How WhatsApp works (Templates, Phone Numbers, Prices)
WhatsApp can be quite difficult, so please read this carefully.
Here are the details:
1. Message Types: There are 2 types of WhatsApp messages:
a. Template Messages – the initial message you send to your contacts; must be pre-approved by WhatsApp – approval often takes a few minutes. You must use a template message if the contact has not messaged you in the last 24 hours. (Template message can only be in the languages listed here).
b. Regular Messages – messages you send and receive to/from people within 24 hours of the last time they messaged you in WhatsApp. These messages do not need to be pre-approved by WhatsApp.
2. WhatsApp Fees: WhatsApp Pricing is based on 24-hour conversations. Here’s how it works…
3. Subscription Plan: You must be on one of our plans: https://www.engagespark.com/plans
There are 2 types of fees:
– Conversation Fee (with 24hr session window): varies by country and type (see pricing here – scroll down to the Rate Card section)
– Message Fee (messages sent or received within the 24hr window): varies by plan
Starter & Professional
– $0.03 per outbound WhatsApp message
– $0.03 per inbound WhatsApp message
– $0.04 per content message (media/lists/buttons)
Organization
– $0.02 per outbound WhatsApp message
– $0.02 per inbound WhatsApp message
– $0.03 per content message (media/lists/buttons)
Enterprise & up
– $0.01 per outbound WhatsApp message
– $0.01 per inbound WhatsApp message
– $0.02 per content message (media/lists/buttons)
An example (using Kenya pricing and Professional Plan, and assuming all messages are content messages, i.e., they have media such as images or videos; lists for selecting an answer; or buttons for selection an answer):
– Day 1, 10am: You send an initial survey invite message with an image. This must be a pre-approved Template Message. It is a new Marketing convo and a content message. It is charged $0.0625 ($0.0225 convo fee + $0.04 content message fee)
– Day 1, 3pm: Contact replies/consents to take the survey – message fee of $0.03 is charged
– Day 1, 3pm: You send q1 – content message fee of $0.04 is charged
– Day 2, 11am: Contact replies – this is a new convo because it is more than 24 hours after the start of the previous convo, and it is treated as a Service convo, as it is user-initiated because they sent the message. It is charged $0.0663 ($0.0363 convo fee + $0.03 message fee)
– Day 2, 11am: You send q2 – content message fee of $0.04 is charged
– Day 3, 9am: Contact replies – message fee of $0.03 is charged
– Day 3, 9am: You send q3 – content message fee of $0.04 is charged
– Day 3, 11:01am: You send a follow-up/reminder message – this is a new convo because it is more than 24 hours after the start of the previous convo, and it is counted as a Marketing convo because you sent the message. It is charged $0.0625 ($0.0225 convo fee + $0.04 content message fee)
– Day 4, 9:01am: You send another follow-up reminder – this is not a new convo because it is less than 24 hours after the last convo started, so the content message fee of $0.04 is charged. However, this will need to be a pre-approved Template Message because you are sending this more than 24 hours after the last message you received from the contact
In total, this 3-question survey with an invite and a few follow-ups costs you $0.4113.
4. WhatsApp Phone Number: If you are bringing your own phone number (e.g., your own SIM card), the number must not have been previously set up as a WhatsApp number on a phone and we’ll need to send some one-time passwords to the SIM.
To Set Up WhatsApp, you need to have a Facebook Business account that is already business verified with Facebook.
Once that is ready, please send us these details from you (an FB admin will need to grab this data)
1. FB Business ID: https://business.facebook.com/settings/info , Click Business Info., Your ID will be listed under “Business Information.”
2. Email: An email associated with the FB account
3. Company Name: Exact company (entity) name listed with the FB account
4. Company Website: Exact website associated with FB account
5. Company Vertical: Please select from:
5.1. Automotive
5.2. Beauty, Spa and Salon
5.3. Clothing and Apparel
5.4. Education
5.5. Entertainment
5.6. Event Planning and Service
5.7. Finance and Banking
5.8. Food and Grocery
5.9. Public Service
5.10. Hotel and Lodging
5.11. Medical and Health
5.12. Non- profit
5.13. Professional Services
5.14. Shopping and Retail
5.15. Travel and Transportation
5.16. Restaurant
5.17. Other
6. Display Name: What display name you want to appear when people click on the number in WhatsApp (see attached pic); WhatsApp is weird about this stuff, so if you want it to be a project name, but your FB account is under your org name, then you likely will need it to be “Org Name – Project Name”…unless your project name has a very strong presence on FB with its own FB name (though it’s not guaranteed that they will approve the project name as the display name). Also, we can only know what they’ll approve once we submit; we recently had another NGO client that wanted to put its project name as the display name and WhatsApp refused to accept it without the NGO name listed first.
7. Profile about: 139 character short profile info (engageSPARK’s for example, is “engageSPARK helps organizations message, survey, and reward hard-to-reach populations globally via SMS, Voice, WhatsApp, CATI, and Top-ups.”)
Your Facebook Business account also needs to be Business Verified. You (or whoever is a Facebook business account admin) can check if it’s verified by going here: https://business.facebook.com/settings/security . If it’s not verified, you need to go through the process to get it verified (this takes anywhere from a few days to a few weeks, so if it isn’t business verified yet, you should get on this ASAP).
After we get the above info from you, we’ll need to set some stuff up on our end (a day or two), then there will be 2 more steps:
1. Accept Terms: You’ll need to accept WhatsApp’s terms of service (attached), which you’d do by checking a box on our telco partner’s (Twilio – a US publicly-traded company) Google Form – we’ll send it to you after we have the above info.
2. Approve Request in FB: You’ll get a request in Facebook Business Manager from our telco partner (Twilio) to grant them approval to send WhatsApp messages on your behalf.
After all of the above, we’ll then need:
1. Number Setup: to set up your number to work as your WhatsApp number – we can do all of this on our end, but it’ll take a few days
2. Logo: the logo you want to appear in WhatsApp (you can send us a link to the logo on your website or e-mail us the file):
2.1. Image must be at least 640×640 pixels in size
2.2 JPG is the preferred format (PNG format cannot have a transparent background)
2.3. Square Aspect Ratio
3. Description: 256 character description that you want to appear when people click on the number in WhatsApp (see same attached pic) (engageSPARK’s for example, is “engageSPARK is a self-service communications platform that nonprofits, research universities, and businesses use to message, survey, and reward hard-to-reach populations across the world via automated SMS, Voice, WhatsApp, CATI, and Airtime Top-ups.”
4. Official Business (Green Checkmark): Note that we can also apply to get you approved as an Official Business so that people see your Org Name instead of a phone number at the top of the chat screen – see WHO vs. engageSPARK example attached, but we can’t guarantee that WhatsApp will approve it. They denied it for a medium-sized NGO client of ours recently, saying that the NGO needed to have more presence on FB apps (Facebook and/or Instagram) and apply again in 3 months.
That’s it for WhatsApp. I imagine you are a bit overwhelmed by this email – WhatsApp rules and regulations can do that to people! Please let us know if anything here is unclear.