In today’s digital economy, it seems that each country or region has its reigning social media or instant messaging application. For instance, people in Hong Kong tend to use WhatsApp the most, and those in Taiwan will frequently use LINE. The LINE Official Account was launched for business purposes, enabling small to medium enterprises (SMEs) to conduct their sales and service better.
In 2011, LINE was initially launched in Japan, and in 2012 it entered the Taiwan market. Currently, it has 21 million active LINE users in Taiwan. The Digital 2022 Taiwan Report also pointed out that the LINE messaging platform accounts for 95.7% of Taiwan’s social messaging usage.
According to this analysis report from the Official LINE Blog, users under 24 years old tend to use text messages. In comparison, users over 45 prefer to use pictures or video messages. They also usually tend to send picture messages in the morning. LINE inferred this practice might be because of the “Elders’ Meme” culture.
In addition to providing the popular instant messaging function, LINE has gradually become a one-stop application system for daily necessities such as food, clothing, housing, and transportation. Its subsidiaries include LINE Today, LINE Pay, LINE Taxi, LINE Travel, LINE TV, LINE-developed games (Disney Tsum Tsum), and the most familiar LINE Friends. These complementary apps make LINE a part of the daily life of Taiwanese people.
LINE PC is available to be downloaded.
We can see that LINE has brought a lot of convenience to citizens, enterprises, and companies. Hence, if businesses wish to enter Taiwan, Japan, and Thailand e-commerce market, LINE would be an indispensable instant messaging software and marketing tool. It could successfully help them to win public attention and build brand awareness.
imBee is an enterprise-focused customer service platform that allows businesses to reply to messages from different channels (e.g., WhatsApp, LINE, Facebook Messenger, WeChat) on one centralized platform, making customer service seamless and efficient. In addition, imBee can also provide the useful function of digital invoices.
With just one click, e-invoices can be created and sent to customers. Moreover, you can plan out custom messages and automatically send scheduled messages and event reminders on imBee, thereby saving your precious time and effort.
The LINE Official Account is a business instant messaging software launched by LINE. The usage method is similar to the personal version of LINE, but with added business functions and a more comprehensive suite of enterprise products that can better support the team’s workflow. You can apply for the LINE Official Account and LINE Business ID on the LINE website. You can log in to LINE Business ID with your business account using your email address.
The various types of LINE Official Accounts are similar to those of WhatsApp, which has several different levels and tiers: (1) Unverified Account with a gray icon, (2) Verified Account with a blue icon, and (3) Premium Account with a green icon. Companies can only apply for the first two accounts on their own. As for the green icon, it requires an invitation from LINE to activate.
The functions of the LINE Official Account are well-developed to make it as suitable as possible for commercial use. Below is a detailed list of the unique features of a LINE Official Account and its impact on a firm’s marketing and customer service functions.
You can distinguish the personal account from the official account because they are two different apps. Thus, enterprises don’t have to worry about replying to the wrong customers even though they are busy.
Merchants can have real-time, one-on-one chats with their customers. LINE Official Account supports multiple user management simultaneously. It allows customer service agents to respond to customer queries and interact with customers simultaneously to improve work efficiency.
After the opening hours, companies can switch the Official LINE Account from the Manual Chat Mode to the Smart Chat Mode. LINE business platform provides customers with specific information via automatic chatbots and pre-set answers. Thus, this feature informs customers that it is currently off-business hours and does not deter them from further inquiry.
In addition, merchants can also set up the auto-reply chatbot flow. Merchants should set the triggering keywords and the corresponding replies beforehand. The chatbot will then provide an instant pre-set response after detecting the keywords from customers’ questions.
This card-based message design is similar to the shopping cart function on Facebook Messenger and the carousel layout on Facebook ads. Merchants can send a group of sliding photo-based messages in the customer’s chat room, with up to 9 cards available. Each card corresponds to a specific product or website link. This function is very suitable for marketing purposes.
In addition to sending information about products and services, LINE also provides three other card types – location, person, and image. Merchants can create the most suitable card-based message layouts for their products and services.
Broadcast messages are also called push messages, where businesses can deliver specific messages to a group of designated customer contacts. It allows merchants to send messages more accurately and ensures the marketing budget is effective.
LINE has the same Broadcast Messaging function as WhatsApp. The advantage of using LINE is that merchants can send compliant content to customers without prior approval.
However, for WhatsApp, businesses need to wait for the WhatsApp team to review and pass the template message on WhatsApp Business API before sending messages to customers. Here, we can see that LINE has fewer restrictions and is more convenient to use.
There are two methods to filter audiences in the back-end management system: filtering friends’ demographic information or a custom setting.
When the number of target recipients for the broadcasting message exceeds 100 people, the business can filter out and prioritize the message recipients through built-in user demographic information provided by LINE. LINE provides five filtering conditions: contact creation time, gender, age, region, and mobile phone. The merchant can use these filtering criteria to select the target recipients according to the push message content.
Regardless of the number of target recipients for broadcast messages, merchants can still custom filter their recipient list. When sending a message, businesses can include a group of audience, exclude a group of people, or even create a cross-group list to deliver appropriate information to specified target audiences in LINE.
The default audience types in the Official Account include manually uploading the user IDs, click remarketing, impression remarketing, audience by chat tag, and audience by channel joined. If businesses embed the “LINE Tag Code” on their websites, they will also have an additional category of the audience called the “Website Traffic Audience” to filter in or out.
The rich menu will appear at the bottom of the chat room of the LINE Official Account. Customers can see it when they click into the merchant’s official account’s chat room. According to the marketing events, marketers can update the rich menu with relevant promotional discounts, product information, and recent activities. This feature serves to urge customers to browse the products.
When users go to the “Gain Friends” section under “Home” in the LINE Official Account Manager, they can get the following links to promote their account and raise brand awareness.
You can share the unique QR code of your LINE Official Account on your website or in a printed paper format for offline promotion. A printed QR code allows walk-in users to add a business’ LINE Official Account as a friend by simply scanning the code.
Find the QR code image on the Gain Friends page under the Home tab in the LINE Official Account Manager. You can also copy and paste the HTML snippet found in LINE Official Account Manager into your website to display the QR code image.
By sharing the LINE ID of your LINE Official Account, users can easily search and add your LINE Official Account as a friend. The LINE ID of your LINE Official Account, which starts with the “@” symbol, is available in the LINE Official Account Manager. You can also customize your LINE ID by purchasing a Premium ID.
If you are an app developer or website owner, you can add a button or a link on the website to let customers follow your account with a single tap from their devices. To create an “Add Friend” button, you can use the HTML code snippet found in the “Gain Friends” page of the “Home” tab under LINE Official Account Manager. Copy the HTML and paste it into the webpage where you want to display the button.
For the link, customers can click the URL generated from your LINE Business app: https://LINE.me/R/ti/p/{LINE_id}. It will open a new tab or direct to customers’ LINE app so that they can add your LINE Official Account as a friend.
For instance, if you click https://LINE.me/R/ti/p/@LINEdevelopers in LINE for iOS or Android, it will display LINE Developers’ LINE Official Account profile.
If Hong Kong companies wish to expand into the Taiwanese, Japanese, and Thai markets successfully, they must register and use the LINE Official Account to handle customer service and marketing. imBee integrates WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Instagram, WeChat, LINE, and other instant messaging applications into one platform. We help enterprises respond to customer inquiries and aid in internal information sharing through the company’s internal team chat function.
In addition, imBee’s unique online payment and digital invoicing functions can instantly collect payments to complete orders and issue invoices, which helps merchants to complete transactions quickly.
Companies can also use imBee’s monitoring dashboard to analyze key performance indicators and obtain insights to formulate more efficient marketing strategies.
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