How to Set Up a Custom Menu and an Auto-Reply on Your WeChat OA

When entering the conversation interface of a WeChat Official Account (OA), a Custom Menu appears at the bottom. And depending on the different settings of the menu, by interacting with it, a subscriber can receive articles, be directed to new links or even Mini-programs.

So for a WeChat OA owner, the Custom Menu is a wonderful feature for subscribers to get more involved with your brand.

As many as three Level 1 menus can be created for each WeChat OA; and for each Level 1 menu, there can be as many as five sub-menus based on it.

To set up a Custom Menu is very easy:

- log in to your WeChat OA Platform

- Locate the “Custom Menu” option under “Function”

- Start setting up a Custom Menu based on your own need

This picture above shows the interface for the Custom Menu setup. By clicking on “Add a menu”, a Level 1 menu shows up, along with its settings to the right.

1. Menu Name:

It only supports Chinese, English, and numbers

It needs to be limited within 4 Chinese characters, or 8 English letters

2. Menu content:

Send a Message

Jump to Web page

Jump to Mini program

Send a Message

It can be a diagram text message, an image, audio, or a video. And no matter which type of message you choose to send, you can either select it from your existing OA materials or upload a new one.

(Note: in a diagram text message, there is one more available option, which is to forward an original article from another OA.)

Jump to Web page

For this one, unless you own a verified OA, you can only select from the rich media messages of the OA.

Jump to Mini program

You can select a Mini Program you would like the subscribers to visit. Or you can also include an alternative web page, on condition that your OA is a verified one.

And as it is previously mentioned, a total number of three Level 1 menu can be created, and each Level 1 menu can include five sub-menus. It means that you can create up to 15 menus, each comes with a different link, article, message, or mini program. And this is powerful indeed and can meet most WeChat OA operators’ demand.

The Auto-Reply function is another feature for a WeChat OA to interact with its subscribers. And there are altogether 3 types of auto-replies:

-Followed Auto-Reply

-Message Received Auto-Reply

-Keywords Auto-Reply.

Followed Auto-Reply

As its name suggests, as soon as someone follows an OA, a pre-edited reply is automatically sent to this new subscriber.

It can be a text message, an image, audio, or a video. Its content can be a greeting, or an introduction of your OA—anything to let the subscribers know what your OA is all about.

Message Received Auto-Reply

Under this feature, whenever a subscriber sends a message to your OA, a pre-edited auto-reply is immediately sent to the subscriber.

And a Message Received Auto-Reply can also be in the form of a text message, an image, audio, or a video.

Keywords Auto-Reply

This is probably the most powerful of all the auto-reply functions. By setting up some keywords for different contents on the OA, a subscriber can receive the specific content based on the keywords included in his or her messages.

And this is how you create a Keywords Auto-Reply:

Step 1: Set up a Rule Name, as a kind of category under which a series of keywords are included.

Step 2: Set up Keywords under the Rule Name. And there can be as many as 10 different Keywords under each Rule Name.

For each Keyword, there are 2 options:

Partial match:

As long as the subscriber’s message contains this keyword, the Reply Content is sent.

Full match:

The Reply Content is only sent when the subscriber’s message is exactly the same as the keyword.

Step 3: Set up the Reply Content, which can be in the form of article, text, image, audio, or video. And there can be up to 5 different Reply Contents under each Rule Name.

(Note: As long as a subscriber’s message contains anyone of these 10 Keywords belonging to this Rule Name, the Reply Contents under this Rule Name gets sent.)

The maximum number of Rule Names allowed for each OA is 200.

So this has been how to set up a Custom Menu and an Auto-Reply on your WeChat Official Account. If you have any further questions, feel free to get in touch with us.