To create Outbound Campaigns and WhatsApp Templates, you need to request the activation on your license of WhatsApp Connector Outbound Channel.
Otherwise you can’t see WhatsApp Campaign and Templates sections on your menu

You can use WhatsApp Connector to send outbound campaigns through the use of templates approved by Meta.
The company can start a certain number of unique conversations (explore Meta's messaging limits here) in a 24-hour time window. Conversation starts when the first WhatsApp template is delivered to the customer, opening a time window of 24 hours.

Let’s see how you can create an outbound WhatsApp campaign.

Requirements

☑️ You need to be registered as Facebook Developers on http://developers.facebook.com

☑️ You need to have a Business Account

☑️ You need to create an App for WhatsApp

☑️ On your Facebook Developers account, you can access to WhatsApp Manager > Overview Dashboard > Insights tab to check your messaging limits (explore here official Meta documentation)

WhatsApp Templates

To create outbound campaigns it is necessary to use templates, the preconfigured messages containing variables inside.

By clicking on WhatsApp Templates section, you have to select created Meta Account to view all created templates .

Templates must be approved by Meta to be used for campaigns

Create a template

From WhatsApp Templates you can create a new template (up to a maximum of 250) by inserting:

Template name
Category that can be:
- MARKETING (e.g. for promotions, offers, welcome messages, newsletters…)
- UTILITY (e.g. for Confirmation of an existing transaction, payment notification…)
  Find out more about Template Categorization, by clicking here

Scenario
If campaign sends a marketing template and customer answers, then campaign send a utility template, this last one “replaces” 24h window that was open so it’s not possible to write to customer until he/she replies to utility template, because category has changed

Enable Header that can be a text, an image, a video or a document. If you choose image/video/document you need to upload relative file while if you select text you have to write text you want, max 60 characters (you can also include one or more variables)

Enable footer text, max 60 characters

You can explore supported languages for templates at this Meta official link https://developers.facebook.com/docs/whatsapp/business-management-api/message-templates/supported-languages/?locale=en_US

Enable Buttons: you can activate two tipology of buttons

It’s not possible to mix buttons typology, e.g. you can’t insert Yes / No / contact us button and if you choose call to action you can’t insert 2 phone numbers, but only 1 phone and 1 link

Call to Action: you can choose among two types:
- Call Phone Number to start a call directly, by inserting a Button text and a telephone number to call with prefix
- Visit the website, by inserting button text and website url (so the customer will open a browser with the indicated link).
  For this option, to avoid spam, Facebook doesn’t allow the use of short links or variables in url (only variable in query string is permitted)

Consider that by sending a campaign with a call to action, the contacts will remain pending until the set Response Timeout

WhatsApp TEMPLATE PREVIEW:

Enable as Recontact Template: if you switch on this option, you will be able to select it as recontact template on Advanced section, by editing a created template.
Facebook manages conversations as time windows within which the agent can write to the contact. Recontact template will be used to contact the customer beyond the expiration of Customer Service Window
Scenario
Agent sends a template at 11am, customer replies at 12pm, a 24h time window opens and starts from the moment when the agent has sent the template (so from 11am). At the end of these 24 hours, the agent can no longer write WhatsApp messages to the customer, but only send a recontact template already approved by Meta. This can be for example a general message such as “Hello {{NAME}}, the chat window has expired, please reply to this message if you still need support”.
Content (max 1024 characters): here you can write text template content (you can use one or more variables if you want).
Find out more about message guidelines and Common Rejection reasons, by clicking here.
Click on Add WhatsApp Message Template

When you create a new template, it remains in Pending Status to be approved by Meta in more or less 24h:

As long as a template is pending, it cannot be used

You can see the same information from Meta messages templates at this link entering in your business manager account, where you can see Active Templates and templates in control

Templates have a quality status: customer can report business account as spam or undesired contact. Facebook registers all answers and if a lot of customers report a template, Facebook downgrades quality.
As long as the template is active (even if low quality) it’s possible to send it, after that it will be put on pause (so not possibile to send it). Find out here guidelines about quality rating and template pausing.

After template creation, you can edit WhatsApp message template:

Click on Edit WhatsApp message template:

Choose Mapping tab, useful to map variables used in templates. System populates automatically the list of variables used in text template. So you can choose which field of customer's database to insert within the variable.

If you don't map variables, you can't create campaign with the specific template

Create a WhatsApp Campaign

You can create a new WhatsApp Campaign, by clicking on WhatsApp Connector → WhatsApp Campaign → + button

Insert campaign Name
Choose WhatsApp Templates (you will see only approved templates)
Select sending Interval
Indicate Response Timeout (expressed in days, minimum 1): specific option for WhatsApp campaigns, indicating time available for the customer to answer the question, in order to consider this answer valid and part of the campaign itself.
start date: you indicate when campaign must start (day and time). Leaving the field blank, the campaign starts immediately
Also send to customers with an active interaction: option to send campaign also to customers in an active conversation with agent. By default this option is switched off because for a client it can be unusual to receive a message while already talking to an operator. There may be instances where you want to send it anyway, for example an information campaign to warn that customer service number is changing, so you may decide to send it to everyone.
Click on Add WhatsApp Campaign

To know prices for sending conversations depending on template category, it is necessary to consult Meta's documentation at this link, where it is possible to download the file for your currency.
It is important to consider that Meta charges per conversation, not per message. A conversation is defined as the exchange of messages in the 24-hour time window.

After campaign creation, you will see it in the list with status (e.g. RUNNING when it starts)

You need to Add a list to send the campaign (you created the list before on Contact Manager → Lists section and contacts must be inserted with prefix without + e.g. 393402211333) and by editing it you can add the list from the green button "Add list"
Campaigns will be sent to Phone Contact field and phone numbers must be inserted with prefix

By editing it, you can see:

Settings with campaign information
Hopper with summary of customers:
- total number
- fresh, so contacts still to be contacted
- retry, failed contacts to retry sending to
- pending, so contacts waiting for response
- closed, contacts with completed campaign
Pending: contacts in pending status after sending the template message waiting for response (a contact remains pending until his answer or until end of the campaign)
Contacts History with the result of the campaign (you will see contacts with relative answers or failed contacts)

For failed contacts, it’s possible to enable Retry campaign

Selecting the 3 dots of the menu you can edit campaign / stop it / Start WhatsApp Retry campaign, so it tries to send again messages to failed contacts.

It is possible to make several retries up to the duration of the campaign

Some messages are considered by Facebook as a definitive failure (e.g. the contact does not have a WhatsApp account so he can’t be recontact), while other messages are considered as a temporary failure so the campaign can try to send the message again → Errors that allow retry are due to, for example:

temporary network problem
invalid template (temporary invalidity decided by Meta)
temporary authentication error
“Contact has an open interaction with another campaign” option (when the other campaign will be closed, you will be able to retry sending desired template).

A running campaign can also be stopped by clicking on the 3 dots in the campaign → Stop WhatsApp Campaign

Campaign interactions

When a campaign starts, the system, as a first check, verifies if there is already a campaign running for that contact (in that case contact remains on pending status until the open interaction is closed so the system can make a new retry).

Going on WhatsApp Accounts → 3 dots menu → Go to Interactions you can see interactions of running campaigns.

First of all if customer sent an answer, interaction status is equal to Closed, while if customer has not yet replied, the interaction results Open

Scenario

You can create a campaign with question "How would you like to be contacted?" with quick reply buttons Phone call | WhatsApp message | Email

If the customer answers within the indicated response timeout, the system registers that he has answered a certain option and closes the conversation related to campaign → status Closed

Moreover for the Customer Service Window of 24h, system opens an interaction for the agent (becoming an inbound conversation) → status Open and agent can manage the conversation (by reading the sent template message and relative customer’s answer

As long as the customer does not answer to the campaign, it will not be possible to send other messages because the system warns that "no messages can be sent since we are waiting for the customer's response."

If answer arrives after timeout expiry, it is not considered valid for the campaign, but the conversation moves on to an agent (becoming an inbound conversation) → first conversation status Closed + open new conversation status Open
Conversation passes to agent management even if the customer replies e.g. "Please contact me by Phone call", so he provides a different answer from those proposed, so the contact in the campaign remains in Pending and a Conversation with Open status is managed by the agent

Moreover clicking on 3 dots menu → Spy you can see the conversation with the customer.

Recontact Template

When the Customer Service Window of 24h expires, on open interactions the agent can only contact the customer by clicking on Send Recontact Template

MicrosoftTeams-image (5)-20240125-153750.png

In this way, the client will receive the recontact template configured on the Meta account from sender System.
If the client replies to the message, the interaction will be managed as an inbound message.

Troubleshooting

If this kind of message appares, it's due to token's expiry.

Check your token and remember to insert a long-lived user access token (discover how on this Meta documentation)

If sending campaign, an error occures you can check contacts:
- phone numbers must be inserted with prefix
- numbers should be entered necessarily in Phone field

Whatsapp for Outbound Campaigns