WhatsApp is a powerful communication application that all users of the century are familiar with. Besides personal messaging, WhatsApp is also prevalently used for business communication and promotion. There are two added features of WhatsApp: WhatsApp broadcast and WhatsApp group, primarily used professionally.
Most people confuse WhatsApp broadcast and WhatsApp group because both involve sending messages to multiple recipients. But the reality is that they work in different ways and are used for different purposes. And if you are wondering how they are different, you are at the right place.
WhatsApp group is more like a chat room where more than one participant can chat and see each other’s messages. When a conversation involves multiple people, the WhatsApp group is the most excellent solution to eliminate the communication barriers of one-to-one communication.
On the other hand, WhatsApp broadcast is a feature that allows you to send the same message to multiple recipients in a private message format. This means the recipients of a broadcast list cannot see each other like the recipients of a WhatsApp group chat.
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If the difference between WhatsApp group and WhatsApp broadcast is still unclear to you, let’s dig deeper.
Simply put, the most significant difference between WhatsApp group and WhatsApp broadcast is that in WhatsApp broadcast, the privacy of the recipients is protected. If you send a message to your broadcast list, the same message will be sent to all the individuals in your broadcast chat list simultaneously but in different chat windows.
But that is not what happens in the WhatsApp group. When you create a group, all the group contacts can see each other’s messages and reply. In WhatsApp broadcast, if the recipient replies to your message, their message will also come as an individual chat which is not available for others to see.
How To Broadcast A Message On WhatsApp?
Before we proceed to the needs of broadcasting WhatsApp messages, let’s discuss how to broadcast a message on WhatsApp in a few simple steps.
- Open your WhatsApp application and click on the three vertical dots at the right-hand corner or the option “broadcast list” on the left. The latter option it’s primarily visible in iOS or androids with an iOS interface.
- Now click on “new list” if you don’t have any existing broadcast list. You can add 256 contacts to your WhatsApp broadcast list and create multiple broadcast lists for the same message.
- Now that your broadcast list is created, you can create your message and hit send to send a message to all the recipients at once.
The list of your WhatsApp broadcast will look similar to that of the WhatsApp group chat. But the only difference between the WhatsApp group chat window and the WhatsApp broadcast group is that the broadcast group will have the icon of a loudspeaker. In contrast, your WhatsApp group chat will have the user icon as the group image until you replace it with a personalized image.
Why Use WhatsApp Broadcast?
Even though you know how to send a WhatsApp broadcast message, you may not be aware of how you can use it to its full potential, or you might not know how other businesses are using WhatsApp broadcast for multiple purposes of their businesses. And suppose you are trying to know more about WhatsApp broadcasting because you have a specific use for it. In that case, you must still know how other businesses in your industry and other industry verticals use WhatsApp broadcasting.
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WhatsApp Broadcast For Sales:
WhatsApp broadcast is a hassle-free way to deliver your business updates to potential and existing customers daily. Many businesses send their latest discounts and offers to their customers to increase their sales. WhatsApp business, especially the WhatsApp broadcast feature, has helped numerous businesses like retail shops, manufacturers, and more to reach a mass audience on WhatsApp without costing much money. Therefore if you are using WhatsApp broadcast for sales, you are attaining a significant ROI from the beginning. If you are a self-sufficient business owner, you can send your current offers and deals to 256 unique users at a time without the risk of getting marked as spam on emails.
WhatsApp Broadcast For Customer Support:
The most common example of the usage of WhatsApp broadcast is probably seen in customer support. You can provide effective and convenient customer support services to your customers across the globe using WhatsApp broadcast, built explicitly for medium to large businesses. You can even use WhatsApp API, which has several additional features and integration opportunities to ensure seamless customer support. Several examples of leading brands are there that successfully use WhatsApp’s customer service strategy for their businesses. For example, if you have booked a room with Oyo, the company will send you a confirmation through WhatsApp. And the company will also avail you of different features along with the confirmation, such as managing your bookings, finding your hotel, talking to customer support, and more. And if you want to be a little more proactive with your customer support, you can make the best use of WhatsApp broadcast and automate your customer support process.
WhatsApp Broadcast For Feedback And Resolutions:
Many businesses conveniently use WhatsApp broadcast to gather feedback from multiple customers. With the help of a dedicated chatbot, many brands are building interactive dialogues and FAQs to provide their customers with helpful feedback and are also developing effective feedback loops to improve their business operations.
WhatsApp Broadcast For General Insights:
Brands that collect insightful data are using WhatsApp API and its tools. For example, suppose a business wants to view the volume, frequency, and language of messages across all support channels. In that case, it is possible to create a comprehensive database using WhatsApp with insightful information that can help the business learn more about its target demographic.
WhatsApp Broadcast For Post-Sales Support:
Since it is easy to automate after sales process using WhatsApp, many businesses are using WhatsApp broadcast and WhatsApp business to provide immediate answers to the queries of their clients. That way, they are improving their overall customer satisfaction and brand loyalty to their customers.
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WhatsApp Broadcast For Booking Assistance:
Many travel and hospitality businesses use WhatsApp broadcast to create a dedicated channel for booking assistance for their customers. Another best thing about WhatsApp is that you can track the performance of every customer service channel and send them reservation and booking status notifications.
Why WhatsApp Broadcast Is An Effective Tool For Businesses?
Nowadays, customers are looking for personalized messages from the brands they like, and they prefer real-time communications instead of emailing and raising tickets. And being a trusted and secured messaging app, WhatsApp makes it easy for brands to meet their customer’s expectations. For that reason, even the pioneer brands of many industries use WhatsApp to reach out to customers quickly.
Here is how WhatsApp is the right choice for your marketing:
- It has the highest monthly active users: Among all the messaging apps, WhatsApp has the highest number of monthly active users of different age groups and geography. Therefore with WhatsApp, you get the chance to expand your reach and realize the true potential of the application.
- It has many features: Whether you want to broadcast your sales message, a product launch message, or assign multiple customer chats to multiple support agents, you can do it using WhatsApp Business. Many businesses are already using the feature to improve the quality of their customer service.
- It has API availability: The WhatsApp Business API can help you with 3rd party integration such as Salesforce and CRM. You can put together all your customer data in one place and use it for better business decisions and customer service.
- It has rich media support: Whether you want to send an image, a document, video, or media of other formats, it is possible to send through WhatsApp. Additionally, you can create a business catalog to showcase your products and services and share them through WhatsApp broadcast.
Why Are Some Recipients Of My WhatsApp Broadcast List Not Receiving My Message?
You can send WhatsApp broadcast messages to people who have saved your number and those who have not. But on the WhatsApp Business app, your WhatsApp broadcast message will not reach those who haven’t saved your number to their contact book. But WhatsApp Business API will allow you to send a WhatsApp broadcast to more than 1,00,000 people in one go even though they have not saved your number to their contact book.
So if you are facing issues of your recipients not receiving your WhatsApp broadcast message following are some of the possible reasons:
- Your Number Is Not Saved In Their Phone Book: As mentioned earlier, a WhatsApp Business user must save your number from receiving your broadcast message. Suppose you have added a number to your WhatsApp broadcast list, and the recipient has not saved your number; they might not receive your message. Additionally, if someone has saved your number in their SIM card instead of their phone contact, the message probably will not reach them.
- You Probably Have Blocked Them: If some recipients in your broadcast list have not received your broadcast message, you need to check if you have blocked them after adding them to your broadcast list. If that is not the case, chances are high that they have blocked you. Many recipients block broadcast messages if the sender keeps sending multiple messages daily and disturbs the receiver.
- They Probably Have Disabled Read Recipient: The most straightforward way to check whether or not everyone in your broadcast list has received and read your broadcast message is to long press the message and then check the read receipt. But if the receiver has disabled that feature, you cannot see whether your message was delivered to them or if they have read it.
Some Best Practices For WhatsApp Broadcast Messaging
In today’s time, human-to-human marketing is very effective. And that is why marketing on WhatsApp is gaining more popularity day by day. According to a report, WhatsApp is the most popular messaging app businesses use to reach millions of users worldwide. The reason is that all the users of WhatsApp are active, giving businesses a chance to reach many people in less time.
Since the launch of WhatsApp broadcast messaging, millions of businesses have already used the feature. But when it comes to the downside of WhatsApp broadcast messaging, it is that many businesses get blocked by the recipients. Still, many businesses are not paying enough attention to the best practices of WhatsApp broadcast. But you can keep yourself protected from getting blocked by your consumers.
So how can you ensure you are not becoming a part of your consumer’s hate list while sending WhatsApp broadcast messages? Here are some WhatsApp broadcast messaging best practices you can follow.
Create Your Own Identity:
First things first. Before you start sending WhatsApp broadcast messages to your customers, you first need to have a profile picture that you use across all other social media platforms to make it easy for your customers to recognize you. We suggest you use a WhatsApp Business profile and your business logo alongside all the details about your company, such as your business name, category of business, address, website link, email, and more in your WhatsApp business account to create a consistent brand identity. If you don’t want to be ignored by your potential customers just because they did not know who the message was from, a strong brand identity is a must.
Connect With Existing Customers First:
Though it is pretty tempting to reach out to all the billions of people worldwide since you got the liberty to send WhatsApp broadcast messages to everyone, it is wise not to do that. Instead of sending your WhatsApp broadcast messages to individuals who don’t know you, it is better to connect with the known ones, such as you are existing customers or customers in the sales pipeline. WhatsApp is more like a closed community of people; you need to keep that in mind. Therefore, it is better to market your product to your existing customers rather than target new audiences who were never engaged with your business. Many businesses are using WhatsApp broadcast in WhatsApp Business to improve their customer engagement rate. You can enable WhatsApp business API to assist your potential buyers in a more proactive way before, during, and after a purchase.
Create A Message Template Wisely:
If you want to keep your consumers hooked to your brand and turn them into loyal buyers, you need to be very careful about what you are writing in your broadcast messages, be it promotional, educational, or sheer entertaining content. Remember that it is essential to strategically plan your WhatsApp broadcast messages to avoid being too pushy and getting blocked by your potential customers. Brands that use WhatsApp broadcast messaging multiple times daily are more likely to get ignored and blocked by consumers. The right frequency of sending WhatsApp broadcast messaging is 5 to 6 messages in a week. Anything more than that can block your number or unsubscribe from your broadcast list.
Use A Semi-Formal Communication Tone:
Though WhatsApp is being used for business purposes, the platform is still broadly used for connecting with family and friends. Therefore, when the recipient to whom you are sending your messages is checking their WhatsApp, the last thing they expect is to read a message written in a complete formal tone. Remember, a tone too formal hides the human touch, and ensuring that your brand never loses touch with the consumer is essential. Alongside, you need to consider that your brand identity and others should also not lose touch with each other while trying to add a casual tone to the messages. Therefore it is recommended to type your WhatsApp broadcast message in a semi-formal tone adding a few emojis to make it look more friendly while maintaining a professional outlook.
Send Short Messages:
Nobody is going to read long paragraphs and reply to you on WhatsApp. It is better to keep your message straightforward and to the point without making it fluffy. Remember, when you consumers check WhatsApp, they do it mostly amidst their essential tasks. Therefore you get a brief span to attract their attention, and it is best to keep your messages short and to the point that they take less than 8 to 10 seconds of your consumer’s time.
Send Creative Messages:
WhatsApp has an open rate of 98% and converts to almost 40 to 60%. But to achieve both, you need to be very creative alongside very contextual while messaging. If you mindlessly start standing broadcast messages to your consumers, you are not going to get any results out of it. Instead, making it look attractive and crisp enough to read at a glance will be more beneficial. You can use all the features of WhatsApp to make your messages more visually appealing. But make sure you don’t lose the context of your messaging while focusing on personalization.
Engage Your Customers:
WhatsApp broadcast mainly sends confirmation alerts, promotional messages, etc. But you can still do two-way communication with your customers using the same channel. Alongside sending promotional, educational, and entertaining content to your customers, you can also get in touch with the customers looking for after-sales support and those who need help during and before purchase. Make sure to have a balanced automated response backed by a human to solve all your customers’ queries and encourage more sales.
Conclusion
The chance of driving more business through WhatsApp broadcasts is exceptionally high. According to the surveys, a typical WhatsApp user checks the app at least 23 times on average. And there are more than 50,000,000 businesses that have incorporated WhatsApp broadcast to connect with their existing and potential customers, build strong relationships with them and drive more sales. But still, not everyone is winning the app. So make sure to incorporate all the tips discussed above to make WhatsApp broadcast work wonders for you. Remember that the best practices will make you stand out. Start creating a WhatsApp broadcast messaging strategy focused on quality conversations with your customers.
