The Ultimate Guide to WhatsApp Broadcasting

Step 1: Create a Free Manychat Account and Connect It to WhatsApp

The first step is to create a free Manychat account, which is one of the best WhatsApp automation platforms on the market.

In fact, I’ve used it for almost all my clients over the last 6 years. I use it because it’s:

• Easy-to-use: If you don’t have any experience with WhatsApp automations, you can get started right away
• 100% Meta-Approved: So we can use them without the risk of getting banned
• Cheap: Manychat offers a free plan and its paid plan already starts at $15 per month

Just click the button below to create a free Manychat account (and get my discount code for 1 month of the Pro plan for free):

Then, click on Get started Free:

Choose for WhatsApp:

And log in with your Facebook account:

Once you are logged in with Facebook, your Manychat account gets automatically created.

Once you have done this, the next step is to buy a phone number and connect Manychat to that phone number.

Here’s a quick tutorial on how to do that:

How to Connect WhatsApp to Manychat (2 Easy Steps)

Step 2: Import WhatsApp Contacts into Manychat (optional)

The next step is to decide to whom you want to send your WhatsApp broadcast.

If you have used Manychat before, you can just go to Contacts and search for the people you want to send the message to:

And then, you add a tag to everyone you want to send the promotional broadcast to:

If you haven’t used Manychat before and already have some phone numbers you want to send the broadcast to, you can upload these phone numbers into Manychat.

You can just create a simple CSV file, like I did here.

Next, click on Import.

Select the CSV file you want to import and confirm you have permission to add them into Manychat:

And determine how you want to map the fields of your CSV to the fields in Manychat:

So the First Name column in my CSV will be mapped to the First Name field in Manychat.

Manychat will then ask if you want to add a certain tag, so we can add the tag we created before and click on Import:

And now you’ve imported the WhatsApp contacts from your CSV file!

In both cases, you must have permission from the contacts to send them these promotional messages.

So, whether they were already inside your Manychat account or you uploaded the phone numbers from your eCommerce store, you need to have permission.

If you don’t have permission, you might get banned from the WhatsApp platform, so it’s absolutely crucial you have this.

Step 3: Create a WhatsApp Message Template and Write the Message

Now that you have the contacts you want to send a message to, you can determine what message you want to send.

To send this message, we use WhatsApp Message Templates. This is a special type of message inside WhatsApp that we need to use to send these promotional broadcasts.

Here is a detailed tutorial on WhatsApp Message Templates:

How To Create WhatsApp Message Templates

But for now, just keep in mind that we need to use these.

In Manychat, go to Settings and click on WhatsApp.

Next, click on Message Templates and add a new one.

So, let’s say, you are an eCommerce company, and you want to send a message to everyone that is a loyal customer.

You want to thank them for being one of your loyal customers and give them a 50% coupon code.

So, the template name will be Coupon Code for loyal customers. The template category is Marketing and the language is English:

Then, determine the contents of the message. You can use a text, image, video, or file in the header.

For now, I will just go with the text. And set it to:

{{first_name}}, here is your gift!

Thank you for being a loyal customer of eCommerceBizz, {{first_name}}! As a gift, we want to give you an exclusive coupon code that gives you 50% off on your next order!

Are you interested?

And we can also add buttons to this message. These can be Regular Buttons or URL buttons.

Regular Buttons trigger other WhatsApp messages. URL buttons directly go to your website.

For now, I will go with the Regular buttons:

Yes, Give Me The Code

No, Not Interested

And once you have done that, you need to click on Send to Review.

This will send the message template to WhatsApp.

Because WhatsApp is strict with these promotional messages, they need to approve your Message Template before you can send it.

So that means that someone from WhatsApp will look at your message and determine if it matches their rules. On average, this takes between 1-2 business days.

Step 4: Send the WhatsApp Broadcast with Manychat

Once you have done this and your Message Template is approved, you can actually send the broadcast inside Manychat.

In Manychat, go to Broadcasting and click on New Broadcast in the top-right corner:

Choose WhatsApp:

And select your WhatsApp Message template as your first message:

Next, connect the first button to another message:

Here is your discount code:

DISCOUNT50

Click on the link below to use it on our website 👇

https://chatimize.com 

And connect the Not Interested button to another message:

Allright, no worries!

So, this will be the content of the broadcast.

And then we can determine our target audience. So here, we can filter on our audience by adding conditions.

And since we added a tag at the beginning of our contacts, we also need to filter on that tag here:

On the right side, you can see what contacts will receive your broadcast.

And then, you can determine whether you want to send it now or if you want to schedule it for the future.

So if you want to schedule it in the future, you can click on the right button or otherwise you can just send it now:

Pro Tip:By default, you can send a maximum of 250 business-initiated conversations per 24 hours. If you want to send more, you need to verify your Meta business. Learn here how you can do that:

How To Verify Your Facebook Business Page in 4 Steps