WhatsApp is rapidly scaling up to becoming a commercial behemoth, by capitalizing its significantly large user base. But more of that in another post.
Meta has now allowed enterprises using the WhatsApp Business API, to send out promotional messages (aka templates, in WhatsApp parlance) and have started approving them. You now have a free pass to reach out to your customers, outside the Session / Conversation timeframes, with promotional messages.
There is no new category of template message introduced, to facilitate this, so you can use any of the existing categories, to start your customer conversations. Meta is actively supporting and approving promotional messages, as they liberalize the WhatsApp Business API and timeframes have come down to minutes.
However, this comes with a caveat – Meta, will be very closely monitoring the recipient responses to your templates. Too many recipients responding with a Block or Report will immediately see a reaction from Meta, to either throttle the template broadcast in case you had initiated a bulk broadcast or even block the template itself. In extreme cases, Meta can block your Business Account itself which will then undergo scrutiny.
Our reasoned proposition to all our platform users as well as anybody who is using the WhatsApp Business API and is planning to use it for promotions is – when you are undertaking promotions, send out a broadcast to a small user base. Evaluate their responses and then expand the recipient coverage in a stepped manner, to minimize any WhatsApp reaction risks.
Mehery Smart messaging, allows you to segment your user base, allowing you to manage this structured promotional message broadcasts.
Contact us at sales@mehery.com to get us involved in your success.