Whatsapp business API is well-known for sending bulk Whatsapp messages in a secure and official way.

Most of them are still unaware of the features of the WhatsApp Business API and misinterpret this with the WhatsApp group or broadcast feature, which has its own constraints. For instance- the number of users you can reach out to in a specific period.

WhatsApp Business API has its own limitations, but it’s far better than the WhatsApp broadcast and group features.

Again, the WhatsApp business app and WhatsApp business API are both different in their features and capabilities.

In brief, the WhatsApp business app is for small businesses, and the API is for medium-sized and large organizations. 

Whatsapp business API has already taken its step into the marketing world. Many companies are moving towards WhatsApp Business API as a marketing platform. Therefore, sending Whatsapp bulk messages to their customers becomes important.

Sending bulk WhatsApp messages to customers has many benefits for businesses. For instance-

• It saves costs.
• Reaches customers of interest, 
• Has low response time, 
• Engages customers, 
• Access active customers, and many more. 

All these businesses can achieve with less effort and market products or services effectively. 

But the real challenges come when you go to selecting the right vendor in the market because most of the vendors who send WhatsApp bulk messages use unofficial tools. 

Going with unofficial tools will have a bad impact on businesses. Whatsapp will permanently ban the business number or will not get access to your account. That is, you may lose your customers and their trust too.

Before going deep into Whatsapp business API, let’s first discuss

What are Whatsapp Bulk Messages?

As depicted in its name itself, it instantly sends many messages to customers. 

It helps you save time, enhances your resources and is an awesome tool that enables customer-business interactions well. Businesses can use these tools to optimize the performance of sales, marketing and customer support teams. 

In the bulk message campaign, you can include- images, videos, and an unlimited number of characters. You even have an option to personalize the content for every user for every other message you send. For example, you can include their name, interest, and further details—all you can do automatically instead of writing out manually.

As discussed before, you can send WhatsApp bulk messages in official and nonofficial ways.

There are third-party apps, that offer an option to send bulk messages on WhatsApp. But we don’t recommend going with these procedures because it puts your mobile at risk, and there are more chances to getting banned on your WhatsApp business mobile number. 

To protect and secure customers’ privacy, Whatsapp has restricted businesses to send mass promotional messages of products and services as it ruins the customer experience. 

Instead, it provided a way for businesses to officially use WhatsApp business API to send bulk messages. Whatsapp business API follows some rules to send or receive messages on a WhatsApp business API account.

Whastapp official and nonofficial ways have their advantages, and disadvantages let’s discuss here-

Sending Bulk WhatsApp Messages using Unofficial Tools

Advantages

• No approval requirement from WhatsApp before sending a message template
• No need to get WhatsApp API approval
• It can be deployed for both personal and business purposes.
• Easy to set up

Disadvantages

• High chance that a WhatsApp business account gets banned because it’s not affiliated with WhatsApp.
• These unofficial accounts are not updated with the frequent changes made across WhatsApp accounts. So there are high chances that it may stop working.
• No green tick verification for businesses.

Sending Bulk WhatsApp Messages using Official APIs

Advantages

• No need to worry about the number being banned
• Automatic reply chatbots can be built
• Can schedule automated messages
• Multiple agents have access to log in and reply to customers.
• There is a possibility of getting green tick verification.
• APIs can be integrated with external systems to send transactional updates.

Disadvantages

• Need business API approval
• Pre-approval of template message by WhatsApp required.
• Promotional messages are not allowed.
• Not for personal use.

To start with WhatsApp business API, you need to have a basic knowledge of some WhatsApp features. Let’s discuss out here

What is Whatsapp business?

Apart from personal use, WhatsApp has two more options for businesses. Though both are used for businesses, their feature set, costs, and use cases are different to support businesses. 

To explain, the WhatsApp business app is for small businesses, available for free and comes with basic features such as fast replies, business profiles and labels.

The major drawback of WhatsApp business apps is that they are built for individual conversations. And doesn’t provide much security to the businesses in handling customer confidential data. That is, it doesn’t comply with the GDPR guidelines. 

To overcome the shortcomings of the WhatsApp business app, WhatsApp came up with the WhatsApp Business API. It gives larger businesses security that is a higher priority for any business and scalable solutions according to their requirements. It permits businesses to receive and reply to unlimited WhatsApp messages from their customers.

Unlike WhatsApp business apps having their front end interface, businesses need to integrate the WhatsApp API’s endpoint to their customer communication interface to start an API. 

You can easily migrate from the WhatsApp business app to the WhatsApp business API account. Click to know-how.

First, you need to select the BSP; you can choose this from the Facebook directory that has a list of WhatsApp service providers lists. Whatsapp business API service providers are of two types- SMS and others.

SMS service providers

These companies held their proprietary APIs before they started selling WhatsApp accounts. Therefore, the API you want to connect to will be like their Legacy SMS API.

These BSPs are superb for businesses that have already implemented their service and want to integrate Whatsapp API as their communication channels. It permits businesses to practice multiple chat platforms without connecting whole themselves.

How easily you can set up and practice a WhatsApp business API account depends on the type of service provider you select. For example- some service providers have a self-service platform that permits you to start without anyone’s intervention. While others are companies based and need you to talk to sales. 

As these SMS providers are integrating Whatsapp API with their proprietary API, it’s a time-consuming process and needs some effort from your end to add or update any new features from WhatsApp. 

Other service providers

Initially, SMS service providers were the only WhatsApp service providers; later other companies added partnerships like chatbot agencies, self-service chatbot platforms and CRM vendors. 

These service providers mostly use proxy API because it’s similar to WhatsApp API. So it’s easy for them to start new features via WhatsApp API. So businesses should go with the proxy API to reflect new updates quickly on their WhatsApp account.

WhatsApp Business API Pricing

To start with the WhatsApp Business API, you need to enrol with the business service provider(BSP). BSP acts as a mediator between the businesses and WhatsApp; the amount collected from businesses by BSP will pay it to WhatsApp to provide service 

To your notice, all BSPs won’t offer the same API pricing, as the way they provide service is different. So it’s our role to search for the BSP that matches your demand and the pricing too. 

Generally, Whatsapp won’t charge businesses within a 24-hour window(session messages) after(template message) a minimal charge is applied. And some BSPs charge for both sessions and template messages. You can check the message rating card charged by WhatsApp to the BSPs; based on that, you can negotiate with the BSPs. Also, WhatsApp keeps experimenting with the pricing models, so it’s not the fixed pricing model. 

WhatsApp Business API Profile

The Whatsapp Business API profile is very much similar to the WhatsApp business app profile. API profile is not searchable online searchable like other apps, so to promote your WhatsApp account, you need to promote it yourself. Businesses can boost their profile by updating their display picture, description, cover photo, email, website and address.

Getting green tick verification to your profile is hard but not impossible; large companies can easily get verified green tick to their name. Some BSPs permit editing your profile or applying for verification on a self-service platform, while some others need sending API calls. So before selecting a BSP, you must keep this into account. 

WhatsApp Business API Contact Management

Though WhatsApp allows businesses to send first messages to their customers by following a set of rules. Still, they prefer a conversation to start with the end-users. 

Whatsapp doesn’t want to compromise the quality of customer experience and for that, they don’t want businesses to send any spam or promotional messages. To overcome this, WhatsApp mentioned its rules to acquire consent from its customers before sending any messages to them. For example- if you have a SaaS platform, you could consent to receive new feature updates when they enrol for an account. Once businesses get consent from end-users, they can send messages but not frequent messages to them because WhatsApp rates the mobile number based on certain factors and bans the number if it comes under a low rate list.

Before sending messages to WhatsApp, you need to verify the contact details through the API features. You can do this by verifying the user has a valid WhatsApp number or ID. Because sending messages to non-existing numbers will lower your WhatsApp account number rating and may get banned if it doesn’t exist. 

Once the number is verified, now you can import the contact lists to your CRM platform. You can easily manage those contacts with the additional features available on WhatsApp. 

The other thing to keep in mind is that businesses need to inform WhatsApp if they change the new WhatsApp ID because they consent to the previous WhatsApp ID. 

Whatsapp doesn’t allow businesses to send messages to customers anytime. Within a 24 hour window(session message), your businesses can reply to messages sent by the customers. After that (template message), businesses need to take permission from WhatsApp. It’s very critical for businesses to maintain the quality and rating of phone numbers.

Based on your WhatsApp business number status or spam rate limit will be given to a specific WhatsApp account number.

How to Send Bulk Template Messages Using Whatsapp Business API?

First, you need to register for a WhatsApp business API account. For this, you need the below details:

1. A phone number that is specific to use for WhatsApp business API. 
2. A business name to display.
3. A business manager ID obtained after getting verified on Facebook.

When you have these details, you can register with any business solution provider which satisfies your business needs. 

Every BSP has their way to send bulk messages to users with WhatsApp business API. for example- one-time or ongoing or any other way.

One time – it’s like sending a message to notify your customer of a specific event.

Ongoing- sending continuous messages to customers throughout their entire lifecycle. For example, providing the status of the order.

You can even check for performance statistics related to every campaign. For example, how many customers saw, read, and replied to your message.

A chatbot agency like SmatBot provides convenient access to the WhatsApp Business API for any business with no code. We’re in partnership with the Facebook directory listed BSP, who will help you with technology integration. 

We have a strong technical team available 24/7 to serve the businesses. You can easily get started and benefit from WhatsApp business API features in no time. 

Once you have decided on the BSP and created your WhatsApp business account, you can follow these steps to Create your WhatsApp business account with WhatsApp business solution providers.

The most important thing to perform here is promoting your WhatsApp business API account. As you will not get visible in searches just like other apps. You need to promote it by following various marketing strategies for example-

• Add a WhatsApp icon on your website.
• Taking consent from the customer at the checkout process or any other stage of their customer journey to send notifications in the future. 
• Use WhatsApp’s feature “Click to Whatsapp”.
• Use your icon on your Facebook or Instagram accounts. 
• Linking to WhatsApp through a QR code also helps your user access your WhatsApp business API account.  

If you want further information about how SmatBot helps you get started with sending bulk WhatsApp template messages. Please do contact SmatBot technical team. We are glad to assist you in all possible ways. 

You can even go for SmatBot 14-day free trial option to understand how to start with sending bulk WhatsApp template messages through WhatsApp business API.