How it works

Five ideas, and everything in WhatsApp Marketing is built from them. When a broadcast does not go out, or you cannot type a reply to a customer, one of these five is almost always the reason.

flowchart LR
    C["Contacts<br/>who you can message"] --> T["Templates<br/>messages WhatsApp approved"]
    T --> S["Sending<br/>broadcasts, Ecomm+, flows"]
    S --> W["24-hour window<br/>opens when a customer replies"]
    W --> L["Live Chat<br/>free-form replies"]
    S --> R["Results<br/>delivered, read, replied, failed"]
    L --> R

1. Contacts

A contact is a phone number with a name, and anything else you know about that person: tags such as vip or diwali_leads, and attributes such as city or last order amount.

Contacts reach WhatsApp Marketing in a few ways. The Source column on the Contacts page shows which.

Every contact also has a Status. ACTIVE means they messaged you in the last 24 hours. INACTIVE means they did not. Section 2 explains why that matters.

WhatsApp only allows you to message people who agreed to hear from you. When you import a list, WhatsApp Marketing assumes everyone on it agreed. It cannot check, so the list you upload is your promise that they did.

A contact who replies with an opt-out keyword is marked as opted out. From then on, broadcasts and marketing messages skip them. Order updates still reach them, because those are about something they bought. See Opt-in and opt-out.

2. Templates and the 24-hour window

WhatsApp does not let businesses send whatever they like, whenever they like. It splits messages into two kinds.

A template is a message you write once and WhatsApp reviews before you can use it. A regular message is anything you type, like a normal chat.

The 24-hour window decides which one you can send. It opens when a customer sends you a message. Every new message from them restarts it. While it is open, you can send regular messages. Once 24 hours pass with nothing from the customer, it closes, and templates are the only thing you can send until they write again.

sequenceDiagram
    participant You
    participant Customer
    You->>Customer: Template: "Your jacket is back in stock"
    Customer->>You: "Is it available in medium?"
    Note over You,Customer: Window opens. You can reply freely for 24 hours.
    You->>Customer: Regular message: "Yes, medium is in stock."
    Customer->>You: "Great, ordering now"
    Note over You,Customer: Window restarts from this message
    Note over You,Customer: 24 hours pass with nothing from the customer
    You->>Customer: Only a template can be sent now

This is why a reply is worth more than a read. A customer who reads your broadcast has seen it. A customer who replies has opened a window where your team can answer questions, send photos and close the sale like a shop assistant would. Templates with a question or a quick reply button get more replies than templates that only announce something. See Template fields.

Template categories

Every template has a category. WhatsApp uses it to decide how the message is treated and what it costs to send.

WhatsApp checks the category against the words. A template filed as Utility that also pushes an offer is approved as Marketing. Abandoned cart reminders count as Marketing, even though they feel like a service.

3. Ways a message gets sent

The same templates go out through four routes. They differ in who or what decides when to send.

Broadcasts are for news you choose to send. Ecomm+ is for messages that should follow an event every time, without anyone remembering to send them. Automations and Live Chat are for conversations the customer started.

4. Limits and quality

WhatsApp controls how much you can send, and it adjusts that based on how people respond to you.

Messaging limit. Your number can send to a set number of different people in any 24 hours. A new number starts at 250. The limit rises in steps as you send to more people while keeping a good quality rating, up to unlimited. It is shared by every WhatsApp number your business has under the same Meta Business Manager, so a big send from one number uses up the limit for all of them. A broadcast larger than what is left of your limit shows the warning Audience size exceeding remaining quota, some messages may not be delivered, and the messages over the limit fail.

Quality rating. WhatsApp rates your number green (high), yellow (medium) or red (low) based on how people have reacted to your recent messages. Replies and button clicks count in your favour. Being ignored is neutral. Being blocked counts against you. A low rating stops your limit from rising, and if you keep sending, WhatsApp blocks the number.

Per-person caps. WhatsApp also limits how many marketing messages one person receives from all businesses combined. If a customer has already had several that day and ignored them, your message to them fails, even though your own limit is fine. These failures say Unhealthy system activity or mention a healthy ecosystem. Wait a day or two before trying those people again.

See Messaging limits and quality for how the limit grows and how to recover a falling rating.

5. Results

Each message moves through a set of states, and every broadcast reports how many reached each one.

See Broadcast performance and Failed messages.

What a broadcast actually looks like

You run a Diwali sale. 1,840 people signed up for early access on your store and ticked a box agreeing to hear from you on WhatsApp. You have their numbers in a spreadsheet.

You import the file and tag everyone diwali_leads. Each contact arrives with source IMPORT and status INACTIVE, because none of them has messaged you yet.

You write a template announcing the sale with a Shop now button, file it as Marketing, and submit it. WhatsApp approves it in a few minutes.

On the Contacts page you filter for the tag diwali_leads. All 1,840 match, which fits inside your daily limit of 2,000. You broadcast the template to them.

1,790 messages are delivered. Fifty fail, most because those numbers are not on WhatsApp. About half the delivered messages are read.

Sixty people reply, most asking about sizes. Each reply turns that contact ACTIVE and opens a 24-hour window, so your team answers them in Live Chat with regular messages and product photos. Three people reply STOP and are marked as opted out.

Two days later you broadcast a last-day reminder with the same filter. The three who opted out are skipped on their own. You did not have to do anything.

Where to go next

• Quickstart to send your first broadcast end to end
• Create a template if you want to start with the message