WhatsApp marketing Q&A: your questions answered [October 23]

In our latest webinar, you had some great questions about WhatsApp marketing: how it works with email, how often to send messages and more. Here are the answers.

In just 1 year, awareness of WhatsApp marketing and its potential for marketing and CRM teams have grown hugely.

This was made even clearer to us after our latest webinar – "5 Summer Secrets: how to keep your customers switched on while you switch off." Attendees had many detailed, knowledgeable questions for our team. 

We're happy to share answers with you:

How often should I send WhatsApp messages?

WhatsApp is a more personal channel than others. Our rule of thumb is to send out no more than 2x campaigns a month to the same subscriber.

But our tip is to ask how often a user wants to receive communications during the welcome flow. If they don't mind more than 2, then go ahead. It's about setting expectations and delivering on that. Then you can't let anyone down.

That's how most of our clients do it to keep the balance right and keep building customer relationships in the long-term.

Can we combine email with WhatsApp when collecting opt-ins?

Yes. You can set up "multistep popups" – a combined popup and opt-in flow that asks for both an email address and gets a WhatsApp opt-in.

We recommend our clients set up popups via Klaviyo (our partner) or any other tool they're already using. We have our own popup tool, but it can be easier to coordinate the display settings of existing tools.

If it's set up in Klaviyo or other tool, we can proactively trigger an opt-in request from charles.

Should I send the discount code before asking for customer details?

No. From what we've learned from clients, the customer is much more likely to reply to the question if you give them the reward afterwards – otherwise you remove their incentive to give you their details.

What about GDPR compliance and WhatsApp?

Our product is built to help customers stay GDPR compliant. Our automated WhatsApp opt-ins (through Journeys) are built with features such as opt-in and opt-out timestamps, "GDPR delete," prompts to ensure GDPR compliance during opt-ins and the functionality to set an opt-out keyword that will automatically opt users out when they message you (usually "stop).

Read more about WhatsApp Business and GDPR.

What are the costs of WhatsApp Business?

If you're a small business using the WhatsApp Business app, it's free.

If you're a larger business (broadcasting WhatsApp messages to more than 256 contacts), you'll use the WhatsApp API through a WhatsApp Business Solution Provider (BSP) like charles.

In this case, WhatsApp charges a small price per conversation you have with a customer (within 24 hours) – in Germany this is around 11c, depending on what kind of conversation (marketing, utility, authentication or service). 

You also pay a subscription fee for your WhatsApp platform and an extra fee per conversation (which is good as it incentivizes the BSP to build your WhatsApp channel).