What is a template message?

What is a template message?

Templated Messages
Message Templates are message formats for common reusable messages a business may want to send. Businesses must use Message Templates to send notifications to customers. This allows a business to send just the template identifier along with the appropriate parameters instead of the full message content. Your message templates will be reviewed manually to ensure that they do not violate WhatsApp policies.

Supported Categories
WhatsApp currently supports the following types of message templates:
  1. Account Update
  2. Alert Update
  3. Appointment Update
  4. Auto Reply
  5. Issue Resolution
  6. Payment Update
  7. Personal Finance Update
  8. Reservation Update
  9. Shipping Update
  10. Ticket Update
  11. Transportation Update

Pricing
The price of each delivered Templated Message is based upon the country code of the message recipient and the volume of Templated Messages delivered in a calendar month to a given country or region.

For the detailed pricing, please refer to WhatsApp List Price Schedule here. 

Rejection
After review by the WhatsApp team, the templated message can be rejected, the reason might be one of the following.
  • Incorrect Format
    • Messages with misspellings or grammatical errors;
    • Incorrect use of variable parameters;
    • Selected language doesn't match with the content, etc.
  • Violation of WhatsApp’s Business Policy
    • Content irrelevant to goods and services provided by the business;
    • Involving transaction of goods and services restricted by WhatsApp such as drugs, tobacco, alcohol, etc
  • Potentially Abusive or Threatening Content
    • Messages that threaten customers with a legal course of action;
    • Messages that threaten to add customers to a WhatsApp group with their friends and family to shame them if they don't pay back their loans
For the detailed guidelines, please refer to WhatsApp Message Template Guidelines.

Opt-in

A user must first consent to receive messages in WhatsApp by opting into them via WhatsApp or a third-party channel. This can be any channel your business uses to communicate with people today — your WhatsApp thread, interactive voice response (IVR) flows, website, app, email, SMS, retail location, etc.

You must follow the requirements below when obtaining opt-in:

  • You must clearly state that a person is opting in to receive messages from the business over WhatsApp
  • You must clearly state the business’ name that a person is opting in to receive messages from
  • You must comply with applicable law

You should continue to optimize for the user experience while obtaining opt-in. For example, you should:

  • Explicitly call out the types of messages a person is opting into (e.g., delivery updates)
  • Avoid messaging people too frequently
  • Provide instructions for how customers can opt out and honor these requests
  • Monitor your quality rating, especially when rolling out new opt-in methods
For detailed opt-in requirements, please refer to WhatsApp Opt-in Guidelines.

Set up a template message
In order to send Templated Messages on WhatsApp, you must first submit the message content to the WhatsApp team for approval on Stella. You can only send approved templates to customers.
For the standard procedure guide please click here.

1. Go to Channels
2. Edit your WhatsApp channel
3. Click "Message Template" in your WhatsApp channel