Create and Properly Use WhatsApp Campaigns
Thomas Möllers9/23/2022
In this article, you will learn how to use WhatsApp campaigns for yourself and your business, and the best way to go about it.
Table of contents
- Why can a WhatsApp campaign be advantageous for your company?
- During the preparation or execution of WhatsApp campaigns, there are organizational/ technical as well as content-related points that you should consider:
- There is the option to place your brand on WhatsApp with the freely available WhatsApp Business App. However, this solution is rather intended for small, local businesses who want to quickly answer queries in chat. For larger customers, WhatsApp offers the WhatsApp Business API. This, on the one hand, offers the possibility that an infinite number of employees can communicate with your customers under one WhatsApp number. On the other hand, newsletters can be sent to all your subscribers. Integration into your existing systems is also possible.
- In order to develop and implement a successful WhatsApp newsletter campaign, you should pay attention to the following points.
- Segmentation.
- The D2C jewelry brand Concrete Jungle was grappling with rising costs in customer acquisition, while at the same time the numbers in email marketing were stagnating. WhatsApp marketing was the solution in this case.
- Conclusion
- advertising opportunities
Our guest author Thomas Möllers explains in this article how you can use WhatsApp campaigns for you and your business and that this model not only works for smaller, local providers, but can also be applied on a large scale.
More and more companies are using WhatsApp in communication with potential customers, to solve support requests quickly and easily or to give specific advice.
After WhatsApp temporarily banned the sending of newsletters in 2019, it has been allowed again since 2021. In addition, WhatsApp is increasingly releasing functions that allow brands to communicate more easily and actively with customers. Whole WhatsApp campaigns are now possible, making the messenger an important new building block in the marketing mix of modern brands. How exactly you can implement a WhatsApp campaign and what you need to consider, you will find out here.
Why can a WhatsApp campaign be advantageous for your company?
WhatsApp campaigns serve companies as a countermeasure against rising acquisition costs by shortening communication, strengthening customer loyalty, and ultimately increasing the lifetime value of customers. This is more important than ever, as the costs for acquiring new customers are constantly rising.
Every day, more competitors are vying for the coveted attention of users on various advertising platforms. However, advertising fatigue is also increasing, as users (similarly to TV) have become accustomed to the various advertising insertions on online platforms and develop a "blindness". Two developments that result in brands having to invest more and more in order to make new potential customers aware of their own brand.
A trend that makes it difficult for companies to stay profitable.
In order to continue to guarantee this, good retention marketing is required. The aim is therefore to bind customers closely to the brand and to convince them of further purchases. The most common tool for this is the email. Customers are cost-effectively informed about further actions after the purchase via newsletter, so that ideally a second or third purchase is made.
But even if email marketing still works well for many brands, the wastage is high. On average, only every fourth email newsletter is opened.
And this is where WhatsApp campaigns come into play. Compared to classic email, WhatsApp offers several advantages:
- Significantly higher interaction
The WhatsApp marketing provider Charles speaks of Open rates of over 80% with a click rate of over 16%." The values can be explained by the frequent use and relevance of WhatsApp in the private sector.More emotional environment
In WhatsApp your customers write with friends, work colleagues and family. The perfect environment to build an emotional bond with your customers. The email inbox is still primarily used for business communication.Faster, two-way communication
While email newsletters are usually one-way communication, your customers can always react directly in the chat and reply to newsletters via WhatsApp. Either by writing a message themselves or by triggering predefined flows with so-called Quick-Reply-Buttons.With the right campaigns, you can thus increase the lifetime value of your
customers by 2.5 times. An enormous potential, therefore, that is currently opening up for companies.What should be considered with WhatsApp campaigns?
During the preparation or execution of WhatsApp campaigns, there are organizational/ technical as well as content-related points that you should consider:
Find a suitable tool.
To really professionally and scalable WhatsApp marketing, you need the WhatsApp Business API, which you get access to through technology partners from WhatsApp. These are usually providers of corresponding WhatsApp marketing software.
To really professionally and scalable WhatsApp marketing, you need the WhatsApp Business API, which you get access to through technology partners from WhatsApp. These are usually providers of corresponding WhatsApp marketing software.
- Pay attention to privacy.
When addressing customers via WhatsApp, strict data protection regulations apply. Your customers must have clearly agreed in advance to really want to be informed via this channel. A checkbox that has been ticked in advance is not sufficient in this case. Definitely discuss this with your data protection officer. The common tools offer data protection compliant solutions, so this point should not be a big challenge. - Address.
WhatsApp is an intimate channel in which your customers usually communicate only with friends and family. Accordingly, it is extremely important to hit the right note and authentically integrate yourselves into this environment. Formal, long messages that have been written strictly according to corporate regulations do not fit – unsubscriptions are the consequence. Keep the message short and casual, look at how your customers usually write and try to bring the style into line with your brand. - No automatic download.
If your customers have not saved your number, images or videos will not be automatically downloaded (depending on your customers' settings, this can also be the case with stored numbers). On the one hand, you should therefore encourage your customers to really save your number. On the other hand, you have to be aware when designing a newsletter that images or videos might not be seen at all. WhatsApp is a chat with a focus on text. So put your focus on the message instead of the picture. - Newsletters can be easily cancelled.
Your customers can easily cancel your newsletter by sending the keyword "Stop" as a WhatsApp message to you. So a very low hurdle. Accordingly, you should consider for each message whether it really offers added value for all your recipients or whether they might be rather annoyed by it. If in doubt, it is advisable to segment the target groups in order to send precise messages. - Be prepared for shipping.
- Messages are read on WhatsApp within a few minutes.. So be prepared for the additional traffic at the moment of sending a newsletter and make sure that everything works. If, for example, a promotion is not yet live, this will cause confusion on the customer side and ultimately frustration. Be also prepared for customers to answer you in the chat when, for example, there are questions about the promotion.Do you need additional tools/ providers to create a campaign in addition to WhatsApp?
There is the option to place your brand on WhatsApp with the freely available WhatsApp Business App. However, this solution is rather intended for small, local businesses who want to quickly answer queries in chat. For larger customers, WhatsApp offers the WhatsApp Business API. This, on the one hand, offers the possibility that an infinite number of employees can communicate with your customers under one WhatsApp number. On the other hand, newsletters can be sent to all your subscribers. Integration into your existing systems is also possible.
In addition, you have to consider the cost structure. As a rule, the costs of the individual providers are composed of a fixed monthly fee and a variable amount depending on the number of messages sent. Ideally, you should therefore calculate how many messages you will send per month before you decide on a tool.
(Note: WhatsApp also charges fees per initiated conversation.
We have developed a cost calculator with which you can easily calculate the cost load.)Another point is compliance with the DSGVO, which should not be overlooked. Especially foreign tools sometimes offer cheap solutions that do not comply with European data protection guidelines. In German providers' tools, this point is normally taken into account from the start and therefore not a problem.
How can you create a WhatsApp campaign? (Step-by-step guide)
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In order to develop and implement a successful WhatsApp newsletter campaign, you should pay attention to the following points.
1. Analyse your brand and target group
The aim here is to find out what your customers perceive as added value and to identify the exact language of the target group. Sounds quite trivial at first, but is a decisive building block for the success of your campaign and forms the basis for all further steps.
At this point you should not act hastily, but take your time to get to know your target group exactly.
At this point you should not act hastily, but take your time to get to know your target group exactly.
Does your target group attach great importance to a feeling of community or is a certain exclusivity more important to them?
- Is she interested in new things or does she live more in fixed routines?
- Does she speak very warmly or rather formally, distantly? Are emojis used?
- Is the language youthful with many Anglicisms or rather old-fashioned?
- Read reviews, look at your target group's social media profiles, look around forums where your target group is on the go. Write down recurring language patterns, phrases as well as questions, needs and wishes. This way you get to know your target group exactly and know afterwards which offers and contents your WhatsApp campaign should contain so that it is well received by your target group.
2. Set goals
In order to evaluate the real success of your WhatsApp campaign later, you should first formulate clear goals.
Do you want to generate direct sales with the newsletter?
- Is it about the presentation of a new product?
- Would you like to gather insights about your target group in the form of a survey?
- Or do you have a completely different goal?
- Also make sure that it is a really measurable result, which should be formulated according to the SMART rule (Specific, Measurable, Attractive, Realistic, Timed). This way, you can later find out exactly whether you have achieved your goal with the campaign. Within each campaign you should also plan and carry out A/B tests to get to know your target group better.
3. Develop special offer
After you now know better how your target group ticks and what measurable goals you, with the WhatsApp campaign want to achieve, you now have to create an occasion, which justifies writing to the customers. If you write a message to your customers out of the blue and advertise your product without any context, they will be confused and annoyed.
In the private sector, communication with friends or family is the same. So think of a good reason why it is absolutely justified from the customer's point of view to send them a message at that moment. Typical occasions are:
Special actions (discounts, free additions, 2 for 1, Black Friday etc.)
- Release of a new product
- Exclusive actions for subscribers (Pre-Sales, exclusive discount codes etc.)
- Customer surveys
- Competitions
- Live events
- So think about which action you want to implement, which on the one hand fits your brand, meets the wishes of your target group and ensures a realistic chance of achieving your goals. If it is important to your customers, for example, to be trendsetters, an exclusive pre-sale fits in, where your WhatsApp subscribers have the opportunity to order a new product before everyone else. Here, you should constantly make new tests to find out which actions are really relevant for your customers. Let insights from your other marketing efforts flow into this to narrow down the range of possibilities.
If you have already built a good connection with your customers, you can occasionally send your customers a message without a clear cause. For example, you can give your subscribers a glimpse behind the scenes or tell a little bit about your founder's story via text message. In these cases, always make sure that you don't bother your customers and that these messages still bring added value from the customer's point of view. But let your creativity run free. There are thousands of possible occasions to write to your customers in the form of a WhatsApp campaign. There is no right and wrong, try different ideas and see how your subscribers react
4. Listbuilding
WhatsApp messages can only be sent to customers who have explicitly agreed to do so. Therefore, it is important beforehand to build a contact list that you are allowed to write to later with your campaign – similar to the email newsletter. In order to collect opt-ins, you should first consider why people should register for your WhatsApp newsletter at this very moment. What is the added value for them? The following incentives have proven to be effective:
Discount codes
- Exclusive content or access
- Participation in competitions
- Free shipping
- Free content or additions
- In the next step, you should consider where you want to collect registrations. Here, there are tried and tested methods:
Popup banner on the website
- Note in the footer
- Note in the top bar
- Note in the check-out
- These are passive methods, which continuously generate registrations for you. But you can also actively draw attention to your newsletter. For example, by means of a note in your normal email newsletter, social media postings or active advertising placements.
Test different variations until you have found a good method to reliably fill your list.
One major advantage of WhatsApp marketing compared to email is the simple opt-in by users. At the appropriate places, simply deposit a so-called wa.me link. This can either be created in your tool or by online generators.
Per clicking on this link, WhatsApp opens and the users land directly in the chat with you. With the link, you can also add a predefined message, for example "Hey, I want to register for the newsletter".
This can be sent directly by the users, which triggers a flow set by you in advance. This flow should once again ask in the chat whether the respective users are really sure that they want to receive the messages from you via WhatsApp. Through Quick-Reply buttons in WhatsApp, you can make the feedback on this very easy. If your users confirm this point, the GDPR-compliant opt-in is collected.
So your users effectively sign up for your newsletter with three clicks.
5. Text newsletter
Now all parts are ready from which you can now write the newsletter. Try to observe the rough guidelines of good WhatsApp newsletters:
Keep it as brief as possible
- write personally (write as an employee of the company, not as a company)
- Use emojis to loosen up and emotionalize the message
- Format your message to make it easy to read
- Use the language of your target audience
- Bring your message to the point in a few words. The longer your message is, the less likely it is to be read in the end. So have courage to cut down.
It is important that the WhatsApp campaign does not feel like advertising from the customer's perspective, but like a nice hint from a friend. This authentic writing is often more difficult than you first think. Always take your analyses at hand and check whether the text really fits your target group exactly. Single words make the difference.
6. Send newsletter
Either plan the shipping for a fixed date or send the newsletter yourself by clicking on the corresponding button in your tool. Either way, it is very important to check the newsletter again thoroughly before hand. This sounds like a trivial point, but I still see newsletters over and over again that have one or more errors. So check these points again carefully and ideally with at least four eyes.
Spelling: Spelling mistakes in a newsletter are embarrassing and have a negative impact on the image of your brand. Check this point carefully and read the text several times.
- Formatting: WhatsApp bolds words or sections that are between two asterisks (*). This offers you the opportunity for a clear formatting, but is also a common source of errors.
- Attachment: As with emails, the attachment is also quickly forgotten in WhatsApp messages, in this case usually a picture. Make sure once again that the right picture or the respective attachment is attached to the message.
- Link: In order for your customers not to get lost on the way from message to website, you should rather check the link once too often than too little. A faulty link will ruin your entire campaign. Also remember to check the UTM parameters, if you are using any.
- Date: Sounds crazy, but I see mistakes here over and over again. Make sure that the shipping date is really stored correctly and that all advertised actions are already live.
- Be ready: A common beginner's mistake is that there are no capacities in support at the moment of dispatch to respond to possible follow-ups. The messages are read by your subscribers within a few minutes. Be ready at that moment to deal with any problems.
- 7. Evaluate results
Your newsletter has been sent, your customers have interacted with it and now it's time to see how successful your WhatsApp campaign was.
Many tools offer integrated analysis dashboards. Nevertheless, you should consult as many analysis sources as possible in order to get a concrete picture.
Small tip: Since the messages are read so quickly after dispatch, you can follow very well how your users behave after receiving the message with the live view of for example
or Google Analytics. Further Shopify-tools that can help you can be found at OMR Reviews.Social Media SuitesThe first measure of whether a WhatsApp campaign was successful or not is of course the previously defined goals from point 2. If you have formulated these measurably, you will be able to see quite easily whether the goals have been achieved.
Have the goals been achieved? Great, congratulations! Take this as an occasion to set yourself even more ambitious goals and further to develop the channel.
The goals have not been achieved? Don't be discouraged. WhatsApp is not a channel where you can make a quick buck. Try to analyze your process and understand why your goal was not achieved.
Was the goal really realistic?
- Was the list big enough?
- Was the offer attractive enough from a customer perspective?
- Did the message make you want to take part in the campaign?
- Was the campaign designed from A to Z, with the target group in mind?
- Did the underlying processes work?
- Take the findings very carefully and try to improve them in the next campaign. With each new message, you will master the topic better and send increasingly successful WhatsApp newsletters.
KPIs such as the opening rate, the click rate, the conversion rate and the deregistration rate give you information about where the problem is likely to be. Check exactly which KPI has achieved weak values and consider what the reason for this could be.
4 professional tips for successful implementation of WhatsApp campaigns
Segmentation.
The more information you have collected about your customers, the more granular you can subsequently segment your subscribers. If you want to professionalize WhatsApp marketing, this is a fundamental building block. The more precisely you segment, the more precise messages you can develop. Your customers feel understood and thank you with higher customer loyalty.Involve users & let them interact.
WhatsApp is not a one-way channel, but a Chat",". Use this to your advantage and encourage your customers to give feedback. The more interaction between you and your customers, the deeper is the one hand the bond to your brand, but on the other hand you also learn exciting insights about your target group. You can use this later on to develop tailored messages and actions. The Quick-Reply buttons from WhatsApp make the interaction with you very easy.Use formatting.
WhatsApp has numerous formatting options (paragraphs, bold, emojis etc.). Use these possibilities to design a text that makes you want to read at first glance. It is important to find the right mix.- More than just regular discount codes.
WhatsApp can do so much more for your brands than just be the channel where you send a discount code every month. Treat your subscribers as VIP customers and integrate them into your brand. Design a small game in the chat, ask for a name for the office dog, conduct small surveys and develop creative campaigns. - Examples of successful WhatsApp campaignsConcrete-Jungle
The D2C jewelry brand Concrete Jungle was grappling with rising costs in customer acquisition, while at the same time the numbers in email marketing were stagnating. WhatsApp marketing was the solution in this case.
In order to stand out among all the newsletters, Concrete Jungle chose a very personal approach. The short and personal messages worked extraordinarily well. Overall, Concrete Jungle achieved a ROAS of 300%. Especially when compared to email marketing, the impact becomes clear. A 50x higher CTR and four times more website conversions compared to the email newsletter underline the potential of WhatsApp.
Concrete Jungle
Snocks
The analytical approach with many tests regularly brings exciting insights to light. For example, Snocks has tested what works better: WhatsApp newsletters with image or better without image? Normally, marketers always recommend adding an image to a content, after all, an image says more than a thousand words. But the final results yielded very different conclusions: The newsletter without image caused an increase in the CTR by 124%. But what is the reason for this?
WhatsApp newsletters without an image blend in much better with the normal environment on WhatsApp. How many messages do you get a day? And how many of them are accompanied by a picture? The majority of the messages are simple texts. In order to be as authentic as possible, you should also be brave and sometimes do without an additional picture. Not only does the message seem more authentic and look less like advertising. You also create more curiosity, as your customers first have to click on the link in your message to see exactly what it's about.
Snocks
Uber
This case shows very clearly the advantages of integrating WhatsApp deeply into its processes and offering its customers an easy and intuitive user experience.
Uber
Which tools are used in the planning and execution of WhatsApp campaigns?
Conclusion
Probably no expert doubts that WhatsApp will be one of the most important marketing channels in the coming years. The market power and potential are too great. Moreover, Meta has proven that it knows how to create lucrative
Superchat
hellomateo
ChatWerkadvertising opportunities
for companies. The earlier you start dealing with it and sending out the first WhatsApp campaigns, the greater is your lead when more and more brands jump on the trend. It is therefore advisable to think about a WhatsApp strategy early on and include the channel in the marketing mix.The opt-in rates are much higher than is the case with the classic email newsletter. First-mover thus benefit from the curiosity of the users and the still little contested market. für Unternehmen geschaffen werden können. Je früher Ihr anfangt, Euch damit zu beschäftigen und die ersten WhatsApp-Kampagnen zu verschicken, desto größer ist Euer Vorsprung, wenn mehr und mehr Brands auf den Trend aufspringen. Entsprechend empfiehlt es sich, frühzeitig eine WhatsApp-Strategie zu überlegen und den Kanal in den Marketingmix aufzunehmen.
Die Opt-In-Raten sind deutlich höher, als es beim klassischen E-Mail-Newsletter der Fall ist. First-Mover profitieren also von der Neugier der Nutzer*innen und dem noch wenig umkämpften Markt.
Author
Thomas Möllers
Author
Thomas Möllers
Thomas Möllers ist seit vielen Jahren im Performance-Marketing für E-Commerce Unternehmen tätig. Nachdem er mit seinen Kollegen die Potenziale von WhatsApp erkannt hat, erfolgte mit chatmarks der Start für die erste E-Commerce-WhatsApp-Marketing-Agentur in Deutschland. Heute hilft chatmarks E-Commerce-Brands erfolgreich auf und mit dem Messenger zu werben.
