What is LINE messaging, and how to use it for customer engagement
Discover how to leverage LINE messaging to boost customer engagement and sales in Asia’s largest markets with rich interactive features and real-time communication.
LINE is one of the fastest-growing mobile apps in Asia with huge popularity in regions such as Japan, Thailand, Indonesia, and Taiwan where they have over 178 million users.
LINE started as a simple messaging app to handle communication challenges during the 2011 Tohoku Earthquake. It has now transformed into a full-fledged communication channel just like WhatsApp or WeChat.
With rich features like chat, voice, video, emojis, and more, LINE is an excellent tool for users to interact with friends and family. The wide popularity of LINE provides an advantage to businesses to use this super app to stay connected with their customers and promote products and services.
Increasing adoption of rich messaging in Asia
According to our messaging trends report, there has been a 51% increase in messaging interaction on our platform, which shows APAC leads in conversational messaging.
LINE has been one of the key channels to drive these interactions across regions such as Japan, Thailand, Singapore, and Indonesia.
Our report shows 126% growth in LINE interactions in Singapore and 29% in Thailand in 2024. As of January 2025, LINE had 56 million monthly active users in Thailand, representing 78.2% of the total population and 85.7% of all internet users in the country.
LINE is one of the most popular channels in the region with a penetration rate of 80% in Japan. Indonesia has a smaller percentage of LINE users, which stands at 15%.
Why is LINE an important customer experience channel?
Today, businesses across Thailand, Japan, Indonesia, and Taiwan use LINE to engage and convert users into customers. Communicating on LINE allows you to reach out to your customers where they already are. Read on to find out why LINE is emerging as an important CX channel.
Building brand awareness
Through LINE, you can make your brand visible by reaching out to the large user base. You can create your verified business profile on LINE using your name, logo, and badge to provide a complete branded experience. Branded messages on LINE are trusted by users and achieve a higher read rate.
Boosting sales
LINE helps you promote your products and services through rich features such as carousels, rich cards, videos, and quick action buttons. You can share coupon codes and seasonal offers with your potential customers through LINE messaging and drive higher engagement and sales.
Enhance customer support
Using LINE as your customer support tool, you can offer real-time assistance to your customers. Two-way messaging feature of LINE makes it ideal to handle support issues, which require immediate resolution. Using an AI-powered chatbot on LINE, you can automate your entire customer communication process.
How to integrate LINE into your messaging mix?
LINE provides two integration options for businesses: LINE Official Account (LOA) and LINE Official Notification. Let’s discuss both in detail:
Line Official Account (LOA)
LINE Official Account is a service that allows businesses to create accounts on LINE and communicate with their customers. Businesses can share general information, sales, and marketing messages through LOA. As a two-way communication service, LOA helps brands create higher engagement and remain connected with customers in real time. For example, a brand guiding a customer through an eCommerce transaction.
Important features of LINE Official Account (LOA):
- Rich messaging: Compared to regular text messages, rich messages help you grab user attention faster using eye-catching visuals, resulting in higher conversion. You can send a single message with static images, videos, or combine multiple images at once in carousel format with call-to-action buttons.
- Two-way communication: With LOA, you can interact with your customers in real time and resolve their queries. Through LINE Chat, Customers can share images, audio, video, and location with the support team to explain their issues better.
- Quick reply buttons: Insert quick reply buttons within your messages, such as ‘learn more’, ‘buy now’, ‘grab the deal’, and more, to help your customers make decisions faster or interact for more information.
- LINE call: Customers can make free voice calls over LINE to resolve issues immediately. For banks or financial matters where immediate assistance is required, LINE Call proves effective in gaining higher customer satisfaction.
A rich messaging conversation on LINE
A two-way conversation on LINE
LINE Official Notifications (LON)
LINE Official Notifications (LON) is a one-way service that helps businesses communicate important information to their customers. Customers can still receive notifications even if they have not added the brand as a friend. For example, notifications can be regarding an insurance premium due or a car service reminder. With LON, you can keep your customers updated and remain connected.
Important features of LINE Official Notifications:
- Transactional messages: LINE Official Notifications allows businesses to send various types of transactional messages like order confirmations, delivery updates, return requests, payment status, service progress, and renewal reminders. These messages are sent after the customer has made a transaction or purchase. Some of the message types include.
- Multiple message types: LON offers several types of messaging options. Businesses can send basic notifications or expanded messages with various details and call-to-action buttons. Users can click on the links within the messages and visit the business website for further information.
A transactional message on LINE
LON advantages for businesses:
LON enables businesses to establish meaningful connections with their customers by turning routine notifications into personalized, engaging experiences. Using LON, you can elevate customer interactions and optimize service. Here are some of the key advantages of LON.
1. Sending important information
LON helps businesses keep their customers updated by sending notifications such as due date reminders, shipping details, flight details, and more. By sending timely notifications and reminders, businesses can enhance customer experience and increase sales. For example, if an insurance premium reminder is sent on time, there is an increased chance that the company will receive the payment on time, and customers will not need to pay any late fees.
2. Reaching customers where they are
LINE has a large user base in Japan, Thailand, and Taiwan, which means businesses can reach their potential customers easily. As most customers are active on LINE, messages sent via LON do not go unnoticed, resulting in higher engagement.
3. Building trust and credibility
LINE Official Notifications messages can only be sent by verified businesses, which makes them highly reliable and trusted communication. There is a minimal chance of any fraudulent account sending notifications, so customers can trust the sender and act accordingly, like making a payment or following links.
4. A reliable feedback option
LON can be easily clubbed with other communication channels like SMS to ensure high deliverability and reach. For example, suppose an SMS notification is not delivered to the customer, LON can be used as an alternative channel to send communication, so that customers do not miss any important updates related to their transactions.
LINE use cases for business
One of the most popular communication apps in the Asia-Pacific region, LINE is adopted by businesses across many verticals, such as retail and eCommerce, banking, aviation, and more.
Banking, financial services, and insurance (BFSI):
BFSI companies can use LINE to improve customer experience, build trust, and increase conversion. Using LOA, different types of business details can be shared with customers, such as the nearest ATM, branch opening hours, and more.
| Use case | Description |
|---|---|
| Personalized marketing | Through LOA, BFSI companies can send new product announcements and tailored investment plans with eye-catching visuals based on customer profiles. Customers can also reply instantly using LINE’s two-way communication feature. |
| Secured communication | Banks and financial institutions often need to share confidential information with their clients. With LON, different types of transactional messages can be securely shared with clients, such as account balance, refund status, transaction completion, and more. |
Retail and eCommerce
LINE is a key business channel of retail and eCommerce companies looking to promote their products and keep customers engaged. With LINE, businesses can create winning marketing campaigns that deliver higher conversion.
| Use case | Description |
|---|---|
| Promotional campaigns | Brands can use LOA to send eye-catching discount coupons, flash sale announcements, and loyalty program updates with high-quality images and videos. In peak seasons, rich messaging features such as carousels can be used to promote multiple products with quick action buttons to drive higher conversion. |
| Seamless shopping | eCommerce brands must remain connected with their customers throughout their purchasing journey. With LINE, customers can send abandoned cart reminders and back-in-stock notifications with links to make instant purchases. |
| Post-purchase experience | Using LON, brands can inform their customers about the order status, delivery time, payment status, and more. Customers can receive real-time order updates, track shipments, and manage returns or exchanges directly using LINE. |
Travel, tourism, and airlines
Travel companies and airlines can use LINE to promote various deals and seasonal offers and increase travel bookings. It proves as a very effective channel for enhancing travelers’ experiences and building brand loyalty.
| Use case | Description |
|---|---|
| Promote travel packages | Travel companies can use rich messaging features like carousels to promote various travel packages. Similarly, airlines can promote discounted flights to specific destinations using videos and images. |
| Manage bookings | Using LINE, airlines and travel companies can ease the entire booking process for travelers through quick-to-action CTA buttons like ‘book now’ that direct users to the company website. If travelers have any queries, they can reach out to customer support through a two-way messaging option. |
| Travel updates and reminders | Once a booking is confirmed, brands can keep travelers informed by sending essential updates such as flight details, hotel information, and itinerary reminders. Any last-minute changes, including gate shifts or flight delays, can be communicated instantly and reliably through LINE Official Notification, ensuring a smoother and more stress-free travel experience. |
How to use LINE for customer engagement with Infobip CXOP
Integrating Infobip Conversational Experience Orchestration Platform (CXOP) with LINE allows you to automate your communication and take your customer engagement to the next level.
CXOP is an evolution of our AI hub that unifies our SaaS and CPaaS platforms and equips them with advanced AI capabilities. The agentic experience agents in CXOP help orchestrate and hyper-personalize every conversation throughout the customer journey. These AI agents are capable of providing intelligent answers based on customer queries and shifting the conversation from a chatbot to a live agent.
Benefits of Infobip CXOP for businesses:
- Enhances customer communication: Dynamic workflows and event-triggered messages help enhance the customer journey. For instance, after a jeans purchase, the AI agent can suggest a matching T-shirt via LINE, boosting engagement and sales.
- Reduces operational load: AI agents handle routine tasks and keep conversations moving, allowing the team to focus on issues needing human attention. This reduces contact center workload and improves efficiency.
- Unified communication experience: Infobip CXOP lets brands manage all customer interactions on one platform, giving agents access to full LINE chatbot history and customer data for personalized service.
Conclusion
Today, most brands in Thailand, Japan, Indonesia, and Taiwan use LINE to stay connected with their customers. If your business is already on LINE, it’s time to unlock its full potential by leveraging its advanced features to create engaging, personalized, and seamless conversational experiences.