Send a WhatsApp campaign
Send engaging marketing messages to your customers on WhatsApp
In this guide, we'll show you how to set up and send your first WhatsApp marketing campaign.
What you'll need
An installed WhatsApp channel instance.
An approved WhatsApp message template.
Create your WhatsApp campaign
From the side menu, click Marketing > Campaigns.
Click Create campaign.
Select WhatsApp as the channel.
This will open the Campaign builder page for you
In the 'Name' field, enter a name your campaign.
Note that your changes will be auto-saved in this view.
Step 1: Select your recipients
Note: You can only select upto 5 lists or segments here
[Optional] If you want to prevent this campaign from being sent to specific customers, use the Don't send to dropdown to select the lists or segments that you want to exclude.
Advanced Options
You can expand to define any advanced options such as:
Skip recently messaged contacts: Turn this ON if you want the frequency cap settings defined in your workspace to be applied. By default, this is turned ON and the frequency cap settings are 1 message in 1 day.
Limit maximum number of recipients: Turn this ON and define if you want to limit recipients to be targeted to a specific number. This will randomly select recipients to be limited out of your defined lists/segments
Global Holdout: This will skip any recipients of they match the global holdout criteria defined in your workspace. If no criteria is defined, no one will be skipped. This is turned ON by default but no global holdout is defined by default on the workspace hence it will not impact your sending
Campaign Holdout: This will skip recipients based on a defined percentage randomly as a control group out of your campaign recipients. This is OFF by default.
Step 2: Select your Sender
Use the Send from dropdown to choose the WhatsApp account or number that you want to send your campaign from.
Note that you need to select the sender before you can select the template as templates are approved for a specific WhatsApp account.
Step 3: WhatsApp Template
Use the 'Select a template' option to choose the WhatsApp message template that you want to send as your campaign. You'll be able to see a preview of your message.
You can either select one of the approved templates in active status for the selected channel or create a new message template. Note that if you create a new one you need to wait till it gets approved before sending the campaign.
If there are variables in your template message, map them in the Variable Matching section after adding the template under the template preview
Step 4: Schedule
Under Schedule section, you can select if you want to send the campaign on a fixed time, gradually or immediately
For a fixed time scheduling, you can select a date, time and timezone for sending
By default, we have selected local recipient timezone for scheduling but you can select a specific timezone
More Settings
Tags
You can optionally apply one or more tags to your campaign before sending
Additional data
This section allows you to upload a csv file of additional data for personalization such as personalized links which are specific to the campaign. You can map this to the unique identifier of the targeted contacts when uploading as a column and then define which column contains the unique identifier for matching
Once done, you can map any predefined custom variables in the SMS content to any columns of the uploaded csv file
Tracking
By default we have UTM parameters automatically appended to all the links in the message so that you can track clicks on your web analytics solution.
You can edit the UTM parameters under settings and also customize if needed for this campaign
Locale Matching
Locale matching is set to Automatic by default which matches the template locale with the contact locale. You can have 3 options here:
Automatic Matching: This will automatically send the template locale which matches the contact locale attribute. If contact Locale attribute is not set, it will send the default locale version.
Strict Language: This will automatically send the template locale which matches the contact locale attribute. If contact Locale attribute is not set, it will NOT send the message.
Single Language: This will only send the selected locale version of the template to all recipients.
Campaign A/B Test
You can turn ON A/B test for a campaign here. Note that if you have selected maximum recipient limit or recipient local timezone, you will need to change them before enabling A/B tests.
Once enabled, you will have 2 variations added for your message automatically by cloning. You can edit content for each of these variations
You can define A/B test settings as follows:
Winning metric: Select click rate or conversion rate based on what you want to optimize on
Test size: Select the test audience pool size for each variation. Rest of the audience will be sent the winning variation
Test duration: Select how long the campaign will be waiting to collect winning metric data for the test result after sending to the A and B test pools before determining the winner
Winner fallback: Select your strategy in case there is not sufficient data to make a test winner decision.
Estimated Recipients and Cost
At the bottom of the page on the left side, you will see number of estimated recipients based on your targeting criteria, contact attributes and campaign settings. Similarly you will also see the estimated cost of sending SMS.
Send a test message
Click on Send test option on the top right to test your message before sending.
You can send your test to a contact and their selected phone number or a proof list.
Send your campaign
Click Schedule campaign or Send campaign button on the top right to finally confirm to schedule or send.
Can I send bulk messages on WhatsApp?
Yes, with Campaigns, you can send bulk messages with WhatsApp by using an approved message and sending it to a predefined audience or list.
Do customers need to opt-in to receive WhatsApp messages from my business?
Yes. If you want to initiate a conversation on WhatsApp (sending a campaign on WhatsApp counts as initiating a conversation,) you must use an approved message template. Customers must have shared their mobile phone number with your business, and explicitly opted-in to receive messages.
Customers can start a conversation with your business whenever they like, without having previously opted in.
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