We are on the brink of a customer engagement evolution. If marketing is about giving the people what they want, the people have spoken loud and clear. Consumers demand quick and accessible ways to interact with the brands they love, and the best brands are working to meet customers on the platforms they are already using every day. We’ve observed our customers adding more channels like SMS and push notifications to their marketing mix each year, with a 21% increase in customers using 5+ Braze channels from 2021 to 2022. As the next step in holistic cross-channel customer engagement, we’re proud to announce that Braze now offers native support for one of the most powerful mobile messaging channels in the world, WhatsApp.

With over 2 billion monthly active users, WhatsApp represents an enormous opportunity for businesses looking to engage with their audience in personalized and meaningful ways, thanks to a range of features designed to help businesses build stronger customer relationships that can drive more revenue. Ever since Meta expanded the use of WhatsApp to include marketing use cases back in 2021, businesses have evolved beyond using the platform solely to provide customer support and have begun to incorporate transactional and promotional messaging to connect with their target audience.

To help brands navigate this channel effectively, we'll explore the benefits of WhatsApp marketing and how businesses can leverage this tool to achieve their business goals.

What’s Possible with WhatsApp: The Top 3 WhatsApp Marketing Superpowers

Brands that include WhatsApp in their marketing mix can unlock tremendous value. That’s because this channel presents a unique opportunity for marketers to take advantage of three critical advantages: A unique global reach, the ability to cultivate deeper customer relationships, and the opportunity to provide seamless experiences that can reduce costs while driving revenue. Curious about how to take your marketing efforts to the next level and connect with your customers in more personal ways? Read on!

1. Tap into WhatsApp’s Unique Global Reach

Every brand has a story to tell. But to tell it to maximum effect, you need the ability to speak to your customers where they are. One simple way to make that possible is by communicating with customers on the platforms they’re already using every day. And as the world’s most popular messaging app, WhatsApp boasts 2 billion monthly active users in over 180 countries, with a whopping 85%+ penetration rate across parts of Asia Pacific, Europe, and Latin America. People all over the globe are already engaging with WhatsApp in large numbers, removing the need to direct those customers to channels where they may be less active.

2. Start Conversations That Spark Deeper Relationships

If you want to keep the conversation going long past a consumers’ initial activation, WhatsApp’s rich functionality is built to enliven communications between brands and end-users.

With its two-way messaging capabilities, WhatsApp provides marketers with the necessary tools to foster meaningful and engaging conversations with their customers. Effective campaigns on this channel can include surfacing timely information about users’ purchases, messages highlighting the latest bells and whistles within your product, and alerts custom-tailored to each individual’s urgent needs and interests. Using Canvas Flow, our journey orchestration tool, brands can create dynamic, two-way conversations with their customers. With Braze, you can instantly activate zero-, first-, and third-party data, and curate a highly personalized WhatsApp messaging experience based on the actions a customer is taking in real time using their most up-to-date preferences.

3. Consolidate Your Marketing and Optimize Spend

Customers who interact with your brand see only one, singular brand experience and they expect it to be cohesive, no matter what teams or technologies might be involved on the back end. One thing guaranteed to get on their nerves is context-switching. They desire a unified experience when they’re interacting with your brand, whether they’re making a purchase, checking the status of an order, or hunting down an exclusive deal. Brands need to build a frictionless experience to reach customers where they are and keep them coming back.

​​Braze is a fit-for-purpose customer engagement platform that connects directly with WhatsApp, replacing point solutions and other redundant technologies. We take a channel-agnostic approach to customer engagement, ensuring that marketers can deliver a unified experience as customers engage across additional touchpoints and can leverage the most cost effective channels to drive higher ROI.

With WhatsApp, brands can reach customers on their preferred platform, providing engagement opportunities throughout the customer journey. Used in concert with Braze Canvas Flow, you can easily segment and deploy personalized messages to individual users at every stage of the lifecycle. WhatsApp sits alongside all other owned and paid channels in Canvas Flow, helping teams break down silos and communicate more efficiently from a single, unified platform.

Key Takeaways

There’s no time like the present to diversify your channel mix. While it can feel daunting to embrace on newer channels, adding a significant player like WhatsApp to your broader cross-channel strategy can extend the reach of your marketing efforts and lead to higher conversions and more lifetime value.

WhatsApp’s two-way messaging capabilities are a game changer. In a fast-paced landscape with an abundance of choice, cutting through the noise and delivering bi-directional experiences to each customer provides a more frictionless experience with your brand.

"When it comes to WhatsApp marketing, the key is to create a valuable messaging experience that focuses on the interactions that matter most to your customers,” said Kyle Jenke, Senior Director, Partnerships at Meta. “By using WhatsApp as a staple messaging channel, brands can foster deeper relationships with their customers. Braze provides the strategic guidance and industry expertise needed to evolve confidently in this space. With their speed to market, extensive experience, and measurable results, brands can optimize their WhatsApp strategy for business growth and adhere to Meta's best practices.”

Wondering how your business could benefit from adding WhatsApp to your channel mix? For the best way to maximize this emerging channel’s value and see an impact, check out our tips, tactics, and real-world use cases in the Braze WhatsApp Inspiration Guide.