan your one-time notifications in advance

Users must opt-in to receive a one-time notification on the specific topic before you send the story. Make sure you give yourself enough time to create and publish the chatbot content that asks users to opt-in, and receive their opt-ins, before you want to send the story. A one-time notification opt-in is valid for one year from the time the user opts in.

To create a Facebook One-Time Notification, you'll need to:

Create the passage that asks users to opt-in to the notification.
Create the story that will send the notification.
Review and send the notification.

Let's look at each of those steps in more detail...

Step 1: Create the opt-in passage

Before you can send your story, you need to your users to opt-in to receive it:

Create the passage in your chatbot conversation to ask users to opt-in to your notification.
Use the FB OTN message type.
Type a Topic to identify your notification.
Publish your chatbot version and wait for users to opt-in to your notification.

Step 2: Create the story

Facebook One-Time Notifications have strict rules about what you can send your users. The story content can be either:

A single text message.
One button-template message (one text bubble with up to three buttons).

To create the story:

Create a new story in your chatbot.
In the story, enable Facebook one-time notification.
Type the same Topic you used in the FB OTN message.
Make sure the spelling, capitalisation and punctuation matches the FB OTN message topic exactly.
Select whether to also send the story to users who are still within the 24-hour messaging window.
Select whether to send to all subscribed users who have opted in to receive the notification, or only a specific audience segment.
Create the story content.
Save the story.

Step 3: Review and send

When it is time to send your story, you must first review the story in Facebook Messenger to ensure the message appears as you intend. Once you have reviewed your story, you can click to send it to your users.