How to avoid WhatsApp spamming?
This article addresses the prevention of spamming on WhatsApp, with a focus on business accounts. It explains how to identify and respond to unwanted messages, and delves into WhatsApp Business's quality rating system and its implications for messaging limits. The piece offers essential guidance for businesses to maintain effective and compliant communication on the platform.
Understanding the Risks of Spamming via WhatsApp
Understanding the risks of spamming via WhatsApp Business involves recognizing the potential for account limitations or blocks if a business account engages in spam-like activities. These activities can include sending unsolicited messages, frequent messaging to users who haven't opted in, or content that violates WhatsApp's policies. Such actions not only undermine trust with customers but can also lead to punitive measures from WhatsApp, including reduced messaging limits or account suspension. It's crucial for businesses to adhere to WhatsApp's guidelines to maintain a positive and compliant presence on the platform.
WhatsApp Business Quality Assessment
WhatsApp's quality rating for business accounts depends on user feedback, as the platform can't view encrypted messages. Users can report spam and block numbers, influencing the internal quality rating for a business number. This rating impacts the phone number status and messaging limits of the business account. If users frequently block a number or report messages as spam, WhatsApp will limit the number of templates that can be sent daily.
Quality Rating States
There are three states of messaging quality for WhatsApp Business accounts:
1. Green (High Quality): Indicates good reception of template messages by users.
2. Yellow (Medium Quality): Reflects a moderate reception of template messages.
3. Red (Low Quality): Shows poor reception of template messages and leads to imposed limits on the number of users the business can initiate conversations with using templates.
To improve quality rating, businesses should ensure their templates comply with WhatsApp Business Policy, are clear, personalized, and useful to users, and are only sent to users who have opted in to receive messages on that specific topic. They should also be mindful of messaging frequency and content quality.
Phone Number Status Based on Quality Rating
- Connected: Allows sending outgoing messages within the set messaging limit.
- Flagged: Occurs when quality rating is low. Businesses can't upgrade messaging limit tiers in this status.
- Restricted: Imposed when a business reaches its messaging limit, halting outgoing messages for 24 hours.
Messaging Limits
WhatsApp Business accounts have different messaging limit tiers:
1. Tier 1: Up to 1,000 business-initiated conversations in 24 hours.
2. Tier 2: Up to 10,000 business-initiated conversations in 24 hours.
3. Tier 3: Up to 100,000 business-initiated conversations in 24 hours.
4. Unlimited: No limit on business-initiated conversations.
Moving to a Higher Tier
WhatsApp automatically adjusts a business number's tier based on its quality rating and messaging volume. To upgrade, the quality rating should not be low, and the number of unique users contacted should be twice the current messaging limit over the last 7 days. Even meeting these criteria, an upgrade can be prevented if the quality rating is low.
What is Allowed/Recommended in How to Use WhatsApp?
According to WhatsApp's Business Messaging Policy, businesses are permitted to contact someone on WhatsApp only if the person has explicitly given their mobile phone number and agreed to be contacted over WhatsApp. This policy emphasizes the importance of consent in business communications, ensuring that customers have opted to engage with the business. It's crucial for businesses to maintain clarity and honesty in their communications and avoid any practices that could be perceived as misleading or spamming.
What is NOT Allowed/Recommended in How to Use WhatsApp?
WhatsApp strictly prohibits confusing, deceiving, defrauding, misleading, spamming, or surprising people with business communications. Businesses are not allowed to share or ask people to share full-length individual payment card numbers, financial account numbers, personal ID card numbers, or other sensitive identifiers. Furthermore, for a business to send any business-initiated messages outside the 24-hour window on the WhatsApp Business Platform, customers must have opted in for such communications. Importantly, a user reaching out to a business does not automatically opt them into receiving future proactive messages from that business.
How to Handle When Quality Assessment is Yellow or Red?
While the specific guidelines for handling a yellow or red quality assessment on WhatsApp Business are not specifically available, businesses should focus on improving their messaging practices to avoid such situations. This involves ensuring compliance with WhatsApp's Business Messaging and Commerce policies, including the prohibition of selling or promoting goods and services that are not allowed on the platform. If a customer initiates a conversation about purchasing a prohibited item, businesses should redirect the conversation to another channel where such discussions are allowed. Maintaining a high quality of messaging, adhering to opt-in requirements, and ensuring lawful compliance are crucial for avoiding yellow or red quality assessments.
For more detailed guidelines on avoiding spamming via WhatsApp and maintaining a high-quality business account, refer to WhatsApp's official documentation and resources such as WhatsApp Help Center.
Here are some relevant articles you can read for more information:
For additional guidance on how to use WhatsApp Business effectively and what practices to avoid, here are some helpful resources:
Sention Agency Article on Avoiding WhatsApp Business Bans:
This article provides insights into the importance of adhering to WhatsApp's policies to prevent bans. It emphasizes the need for obtaining user opt-in before sending messages and discusses the use of approved message templates and respectful automation. The article also covers the prohibition of selling goods or services that violate the Commerce Policy and outlines the types of organizations and uses that are prohibited by WhatsApp Business Solution, including telemedicine and sharing sensitive personal identifiers.
You can read more about it here: https://sention.agency/blog/conversational-marketing/whatsapp-marketing-and-conversational-strategies/whatsapp-business-banned/
Sprout Social's Guide on Using WhatsApp for Business:
Sprout Social offers innovative tips for leveraging WhatsApp Business, such as optimizing your business profile, using digital catalogs, supporting customers through chatbots, sharing content via the Status feature, developing creative marketing campaigns, replicating core business processes, and using targeted ads. They also highlight key WhatsApp Business account features, including quick replies, automatic away messages, and using labels to organize messages and contacts.
You can read more about it here: https://sproutsocial.com/insights/how-to-use-whatsapp-for-business/
Gallabox's Best Practices for WhatsApp Business in 2023:
This blog outlines eight critical best practices for using WhatsApp Business. These include ensuring your business profile is relevant, avoiding spamming customers, engaging actively with customers on the platform, sending personalized messages, ensuring messages are contextually relevant, including multimedia in texts, responding quickly to customer queries, and leveraging WhatsApp's data for better customer understanding.
You can read more about it here: https://gallabox.com/blog/whatsapp-business-best-practices
These resources provide a comprehensive overview of best practices and guidelines for WhatsApp Business users.