Whatsapp for Outbound Campaigns

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Last updated: Oct 17, 2024 by Product Knowledge
12 min read

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What’s about

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 and outbound single messages through the use of templates approved by Meta or Kaleyra.
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

WhatsApp Templates

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

By clicking on the WhatsApp Templates section, you have to select the created Meta/Kaleyra Provider and Account to view all created templates.

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Templates must be approved by Meta or Kaleyra 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:

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  • Template name

  • Provider (that can be Meta or Kaleyra if you have enabled the license)

  • Account

  • 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

  • Template language

  • Enable as Recontact Template: if you switch on this option, you will be able to select it as a Recontact template on the 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 the Customer Service Window
    Scenario
    Agent sends a template at 11 am, 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/Kaleyra. 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”.

  • Available to agents: by selecting this option, you allow agents to send specific templates to a single contact. Explore documentation about it at this link

 

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.

Then you can select the different tabs to enable header, footer and/or buttons

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 (Drag & drop option)

If you select text you can write text you want, max 60 characters.
Morever it’s possible to include a variable, both with Meta and Kaleyra providers.

  • Enable footer text, max 60 characters

  • Enable Buttons: you can activate two tipology of buttons

Example of WhatsApp Template with call to action buttons:

Call to Action: you can choose to enable:

  • Call Phone Number to start a call directly, by inserting a Button text and a telephone number to call with a 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)

Example of WhatsApp Template with quick reply buttons:

  • Quick Reply: you can create a choice with a max of 3 buttons with text (max 25 characters)
    If the customer clicks on one of the proposed choice, the system sends a message with the relative text button

  • Click on Add WhatsApp Message Template


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

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 the control

Templates have a quality status: Customers can report business accounts 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 possible to send it). Find out here guidelines about quality rating and template pausing.

On Kaleyra’s account you can see template status on Channels → WhatsApp → Configurations → Templates

After template creation, you can see the list of created templates with relative category and status:

If you click on the Preview template, a modal will appear with the preview template

Moreover you can edit a WhatsApp message template, by clicking on Edit template mapping

 

You can see:

  • template name

  • Chosen category

  • Recontact Template option (switch on/off)

  • Available to agents option (switch on/off)

  • Header content

  • Content

  • Template preview

 

If in the content or header, you have inserted some variables, you can do the relative mapping.
The system populates automatically the list of variables used in the text template. So you can choose which field of the customer's database to insert within the variable (e.g. selecting the first name)

Create a WhatsApp Campaign

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

 

  • Insert campaign Name

  • Select Provider (Meta or Kaleyra)

  • Choose Account (Meta/Kaleyra type)

  • Select WhatsApp Templates (you will see only approved templates) and the eye icon shows a template preview

  • 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, to consider this answer valid and part of the campaign itself

  • Hopper history duplicate check: indicate number of past days (1-7) to check for contact duplicates in the hopper history.
    Leaving this value empty will skip the duplicate check

  • Include customers with an active interaction: option to send campaign also to customers in an active conversation with an 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.

  • Close interaction on quick reply response: by enabling this option, if the customer answers with a quick reply, the interaction can be closed directly

  • Start date: you indicate when the campaign must start (day and time). Leaving the field blank, the campaign starts immediately

  • Click on Add WhatsApp Campaign

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

In this section, by default, all the created campaigns are shown and you can filter by account to see the relative campaigns
By clicking on the 3 dots menu you can see these options:

By editing on Edit WhatsApp campaign, you can see:

 

  • Settings with campaign information

 

  • Hopper with a summary of customers:

    • total number

    • fresh, so contacts are still to be contacted

    • retry, failed contacts to retry sending to

    • pending, so contacts waiting for a response

    • closed, contacts with the completed campaign

  • Pending: contacts in pending status after sending the template message waiting for a 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)

  • Moreover, on the blue bar you can see two icon:

    • the green one to add a list to send the campaign

    • the red one to reset the list (so to launch the reset of the contacts in the Hopper that will be restored as fresh). Remember that in this case, contacts already managed will receive again the campaign

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

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

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

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

Scenario

You can create a campaign with the 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

  • 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.

Troubleshooting

  1. 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)

 

  1. 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