Getting Ready for Promotional Messaging

Sending promotional messages is a powerful marketing tool that can increase customer engagement and drive sales. This article will help you prepare for sending broadcast promotional messages to your customers. We will cover the prerequisites, sending the promotional message and increasing messaging limits on WhatsApp.

Pre-requisites for Sending Promotional Messages

Here are a few things you need to prepare and understand before sending promotional messages:

• Sufficient balance in WhatsApp Fees

• Create and submit a message template

• Ensure your phone number quality rating is not low or flagged

• Ensure your Contact has opted in to receive promotional messages

It is mandatory to ensure your Contacts have opted in before sending marketing messages. Sending without consent can cause message failures or restrictions. Learn more about WhatsApp Opt In in our blog post.

Sufficient Balance in WhatsApp Fees

To send promotional messages, you need to use WhatsApp message templates. Therefore, you need to ensure that you have enough balance in your WhatsApp account. You can top-up your credits in your WhatsApp Fees on the platform.

Learn more about WhatsApp Fees here.

Create and Submit a Message Template

Before sending promotional messages, it is essential to create and submit your message templates for approval. Ensure to follow the template guidelines to avoid your template from being rejected.

Here are some template samples that you can use as a reference when creating and submitting your message template in the platform.

Ensure your Phone Number Quality Rating is not Low or Flagged

If your phone number quality rating is low or flagged, your phone number status will change to Flagged or Restricted and may restrict you from sending broadcast promotional messages.

Sending the Promotional message

Once you have ensured that your WhatsApp Fees balance is sufficient, your message template is approved, and the message template quality rating is not low or flagged, you can now send your promotional message. You can use the broadcast feature in the platform to send your promotional messages to your Contacts quickly and easily. Additionally, you can import your Contacts to send broadcasts to specific groups.

Learn how to send a broadcast here.

If your business is unverified, you can only send broadcast messages to up to 250 unique Contacts.

Increasing your Messaging Limits to Send More Messages

Increase daily messaging limits to send promotional messages to more customers. Here’s how you can raise your messaging limits:

• Criteria to increase your messaging limits

• Steps to increase your messaging limits

You can check your current messaging limits in the your WhatsApp Accounts > Settings tab > WhatsApp Manager > Account tools > Phone Numbers

Criteria to Increase Your Messaging Limits

Your portfolio’s messaging limit can increase if both of the following conditions are met:

• Message Quality: You are sending high-quality messages across all of your business phone numbers and templates, with a Medium or High quality rating.

• Usage Threshold: In the last 7 days, your portfolio has initiated at least 50% of its current messaging limit (e.g., 1,000 conversations if your limit is 2K).

Steps to Increase Your Messaging Limits

If your business consistently sends high-quality messages across all phone numbers and templates, and meets the usage thresholds at each tier, your messaging limits can scale from 250 → 2K → 10K → 100K → Unlimited in as little as 4 days.

Learn more about Increasing Messaging Limits here.

Struggling to Increase Your WhatsApp Messaging Limits?

The Alternate Path Program gives you another way to scale your messaging limits without completing full business verification. If you consistently send high-quality messages and meet usage thresholds, Meta can upgrade your limit based on performance.

From 1K → 10K

• Day 1: Send at least 500 messages to unique contacts.

• Your limit increases to 10K within 24 hours of the 500th message.

From 10K → 100K

• Day 2: Send at least 5,000 messages to unique contacts.

• Your limit increases to 100K within 24 hours of the 5,000th message.

From 100K → Unlimited

• Day 3: Send at least 50,000 messages to unique contacts.

• By Day 4 (24 hours after the 50,000th message), your limit increases to Unlimited.

In short: By meeting the thresholds each day, you can move from 1K → Unlimited in just 4 days, provided your messages maintain a Medium or High quality rating.

Phone Number Quality Rating

The quality rating assigned to your phone number is based on customer feedback about the messages they’ve received in the past seven days.

• 🟢 High (Green): Customers respond positively to your messages.

• 🟡 Medium (Yellow): Some concerns have been raised. You should address them.

• 🔴 Low (Red): Significant issues or complaints — you need to improve quickly.

Check your phone number quality rating in WhatsApp Manager > Phone Numbers tab > Quality Rating column

What happens when your Quality Rating is low?

If your quality rating drops:

• You won’t be downgraded to a lower limit, but scaling will pause until your rating improves.

• You will receive email and Business Manager notifications as a warning.

Restricted status: This occurs when you reach your portfolio’s messaging limit. During restriction, you cannot start new business-initiated conversations until the 24-hour cap resets, but you can still respond within the customer service window.

Shared limit note: Because messaging limits are shared at the portfolio level, one phone number can consume the entire allowance for all numbers.

Improve Your Quality Rating

To improve your quality rating, consider these steps:

• Check Templates: Identify whether any templates added in the last 7 days are causing negative feedback.

• Policy Compliance: Make sure your notifications comply with WhatsApp’s policies.

• User Opt-In: Only send messages customers have explicitly agreed to receive.

• Best Practices: Review WhatsApp’s Best Practice Guide and optimize your messaging style.

By following these steps, you’ll increase customer satisfaction and improve your eligibility for higher messaging limits.

Next Steps

You’ve learned how to send promotional messages and increase your messaging limits. Let’s move on to the next step in your journey to become a WhatsApp Official Business Account.