Sending promotional messages to your customer lists is the lifeblood of most businesses, especially if you're in ecommerce.
With the decline of open rates and ROI for channels like Email, it's imperative that brands experiment with new channels that can lead to higher revenues, customer LTVs and ROI.
WhatsApp API is the most promising channel for sending promotional broadcasts and deriving ROI.
Send Promotional Broadcasts via WhatsApp API
If you already have your WhatsApp API access from DelightChat, we can set up your first promotional broadcast in just 2 minutes!
Video version:
If you prefer a text + screenshots guide, read on.
Step 1: Open DelightChat
Open WhatsApp Marketing > Broadcasts in the app.
Step 2: Create New Broadcast
Once you click the button, a new page will ask you to set the name of the campaign. This naming is for your internal reference only.
Step 3: Upload Customer List
It's extremely simple to send a broadcast to your customers. Simply upload a CSV containing your customer's phone numbers and you are ready to go!
This is a sample CSV. Note that any additional columns you include in the CSV, for example "Customer Name", will become available as variables that you can connect to the message template.
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Note: If you exported your customer phone numbers from Shopify Customers or Orders, then you may need to first transform the exported data into the right format required for WhatsApp Broadcast. Here is a help article that will help you achieve that.
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Step 4: Select Message Template
With DelightChat, you can create WhatsApp message templates according to your requirements, and if they get approved, you can use them anywhere such as sending a promotional broadcast via WhatsApp.
For the purpose of this example, I've configured a template that we are using at DelightChat to reach out to brands.
If your template has additional options like a Header Image, or CTA Buttons, you would configure them in this step.
Step 5: Track Broadcast Goals
For now, DelightChat automatically tracks 2 broadcast goals, made possible through our integration with Shopify:
- Orders placed
- Order value
This is done by matching the phone number of a customer who successfully received a broadcast, to the phone number in a new order placed in your store.
What is the attribution window for new orders?
We check for up to 72 hours after a customer successfully received a broadcast message, and if the customer placed an order, that order is attributed to the broadcast campaign.
In case the same customer received 2 broadcasts and then placed the order within 72 hours of the latest broadcast, the attribution is made only to the 2nd broadcast automatically.
Step 6: Schedule your Broadcast
There are 2 options in this step:
- Send your broadcast immediately.
- Schedule it for a future date and time.
We understand that you might want to prepare a promotional broadcast the previous night and have it just start in the morning the next day. DelightChat makes scheduling your broadcast easy!
Step 7: Publish!
Once a broadcast is published, it goes into our messaging queue and starts getting sent according to schedule.
WhatsApp Promotional Broadcast Analytics
Sending a WhatsApp promotional broadcast is one thing. The obvious next step is to look for good conversion rates and ROI.
DelightChat has you covered. We offer detailed analytics such as
- Messages successfully sent, delivered, read
- Orders placed
- Value of orders, directly matched with your Shopify store data via the integration
You can also download the analytics data and analyze it further, such as seeing the exact order IDs that got placed, phone numbers where the message got delivered or failed etc.
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Commonly asked questions about sending promotional messages via WhatsApp API.
Does WhatsApp API allow promotional messages?
The answer used to be no, but recent policy changes at WhatsApp have made it possible to send promotional messages via WhatsApp.
The first step is always to create a new WhatsApp message template. Earlier, templates of promotional nature used to get rejected, but nowadays they get easily approved.
Can my number get banned for sending promotional messages?
In our experience, a regular WhatsApp number used with the Business app does get banned if sending too many outbound messages.
However, WhatsApp API numbers rarely if ever get banned. At the most, your number's quality rating goes down, which gives you the opportunity to fix it and take it back up to a higher quality rating.
This does not mean you should spam your customers. End users still get an option to report a number, or outright block it.
That's why we believe brands should use WhatsApp Marketing with utmost care.
- Craft delightful message templates that your customers would love.
- Send occasional messages so as to not bombard your customers.
- Segment your customers based on activity or interest and send personalized templates instead of mass promotional blasts.
DelightChat lets you send promotional messages via WhatsApp using the Official API. Sign up today to get started!
