Best practices for WhatsApp Business messaging

Best practices for WhatsApp Business messaging

This article we would like to offer more detailed information on the criteria of WhatsApp Business/Facebook to our customers that will help to enhance the communications to your customers and take care of your business reputation. According to the latest data, the use of WhatsApp Business has a huge impact on business growth, and we are pleased to see its effect on Woztell customers as well. However, while working with WhatsApp Business apart from being compliant with WhatsApp/Facebook policies it is also important to keep in mind such concepts as Quality Rating, Messaging Limits, and Status.

Let's take a look at why it is so important to consider these metrics and how they affect the course of your business. As you know, Facebook/WhatsApp very carefully monitors the quality of communications produced by WhatsApp Business users in relation to the end customers, i.e. WhatsApp users. For this purpose, Facebook/WhatsApp has different indicators.

Quality Rating is an indicator of the quality of your communications in relation to your customers. A Quality Rating indicates how messages were received by your customers during the current 24-hours window. It is presented in 3 different types on the Facebook platform:
  1. High (green)
  2. Medium (yellow)
  3. Low (red)
So what do these colors and quality rating levels mean? There is an option to assess the quality of your communications with your customers on Facebook and, based on these reactions of your customers, WhatsApp/Facebook assigns to your WhatsApp Business number a quality rating. For example, if your customers mark your WhatsApp number as spam, or block it, or complain about your account, then the quality rating of your number is lowered according to WhatsApp/Facebook algorithms. Facebook assigns a quality rating in 3 levels in order to notify about the current quality of communications of your WhatsApp Business number and thus gives you the opportunity and time to review your communications strategy and take measures to improve its quality.

However, it should be noted that the quality rating is not just a nominal indicator. Its level also affects the status of your number and its functionality.

So, everything is clear with quality, now let's move on to quantity. Facebook/WhatsApp uses Messaging Limits to better control the number of communications made by WhatsApp Business users and thus prevents the sudden mass spam of any company that does not have a trustworthy reputation among WhatsApp users. Messaging limits in WhatsApp Business determine how many unique users your business can send messages to start the conversation on a daily basis. It does not apply to messages sent in response to a user-initiated message within a 24-hour period. This indicator does not limit the number of template messages, nor the total number of template and session messages, but the number of unique WhatsApp users, i.e. the number of your clients with whom you can start a conversation (notifications) within 24 hours. Messaging limits include the number of both new and existing conversations with your customers.

There are 3 types of Tier:
  1. Tier 1: Allows your business to send messages to 1K unique customers in a rolling 24-hour period.
  2. Tier 2: Allows your business to send messages to 10K unique customers in a rolling 24-hour period.
  3. Tier 3: Allows your business to send messages to 100K unique customers in a rolling 24-hour period.
Note: A business starts in Tier 1 when it registers its phone number.

It should be noted that the process of moving from one Tier to another is consequent and it is impossible to skip one stage and go straight to the next. In accordance with the requirements and the algorithm for increasing the number of conversations, the transition from one Tier to the next occurs automatically. To move to the next Tier, the WhatsApp Business number must have:
  1. quality rating is not low, and
  2. The total number of unique users to whom WhatsApp notifications were sent exceeds twice the current messaging limit within 7 days.
Once the business has reached this threshold, its number will be moved to the next Tier. The minimum transition time to the next Tier is 48 hours, while the business sends the maximum number of messages within its limit (the limit for Tier 1 is 1000) daily.

See the charts below for examples of how a business might move to the next tier:

Example 1: The chart explains the concept of messaging limit in a rolling 24-hour window.


                                                                                                                                                 Source: Facebook.com

According to the table, the business can send notifications to the first 500 unique users (i.e., its customers) at 13:00, then at 13:30, the business sends to another 500 unique users so that it does not exceed 1000 unique users of the corresponding Tier 1. Then on the 2nd day, a business can send notifications according to the same scheme, and thus on the 3rd day, it can be moved to Tier 2 (maximum 10K unique users). It is important to note that all these unique users should receive the notifications, that is, the 24-hours window with unique users should be closed.

Example 2: A business is upgraded from Tier 1 to Tier 2 when it messages a total of 2,000 users within a 7-day period.


                                                                                                                          Source: Facebook.com

It is important to keep in mind that the number of unique numbers to which notifications are sent within 24 hours must be stable for 7 days, that is, if the increase in the number stops or the number of notifications sent decreases, then the WhatsApp Business number can be moved back to the previous Tier with the corresponding (lower) number of maximum unique users.

As you can see, Facebook strictly monitors and limits the number of communications. This is done in order to exclude a sudden mass sending of WhatsApp messages, which is more likely to be regarded as spam by WhatsApp end users.

Now you understand better about the qualitative and quantitative control of WhatsApp Business users. Let's now analyze how these criteria directly affect your business and your communications with your customers. Facebook has a special indicator that takes into account quality and messaging limits, this is the Status of the business number. In this regard, the Status can be: Flagged and Restricted.

Flagged: This is a warned state. When the quality rating reaches a low (red) state, the phone number is moved to a Flagged status.
  1. If the quality rating improves to a high (green) or medium (yellow) state over 7 days, the phone number will return to a Connected status, which means that the phone number is online and functioning normally.
  2. If the quality rating does not improve within 7 days, the number will still return to a Connected status but with a lower messaging limit imposed on it.
Restricted: Phone numbers that reach their messaging limit (during 24h) are moved to a Restricted state. During a Restricted state, the number will be unable to send any notification messages until the 24-hour window for sending messages is reset. They can still respond to any messages initiated by users.

Good Practices

To maintain high quality:
  1. Make sure messages follow the WhatsApp Business Policy.
  2. Only send messages to users who have opted in to receive messages from your business.
  3. Make the messages highly personalized and useful to users. Avoid sending open-ended welcome or introductory messages.
  4. Be mindful of messaging frequency; avoid sending customers too many messages a day. Be thoughtful of informational messages, optimizing for content and length.
  5. The customers of WOZTELL can always contact the support team in order to control its indicators and get advice on the best practices for your specific business use of Whatsapp.