Wondering what’s the deal with Whatsapp Business API and how can you use it for your own business? 

Trust us, it’s not that complicated. 

 This guide will help cover all your questions about Whatsapp Business API and it’s marketing-related jargon like 

• What is the pricing for Whatsapp API?
• How to apply for the business account?
• What’s the limit of sending messages?

This guide covers the basics of Whatsapp API in general. If you’re ready to get an account for your company, you can hop over to WhatsAppBusinessAPI.com and learn to automate your Whatsapp marketing campaigns for FREE for the first 7 days.

What Is Whatsapp Business API?

Whatsapp Business API is an effort from Facebook to help business owners reach their customers across the world. It is a fast, secure & reliable way to power the communication of large and small businesses with their customers.

Why Was Whatsapp Business API Created?

You’re probably living in a cave if you don’t know about one of the biggest tech acquisitions of all time. 

Facebook acquired Whatsapp at $16 billion in stock value and cash. 70% of Whatsapp’s 450 million subscribers at that time were actively using that app to communicate with each other. That’s more than the volume of SMS’s sent out every day. 

In 2019 alone Facebook earned over 60 billion dollars. And it is estimated that Whatsapp will contribute anything between 5-10 billion dollars to its annual revenue very soon.

And at the front of the race are developing countries in Africa, Asia, Latin America and recently even New Zealand. With such countries coming to Whatsapp faster than ever, Whatsapp wants to capitalize on the business owners in the emerging markets. The reason is that most of these countries are practically extremely well adapted to the application and is already being used extensively. This is where they release something like the Whatsapp Business app. 

But in Europe where Whatsapp is wearing the crown as the no.1 messaging app, they released something called the Whatsapp Business API.

(if you want to completely skip the whole application process and fast track your Whatsapp marketing success using AI-based technology, check out WhatsApp Business API)

Getting Started with Whatsapp Business API

Whatsapp Business API is more targeted towards large enterprises and big-scale corporate companies since there’s no interface or an app that can you interact with. This API is customized and coded to work with the business software that the company is using. 

It has primarily be used for 3 cases:

• to create a brand presence on Whatsapp
• to respond to customers within 24 hours…manually
• send pre-programmed messages only

The Whatsapp business profile is what the user interacts with and enhances the brand presence.

Whatsapp Business API: Profile

It is the business’s responsibility to spread the word and create a brand presence. The profile is not going to be searchable in Whatsapp itself.

Whatsapp Business profile has the following information stored about the business much like a personal profile:

• Cover photo
• Website
• Description
• Email ID
• Official Address
• Business Hours (Operation Hours)

All businesses using the Whatsapp business app will automatically get listed as a business account.

The other type of Whatsapp Business Account that a company can have is an official business account. When these accounts are verified (the process for which is VERY hard btw!), a green tick appears next to the name of the business in the profile.

How Much Does Whatsapp Business API Cost?

The pricing is dependent on the Whatsapp business partner that you reach out to. And it’s more complicated than just that. Most of these Whatsapp business partners are actually SMS providers. They have found a way to charge a transactional fee as they do in the case of SMS for Whatsapp as well.

Otherwise, Whatsapp has a no-charge policy and the messages are free to send. They basically don’t charge for the messages sent in the first 24 hours (aka Session Messages) and charge a small fee for the messages (aka Template Messages) sent after the first 24 hours. The fee also depends on the carrier rates in the country. Everyone has a different charge.

It will eventually boil down to who you’re choosing as your Whatsapp business partner and only they decide the entire cost for that. 

Another way to succeed at Whatsapp business marketing is to get a tool like WhatsApp Business API that gives you complete control of your Whatsapp marketing needs using AI-based tech. 

How To Add Customers As Whatsapp Contacts?

Whatsapp is very strict about who you’re sending the messages to. So before you start out, you want to get consent. There are two ways to get consent from customers to receive messages:

• The user sends the first message
• The user opts-in actively in agreement for sending messages

The active opt-in method looks something like this…

The users need to give consent by clicking on the checkbox or entering their phone number. As long as there’s consent, the users can opt-in from anywhere. Sometimes a company can also take another route because this opt-in method is slightly complex and can lead to users dropping out. So instead of asking them to opt-in, you can also the users to send you the first message.

As a standard practice, once the user is accepted and their number verified, you can use a CRM to import the newly added contacts. Unfortunately, there’s still no way for you to check whether the number is still active on Whatsapp or not unless the sent message shows up as failed.

Thankfully some tools like WhatsApp Business API can automate the Whatsapp number filtration method at the press of a single button. 

Whatsapp Business API: Messaging

For sending and receiving messages, you will receive an API to connect with a platform or a tool. Whatsapp Business API only provides you with an API endpoint for connection.

After successfully connecting the API with a CRM, you’ll start here:

Messaging Interface

Whatsapp is not half as fancy as other instant messaging apps are like Facebook’s Messenger which has funky chat UI elements. Whatsapp only has plain text, emoji, files & other media like videos to help you put your point across.

Your focus would be on leveraging the various formats of media that Whatsapp can support. This includes playing media natively like audio and Whatsapp’s picture-in-picture features lets users watch Facebook, Instagram & YouTube videos without having to leave the chat window itself.

Whatsapp’s emojis and stickers are also worth taking advantage of. Brands like Tinder, McDonald’s, Bacardi, ABN Amro Bank, and others are already making use of the stickers to communicate with their customers. In India alone, the market Whatsapp has crossed 400 million users mark and every brand wants a piece of the pie.

All you really get to do is to be able to send and receive messages and read notifications that will make sure your point is put across. Location sharing messages are also possible but that’s it.

Unfortunately, there are messaging limitations for businesses even though the Whatsapp interface is simple to use.

Session Messaging

When any messages that are sent and received due to a response of a user-initiated message, it’s called a session message. 

These last for only 24 hours and businesses cannot send any promotional messages after the time has lapsed. The idea behind Whatsapp implementing this was that they wanted to become the preferred portal for customer service for businesses. 

Because customers expect businesses to respond fast, the 24-hour rule has made companies shift to Whatsapp as a preferred channel. It also prevents businesses from abusing the power of SPAM marketing messages.

How Does Session Messaging In Whatsapp Work?

If a user sends a message to Whatsapp API connected business, the business has 24 hours to respond to that user without any restrictions from the time of receiving that message.

Once the time runs out, businesses only have an option to send templated messages to their contacts.

Template Messaging

As a business, if you want to send a message after the first 24 hours of the last incoming message, the only way to do it is by using the Whatsapp template message. 

 These messages are pre-designed and pre-approved by Whatsapp since they want to limit the power of sending any sales/marketing messages to their users after 24 hours have elapsed. 

It looks something like this…

The pricing for sending these messages varies depending on which country you’re sending from and where the user lives. Usually, the charges are incurred on a “per template message” basis.

If you think you can mislead WhatsApp into getting your templates approved and send them as bulk messages, you can forget about it. The reason for that is that Whatsapp Business API restricts you to 15 messages per second template messaging. 

Moreover, you risk losing your Whatsapp Business API account if they find out you’re trying to game their system.

The only proper use of Template messaging lies with being able to send customer updates and some other pre-approved messages that are not meant for transactional purposes. Think stuff like two-factor authentication, shipping updates, travel/event booking notifications, and confirmation updates, etc.

This is how you can select the category of the message when you use a software/CRM to connect with Whatsapp Business API.

To make sure your template messages are approved (they’re approved one at a time), just make sure you don’t include the following in your messages:

• Anything words/sentences implying you’re trying to promote something or up-selling
• Cold messages
• Too many spelling mistakes
• Floating parameters (i.e. lines with only parameters but no text)

The only other way for you to write a template message to re-open the 24-hour window is by mentioning something about the previous message sent. Following are two examples of approved messages that work:

• Hello [username], I’m sorry for not being able to respond earlier but I’m happy to address your concerns now. Please respond with “yes” if you’d like to continue the conversation
• I’ve been able to find the solution to the problem you were facing earlier. It concerns our refund policy so if you’d like to continue with the discussion, type “yes” and hit send.

One recent addition by Whatsapp is helpful – the company introduced a localization feature that lets you store message templates as language packs. 

Language packs are a bundle of message template elements that are specific to a native language or region. This helps businesses reach out to masses in different countries but also keeps it local by communicating in their local language.

Group Messaging

Whatsapp partners are currently not offering the Whatsapp Group feature just yet but here’s a little idea on what you can expect when it launches…

Businesses cannot be added to groups. It can only create them and manage them. Admin privileges can be added as well and invitations can be sent to participants. But they can’t be added forcefully.

If you still feel like you want to use Whatsapp to send messages in bulk to a large set of numbers, a tool like WhatsApp Business API is the best way to make your Whatsapp marketing future-proof.

How To Apply For Whatsapp Business API Account

Whatsapp Business accounts need to be approved by Whatsapp. And these approvals are managed further by Whatsapp Partners. 

Here’s what you need to do to get an account:

1. Select a Whatsapp partner
2. Fill up Company Information
3. Activate Business Number/Account
4. Verification of Whatsapp Business Account

1. Selecting A Whatsapp Partner: While choosing the right Whatsapp partner, you’ll need to evaluate them on certain factors like:
   1. can it provide a number in the country you plan to run your campaigns in
   2. how does the pricing work when it comes to message volume
   3. can they provide all the Whatsapp API functions that is needed for your business

All of these problems are automatically taken care of with every license purchase of WhatsApp Business API. You can read more about it here.

2. Providing Company Information: Much of this is dependent on the partner itself but at the most basic level you will be required to furnish the following information:

• Name of your company
• Website URL
• Industry
• Use Case
• Region of Operation
• Country in which company HQ is located
• Facebook Business Manager ID

Another major thing you’ll need to keep in mind is to get your business page verified on Facebook by uploading official documents proving the legitimacy of your business. The documents are needed for verification purposes like the address of the business, phone number, etc.

After verification, you will receive your FB business manager ID and then you can submit the information to Whatsapp. The business account approval process typically takes 3-14 days depending on the turnaround time of your Whatsapp partner.

3. Activating Your Business Number: Once your business is approved by Whatsapp, consider the job almost done. Select a phone number that you will be using for your Whatsapp business account. Since this is only possible once and can’t be changed later, we suggest you be as careful as possible. 

 Your Whatsapp partner can help with the porting of an existing number as well if required. it’s a new business and you want a brand new phone number to go with it, the partners can give you various options. However, it’s 100% possible that they might not be able to provide Whatsapp numbers for all the countries. 

Again, it’s best to check with them directly about the available numbers and whether they function in all countries.

As soon as you have your number, the last step is to connect it with a CRM and then configure the whole thing with the help of a Whatsapp partner.

4. How To Get Whatsapp Business Account Verified

Unless your phone number is verified, your Whatsapp business account will not show the signature tick-mark sign next to your number. For your business name to show up, an official Whatsapp Business Account is needed.

To be fully honest, the approval rate for local or small brands is rather low. Whatsapp takes the time to verify bigger brands first and gives them a priority. This could be damaging for your business if it doesn’t get verified.

WhatsApp Business API on the other hand has a very simple, straight-forward & fast verification process and once the license is yours, you can expect free lifetime updates.

Take our free demo for a spin today and start sending mass messages without the need for verification from Whatsapp or getting your number blocked.

 Also, recommend you read…

Ultimate Guide to WhatsApp Business App