Before you start
No setup needed, we take care of it!
All you need is a mobile number to use as the sender of the messages sent on behalf of your brand. We will send you a form with all the information we need to turn that number into a WhatsApp sender, and then you will be ready to send your first communication.
Do you have more than one brand and want to customize the sender of your messages each time?
No problem: if you give us more mobile numbers, we can create all the senders you need!
You can then view the list of configured senders in App Center > WhatsApp Business > Settings.
Create a template
To start a conversation with a contact, you first need to send them a message based on a template that has been reviewed and approved by WhatsApp.
Find out how to create a template here: How to create a WhatsApp template.
Send a communication to your contacts
Now that Meta has approved your template, you can finally send your first message to your contacts.
From Journey Lab, create a new communication and select the WhatsApp Business channel.
In the home page you will see a card for the WhatsApp channel: click Setup and choose sender, template and language. When you save, the card already shows the template preview.
Picked the wrong template? No problem, you can click Setup again and choose the right one.
To send messages in different languages, create separate communications, each using the template in the language of the contacts in the target.
Every time you change template your changes are lost, so make sure you complete the setup correctly before moving on to the design.
The card also shows some warnings indicating that the message is not ready to be sent yet.
In Design you can complete the configuration by adding the parameters needed to send the message to your contacts.
Messages with an image, video or document header
If your template has an image, video or document header, you need to add it in one of these ways:
- Choose from library: choose a media from the global, journey or communication media library, or upload a file from your computer.
- Enter an external URL: if your files are already hosted on a public external website, enter the URL of the image, video or document.
See the guide on the best sizes for your images: Best settings for images on WhatsApp.
Messages with a Location header
For an approved template with a Location header, in Design you are asked to enter the latitude and longitude coordinates and, optionally, the name and address of the place.
To get the coordinates easily from Google Maps, right-click the point you want on the map and click the first item to copy latitude and longitude.
Placeholders in the body and in Text headers
If you used a placeholder in the header, or one or more placeholders in the template body, such as {{1}}, {{2}}, …, you need to fill them in the communication design.
You can enter fixed text, or one or more system placeholders that you add by clicking the dedicated icon. You can also add further formatting with WhatsApp markdown.
Shorten links in one click!
As you may know, magnews tracks every link it handles, which means the links that reach the end user are inevitably quite long.
To solve this, you can shorten them automatically.
To do so, you first need a web domain configured for short links. Once it is configured, you will find an option to enable them in the Design of the communication you are sending:
If you want short links enabled by default for all communications, turn on the corresponding option by clicking Settings in the sender card, in App Center > WhatsApp Business > Settings.
Do you have buttons in the footer?
Your template may include buttons, such as quick reply buttons (up to 3) like in the example below, which let contacts reply quickly to the message.
For quick reply buttons you are asked to fill in a value for each button. This is the value the sender receives as the reply, whatever the button label. For example, if you have one template for Italian contacts and one for English contacts, you can set the same value in the buttons of both templates, so that the replies you handle are consistent regardless of the language the contact sees.
Besides quick replies, your template can also include up to two website (link) buttons and one phone number button. If the URL of a website button contains a placeholder, you fill it in here in Design, just like the body placeholders.
Send a test and send the communication to your target contacts
Want to see the message your contacts will receive?
Click Preview to get an idea, but for a more accurate check we recommend clicking Send WhatsApp Business preview.
In the Recipient field, enter the mobile number (don't forget the international prefix!) where you want to receive the test and click Send preview.
If you do not receive the test, there may be problems in the message configuration.
The communication home page always shows any problems, to the right of the preview:
At this point, if everything is fine, you are ready to send. The recipient used is the WhatsApp recipient contact field, which you find in the Settings category of the contact. It contains the contact's WhatsApp username or, if there is none, their mobile number. For contacts that only have the Mobile field, magnews fills in the WhatsApp recipient automatically.
You can only send to Italian contacts, that is, with the +39 prefix. If you send to non-Italian contacts, the messages are set to Not sent.
Send messages from workflows
Message sending is also available in the Send message node of workflows.
Add a Send message node to your workflow and select the WhatsApp Business channel. You are asked for the template to use, and then a designer similar to the communication one opens on the right:
Click Design to complete the configuration, then click Activate message: the message is ready to be sent in your flow.
From a workflow, besides template-based messages, you can also send interactive messages with buttons and lists, without an approved template, as long as it is within 24 hours of the last message received from the contact. Find out how: Sending messages with buttons and lists from workflows.