WhatsApp best practices

Before sending your WhatsApp messages, refer to these suggested best practices to maintain a high phone quality rating, avoid blocks and reports, and opt-in and out-out users.

Maintain a high phone quality rating

WhatsApp bases its phone quality rating on actions taken by users who receive your messages, such as blocking or reporting your business. It’s important to maintain a high quality rating because if it’s low and doesn’t improve over a certain time, your messaging limit may decrease.

The first time you message a user in WhatsApp, these options are displayed within the message thread.

To avoid high instances of blocks and reports, Braze suggests the following best practices to maintain a high phone quality rating and stable messaging limits.

Follow WhatsApp opt-in requirements and guidelines

Make sure all users have actively consented to receive WhatsApp messages before you start communicating with them on WhatsApp. When asking users to opt-in, users should be told that they are specifically agreeing to receive messages from your business over WhatsApp.

Follow messaging best practices

• Make your channel name reflect your brand so users recognize that the message is from you, not spam.
• Send a confirmation message to users after you collect their opt-in consent.
• Send messages during appropriate times.

Give customers the option to opt-out

Opt-outs don’t impact your phone quality rating, so it’s better for a user to opt-out of receiving WhatsApp communications versus blocking or reporting you.

A suggested best practice is to provide instructions about how to out-out in the footer of the first message you send users. For example, you could state that users can unsubscribe from your WhatsApp channel by responding with your opt-out trigger word. You could also regularly include the opt-out footer in future campaigns. To learn how to set this up, see Opt-in and opt-out.