WhatsApp Marketing Best Practices: How to make your WhatsApp a success

Many talk about a "Blue Ocean Market", we at chatarmin.com say many are pinning the "WhatsApp Newsletter" around their flags, even though it doesn't even exist. Whatever you want to call it, the hype around WhatsApp marketing is huge. In this blog post, we will try to give you the most important WhatsApp marketing best practices to make your WhatsApp marketing a success and start validating WhatsApp as a successful marketing channel for you without fear.

The most important WhatsApp marketing best practices

To give you the most relevant overview as quickly as possible, we'll give you your "WhatsApp Marketing Best Practice Overview" right at the beginning of this blog post here.

The most important WhatsApp marketing best practices for WhatsApp marketing campaigns:

1. Low frequency
2. High relevance
3. Corresponding to natural WhatsApp user behavior.
4. Unique WhatsApp benefits
5. segmentation
6. Consideration of other marketing channels

Key WhatsApp marketing best practices for flows and automations:

1. Double Optin
2. Segmentation in the flow
3. Smart use of the 24h conversation time slot.
4. Language of the end-user 5.
5. Less is more

Key WhatsApp marketing best practices for service use cases:

1. Automated Value
2. Instant answers to standard questions.
3. Reliable information and ticket management

WhatsApp Marketing Campaigns: WhatsApp Marketing Best Practice

• Low frequency of WhatsApp campaigns: In order to reflect the natural user behaviour of your end customers via WhatsApp, it is advisable to play out WhatsApp marketing campaigns only at a very low frequency. So, if you are unsure whether your campaign is relevant enough for your target group, leave it alone. The WhatsApp list is too valuable to be spent on unnecessary campaigns. For employer branding or educational content campaigns, WhatsApp is simply too expensive. Even your relatives and friends don't send you the good morning message every morning at 08:00. And if your grandmother does, she annoys you with it and you just wipe away the push notification from grandma's WhatsApp. A negative example that tramples on this WhatsApp marketing best practice is retail. Distributing a flyer digitally every Sunday is deeply contrary to all current WhatsApp marketing best practices.

Source: REWE WhatsApp Channel

• High relevance of WhatsApp campaigns: Typically, we at Chatarmin recommend 7-10 annual WhatsApp outbound campaigns. You've usually reached that very quickly with birthday automation, holidays like Father's Day, Mother's Day, Valentine's Day, Easter and Christmas, as well as seasonal promotions, sales, early accesses and secret drops as a D2C brand. If you then also take into account segments and customer CLTV as well as purchase recency and possibly email user behaviour thanks to Chatarmin's Klaviyo integration, nothing stands in the way of following the WhatsApp marketing best practice "high relevance".

• Corresponding to natural WhatsApp user behaviour: We have already indirectly addressed this point. It does not correspond to our private, natural user behaviour to receive a frequent and predictable "WhatsApp push". Except for the case that you buy a digital or weather subscription via WhatsApp, we can't think of any case where a repetitive WhatsApp marketing campaign makes much sense. So please cover this use case with your free weekly email newsletter. For WhatsApp marketing, the best practice is: low frequency, high relevance, natural user behaviour.

• Unique WhatsApp advantages: The WhatsApp marketing channel offers fabulous advantages, such as utopian opening rates, fantastic click-through rates and therefore extremely profitable conversion rates. Please repay your WhatsApp marketing friend for this trust by rewarding your users' WhatsApp marketing experience with exclusive benefits. Early access promotions, secret drops, club benefits, local and regional promotions and much more can hit the nail on the WhatsApp Marketing best practice head here. Birthday automations - optional not only for you but also your loved ones - have been found to work extremely well.

• Segmentation: If you are a jewellery brand, you may have customers who only buy silver jewellery. As a sports brand, you might have customers who only do weight training. As a beauty and cosmetics brand, you have customers with different skin and hair types. One wants to lose weight, the other wants to build muscle. It would be negligent not to consider all this in retention marketing. With WhatsApp marketing, segmenting your customer cohorts is even more important because the channel is paid. If you segment your customers in detail via welcome flows, purchase history, Klaviyo integration or other user behaviour, you will be rewarded with high RPR's (Revenue Per Recipient) and extremely profitable WhatsApp marketing results. Please make sure to follow this WhatsApp Marketing Best Practice "Segmentation" to get the most out of your WhatsApp Marketing campaigns.

• Consider other retention marketing channels: The ideal retention marketing mix consists of email marketing, WhatsApp marketing and direct mailings. And in that order of priority. It would be negligent to play out exactly the same on all channels. Because each channel has its own characteristics, advantages and disadvantages. Use your marketing channels differently and follow WhatsApp marketing best practices, then you can get the most out of your existing customers.

Sourece: Chatarmin

WhatsApp Marketing Flows and Automations: WhatsApp Marketing Best Practice

• Double Optin: Make sure that all your WhatsApp leads are activated via a double opt-in. Furthermore, you can always give your customers the option to unsubscribe from your WhatsApp list via button click or buzzword send (usually "Stop"). Every end consumer must be able to request deletion of WhatsApp data from the company, or the WhatsApp provider such as Chatarmin, and have it confirmed.

• Segmentation in the flow: Ask your customers how often they shop with you, what breed their dog is, or when their birthday is. Any data enrichment helps to ultimately deliver more personalised and better segmented WhatsApp marketing campaigns and flows. With Chatarmin Flowbuilder and static or dynamic tagging, as well as enriching your user profiles with multiple-choice lists, buttons, or even customer responses in body text, this is a breeze to do in minutes.

• Smart use of the 24h conversation time window: If you want to build in a delay of about one day, use a period of less than 24 hours. This way, only one "WhatsApp conversation" is billed and you save valuable money.

• Language of the end user: If you play different markets and don't open separate WABAs (WhatsApp Business Accounts) anyway due to different Shopify instances and varying Klaviyo accounts, you can filter on area codes or segment your audience by language or origin.

• Less is more: Of course, every step in the WhatsApp flow yields potential to break in flow retention. With Chatarmin's flow analytics, you always keep track of this. And yet, the shorter the flow, the better the retention. Less is often more with WhatsApp. Ask yourself once again: Does this step in the flow really bring me something?

Source: Nah&Frisch WhatsApp, Chatarmin Kunde

WhatsApp Service: The most important WhatsApp Marketing Best Practice

• Automated Value: If your customer request is as clear as day, for example, a table reservation, boarding pass or package tracking, automate it via buzzword flow and give the customer immediate value. In this way, you achieve a "bot deflection" (automatically completed customer requests via WhatsApp chatbot) of up to 90%. You avoid unnecessary waiting times for the customer and unnecessary support load for your customer support.

• Immediate answers to standard questions: If the customer's query is a bit more complex, you can ask them whether they want to wait for a support agent or try a static or AI chatbot. In this way, you can automatically play out standardised - optionally also dynamic - product information or other generic answers such as the weather, current promotions or your opening hours.

• Reliable information and ticket management: Even if you cannot or do not want to solve your customer's request immediately. At least give them peace of mind. Let him know if you don't offer customer support in your WhatsApp marketing channel, or just a standard static FAQ. Tell him where he needs to go, or let him know if it will take a while for a support agent to deal with him. This way, your customer knows that his concern is in good hands, can go to work or training in peace, and will get an answer to his question sooner or later. Without having to stay in annoying queues or not being allowed to close a browser chatbot window.

Source: Support Flow von Chatarmin SDR Amor Ikotic

WhatsApp Best Practice: How to make your WhatsApp marketing a success

We hope this blog post has given you a good overview of the most common WhatsApp marketing best practices. Make sure that you pay attention to your entire communication mix in the retention marketing mix. For WhatsApp marketing, the general best practice is "less is more". Segment smartly and personalise your campaigns. By following these WhatsApp marketing best practices, you will be running profitable, scalable and successful WhatsApp marketing.

Feel free to sign up with me, Johannes Mansbart - the founder of Chatarmin - to learn how you can start your WhatsApp marketing or make it a success: