2021 LINE CONVERGE Marketing Summit: Key Takeaways from TO THE NEXT BIZ

LINE Taiwan recently hosted its 2021 LINE CONVERGE marketing summit online. Unlike LINE Japan's online DEVELOPERS DAY held the same month, which centered on technical applications, LINE CONVERGE focused on where LINE stands in Taiwan today and where it is headed.

To address shifting user habits in the post-pandemic era and evolving digital marketing trends, LINE Taiwan first looked back on 2021 through first-hand user data. Then, under the theme “TO THE NEXT BIZ,” it laid out its 2022 direction around four keywords—Data, AI, OMO, and VIDEO—and unveiled the latest LINE CLOVA applications along with two new services: LINE MINI App and LINE VOOM.

Official Account Usage Tops 80% During the Pandemic, Making LINE Official Accounts a Key Brand Channel

During Taiwan's Level 3 alert, people spent more time online to keep up their daily routines and essential interactions, and LINE usage grew both deeper and broader. Each user added an average of four official accounts during this period. According to Nielsen's 2021 LINE usage survey, more than 80% of users now use official accounts—higher even than the 70% who use LINE POINTS. Whether it's reading news on LINE TODAY, streaming live concerts and sports, hailing a ride or ordering fresh groceries through LINE TAXI, or handling banking directly through a bank's LINE Official Account, it's clear that LINE has become a channel brands can't afford to ignore.

Brand Official Accounts Grew 18% Year over Year

Photo Credit: LINE Press Releases

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Facing changing user habits and the inability to run offline events, more brands began investing in LINE Official Accounts. LINE's full opening of third-party API integration in 2019 was another major driver. The result shows up clearly in the numbers: official accounts grew 18% from 1.78 million last year (2020), crossing the 2 million mark for the first time.

Heading into 2022, as digital transformation advances and more brands pursue OMO strategies, we expect the number of official accounts to keep growing steadily.

TO THE NEXT BIZ: LINE's Four Core Keywords for 2022

Photo Credit: LINE Press Releases

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Beyond the pandemic accelerating changes in user behavior, brands' digital marketing has faced two major challenges in recent years: the upcoming phase-out of third-party cookies, and privacy policies such as App Tracking Transparency (ATT). Both have sharply limited brands' ability to track user data.

That's why LINE's 2022 direction centers on combining technology (TECH) with video (VIDEO). Through four core keywords—“DATA for customer management,” “AI for caring service,” “OMO to reduce contact,” and “VIDEO for entertainment in lonely times”—LINE aims to help brands build their own first-party data and use it to connect every online and offline channel where they interact with users.

Embrace First-Party Data to Improve the Experience at Every Touchpoint

Photo Credit: LINE Press Releases

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LINE's approach to helping brands build first-party data reflects Social CRM thinking. With today's many digital marketing challenges, brands can only craft precise marketing strategies—and deliver the content each user needs—by understanding user behavior profiles and building first-hand data.

The upcoming LINE Business Manager connects LINE Official Account, LINE Ads Platform, LINE Beacon, and other services, so data from different brands within the same group can be shared across all three solutions. It can also integrate with a brand's existing CRM system, enabling true cross-product marketing and group-wide synergy.

How to Build an Effective First-Party Data Database? CRM Is the Only CureThere are now many first-party data CRM solutions, such as DMPs and CDPs, all designed to respond to increasingly strict limits on third-party data, as privacy regulations like GDPR require companies to be ever more careful with user data. Yet many people online are waiting for Google or Facebook to offer more solutions, and some feel there's no real urgency—if Chrome were blocking third-party cookies tomorrow, solutions would surely appear.https://oakmega.com/blog/crm-solution

Build Warmer Customer Relationships with LINE CLOVA

Photo Credit: LINE Press Releases

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LINE CLOVA's AI technology, already widely used in chatbot services, will expand into more use cases, including AI customer service, optical character recognition (OCR), and facial recognition.

According to the summit, the current plan focuses on Chinese-language text customer service. Drawing on a massive Q&A database built from nearly 1 million chatbot services used more than 100 million times, LINE will launch text-based customer service and aims to move toward human-like Chinese voice customer service. Delivered via API integration, it is meant to reduce busy lines and make customer service more efficient.

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New Services Bring More Diverse Conversational Experiences on LINE

LINE MINI App: A One-Stop Shop for Every User Need

LINE MINI App is set to officially launch in Taiwan in spring next year (2022). Already available in Japan since 2019, LINE MINI App addresses a key pain point: building a standalone app costs brands significant time and manpower. Instead, brands can offer customized services to their target audiences directly in LINE, combining features like food ordering and online shopping, and using LINE Pay to close the last mile of payment. Marketing, sales, and customer service all happen in one place, while staying linked to—and sharing data with—existing LINE Official Account services.

Jun Masuda, Senior Executive Officer at LINE, also noted that LINE MINI App can be designed around the specific needs of a brand's audience and, paired with an official account, can deliver even greater results.

For users, LINE MINI App means no extra app to download and no new account to create—they can meet all their purchasing needs with a brand through its LINE Official Account. And because user information is stored mainly within LINE itself, users don't have to worry about their personal data staying with the merchant, keeping their privacy protected.

Automaker Success Story: Delivering End-to-End Car Sales Service Through a LINE Official Account MINI AppThe car sales journey breaks down into pre-sale test drive bookings and sales follow-up, vehicle delivery, and post-sale maintenance and repair. Automakers' main goal is usually to attract as many test drive bookings as possible, collect a large pool of leads, and pass them to sales reps. But because they can't accurately track each customer's status, follow-up rates after test drives stay low, and after delivery they must rely on sales reps to reach out passively. This lowers service efficiency and makes it impossible to fully extend each car owner's customer lifetime value.https://oakmega.com/blog/automobile-industry-case-study

LINE VOOM Debuts to Take On the Short-Video Market

If last year (2020) was the year of the podcast, it's fair to call this year (2021) the year of short video. TikTok keeps drawing young people worldwide, and YouTube launched Shorts to compete. Now LINE has joined in: on November 25, it renamed and upgraded “LINE Timeline” to “LINE VOOM,” officially transforming it into a new video-centric social platform to take on the short-video market head-on. LINE hopes to leverage its ecosystem in Taiwan, Japan, and Thailand to create more touchpoints with users through video.

In the top-left corner of LINE VOOM, users can switch freely between the “For you” and “Following” tabs. “For you” recommends suitable content, while “Following” shows the friends, creators, and brands a user follows. LINE has also launched the “LINE VOOM Creator Fund” program, inviting creative teams across Taiwan to submit proposals. By combining LINE's ad services with its high user engagement, the program helps video creators monetize their content and further expands LINE's influence in short video.

LINE VOOM Launches in Taiwan, Entering Video Social Media to Capture Gen Z's Vertical-Screen Market: Original IP Shows, 200 Short-Video Creators Recruited, a Goal of 100 Million+ Views, and an Original Meme Song with Rising Idol Lou Jun-Shuo Leading the LINE VOOM DanceWith the arrival of high-speed internet, demand for quality mobile viewing keeps growing, and original vertical short videos are catching on fast among younger generations. To offer richer original content, LINE today (the 25th) renamed and upgraded “LINE Timeline” to “LINE VOOM” simultaneously in Taiwan, Japan, and Thailand, transforming it into a social platform built around video creation and officially entering the short-video market, so LINE users worldwide can enjoy quality content across borders anytime, anywhere. To foster local original IP, LINE will recruit 200 more video creators in Taiwan and, starting this December, launch new “original themed shows” and a “creator native video challenge” to drive social buzz, with an expected 100 million-plus views. LINE aims to make LINE VOOM a content platform bringing together great videos from around the world, a creative hub for creators, and a one-stop entertainment experience. LINE also created an original meme song, teaming up rising idol Lou Jun-Shuo with popular creator Chien Chien to dance the LINE VOOM Dance in a brand video that conveys the younger generation's “be yourself” attitude. The full version is set for release in December and is sure to spark the next wave of social buzz!https://linecorp.com/zh-hant/pr/news/zh-hant/2021/4018

Conclusion

In the post-pandemic era, OMO and digital transformation have become issues every brand must start thinking about and acting on. As the most widely used messaging app in Taiwan, LINE offers a key opportunity: brands that use digital marketing and Social CRM to build first-party data and precisely deliver the right content to each user will be the ones that stand out.

OakMega also hopes to use third-party API integration to help brands take a different approach at every touchpoint and engage with users more effectively.