3 Essential WhatsApp Marketing Campaigns to Get Started

WhatsApp is leading the shift to conversational marketing, and it’s changing how brands and customers communicate. A new channel means a new opportunity to build an impactful program. Once you breeze past getting started on WhatsApp, the next question often is, “What exactly should I send? And what are some WhatsApp marketing campaign examples?”

At Tildei, we want to make each step of building your next-generation marketing program seamless, so we’ve got the answers to your campaign questions. Superpowering your marketing team with this popular messaging tool can be as easy as 1, 2, 3. Here are the three most important WhatsApp marketing campaign ideas to get started:

1. Welcome Campaign

The perfect start to the conversation

The foundations of a strong WhatsApp marketing program aren’t entirely different from other channels. When a customer generally opts-in to connect with your brand, the first interaction they experience is a welcome message. A welcome campaign should be the first campaign that you create. Customers are most engaged when they first subscribe, so this is your opportunity to make an impression. If done right, you can win customers for life and have a highly engaged list of WhatsApp subscribers.

Conversational marketing is slightly different from traditional marketing though. There is a chance that a customer might begin a conversation with your brand through a targeted campaign or by asking a general question. In these cases, the welcome campaign can begin after they complete their initial conversation, and let them know the other ways they can continue to use the conversation.

Entry points for a WhatsApp marketing campaign can come from a variety of sources including your own website, a social media ad, or an out-of-home QR code. To learn more about WhatsApp marketing acquisition strategies, check out our blog on How to Grow Your WhatsApp Community.

What to Include in Your WhatsApp Welcome Campaigns

• A greeting and thank you for opting-in
• An explanation of how they can expect to interact with your brand
• Guidance on how the conversation supports their purchasing process
• Requests for additional information to help complete a detailed customer profile
• Messages that are communicated in a tone and language that resonates with your customers while aligning with your brand voice

Creating a Conversational Dialogue

Beyond the initial “thanks for choosing to opt-in,” this is a great moment to orient them to these new kinds of marketing messages, and the WhatsApp channel. You can leverage tools and techniques unique to WhatsApp like sending a list of items from which they can choose to learn more about, or a three-button quick reply which they can easily tap to continue the conversation. Anything that creates a back-and-forth dialogue at the beginning will help your subscribers see how much more conversational this channel is than others.

WhatsApp Marketing Welcome Campaign Example

WhatsApp Marketing Welcome Campaign Best Practices

Personalize Early for Better Conversations

If the customer has shared their mobile number with you in other ways and you have collected data attributes from previous interactions, you can personalize the conversational experience from the get-go. When their WhatsApp number matches the number you have on record, you can apply conditional logic and personalization to make the messages unique to them.

Unlock Conversational Data

No data related to that phone number? No problem! Conversational marketing is one of the best ways to learn more about your customers and instantly personalize the experience. WhatsApp stands out from other marketing messaging with its ease in building a customer profile. Every response you receive from the customer, whether that’s in a quick reply, typed response, or reaction (heart, thumbs up, etc.), can be written directly to their customer profile. For the customer, it’s as easy as tapping a response. For you, the marketer, it’s as straightforward as the information automatically saving to their profile to be used instantly and in the future. You can gather helpful insights on the customer as you get to know each other better while resulting in personalized messages for the customer.

Establishing First Impressions

This moment in the relationship is also their first impression of your brand in this channel. It may even be their first impression of interacting with a brand in general with the WhatsApp messaging app, so it’s important to put your best foot forward. Make it a fun, engaging experience, and avoid selling to them at this early stage. They’re already showing interest in your brand, so help them get comfortable with you!

The Strategic Approach to Welcome Campaigns

This is a triggered message. It is individual-based, sent on the behavior of a customer after they opt-in to your program. The message is a perfect place to begin developing customer loyalty, brand awareness, and engaging your customer base in this popular messaging app. This is in contrast to a ‘broadcast’ message that goes out to a group of subscribers all at once, which is a common business messaging practice, used across other messaging apps.

2. Conversational Newsletter WhatsApp Marketing Campaign

A reason to continue the conversation

We’re all familiar with the newsletter. Whether it’s an old-fashioned paper printout or the email messages in our inboxes every day, we’ve all received and even sent newsletters as promotional messages. When sending a newsletter in the form of a WhatsApp campaign, you can innovate on the newsletter and create a moment to connect with your customers on the topics that matter most to them. The newsletter no longer has to be a push of information, but instead, it can be turned into a two-way conversation that makes the experience more personal. It’s a chance to truly build a relationship with your target market.

Goals for a Conversational Newsletter WhatsApp Marketing Campaign

• Share the latest news and updates related to your brand and cultivate brand awareness
• Communicate authentically - like you’re catching up with a friend
• Provide a pathway for deeper engagement like starting a conversation or sharing input
• Audience segmentation and personalized recommendations based on customer experiences inside of a conversational experience
• Make it personal by including their name, preferred interests, or specific information related to a past purchase

Why a WhatsApp Campaign is Perfect for Reimagining Newsletters

The power of this kind of message in WhatsApp comes from the opportunity to do two things: 1. make it personal and 2. keep it conversational. Because of WhatsApps ability to collect data in real time, you can also maintain a healthy list of active users, measure open rates, record customer clicks, and leverage quick replies to quickly gather data attributes that are helpful to growing customer satisfaction and driving higher engagement.

WhatsApp Marketing Conversational Newsletter Example

Conversational Newsletter WhatsApp Marketing Campaign Best Practices

A Newsletter Personalized to the Customer's Interests

Similar to other digital channels, you can pull in known data points to show you understand them and how they’ve engaged with your brand. Consider incorporating elements like past purchase history, preferred products, and previous customer engagement. Maybe you’re mentioning new products in your newsletter, and you could highlight how a new product pairs well with one of their previous purchases.

Re-Imagining the Newsletter as a Conversational Experience

Make your WhatsApp marketing newsletter conversational and start a dialogue with customers. This is one of the key differentiators to messaging in WhatsApp compared to the more traditional messaging channels like email and SMS, so lean into this improved approach.

Because of the two-way exchange of information, this is your chance to avoid the one-sided conversation style that they're used to with legacy messaging platforms. Instead, craft a conversational newsletter that asks the customer for their opinion or encourages them to reply and engage. This gives you an opportunity to share multiple new products and updates instead of having to choose a single, static message for all subscribers withe a singular newsletter.

Converting Your Marketing Strategy From an Email to a WhatsApp Message

A great first step to building a new WhatsApp marketing campaign is considering an email newsletter and thinking of how it can be turned into a WhatsApp message. One easy way is to segment your email into different talking points and consider leveraging these segments as quick replies in WhatsApp messages to make it easier to interact and allow subscribers to learn more about the areas that interest them the most.

For retail and consumer goods, this could mean looking at your 'new in stock' or 'monthly update' messages with fresh eyes. Think of the way you would normally segment that email, and those segments can become different points of the conversation. Or do you have to send multiple emails over a series of days focused on the same topic? Each of those emails can be combined together into one dynamic conversation.

For travel, you might send a regular email with travel tips and deals. That's a prime example of content that could fit better in a WhatsApp campaign. Give them the high-level topics and let your customers decide the areas they want to learn more about. In the conversation, you can ask them about their preferred method of travel and continue to tailor their updates based on their responses.

The customer’s responses can give you more data to use for personalization or audience segmentation in future marketing messages.

The Strategic Approach to WhatsApp Newsletter Campaigns

This is a broadcast message meaning that it’s sent to a segment of subscribers at the same time. It’s not necessarily triggered by behavior and is instead sent on a weekly or monthly cadence. You can tailor the message by segments and send it to those interested in those individual segments or you can send a broader message to your full, opted-in target audience. Either way, you allow the customer to interact with the WhatsApp conversation to organically choose their own journey. Because it is sent to subscribers unprompted, it requires the approval of the WhatsApp template.

3. Post-Experience WhatsApp Marketing Campaign

A moment to listen to the customer

As consumers, we are all familiar with sharing feedback on our customer experience. As marketers, customer feedback helps us measure customer satisfaction and adjust our strategies. It's valuable information. Oftentimes, the request for feedback comes through the email inbox, but it’s not always the most convenient way to share input. WhatsApp, being a mobile messaging channel, has an estimated 98% open rate, meaning it will almost certainly be seen and not lost in the noise. In addition, instant messaging in WhatsApp will be a place where customers are already comfortable quickly replying and sharing their top-of-mind thoughts.

Goals for a Post-Experience WhatsApp Campaign

• Increase ease and convenience of sharing feedback
• Provide a path to rectify any issues for both the customer and the company
• Offer guidance and additional information on the product, service, or experience

WhatsApp Marketing Conversational Post-Experience Example

Post-Experience WhatsApp Marketing Campaign Best Practices

Re-Inventing the Post-Purchase Message on WhatsApp

Post-purchase (and experience) messages are nothing new to digital marketing, so this is again a place where you can leverage the power of WhatsApp to reinvent the customer experience. This is your chance to make it conversational. Think of how you ask your friend about something they bought or just finished and use similar language. Take advantage of the quick reply option to make it as easy as tapping for customers to respond to your message. Even more powerful is that customers can reply with images and videos, making it that much easier for them to share a thorough, more meaningful review.

Takeaways From a Post-Experience WhatsApp Marketing Strategy

To make a post-experience strategy truly informational, learn from your customer support team to understand common issues or commonly asked questions post-experience. Use this information to continue to improve your WhatsApp campaigns and include it in your post-purchase conversational flow. Give the customer the means to learn more about the topics they care about by using the quick reply or a menu of topics to select.

The Strategic Approach to Post-Experience WhatsApp Marketing Campaigns

This is a triggered message. It is an individual-based message sent after a customer completes an action like receiving a package or taking a trip. This is in contrast to a ‘broadcast’ message that goes out to a group of subscribers all at once. If the message is sent without receiving the first initial message from the customer, it's considered a brand-initiated message and requires approval of the WhatsApp template.

It is Easier Than Ever to Get Started With Conversational Marketing on Tildei

Tildei takes a radically simple approach to building interactive campaigns and driving higher conversion rates with the use of Tildei's AI-powered conversational messaging platform. Your Marketing team can set up and connect with the WhatsApp Business API and send promotional messages in as little as 24 hours.

Increase your customer lifetime value, deliver higher conversion rates, and power up marketing automation with the power of TIldei. Launching a new channel, and building interactive campaigns that are suitable to fit multiple message types no longer has to be a pain point for marketers. You can request a demo by simply filling out our demo request form here.

Still Need More Inspiration? There are Integrated Templates on TIldei

Simply start your newest campaign by selecting from our integrated templates and in one click Tildei will generate a customized campaign based on your company brand. You can also customize the template further with our suggested next-step feature or simply add your own campaign customization!