Businesses can now add buttons to drive actions in Direct Messages

Today we’re giving businesses one more tool they need to create great customer experiences in Direct Messages. Now, businesses can attach buttons to messages to make it easy for people to take actions outside of the Direct Message conversation – like composing a Tweet, following an account, or opening a website within the Twitter app.

For many businesses, delivering a great customer experience through a bot in Direct Messages depends on helping people complete a task other than sending a message. These tasks can include:

• Tweeting about your bot: At the right point in the conversation, people might want to Tweet to share a coupon or offer, challenge their followers to a game, or tell the world about new content they just discovered -- like a new product or an exclusive movie clip. The unique combination of public and private messaging on Twitter makes it easy for people to become brand advocates by Tweeting about an experience. And by combining this feature with the new Direct Message Card, those Tweets can then help other users discover and start talking to your bot.
• Visiting a website: After discovering content or making a choice in a Direct Message, people might need to visit a website (e.g., a payment page to complete a transaction). Buttons that point to web links open a native browser within the Twitter app, so that once a person completes an action, they can come right back into the Direct Message to continue the conversation.
• Following accounts: With the ability to turn on the setting for ‘Receive Direct Messages from anyone’ not everyone who engages with your bot necessarily follows your account. Buttons let you direct people to your profile page to follow your account, and encourage people who engage with your bot to then follow your Tweets.
• Starting a conversation with a different account you own: Some businesses use multiple accounts on Twitter for different purposes, and at times it makes sense to ask a user to send a Direct Message to another account. For instance, a brand might run a marketing-related bot in Direct Messages in one account but provide customer service through another account. Now a button can be used to seamlessly guide users into a new conversation.

Up to three buttons can be attached to any message and they can be used to open any web URL, including links to other features in the Twitter app. Businesses can fully customize the call-to-action text on a button, including the use of emojis.

Businesses are already getting creative with how these buttons are used. For example, Focus Features has a bot that showcases trailers for their upcoming movies, lets people buy movie tickets, enables people to join their rewards program, and even connects people to a human to answer questions. For their new movie The Beguiled, the bot has additional features where people can play a trivia game to get more excited about the release. After completing a quiz, people are encouraged to share their score and invite their followers to engage with the bot as well.

STXfilms has created a unique bot for the upcoming sci-fi action adventure, Luc Besson’s Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets. The bot enables people to engage in a conversation with characters from the movie, and even go through training to join Valerian and Laureline in the fight to save Alpha. Once people get far enough into the storyline, they get a message with a button attached that lets them know they can unlock exclusive content if they share the bot with their followers through a Tweet.

Buttons on messages will begin rolling out today and will soon be visible across our iOS, Android and desktop web clients. Alongside Direct Message Cards, welcome messages, quick replies, custom profiles, location sharing and Customer Feedback Cards, this feature adds to the canvas available for businesses to create innovative customer experiences in Twitter Direct Messages. Like these other features, it is only supported via our developer API. To get started using buttons on messages, check out details on our developer blog or speak with your bot or customer service solution provider.