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Everything you need to know about WhatsApp Templates

Templates and their related rules and approvals are unique to WhatsApp. This guide provides the definitions, categories, guidelines, and best practices when it comes to creating, sending, and monitoring templates.

Golden Rule for Business-Initiated WhatsApp Messages

Before you can send a business-initiated message to your WhatsApp subscribers, you need to create a template and have that template approved.

Defining a WhatsApp Message Template

• A template is a pre-built message that can include variable parameters, buttons and quick replies.
• A template is not a live conversation between a customer and a brand.
• Message templates are meant for messages sent to customers based on a trigger or sent to a group in a batch.
• Any template you’ve created and want to use must go through approval.
• Tildei can provide insights and guidance on helping build an approved template. WhatsApp still has the final decision on the approval process, not Tildei.
• Once a template is approved, it continues to receive a quality rating that is monitored by WhatsApp. This quality rating is determined by your customers and their feedback.

The Four Types of Conversation Categories

Any template that you create within WhatsApp falls within one of 4 category distinctions. You choose the category before submitting it for review and approval.

Marketing
‍A Marketing conversation relates to your business, products, or services. These conversations can include offers and promotions, product suggestions, and abandoned cart message follow-ups.

‍Utility
‍A Utility conversation is directly related to a transaction your customers have made. This commonly can include a post-purchase notification and a recurring billing statement.

Authentication
‍An Authentication conversation provides users with one-time passcodes for authenticating their accounts during registration, account recovery, or if they’re experiencing any other challenges.

Service
‍Service conversations are inquiries initiated by your users, and businesses have a 24-hour window to respond. Service messages don’t have to be templates.

Note: Currently, within WhatsApp, you cannot categorize a Template as a Service Message but you can send a templated response to a customer-initiated Service Conversation.

You can find further template categorization documentation and guidelines here.‍

Creating a Template Within the WhatsApp Business Platform

Templates can be built within the Template Manager. To manually create a message template you must first navigate to your WhatsApp Manager and from there you can submit your template for approval.‍

Meta Resource Page for Manually creating a template

‍Template Parameters and Limits

Unverified and Verified Businesses
‍Within WhatsApp, your Business can be a Verified Business and an Unverified Business. The verification limits the number of templates you can create.

Unverified: 250 templates
Verified: 6,000 templates

You can find more details on verifying your business here.
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‍General Template Limit

Providing Samples and Supporting Information for Your Template Review

Once you’ve drafted and are ready to submit your template for review, you are encouraged to submit further examples or samples. It is also best practice to label your template to help expedite the acceptance of your template.

Adding Samples to a Template and Clear Labeling

WhatsApp for Business refers to additional visual files that are included with your template submission as Samples. They are highly recommended to be included when submitting to help the approvals team make a decision on your template. They help communicate a better understanding of the message and context you’re hoping to deliver to your customers.

The sample is also a required attachment if you appeal a rejected submission. It’s incredibly important not to include any real, sensitive customer data in the samples you submit.

WhatsApp provides some examples of sample submissions here.

‍Before you submit your template for review you should label your message template NAME clearly. For example:

• new-store-opening-welcome-message-newyork
• NOT, template-2

Avoiding Common Rejection Mistakes

Once you have submitted a template for approval, it has to undergo a review that takes up to 24 hours. During that review, WhatsApp checks the consistency of the variable parameters (no broken data links or fields), the message and content, how it fits within the conversation category, and if it abides by their messaging policies.

Variable Parameters, Formatting, and Grammatical Errors

‍When creating your template there are some mistakes that commonly pop-up.

The most common mistakes are related to the variable parameters of your templates.

• the correct formatting for curly braces is {{1}}
• special characters are not recognized (#, $, or %)
• variable parameters must be sequential. {{1}}, {{2}}, {{4}}, {{5}} are defined but {{3}} does not exist. {{3}} must exist.

Before submitting your template for approval be sure to proofread and check for grammatical and spelling errors.

When embedding links in your messages ensure that the link is in its entirety and not shortened. A correct example: https://www.tildei.com/

Policy Violations

WhatsApp has two policies for its templates, a Business Policy and a Commerce Policy. They essentially outline limitations on the goods that you are allowed to sell using their platform. Please review both policies and determine if WhatsApp for Business is suitable for your business. If your company violates these policies your message templates will be rejected.

Any exchange of information, sales, reviews, feedback, or promotional information is seen as a Transaction by WhatsApp. Common transaction rejections would be messages that include Games, Contests, and Surveys that do not relate to your company or brand and violate the Commerce Policy.

Sensitive Information

Do not request any sensitive information from your customers such as banking information or national identifying information. This means fully identifying numbers like complete payment card numbers or account numbers. For verification purposes partial identifiers such as the last 4 digits of a social security number are acceptable. WhatsApp is not a secure payment transaction platform.

Duplicate Templates

Avoid submitting a duplicate of an existing template. If a template is submitted with the same wording in the body and footer of an existing template, the duplicate template will be rejected. To avoid submitting duplicates, consider making edits to your templates.

Languages

When creating a template make sure you choose a language that is supported by WhatsApp. Once you choose a language for the message, ensure the content of the message is written in the same chosen language. For example, if the language category is English, don’t then write the template message in German. Here is a list of supported languages.‍

Threatening Content

Finally, never send threatening or abusive messages to your customers. This includes legal action letters or documents.

Opt-Out Instead of Blocking

If you’re sending a marketing message to your customers, it's a good idea to add an opt-out button on marketing messages. Although it is a sad moment when your customers choose to opt-out of receiving messages from you, it does help keep a healthy, high-quality rating on your templates as well as an engaged audience within your customer campaign instead of them reporting or blocking your brand.

Understanding the Quality Rating and Status of Your Template

Once you have submitted your template, followed the guidelines required, and received approval, you’re ready to send. As your template is sent to your customers, it will receive a QUALITY RATING and a STATUS. This information should be viewed as a health rating of your messaging to customers.

The three QUALITY RATINGS are:

1. Green: High Quality
2. Yellow: Medium Quality
3. Red: Low Quality

The quality rating is influenced during a 24-hour period of time so can fluctuate based on the rating provided by your customers.

When your template reaches a level of low quality, the status of the template will change to Flagged or Disabled. If your template reaches a level of Flagged or Disabled you will receive an email notification.

Flagged Status means that your template has consistently received a Low Quality Rating. It should be viewed as a warning status before the template is Disabled. You will have a window of 7 days to improve the quality rating to Medium or High. Once the Status of the template moves to Medium or High it will automatically be moved back to Approved.

Disabled Status occurs when your quality status remains low for greater than 7 days. While your template is in a Disabled Status you cannot use the template to send or edit messages.

You can find more info on WhatsApp statuses and quality ratings here.

What are some limitations to keep in mind when creating and editing templates?

Once you have created a template, the stated standard approval time is up to 24 hours, so allow for that delay before any planned campaign send. You should also be conscious that your template may be rejected and require further edits extending the amount of time it might take before send.

There are a number of statuses your templates can be labeled in, but you may only make edits to templates in the statuses: APPROVED, REJECTED, or PAUSED. There are also limitations on the edit parameters. You can only edit a template's CATEGORY or COMPONENTS, and the CATEGORY cannot be changed on an APPROVED template.

When making edits to an APPROVED template you can make 10 edits within a 30-day window or 1 time within a 24-hour window. An edit to an APPROVED or PAUSED template will be approved automatically, the only exception is if the new edit does not comply with policies and fails a template review.

You can make unlimited edits to a REJECTED or PAUSED template. The template will then be re-submitted for review before the template can be used.

Additional Resources for You to Build Your Template

• WhatsApp Business Platform Templates Guidelines
• Abiding by WhatsApp Policies

If you are new to marketing on WhatsApp - welcome! 👋🏽
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You’re ready to get started, and we’re here to help you with the nuts and bolts. If you’ve made it to this guide, you most likely don’t need to be convinced you should be connecting with your customers on WhatsApp, but in the case you need a little nudge, this post explains it all.

Today, WhatsApp is the most popular messaging app in the world with over 2 billion active users. The US is the fastest growing market, while India and Brazil lead the world in users. As the saying goes, with great power comes great responsibility. Leveraging WhatsApp to speak with your customers gives you a powerful platform and massive advantage, but it also comes with standards and requirements that are important to know. Specifically, WhatsApp has unique processes and rules to ensure that businesses use the platform responsibly.

And none of this should be a hurdle to leveraging WhatsApp! We are here to tell you what you need to know, and how Tildei will help take the guesswork out so you can focus on what you do best - marketing! Let's get started.

Setting up your WhatsApp Business Account

First things first, in order to communicate with your customers on WhatsApp, you need to establish a business account. WhatsApp has different tools for different types of businesses. The WhatsApp Business App caters to SMB businesses, while the WhatsApp Business Platform is for mid-sized businesses and the enterprise. Today we will be focusing on the WhatsApp Business Platform.

The Business Platform unlocks the WhatsApp API. Through it, brands can connect with their customers at scale, send a variety of messaging types, and leverage the full power of WhatsApp. It can be accessed in 1 of 2 ways: you can build an in-house solution on top of it, or you can work with a third party (like us!). To start you will need to do the following:

• Get a phone number: You will need to own the phone number, and it can’t be tied to another WhatsApp account. If you need help with this step, let us know!
• Get Meta Business Manager: If you have a company Facebook Page you should already have this. If not, it’s easy to get set up!
• Set up your WhatsApp Business profile: This is your name, business description, address, website and an image. Bonus: if you are in a country that supports WhatsApp directory, it will also let customers find you there!
• Integrate with your WhatsApp provider: If that’s us, we will take you the rest of the way and give you access to the Tildei Platform!

Collecting Opt-Ins

Now that you are set up, let’s talk opt-in rules and best practices. Like all marketing channels, you need consent to talk to your customers in WhatsApp. That means your opt-in must:

1. clearly state your business name
2. explain that the customer is giving permission to receive messages from you

WhatsApp is focused on high quality conversations between you and your customers. This means that individuals blocking or reporting your messages can result in WhatsApp limiting the number of messages your business can send, flagging you for policy violations, or evaluating your opt-in flows.

To avoid these potential challenges, we recommend being proactive and preventative by building a program that adheres to and goes above WhatsApp’s standards. Follow best practices and keep the channel a place for quality interactions, and the rest will take care of itself.

Think of acquiring WhatsApp subscribers similar to how you think of other channels. You can ask for opt-in on your website, at critical points of the purchasing cycle, and even in store or on packaging. The best part about WhatsApp is that opt-in can be as easy as clicking a link to start a conversation or by scanning a QR code to learn more about your brand.

Tildei will also be there with templates that incorporate best practices and rules from WhatsApp, that remove the guesswork but are still customizable to your brand, use case, and needs.

Sending Messages

WhatsApp is a unique marketing channel for many reasons. When it comes to crafting and sending messages, WhatsApp has a different approach to message types and templates. Today there are 2 types of conversations in WhatsApp for Business; business-initiated and user-initiated. On June 1, WhatsApp will be introducing additional categories for brands to use to communicate with their customers.
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Business-initiated‍

Business-initiated sends are what you send after you receive customer opt-in. It’s when you start sending messages to customers unprompted or without them starting the conversation. For business-initiated messages, you must have an opt-in and you must use an approved template. Message templates are pre-created structured messages that go through an approval process with Meta. To be approved, templates should be clear and concise, free of grammar and spelling errors, not promote any Meta prohibited categories, and follow template guidelines.

The 3 categories of business-initiated messages are:

• Marketing conversations: This includes promotions or offers, informational updates, or invitations for customers to respond or take action.
• Utility conversations: These conversations pertain to a “specific, agreed-upon request or transaction or update to a customer about an ongoing transaction”. They can include order confirmations and other post-purchase notifications and recurring billing statements.
• Authentication conversations: Authenticate users with one-time passcodes (e.g., account verification, account recovery, integrity challenges).

User-initiated or Service Conversations
Formerly called “call user-initiated conversations”, any conversation begun by a customer is now a service conversation and intended to help customers resolve enquiries. If the business replies within the 24-hour window, it will be associated with that user-initiated conversation, and the brand can send free form messages within that customer service window.

Explaining the 24-hour Window
A unique feature of WhatsApp is the 24-hour conversation window. It's not as complicated as it sounds. When a customer messages a brand, a 24-hour timer goes off. In that 24-hour window, a brand can reply with a free form message and engage in a Service Conversation. Outside that window, brands must use a message template to engage.

The good news is, you won't have to do anything to comply with the 24-hour window. Tildei sets the timer and moves customers in and out of conversations seamlessly for you.

Sending messages with approved templates

Having a template approved by the messaging platform is a new workflow. Most of the time, messages like emails or SMS only require internal approvals before sending, but not from the email inbox or phone provider. This can be a new process to understand and learn.With Tildei, we’re removing the guesswork and making it easy with the 2 ways to send WhatsApp messages using approved templates.

‍Use our approved templates!
‍We built templates for you to use that follow all the best practices and rules Meta has laid out. They are also been built with the customer experience and impact focused goals in mind. This is a great option for getting your WhatsApp marketing program up and running in just a few clicks. Get started quickly by taking advantage of templates that meet standards and exceed expectations!

Create your own
‍Feeling creative? Have a unique use case? Create your own template, with our guidance. Using Tildei, you can craft your own messaging, and we will check it for you, in real time, to ensure you are following Meta’s rules and industry best practices. Fast track yourself for approval by submitting it right the first time.

Since January 2018, Meta has offered the WhatsApp Business Platform for enterprise brands. Many companies large and small have adopted WhatsApp as a channel to engage with their customers. The future of marketing is conversational, and WhatsApp is an integral tool for brands to have a conversation with their customers. So…should YOU be marketing on WhatsApp?

Marketers and companies continue to debate which platforms are the right ones to reach their target audiences. WhatsApp should, at the very least, be one of those tools up for consideration. It often tops the list for marketers and businesses who want to begin or continue their conversational marketing journeys and generate new revenue streams.

In this blog, we answer your questions about which businesses are the right fit for marketing on WhatsApp, highlight interesting data points about WhatsApp Business, and share further thoughts that will help you decide if marketing through WhatsApp Business is the right fit for your brand.

Do my customers use WhatsApp?

Yes, customers are using WhatsApp, and more than you might realize! With approximately 2.78 billion unique active users worldwide, there’s a good chance your customers are already on WhatsApp.

Even more, the number of WhatsApp users is growing. Worldwide, WhatsApp monthly users increased by 12% between June 2022 and June 2023, and it’s predicted to keep growing.

This WhatsApp boom is happening in the US too, with 98 million people in the US now using WhatsApp, growing at a whopping 10% YoY. Over 25% of 35-44 year olds in the US own a WhatsApp account while 33% of 18-34 year olds have one.

Are other brands marketing on WhatsApp?

Yes, businesses are using WhatsApp, and it’s in the millions. As of June 2023, there were 200 million business users on WhatsApp, up from 50 million in 2020.

WhatsApp sees the potential for businesses to connect with their customers, so they’ve built two tools to help brands build relationships: the WhatsApp Business Platform and the WhatsApp Business App. The WhatsApp Business Platform is geared towards medium and enterprise businesses while the Business App is focused on small to medium businesses.

The tools are there, millions of businesses are using them, and people are communicating with brands on WhatsApp. The volume of daily conversations between people and businesses grew over 50% between 2021 and 2022.

What kinds of businesses is WhatsApp marketing best for?

WhatsApp marketing can be used by just about any business. Specifically, WhatsApp has a commerce policy that highlights the types of businesses that cannot use WhatsApp for business marketing. For example, the policy indicates that product marketing and sales of highly regulated businesses like tobacco, firearms, and adult content are prohibited.

If your business doesn’t fall into those categories, WhatsApp marketing is for you! Businesses in any industry that want to have a conversation with their customers will benefit from using it.

Retail is one of the top industries for using WhatsApp marketing messages due to the large customer base, eagerness in the industry to adopt innovative tools, and customers with high expectations. Other top industries for WhatsApp include finance, telecommunications, non-profit, grocery, and direct-to-consumer.

Is WhatsApp marketing effective?

WhatsApp marketing is effective in meeting customer expectations, driving engagement, and generating high ROI.

The interaction between brand and customer is now expected or preferred to be a conversational experience. According to WhatsApp, Globally, 66% of online adults surveyed agree that messaging is their preferred way of communicating with a business, with that number growing to 72% among 18-34 year olds. WhatsApp is a conversation-first channel, so building a dialogue is inherent in the technology.

With an average 98% open rate of WhatsApp messages, it has one of the highest engagement rates of any channel. This almost guarantees your message will be viewed and exponentially increases the effectiveness of your marketing campaigns. For example, travel brand HolidayPirates saw 10x subscriber engagement when compared to email.

Brands are also seeing massive returns on their efforts. For example, retail brand SNOCKS saw a 586% return on their campaign spend in just 6 months where they generated more than €1m in revenue through WhatsApp.

Where does WhatsApp fit into the marketing funnel?

WhatsApp views the marketing funnel from a full-funnel perspective. They’ve built their product with the three main stages of the funnel cycle in mind:

Top of funnel - send media-rich messages to customers to help engage and drive product awareness

Middle of funnel - message customers with unique offers and personalized messages to nurture and convert

Bottom of funnel - send helpful reminders when a customer has abandoned their cart and create re-marketing ads that send customers to a WhatsApp conversation

Similar to how marketers are solving for their own funnels, WhatsApp has built a comprehensive tool addressing all phases of the customer lifecycle. Collecting opt-ins, driving customer awareness, newsletters, new product launches, returning to abandoned carts, and other marketing campaigns can all be done via WhatsApp marketing.

When should I start marketing on WhatsApp?

Long story short, start marketing on WhatsApp as soon as possible. View WhatsApp as a new opportunity to directly speak with your customers and have a conversation using their preferred method of communication.

WhatsApp is a less saturated conversation channel when compared to the busy email inbox or the noisy SMS space, making it a channel for you to stand out, easily connect with your customers, and get the benefits of a first mover.

The United States is the fastest-growing market for WhatsApp for both business and personal messaging. The adoption of WhatsApp increases every year meaning more opportunities for businesses and brands to use WhatsApp for their marketing conversations.

Want to begin sending messages to your customers using WhatsApp? Now is the perfect time to start. We’re also available to help you begin exploring WhatsApp, so connect with us to get started.

For so long marketers have been chasing the elusive right message to the right person at the right time, and today’s technology gets you pretty darn close. But being a marketer also means staying ahead of your customers’ wants and needs, and personalized isn’t the same as personal. Today, 80% of consumers want brands to offer a conversational channel and 77% want to use messaging to get help in their initial buying stages. Consumers want it, brands want to meet them there, and now, we can make it happen.

We’re excited about conversational marketing. It’s at the forefront of bringing customers and brands closer together. True 2-way communication is what builds relationships, and it’s a future that’s no longer difficult to imagine. Here at Tildei, whenever we receive emails or SMS messages, we turn those campaigns into conversations. Today, we’re sharing those conversation ideas with you.

Now let’s reimagine these campaigns as if they were conversations:

Suggesting the right gear based on your court of choice / Guiding the product search

Asics has the right gear for the right sport. With pickleball being America’s fastest growing sport, it’s important for their active customers to know that Asics supports them on any court. This kind of message not only drives awareness to other product categories, but it can also be used for progressive profiling and tuning into the specific interests of customers.

Subject line: Total support on any court 🏸

Building engagement and intrigue into onboarding

Email isn’t the only channel that we reimagine as conversations. SMS messages as well can become more dynamic and interactive when moved into WhatsApp. From the outset, when a customer first signs up to receive messages from you brand, it’s a chance to show them how fun the experience can be. Instead of only saying hi nice to meet you, use the first message as an opportunity for them to get something in return. In this first interaction, leverage the more interactive components available to you in WhatsApp and share videos of the product, send store locations, or at the very least ask them a little about themselves.

A Beauty Quiz to Recommend the Best Routine / A quiz

For customers, quizzes help narrow down the right products, make sense of the latest trends, and fill in when speaking with someone directly isn’t an option. For brands, quizzes provide an organic opportunity to learn more about their customers and begin to capture data points, specifically conversational data. And what better way to learn about someone than through a conversation? Moving a quiz to WhatsApp reduces friction and increases completion, staying in one channel versus jumping from email to web to complete. So what if we turned this quiz into the type of conversation it’s trying to mimic?

‍Subject line: Meet our new Clean Routine Skin Care Quiz

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Simplifying the review process

Is it even possible to make a purchase or a reservation or a decision without reading a review? The majority of the decision-making process happens online so reviews provide the information needed to make an informed decision. To make the review ecosystem work, we too have to leave reviews from time to time. It’s not always the easiest process to leave a review though, so we’re turning to WhatsApp to remove friction. What does it look like if reviews became a conversation?

Subject line: Write a review for Robert

Reinventing the newsletter

Newsletters can be long and include a lot of information your readers might not always find relevant to their specific needs or situations. Usually in email, the big debate is about what to put above the fold. But what if we let each individual customer decide what they see first and remove the fold all together? An interactive newsletter enables you to shorten your message and only show the required information relevant to the reader. The options your reader selects can be stored and used for future personalization.

Subject Line: Investing Insights for August

After 20 years in marketing, I can say one thing for sure. Our jobs are not simple. Marketers today are expected to be a lot of things: creative, analytical, technical, great project managers to name just a few. To use most popular marketing platforms, we are even expected to learn a whole new programming language.

Why is this? Simply stated, a lot of existing platforms were built 10-20 years ago. They are powerful, and they can do a lot. But they are built on legacy stacks, often with acquired technology tacked on. The architecture isn’t as nimble as something built today and they aren’t built with usability at their core.

The result? Marketing teams that are stretched too thin - being asked to do more with less and to learn new skills that take away from their core focus as marketers.

We think that marketing should be, well…simpler. We believe this so much that one of our core values at Tildei is Radical Simplicity. With everything we build and everything we do, we ask one question - can this be simpler? If we look at marketing platforms today, the answer is a resounding yes. And for brands to move their marketing to the next level, they must be.

That’s where Tildei comes in. We want marketers to be marketers, and this is how we are going to do it.

Simplicity is at our Core

Think about some of your favorite services. Some of mine - Slack or TikTok for example - are favorites for reasons beyond their utility or content. There is no shortage of places where I can chat with colleagues and friends or stream videos, though Slack and TikTok surely excel at that too. But what sets them apart is the experience. The interfaces are intuitive, easy to navigate, and helpful. When you log into the platforms,  you just know what to do.

We are drawing our inspiration from some of our favorite tools as marketers and product managers. Think Figma, Notion, or Miro. We are building a modern platform that draws on all the things we love about other platforms and more. So what’s that look like?

A modern platform is easy to use

The other day I asked an engineering colleague what they thought a marketer’s job was. They had a great answer: to creatively communicate ideas. It’s why most marketers I know chose this career, and it’s a compelling reason. But the day-to-day reality is often pretty different than what I imagined when I started my career. I didn’t envision being elbow deep in code to troubleshoot campaign errors. I didn’t envision poking around settings and preferences in 10 different platforms, designed 10 different ways, to make a simple change.

Platforms now are built differently, and Tildei is drawing on common and intuitive choices that feel natural to today’s users. Things like leveraging common keyboard shortcuts to navigate around and quickly create,  gestures to view your campaign flows, and slash commands to call in content or functions. There is no new language to learn - we have a team of amazing engineers who do that for you behind the scenes. You create beautiful, dynamic campaigns through an interface that makes sense from the moment you log in. No certificates, tutorials, or dev team support necessary - just your ideas easily coming to life.

A modern platform helps you get started

WhatsApp is a new channel for businesses and conversational marketing is still a fresh idea. Per our value - Radical Simplicity - Tildei is specifically designed to make this easy for marketers. We handle everything from keeping you in compliance with Meta rules to flexible templating to get you started. Log into the platform and you will be presented with the most valuable campaigns to get you going. Welcomes, newsletters, triggers, reviews and more - simply choose the one that makes sense, edit to your specifications, and publish. We put up the guardrails and the creativity is all you.

Marketing stacks are complex and adding onto it is no small decision! Your data needs to be in the right place and different platforms must work seamlessly together to keep your marketing machine well oiled. Tildei makes your most important integrations easy to set up so there is no interruption to your flows, and no barrier to get started.

A modern platform is collaborative

Marketing is arguably the most collaborative, cross-functional role in any organization. Today we use email, Slack, Dropbox, and countless other tools to gather assets, collect feedback, and get campaign approvals. But collaboration can and should happen in real time where you already are. Long gone are the days of emailing around Word documents with “_v26” at the end of the file name. Now, we @ mention a colleague in a Google Doc or share a link with a note, with versions, edits, and comments seamlessly tracked and saved in real-time. It’s time for marketing platforms to catch up.

Tildei is bringing the productivity revolution to marketers, with real-time collaboration and robust commenting. Leave feedback, make changes, and manage approvals in the campaign itself, reducing both the time needed to collate comments and the chance of making errors.

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A modern platform answers “What’s next?“

The emergence of ChatGPT and generative AI is changing the landscape…and quickly feeling like a buzzword. We will continue to be thoughtful about how we build AI into our platform - but it will be core. As we see it, the question marketers are constantly asking is “What’s next?” And that is what we will answer.

What is the next step in the customer journey for this specific customer? What A/B test should I run next? Who should even get this campaign?

As a conversational marketing platform, our vision for AI is likewise a conversation between Tildei and our users. Instead of building a query like:

Gender = Male
AND
State = New York or NY
AND
Purchase date = last 90 days

And then checking for syntax and QAing, you would simply say “Hey Tildei, give me all males in NY who have purchased in the last 90 days”

Or better yet…“Hey Tildei, make me a happy birthday campaign” - and voila you have a segment and copy in your brand voice ready for your approval. The possibilities are endless - more to come on how we are dreaming up AI…

A modern platform lets you do your job

At the end of the day, we think marketers should be marketers. Not project managers, not data scientists, not coders. Between our team, we have both been marketers and built enterprise software for marketers. We know the good, the bad, and the ugly. We also know it can be easier. Tildei is the platform for the modern marketer. Welcome to the future of marketing.

WhatsApp is the perfect platform for retailers to connect with customers, and engage in true conversations that lead to brand loyalty and conversion. If you are looking for creative inspiration to take advantage of WhatsApp’s unique features and provide a fresh marketing experience, we got you covered! Here are 5 creative ways for retailers to use WhatsApp for marketing.

Creative WhatsApp campaigns using QR codes

How can QR codes capture my customers in WhatsApp?

Using a QR code in your customer lifecycle is a low-friction method to open a conversation with your customers. Over the past few years, QR codes have become a common sight for shoppers. They have become familiar with taking out their phones to scan codes on menus, on posters, when standing in line, and in-store. The QR code for WhatsApp automatically routes them to a chat flow from the moment of scanning.

#1 Point-of-Sale Campaigns

The check out counter is the perfect place to gather information so you can connect with your customers online. It’s also an experience we are accustomed to - providing email or mobile numbers for loyalty memberships or discounts is commonplace today. A QR code at point-of-sale is a seamless process. Your customer scans the code, WhatsApp opens with a pre-populated message. Once they hit send to confirm their opt-in they get an immediate reply and on-the-spot discount, all hands off for the associate! Now that they are opted in you can follow up on their purchases, future store events, sales, or any other marketing.

Benefits to this campaign: Collect marketing opt-ins in a new and engaging way, capturing a new audience

#2 Assisted Sales

We have all been in a store looking at a product and wanted just a bit more information. Does this toaster have good reviews? What pants would look good with this shirt? What accessories are needed to make this camera work? QR codes on clothing tags, shelves, or on packaging can route your customers to an engaging conversation on WhatsApp. From the first scan, your suggested replies allow them to choose what they want to learn more about and answer their questions. At the end of the conversation, you have rich information about what is important to your customer, stored to a profile to use anytime you talk to them.

Benefits to this campaign: Influence the buying process, surprise and delight your customers, connect with your customers on topics that matter to them

#3 Post-purchase Reviews

Another use for QR code marketing is within a parcel or delivery package. A flyer with a QR code is included in the box. When scanned, it routes your buyer to a message thread where they can provide a review or feedback. Have them provide a star rating, written review, and even photos of your product in their home. Take it a step further with recommended products.

Benefits to this campaign: Receive direct feedback on your products, shipping, and overall purchase process; generate input about any improvements such as delivery, sizing, and packaging; rectify any situations with unsatisfied customers
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Creative WhatsApp campaigns using URL links

How to use a URL link for WhatsApp marketing

A URL is another way to route your customers to a WhatsApp conversation with your brand. URLs can be used across both mobile and desktop web pages so they’re easy to place throughout the customer journey. Once clicked, it opens a WhatsApp conversation for them to engage with your brand based on the link they clicked.

#4 Product launch / ‘drop’ campaign

You have a new and exciting product launch, and your customers can’t wait to learn when they can get their hands on it. On your product launch landing page, you can include a URL link that will start a message thread. In the conversation, you can share more information on the product and ask them if they want to receive countdown messages so they’re ready. Leading up to the launch you can share the product’s release date and more behind-the-scenes content.

Benefits to this campaign: Innovative way to build on the excitement around launches and ‘drops’, helpful for customers who want to be in the know, URLs can be easily placed on targeted webpages

#5 Early access campaigns

Back to School, Labor Day or another big sale event is fast approaching, and your customers are eager to see your offers. Encourage them to sign up for early access by providing a link that opens a chat where they can opt-in to learn more. You can follow it with a menu of product areas to choose from to learn more. And remember - all responses can be stored for future segmentation!

Benefits to this campaign: Build excitement and brand loyalty, URLs can be easily placed on targeted webpages

WhatsApp is leading the shift to conversational marketing, and it’s changing how brands and customers communicate. A new channel means a new opportunity to build an impactful program. Once you breeze past getting started on WhatsApp, the next question often is, “What exactly should I send? And what are some WhatsApp marketing campaign examples?”

At Tildei, we want to make each step of building your next-generation marketing program seamless, so we’ve got the answers to your campaign questions. Superpowering your marketing team with this popular messaging tool can be as easy as 1, 2, 3. Here are the three most important WhatsApp marketing campaign ideas to get started:

1. Welcome Campaign

The perfect start to the conversation

The foundations of a strong WhatsApp marketing program aren’t entirely different from other channels. When a customer generally opts-in to connect with your brand, the first interaction they experience is a welcome message. A welcome campaign should be the first campaign that you create. Customers are most engaged when they first subscribe, so this is your opportunity to make an impression. If done right, you can win customers for life and have a highly engaged list of WhatsApp subscribers.

Conversational marketing is slightly different from traditional marketing though. There is a chance that a customer might begin a conversation with your brand through a targeted campaign or by asking a general question. In these cases, the welcome campaign can begin after they complete their initial conversation, and let them know the other ways they can continue to use the conversation.

Entry points for a WhatsApp marketing campaign can come from a variety of sources including your own website, a social media ad, or an out-of-home QR code. To learn more about WhatsApp marketing acquisition strategies, check out our blog on How to Grow Your WhatsApp Community.

What to Include in Your WhatsApp Welcome Campaigns

• A greeting and thank you for opting-in
• An explanation of how they can expect to interact with your brand
• Guidance on how the conversation supports their purchasing process
• Requests for additional information to help complete a detailed customer profile
• Messages that are communicated in a tone and language that resonates with your customers while aligning with your brand voice

Creating a Conversational Dialogue

Beyond the initial “thanks for choosing to opt-in,” this is a great moment to orient them to these new kinds of marketing messages, and the WhatsApp channel. You can leverage tools and techniques unique to WhatsApp like sending a list of items from which they can choose to learn more about, or a three-button quick reply which they can easily tap to continue the conversation. Anything that creates a back-and-forth dialogue at the beginning will help your subscribers see how much more conversational this channel is than others.

WhatsApp Marketing Welcome Campaign Example

WhatsApp Marketing Welcome Campaign Best Practices

Personalize Early for Better Conversations

If the customer has shared their mobile number with you in other ways and you have collected data attributes from previous interactions, you can personalize the conversational experience from the get-go. When their WhatsApp number matches the number you have on record, you can apply conditional logic and personalization to make the messages unique to them.

Unlock Conversational Data

No data related to that phone number? No problem! Conversational marketing is one of the best ways to learn more about your customers and instantly personalize the experience. WhatsApp stands out from other marketing messaging with its ease in building a customer profile. Every response you receive from the customer, whether that’s in a quick reply, typed response, or reaction (heart, thumbs up, etc.), can be written directly to their customer profile. For the customer, it’s as easy as tapping a response. For you, the marketer, it’s as straightforward as the information automatically saving to their profile to be used instantly and in the future. You can gather helpful insights on the customer as you get to know each other better while resulting in personalized messages for the customer.

Establishing First Impressions

This moment in the relationship is also their first impression of your brand in this channel. It may even be their first impression of interacting with a brand in general with the WhatsApp messaging app, so it’s important to put your best foot forward. Make it a fun, engaging experience, and avoid selling to them at this early stage. They’re already showing interest in your brand, so help them get comfortable with you!

The Strategic Approach to Welcome Campaigns

This is a triggered message. It is individual-based, sent on the behavior of a customer after they opt-in to your program. The message is a perfect place to begin developing customer loyalty, brand awareness, and engaging your customer base in this popular messaging app. This is in contrast to a ‘broadcast’ message that goes out to a group of subscribers all at once, which is a common business messaging practice, used across other messaging apps.

2. Conversational Newsletter WhatsApp Marketing Campaign

A reason to continue the conversation

We’re all familiar with the newsletter. Whether it’s an old-fashioned paper printout or the email messages in our inboxes every day, we’ve all received and even sent newsletters as promotional messages. When sending a newsletter in the form of a WhatsApp campaign, you can innovate on the newsletter and create a moment to connect with your customers on the topics that matter most to them. The newsletter no longer has to be a push of information, but instead, it can be turned into a two-way conversation that makes the experience more personal. It’s a chance to truly build a relationship with your target market.

Goals for a Conversational Newsletter WhatsApp Marketing Campaign

• Share the latest news and updates related to your brand and cultivate brand awareness
• Communicate authentically - like you’re catching up with a friend
• Provide a pathway for deeper engagement like starting a conversation or sharing input
• Audience segmentation and personalized recommendations based on customer experiences inside of a conversational experience
• Make it personal by including their name, preferred interests, or specific information related to a past purchase

Why a WhatsApp Campaign is Perfect for Reimagining Newsletters

The power of this kind of message in WhatsApp comes from the opportunity to do two things: 1. make it personal and 2. keep it conversational. Because of WhatsApps ability to collect data in real time, you can also maintain a healthy list of active users, measure open rates, record customer clicks, and leverage quick replies to quickly gather data attributes that are helpful to growing customer satisfaction and driving higher engagement.

WhatsApp Marketing Conversational Newsletter Example

Conversational Newsletter WhatsApp Marketing Campaign Best Practices

A Newsletter Personalized to the Customer's Interests

Similar to other digital channels, you can pull in known data points to show you understand them and how they’ve engaged with your brand. Consider incorporating elements like past purchase history, preferred products, and previous customer engagement. Maybe you’re mentioning new products in your newsletter, and you could highlight how a new product pairs well with one of their previous purchases.

Re-Imagining the Newsletter as a Conversational Experience

Make your WhatsApp marketing newsletter conversational and start a dialogue with customers. This is one of the key differentiators to messaging in WhatsApp compared to the more traditional messaging channels like email and SMS, so lean into this improved approach.

Because of the two-way exchange of information, this is your chance to avoid the one-sided conversation style that they're used to with legacy messaging platforms. Instead, craft a conversational newsletter that asks the customer for their opinion or encourages them to reply and engage. This gives you an opportunity to share multiple new products and updates instead of having to choose a single, static message for all subscribers withe a singular newsletter.

Converting Your Marketing Strategy From an Email to a WhatsApp Message

A great first step to building a new WhatsApp marketing campaign is considering an email newsletter and thinking of how it can be turned into a WhatsApp message. One easy way is to segment your email into different talking points and consider leveraging these segments as quick replies in WhatsApp messages to make it easier to interact and allow subscribers to learn more about the areas that interest them the most.

For retail and consumer goods, this could mean looking at your 'new in stock' or 'monthly update' messages with fresh eyes. Think of the way you would normally segment that email, and those segments can become different points of the conversation. Or do you have to send multiple emails over a series of days focused on the same topic? Each of those emails can be combined together into one dynamic conversation.

For travel, you might send a regular email with travel tips and deals. That's a prime example of content that could fit better in a WhatsApp campaign. Give them the high-level topics and let your customers decide the areas they want to learn more about. In the conversation, you can ask them about their preferred method of travel and continue to tailor their updates based on their responses.

The customer’s responses can give you more data to use for personalization or audience segmentation in future marketing messages.

The Strategic Approach to WhatsApp Newsletter Campaigns

This is a broadcast message meaning that it’s sent to a segment of subscribers at the same time. It’s not necessarily triggered by behavior and is instead sent on a weekly or monthly cadence. You can tailor the message by segments and send it to those interested in those individual segments or you can send a broader message to your full, opted-in target audience. Either way, you allow the customer to interact with the WhatsApp conversation to organically choose their own journey. Because it is sent to subscribers unprompted, it requires the approval of the WhatsApp template.

3. Post-Experience WhatsApp Marketing Campaign

A moment to listen to the customer

As consumers, we are all familiar with sharing feedback on our customer experience. As marketers, customer feedback helps us measure customer satisfaction and adjust our strategies. It's valuable information. Oftentimes, the request for feedback comes through the email inbox, but it’s not always the most convenient way to share input. WhatsApp, being a mobile messaging channel, has an estimated 98% open rate, meaning it will almost certainly be seen and not lost in the noise. In addition, instant messaging in WhatsApp will be a place where customers are already comfortable quickly replying and sharing their top-of-mind thoughts.

Goals for a Post-Experience WhatsApp Campaign

• Increase ease and convenience of sharing feedback
• Provide a path to rectify any issues for both the customer and the company
• Offer guidance and additional information on the product, service, or experience

WhatsApp Marketing Conversational Post-Experience Example

Post-Experience WhatsApp Marketing Campaign Best Practices

Re-Inventing the Post-Purchase Message on WhatsApp

Post-purchase (and experience) messages are nothing new to digital marketing, so this is again a place where you can leverage the power of WhatsApp to reinvent the customer experience. This is your chance to make it conversational. Think of how you ask your friend about something they bought or just finished and use similar language. Take advantage of the quick reply option to make it as easy as tapping for customers to respond to your message. Even more powerful is that customers can reply with images and videos, making it that much easier for them to share a thorough, more meaningful review.

Takeaways From a Post-Experience WhatsApp Marketing Strategy

To make a post-experience strategy truly informational, learn from your customer support team to understand common issues or commonly asked questions post-experience. Use this information to continue to improve your WhatsApp campaigns and include it in your post-purchase conversational flow. Give the customer the means to learn more about the topics they care about by using the quick reply or a menu of topics to select.

The Strategic Approach to Post-Experience WhatsApp Marketing Campaigns

This is a triggered message. It is an individual-based message sent after a customer completes an action like receiving a package or taking a trip. This is in contrast to a ‘broadcast’ message that goes out to a group of subscribers all at once. If the message is sent without receiving the first initial message from the customer, it's considered a brand-initiated message and requires approval of the WhatsApp template.

It is Easier Than Ever to Get Started With Conversational Marketing on Tildei

Tildei takes a radically simple approach to building interactive campaigns and driving higher conversion rates with the use of Tildei's AI-powered conversational messaging platform. Your Marketing team can set up and connect with the WhatsApp Business API and send promotional messages in as little as 24 hours.

Increase your customer lifetime value, deliver higher conversion rates, and power up marketing automation with the power of TIldei. Launching a new channel, and building interactive campaigns that are suitable to fit multiple message types no longer has to be a pain point for marketers. You can request a demo by simply filling out our demo request form here.

Still Need More Inspiration? There are Integrated Templates on TIldei

Simply start your newest campaign by selecting from our integrated templates and in one click Tildei will generate a customized campaign based on your company brand. You can also customize the template further with our suggested next-step feature or simply add your own campaign customization!

If the future of marketing is conversational, then we believe that WhatsApp is the channel to bring those conversations to life. There are countless reasons why brands should already be using WhatsApp to talk with their customers - the most obvious being size. A whopping 2 billion monthly active users makes it by far the most popular chat app in the world.

But as we center the conversation between brands and their customers, we think there are even more compelling reasons. Our favorite are the interactive elements native to the channel. WhatsApp has intuitive, interactive features like quick replies, lists, voice memos, images, PDFs and videos that actively encourage conversations in a way thats unique to the channel.

And it doesn’t end there. Let’s get into more reasons why your business should be tapping into WhatsApp now.

Why Businesses Should Use WhatsApp

It’s where your customers are

WhatsApp is the most popular messaging app worldwide. Even more, the US is the fastest growing WhatsApp market. Customers are already interacting with brands on the platform - 1 billion users connect with business accounts on WhatsApp every week. So your customers are there, and they’re already interacting with businesses. But why are they there?

To understand WhatsApp’s rise in popularity, it’s important to know the highlights and features:

• Free for users - Easy enough. While SMS can have high costs in some countries, WhatsApp is free  for the user no matter the region.
• Works across devices - This is key. It allows for easy communication between different devices i.e. sending messages between iPhone and Android devices (example: no more receiving pixelated, shrunken images when sending pictures between Samsung and iPhone devices).
• Uses internet connection to send messages - Instead of sending messages and calls over a cellular network, this feature allows users to communicate between countries and over long distances without any fees.
• Encrypted - For the security-minded, users can rest assured that messages and phone calls are protected from access by third parties unlike SMS, email, or phone calls.
• Interactivity - Beyond just sending text based messages back and forth, WhatsApp supports sending photos and videos, sending voice messages, reacting to messages with emojis, replying to messages in line, and sharing daily statuses with images and video.

Early adopters of the app were users from countries outside of the US, where SMS and cellular plans are expensive, allowing them to communicate without the high cost. Within the US, international travelers and those with friends and family in other countries were first movers because of the ease of global communication. Since then, more and more Americans have become regular users of the multi-platform communication app for the superior group chat features and end-to-end encryption.

An early adopter advantage: less marketing noise to break through

WhatsApp has been around since 2009, but only in the past few years has it really taken off, especially in the US. On top of that, WhatsApp didn’t launch a business part of the app until 2018. It’s a less saturated conversation channel when compared to the busy email inbox or the noisy SMS space, making it a channel for you to stand out, to easily connect with your customers, and to get the benefits of a first mover.

As of late 2021, tens of thousands of businesses globally were using WhatsApp Business. That number may sound like a lot initially, but then consider what it includes. It’s both small and big businesses around the world who may or may not be using it actively and, further, who may or may not be using it well.

This is where you and your brand come in. Not only is it a chance to stand out and avoid the fight for customer attention, but also it’s a chance to show how WhatsApp marketing can be done well. You can set the tone and the bar for the conversations your customers want to receive, and we’re here to help you do that.

Imagine a world where you’re able to have a dialogue with a customer or prospect in the moment they need it the most. They’re looking for more product information or want to learn more about your brand before purchasing, and you’re able to answer their questions.

More meaningful conversations and experiences

As communicators ourselves, when we want to have back-and-forth, in-the-moment conversations to gather information, email is often the last place we turn. More often than not, we’re not even turning to SMS. More and more, we’re using messaging apps, pinging a colleague or chatting a friend, to get insight or start a conversation.

This dynamic, interactive conversation plus the audio and visual component, is possible within WhatsApp. Comparing and contrasting to email or SMS is difficult because with WhatsApp you have a whole new set of capabilities and richness not accessible in the previous channels. Think of it as the richness that’s in email, combined with the status updates that are possible in social, and supported by the interactive messaging capability only available in chat app messaging.

Better and more actionable metrics

Marketing, and more specifically messaging, is measured by the metrics it directly produces. The old standby channels like email and SMS have provided a good foundation of must have data points like delivered, opened, or clicked. But what if there was a channel that had more built-in metrics, with more meaning, that were easy to access? This is one of the top reasons we’re so excited about marketing in WhatsApp.

As a personal user of WhatsApp communicating with my friends and family, I love nothing more than the added metrics like delivered and read built right into the application. I can quickly and easily glance at a message window to check for the memorable two blue check marks to determine if my message was received and read. Whether it’s for individual or business users, sharing important metrics is core to the app and to the channel.

The more robust metrics, plus the segmentation based on those metrics, will make customer journeys deeper and more valuable. We’re excited for foundational use cases like these, built around WhatsApp metrics:

• Sending a reminder if a message remains unread: A customer starts a product review, but doesn’t respond to the final question, and the message goes unread. A reminder message can be sent the following day to encourage them to complete the review.
• Sharing suggestions based on previously shared preferences: A customer sends a message asking for help planning a trip. You can ask them questions - do you prefer city or beach? - and then respond in real time with suggestions!

Why Businesses Should Not Use WhatsApp

That’s a great question! For some businesses maybe the time isn’t right to add a new channel. For others, maybe it’s not for their audience.

As WhatsApp continues to release new features, to grow business-based messaging, and to focus on growing the US market, the window of those who shouldn’t use it will get smaller and smaller. Some may say it’s for a younger audience, but many Boomer and Silent Generation parents and grandparents use it to communicate with their families. Some may say it’s only for a certain industry, but it’s becoming less about customer support and more about customer conversations.

WhatsApp is no longer a new channel. It’s becoming well known in American households at a time when it’s already the default communication for many communities around the world. For businesses, it’s not just another fun channel to test - it will be a critical part to marketing strategy in meeting customers in the places they prefer.

Over the last 20 years we have witnessed 2 major shifts in marketing. We are now on the precipice of a 3rd.

20 years ago a slew of amazing marketing platforms emerged. They centered on reaching people where they were - the email inbox. The technology has inched itself closer and closer to the truly one-to-one content. The personalization we dreamt of 20 years ago in now in your customer’s inboxes, even being personalized to the second the email is opened.

10 years ago we saw a second shift. In 2007 Apple released the iPhone and changed the world. We were still in our inboxes, but we were no longer tied to our computers. We took our inboxes with us everywhere, and our phones didn’t stop at email. Smartphones, combined with native apps, real time GPS and more, made channels like SMS, push and in-app messaging ubiquitous. The customer journey morphed into a  fragmented experience. Now brands had to find ways to communicate across smartphones, tablets, watches, and TVs, in addition to the traditional places like our computers. A new set of marketing platforms emerged to help brands meet customers where we now were - on our phones, and on-the-go.

Today, we are on the cusp of another shift. 80% of customers report that they want to talk to brands in a chat or social app. AI technology like Chat-GPT has captured our imaginations and spurred 1000’s of new companies that are testing the limits of what is possible. Brands are being challenged to have real conversations with their customers. They are being asked to send more than a highly personalized message. They are being asked to talk to customers in a genuine, authentic way.

But what does that even mean? What does it look like, or better yet…what could it look like?

Today, most conversations are simply support requests that have moved from email to web chat or SMS; tracking order status, checking product inventory, or technical support. By now we have all had this experience. And its great! I would guess most of us prefer it to waiting on hold and answering telephone prompts!

We love this experience. And we think this is just barely scratching the surface. A conversation is more than a transactional exchange - I send my order # and you send me a tracking link. A conversation is an opportunity to develop a genuine relationship. Each one is a chance to tell the other side who you are, what is important to you, and what you stand for.

So what could it look like instead? Imagine this. Your favorite shoe brand invites you to sign up for their newsletter. You scan a QR code on your phone, and WhatsApp opens with a pre-populated message. You hit send, and instantly get a response thanking you and asking you about yourself. Do you hike, run, walk or commute? You reply that you are a hiker and they ask you what kind of hiking you do.  Within seconds you have a link to customer favorites that match your needs.

This is more than a promotion and it's more than a service exchange.

THIS is a true conversation. It's the future of marketing, and it's just the beginning. Stay tuned.