What WhatsApp lets a business do, on one page.
The WhatsApp Business Platform has rules every business meets, whichever provider it uses. Here they are in plain words, with what Sema does about each.
The 24-hour window
When a customer writes, you have 24 hours to reply with anything.
WhatsApp’s central rule. When a customer writes to you, you may reply with anything you like for the next 24 hours: words, pictures, voice notes, documents, buttons and lists. Each time they write again, the 24 hours start again.
Once the 24 hours have passed, the only thing WhatsApp will deliver from you is a template Meta has approved. A customer who writes after tapping one of your Click-to-WhatsApp adverts opens 72 hours instead of 24.
Templates, approved first
Writing first means a template Meta has approved.
A template is a message Meta approves before you send it, with gaps for what changes from one customer to the next, such as a name or an order number. It is how you write to somebody first: an order update, a reminder, an offer. Approval usually takes minutes and can take a day; a refused template can be corrected and sent again.
Meta refuses a template that starts or ends with a gap, puts two gaps side by side, gives no example for a gap, or sells something while claiming to be an update. Sema’s template studio checks for these before you submit, and the template library has the common ones already written.
Four kinds of message, four prices
Marketing, utility, authentication, and replies.
Every message you send is one of four kinds, and its kind sets its price:
- Marketing: anything meant to sell, or not about something the customer already did with you. The dearest kind.
- Utility: about something the customer started, such as an order, a booking or a payment. Cheaper while their 24 hours are open.
- Authentication: a one-time code and nothing else.
- Service: your replies inside the 24 hours. The cheapest kind.
Meta decides a template’s kind when it approves it, and can change it later if the words say otherwise. Messages customers send you are never charged. What a message costs also depends on the country of the number you send it to.
Consent, and a way to stop
Marketing only to people who agreed, and STOP always works.
WhatsApp allows marketing only to people who agreed to hear from you, and Kenya’s Data Protection Act asks you to be able to show when and how they agreed. Replying to somebody who wrote to you never needs consent: they started it.
Every marketing message should give a way out, such as a Stop promotions button or a line saying to reply STOP. Sema records each contact’s consent and where it came from, sends campaigns only to people who agreed, and stops marketing to anyone who says STOP, in English or Kiswahili.
Quality rating
How people react to your messages, rated by Meta.
Meta rates every business number high, medium or low, by how people reacted to its messages over the last week or so: mostly how many blocked it or reported it as spam. A low rating can lower the number’s daily limit or stop it sending templates.
What lowers it: messages to people who never agreed, too many offers too close together, and messages that do not say who they are from or give no way to stop. Replies to customers who wrote almost never do. Sema shows the rating on the Numbers page, warns you when it slips, and leaves out of a campaign anybody who had a marketing message in the last two days or stopped opening them.
Daily limits
How many customers a number may write to first, each day.
A number may start conversations by template with only so many different customers in 24 hours: 250, 1,000, 10,000, 100,000, or no limit. Replies to customers who write to you are never limited. A new number starts low, and Meta raises the limit as it is used with good quality. Sema keeps a campaign within it: whoever is past the day’s limit waits for the next day, uncharged.
Who may use it
Most businesses; a few never.
Meta does not allow political parties, politicians or campaigns, or police, military, security and intelligence agencies, to use WhatsApp for business, so Sema cannot take them on. Under WhatsApp’s commerce policy some things cannot be sold on it at all, among them weapons, drugs, tobacco, alcohol and real-money gambling.
A clinic, hospital or pharmacy may use it, but a message is read on a lock screen by whoever holds the phone: say that something is ready or due, never what it is. Sema checks a health workspace’s templates for words that would give a condition away.
Your name, and being verified
What customers see, and how they know it is you.
The name customers see on your messages is a display name Meta reviews: it should be your business’s real name. Verifying your business with Meta shows customers it is real, and is needed for the Official Business Account badge. Sema’s Numbers page shows each of these with what is still to do.