The Drop is our monthly update that highlights recent improvements we’ve made to the platform, so you can easily stay informed on what’s new in Smooch. Here’s what we launched in March.

This month, we’ve released our first set of features and API updates for Messenger Platform 1.4 which opened up new possibilities for businesses and bot makers on Messenger. We’ve also introduced Mailgun, our latest email integration which makes it easier than ever to manage email communication at scale. Last, but not least, we’ve launched an Early Stage plan, specifically designed for software maker startups building conversational experiences.

What's new 🎊

Mailgun integration

It is now easier than ever to communicate with customers over email using our latest integration: Mailgun. Mailgun is a reliable email delivery system that enables you to send, receive and track email effortlessly and it scales to massive volumes. It provides all the tools to follow email best practices and manage your email reputation, company domain, SPF & DKIM signatures, constant sender IP and more. It is the best way to keep your email delivery rate as high as possible.

It is clear that email still has its own valuable place in the messaging world. Depending on your industry, customer segments and specific use case, email is often the preferred channel for your customers or the first one they’ll think about using. It’s a great channel for conversations that take place over a longer period of time, that aren’t fast-paced or require longer messages. For example, we see email being the best channel to send a monthly digest or other communication that a customer is likely to keep in archive and want to search for in the future.

For more details and instructions on setting it up, check out our complete Mailgun blog post.

Credit card obfuscation

Smooch now automatically hides credit card numbers in messages for increased security and privacy. Based on the Luhn algorithm, credit card numbers are now replaced by an obfuscated one such as ************4242. This means that your business won’t be at risk of leaking a customer’s credit card number inadvertently.

Early Stage plan for startups

We’ve created a new pricing plan for innovative software startups looking to create better customer experiences with messaging. We want to remove one more obstacle from your path so you can focus on growing your startup. Just tell us a little about yourself, and we’ll let you know if you qualify.

Note that this plan is targeted at software makers only. If you’re an early business, check out our generous Essentials plan starting at $60 per month, or get started for free.

Smooch API updates ⚙

OAuth revoke access API

We've updated Smooch Connect so that OAuth integrations can be disabled via the API when a user removes the integration outside of Smooch. OAuth integrators can now use the revoke access API to ensure Smooch doesn't continue to call their app with webhook events.

Improved persistent menu API

We've updated our persistent menu API to support menu nesting on both Messenger and WeChat. Seeing how those menus are starting to shape up, we also changed our API to allow you to configure each channel separately if needed. Disallowing the user from sending freeform messages is also supported on Messenger.

Facebook Messenger improvements

New image ratio for carousel

You can now specify square images inside your carousel in addition to the existing horizontal ratio default setting. Your designers are sure to appreciate the new, more common ratio. See our updated post message API for more details.

Increased number of quick replies

NPS score via quick replies seems a good reason to crank it up to 11. Our reply button API will now truncate your buttons at 11 when sending to Messenger (note that our API & SDKs support infinite number of replies).

Increased character limit

Our logic will now take into account the increased character limit and let you use up to 640 characters, instead of the previous 320.

Improved webview support

We’ve updated our link button API to support specifying a webview height ratio, enabling Messenger extension when opening webviews as well as defining a fallback URL for Messenger clients without Messenger extension support. Learn more in the link button API doc.

Other polishes ✨

Automatic message delivery logic

When responding to users that have multiple channels linked, either via the Linking API or the Web Messenger, Smooch uses an automatic message delivery logic to deliver to the most relevant channels, without spamming your users. We've went ahead and documented how it works since some of you asked. You can read more about it in our guides.

Sneak peek 👀

We’re hard at work building a number of API wrappers, which will make it even easier for developers to enjoy all of Smooch in their preferred language. Stay tuned for more details coming soon on our blog!

Happy messaging!

-The Smooch team