With nearly 20 million users in France and more than 2 billion worldwide, WhatsApp is of obvious interest for business marketing. Still limited, the presence of advertisers could intensify with the provision of new functionalities intended for businesses, provided that specialized solutions are used.
Marketing on Whatsapp, a not so new practice
Until 2019, sending “WhatsApp newsletters” remained a popular gray area in some countries, including Germany and Latin America, where businesses were quick to reach out to their customers en masse via WhatsApp. Despite the total absence of regulation and control on the part of the Meta firm, this practice had entered into usage and was well accepted.
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But we understand that this situation has become too risky for the application, whose success is based above all on the user experience, but also on the absence of spam for its millions of users. The parent company therefore decided to take action, and in December 2019 decreed a ban on using its services to initiate conversations for commercial purposes, officially putting an end to this practice.
At the same time, the WhatsApp Business application, launched in January 2018, took over: it allows small businesses, mainly local ones, to be contacted by their customers and to respond to conversations initiated by them, but not to contact directly. The creation of a profile on WhatsApp Business subject to validation, as well as the limitation of the possibilities of sending mass messages thus allowed WhatsApp to continue to offer a platform to local businesses while ensuring that they could not not send unsolicited messages to large contact lists.
WhatsApp campaigns back in 2022?
Since June 2021, the possibility of making whatsapp marketing appears to be open again after the app re-allowed business-initiated messaging.
To do this, you must use a third service, paying this time: WhatsApp Business API. The API, which allows you to connect to WhatsApp services to send mass messages, is however not directly accessible to companies and to be able to use it, you have to go through two filters:
- Have a validated WhatsApp Business profile
- Go through one of partner solutions selected by Meta to provide API access.
In summary, WhatsApp only grants direct access to its API to a very small number of partner companies, who in turn offer this access to their customers as a service charged by the number of messages sent.
Who are these official partners? Although they have not all been revealed, they are essentially companies offering solutions specializing in direct marketing and customer relationship management, starting with service providers for email marketing, newsletters, etc. .
This strategy allows WhatsApp, which has a small workforce and fears above all for the experience and susceptibility to spam of its users, to use these partners as a “buffer” to ensure that the messages sent are compliant with anti-spam regulations, starting with the GDPR.
Between untimely marketing and customer relationship management, a boundary still blurred
With a 98% message open rate, 60% click rate, 2 billion users: the advantages of such a marketing channel are enough to make advertisers dizzy.
But this perspective of El Dorado is a double-edged sword: will the growing presence of companies on WhatsApp be to the detriment of its users? If certain geographical areas are already accustomed to this mixture of genres, French users may frown when they are contacted directly on their email after leaving their phone number in a form. Because between an untimely marketing and a welcome management of the customer relationship, the border is still blurred.
As we can see, the quality of consent management, but also the quality of the relational approach will be crucial to making WhatsApp a channel of trust. Fortunately, companies have made huge strides in their approach to relationship marketing, if only to become GDPR compliant.
For now, WhatsApp looks like a promising communication channel for companies to invest in, and the safeguards put in place through a network of partners who ensure the quality of messages seem to be working for the moment. 2022 will undoubtedly be the year marketers return to WhatsApp!