ShoutAd.GonzaloGomezRufino

Blog · 14 May 2014

The first bulk WhatsApp messaging platform for businesses

WhatsApp changed how people communicate, and businesses were quick to notice that a message sent there gets read within minutes, while an email may sit unopened for days or never be opened at all.

That gap is what the first bulk WhatsApp messaging platform was built to exploit. It let a business load its own customer database, segment it, and send a campaign of text, images or video to thousands of contacts at once, with delivery reporting on the other side.

Why the channel works

Open rates on messaging sit far above email, and the reading window is measured in minutes rather than days. For time-sensitive offers, appointment reminders or a limited promotion, that difference decides whether the campaign works at all.

What matters when you use it

The channel is powerful precisely because it is personal, which is also why it punishes misuse faster than any other. A few points that decide whether it works:

  • Permission. Send only to people who agreed to hear from you. Anything else damages the brand and, in most jurisdictions, breaks the law.
  • Relevance. A segmented list of five hundred people who care will outperform a blast to fifty thousand who do not.
  • Frequency. Messaging tolerates far less volume than email. One good message a month beats one mediocre message a week.
  • An easy way out. Make opting out trivial. The people who leave were never going to buy, and keeping them costs you reputation.

Used with those constraints, messaging became the highest-converting channel in most of the campaigns we ran, at a fraction of the cost per contact of any alternative.

← See all articles