Everything You Need to Know About WhatsApp Marketing

You need to connect with current and future clients at the right time and in the right way to succeed in business. Father’s Day and other special days provide an ideal opportunity for your brand to engage customers with interactive, personalized messages on WhatsApp. With WhatsApp marketing software like WhatTalk by Nakusikizia, you can explore the full potential of personalized customer interactions this Father’s Day.

And with over two billion active users worldwide, WhatsApp is also where your ideal customers interact with friends, family, and probably even your competitors. Learn why and how to integrate WhatsApp into your marketing strategy.

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What is WhatsApp Marketing?

WhatsApp Marketing uses the popular messaging app, WhatsApp, to promote your products or services, engage with customers, and achieve your business goals. It’s basically promoting your business through WhatsApp.

Is WhatsApp Marketing Legal in Kenya?

Yes, WhatsApp marketing is legal in Kenya as long as businesses:

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  Respect the client’s privacy
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  Obtain customers through the opt-in method
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  Provide opt-out options

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  Declare their name and activities
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  Refrain from illegal activities

Put simply, you must comply with the data protection regulations when conducting any form of marketing in Kenya, including WhatsApp Marketing. This means obtaining consent from recipients before sending them promotional messages and providing an option to unsubscribe or opt-out.

WhatsApp Ecosystem

Here’s a brief description of the three different forms of WhatsApp:

WhatsApp Business Names

WhatsApp business name is the display name your customers will see on your WhatsApp profile. The name is required to register a WhatsApp business account. And for your business name to be approved, it must meet the following conditions:

Compliance with policies

Your WhatsApp business name must comply with WhatsApp commerce and business policies.

A Perfect Representation of your Business

The name should accurately represent your business, products and services, and departments.

Consistency with External Branding

The name must have the same branding as external features of the business, such as the company website, registration details, and tax documents.

Clear Relationship with your Business

The name should associate with the business, including its operations and external references.

Where Can I Get a WhatsApp Marketing Software in Kenya Running on WhatsApp API?

WhatTalk by Nakusikizia Technologies is the number one WhatsApp Marketing software in Kenya, running on WhatsApp Business API. The software offers businesses an opportunity to revolutionize their customer engagement by enabling the following:

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  Live chats
• 
  Chatbots
• 
  Automated messages

• 
  Broadcast campaigns
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  Click to WhatsApp ads
• 
  Real-time analytics

WhatTalk can help supercharge your marketing with its bulk personalized message and enhanced customer engagement features. Book a demo of WhatTalk and see how it is easy to capitalize on the unlimited possibilities of WhatsApp marketing in Kenya.

What Makes WhatsApp Marketing Ideal?

WhatsApp marketing is increasingly becoming popular, and for a good reason. Here are WhatsApp ideal features and benefits:

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  High usage rate: WhatsApp has over 2 billion active users worldwide.
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  97% WhatsApp usage in Kenya: Reach a large portion of the population.
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  Friendly User Interface: Easy to navigate and use.
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  Data-lite: Works in areas with limited internet.

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  Basic IT literacy: Accessible to users with basic IT skills.
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  98% Open rate: High message open rate.
• 
  55% Click rates: High engagement with message content.
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  40% more conversations: Increased opportunities for meaningful interactions.

WhatsApp is currently the number one customer engagement platform. And looking at the above statistics, the platform speaks for itself.

WhatsApp Business API vs. WhatsApp Business App

Why should your brand use WhatsApp Business API and not WhatsApp Business app? There are several advantages of using WhatsApp Business API, including

Access buttons and lists Green Tick Integration with other CRMs and platforms
Access buttons and lists

Utilise access buttons and lists within WhatsApp to enhance user experience and provide easy navigation. These features allow users to quickly access specific actions or information, improving engagement and efficiency.

Green Tick

The green tick verification badge adds credibility and trust to your business, indicating that you are a verified WhatsApp Business Account.

Integration with other CRMs and platforms

Seamlessly integrate WhatsApp with other customer relationship management (CRM) systems and platforms, enabling streamlined data management and enhancing overall customer experience.

Utilise access buttons and lists within WhatsApp to enhance user experience and provide easy navigation. These features allow users to quickly access specific actions or information, improving engagement and efficiency.

The green tick verification badge adds credibility and trust to your business, indicating that you are a verified WhatsApp Business Account.

Seamlessly integrate WhatsApp with other customer relationship management (CRM) systems and platforms, enabling streamlined data management and enhancing overall customer experience.

You can schedule and send appointment reminders and confirmations to patients.

This enables healthcare providers to send lab results to patients via WhatsApp.

Patients can provide feedback via WhatsApp.

Healthcare providers can access patient data via WhatsApp.

Patients can receive professional mental health counseling.

No blocking from WhatsApp Affordable campaigns Menu listing Shared Inbox
No blocking from WhatsApp

By sending messages only to users who have opted in and following WhatsApp’s guidelines and template approval process, you can avoid being blocked and maintain a positive reputation with anti-spam.

Affordable campaigns

Run cost-effective campaigns by paying once and being able to engage with clients within a 24-hour window, allowing for effective and targeted communication at a reasonable cost.

Menu listing

Implement a menu listing feature to automate the sales and support process. Users can easily navigate options and select the desired action, improving self-service capabilities and reducing agent workload.

Shared Inbox

Collaborate effectively with a shared inbox, allowing multiple agents to access and manage customer inquiries from a single business number. This ensures efficient communication, improved response times, and adherence to service level agreements (SLAs).

By sending messages only to users who have opted in and following WhatsApp’s guidelines and template approval process, you can avoid being blocked and maintain a positive reputation with anti-spam.

Run cost-effective campaigns by paying once and being able to engage with clients within a 24-hour window, allowing for effective and targeted communication at a reasonable cost.

Implement a menu listing feature to automate the sales and support process. Users can easily navigate options and select the desired action, improving self-service capabilities and reducing agent workload.

Collaborate effectively with a shared inbox, allowing multiple agents to access and manage customer inquiries from a single business number. This ensures efficient communication, improved response times, and adherence to service level agreements (SLAs).

You can schedule and send appointment reminders and confirmations to patients.

This enables healthcare providers to send lab results to patients via WhatsApp.

Patients can provide feedback via WhatsApp.

Healthcare providers can access patient data via WhatsApp.

Patients can receive professional mental health counseling.

Why should your brand use WhatsApp Business API and not WhatsApp Business app? There are several advantages of using WhatsApp Business API, including

How Does WhatsApp Marketing Work?

Why should your brand use WhatsApp Business API and not WhatsApp Business app? There are several advantages of using WhatsApp Business API, including

• 
  Marketing
• 
  Sales

• 
  Customer support
• 
  Notifications

The table below shows how WhatsApp marketing works.

Category	How It Works	Example
Marketing	To start conversations with potential customers, run ads that click to WhatsApp from Facebook or Instagram. You can also re-engage existing customers with personalized offers and recommendations that they choose to receive.	Use a customer relationship management (CRM) system to enrich your interactions with deep customer history.
Selling	Build offline shopping experiences within WhatsApp conversations to increase sales. Integrate WhatsApp shopping with your eCommerce platform, such as Shopify, Amazon, Jumia, and BigCommerce.	Customers can buy goods from their favorite stores via WhatsApp. They will view products, choose, make orders, buy, and the goods delivered on the WhatsApp chat app.
Notifications	Send relevant and timely messages to customers that have opted in. You can also increase engagement and awareness with product recommendations and updates.	Notify customers of new products and services, offers and discounts, seasonal and holiday greetings and offers, and special day messages such as birthdays.
Customer Service	Offer efficient, seamless customer support through WhatsApp shared inbox. Multiple agents can access and solve client queries while bots can answer FAQs. You get to improve customer satisfaction and lower your service costs with automation.	While bots can answer FAQs and repetitive questions, human agents can handle more complex customer issues.

Benefits of WhatsApp Marketing in Kenya

You stand to gain a lot by adopting WhatsApp marketing in Kenya, including:

1. Team inbox with Service-Level Agreements (SLAs)

Efficiently manage customer inquiries and ensure timely responses through a shared inbox, improving team collaboration and setting service-level agreements.

2. Automated Customer Support

Provide 24/7 support through chatbots, reducing reliance on human agents. Chatbots can handle common queries, while human agents focus on more complex issues. You can also send order updates and track orders seamlessly.

3. Automated Sales

Enable seamless and frictionless sales by integrating with eCommerce platforms. Customers can choose, purchase, and pay for products directly within WhatsApp, offering convenience and accessibility.

4. Automated Marketing

Utilize WhatsApp as a marketing channel to reach a wide audience and automate marketing campaigns for improved efficiency.

5. Reduce Response Time

Auto-reply and FAQs provided by chatbots help reduce response times, ensuring quicker and more efficient customer interactions.

6. Reduce Agent Load

Chatbots handle frequently asked questions, allowing human agents to address more specific and complex customer concerns.

7. Increase Customer Satisfaction

Reduced response time and two-way conversations improve customer satisfaction and engagement.

8. Reporting

Gain insights into campaign performance and track key metrics, allowing you to evaluate the success of your WhatsApp marketing efforts.

As you can see, WhatsApp marketing is effective in Kenya. Adopt this marketing strategy by claiming your free trial of WhatTalk and enjoy these benefits. 

What Are WhatsApp Message Templates? What You Need to Know

WhatsApp templates are pre-approved messages that businesses use to start conversations with customers. They are an easy way for Meta to regulate the messages you send to your customers.

1. Text-based Templates

Text-based templates contain only text and are used to send simple messages, such as order confirmations and appointment reminders.

2. Media-based Templates:

These templates have both text and media content, such as images, videos, documents, and GIFs. They are used to send more engaging messages, such as product announcements, seasonal greetings, and birthday wishes.

3. Interactive Templates

Interactive templates feature buttons that enable a person to respond in a certain way. They include call-to-action, marketing opt-out, and quick reply buttons. For instance, you can use them to collect customer feedback or allow users to book appointments.

How to Get WhatsApp Templates

To get WhatsApp templates, sign up for Meta Business Manager and create a WhatsApp Business account. After that, you can use WhatsApp Business Manager to manually produce your message templates.

Here are the steps to create WhatsApp message templates:

1. Go to Business Manager and select your business.
2. Click the WhatsApp Manager tab and select the account you want to create the message template for.
3. Click the 3-dot icon and select Manage message templates.
4. Click Create message template.
5. Choose the category of the template. You can choose from Marketing, Utility, or Authentication.
6. Choose your appropriate template button, including call-to-action, marketing opt-out, or quick reply buttons.
7. Enter a name for the template. The name must be in lowercase letters, numbers, and underscores only.
8. Select the languages the template will have, including English-US, English-UK, Swahili, French, etc.
9. Enter the message content for the template. The message content must be limited to 1024 characters.
10. Click Submit to create the template and wait for approval by Meta within 24 hours.

Special Conditions for Approval of WhatsApp Templates by Meta

For your WhatsApp templates to be approved by Meta, they must:

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  Be relevant to your business.
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  Be clear and accurate.
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  Not contain spam or misleading information.

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  Not violate any of WhatsApp’s policies.
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  Not be a duplicate of an existing template.

After approval, which can take up to 24 hours, you can start using your templates to send messages to your customers. And if your submission is rejected, you can file for an appeal, edit, and resubmit your template for another consideration.

Message Template Limit

There are limits on how many message templates a WhatsApp Business account can have and how many can be created at a time. Each WhatsApp Business account can:

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  Create up to 250 message templates, and each of them can have multiple language translations. For example, a message template called hello _ world translated into two languages counts as a single message template.
• 
  Produce 100 message templates per hour.
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  Edit the message templates only when approved, rejected, or paused.
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  Edit the message templates only once per day, up to 10 times per month.
• 
  Delete the message templates altogether.
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  Delete the message templates altogether.

It’s also important to note that the message template name field is capped at 512 characters, while the content field is limited to 1024 characters.

Lastly, WhatsApp business accounts have three different interactive template buttons that let customers respond to your message or take action. They include: 

• 
  Call To Action: Create up to two buttons that let your customers take action. It lets you add a phone number or website URL to your message.
• 
  Quick Reply: Have two custom buttons and a marketing opt-out option, which is highly recommended. It lets customers respond to your message.
• 
  Custom buttons: An optional choice that gives you up to three custom button options to enable your customers to take a desired action.

Types of WhatsApp Messages

As a business, you can use the WhatsApp Business Platform to deliver these types of messages:

• 
  Text messages: Simple text-only messages without additional parameters or attachments.
• 
  Media messages: Attached media files, including images, audio, videos, location, and documents.
• 
  Message templates: Automated responses generated with user-specific data, such as name and account number.
• 
  Contacts messages: Messages that include personal user information, such as name, address, and birthday.
• 
  Location messages: Messages that specify a location based on longitude and latitude.

Types of WhatsApp Marketing Campaigns

Here are the three common types of WhatsApp marketing campaigns:

• 
  Promotional Campaigns: Share special offers, discounts, and sales with your customers.
• 
  Content Campaigns: Share relevant and valuable content, such as blog posts, articles, newsletters, and videos.
• 
  Event Campaigns: Promote upcoming events, webinars, and product launches.

WhatsApp QR Codes

WhatsApp QR codes are an excellent way for customers to discover and reach out to your business. Customers can scan your QR code using their phones to start a conversation with your business easily.

You can print out your WhatsApp QR codes and display them openly within and around your business, including on your banners, products, posters, paypoint, and counter areas. You can also share them online through your website, WhatsApp templates and statuses, and other social media pages. 

Through Meta WhatsApp Manager, you can:

• 
  Generate and manage up to 2,000 unique codes using Meta WhatsApp Manager.
• 
  Handle and control the generated codes within the Meta WhatsApp Manager platform.
• 
  Create non-expiring QR codes which do not have an expiration date.
• 
  Retire a QR code manually by deleting it from the system.

In other words, you can create, update, and delete QR codes using the WhatsApp Business API Manager. 

WhatsApp Marketing Rules

If you want to do WhatsApp Marketing without being blocked and banned by Meta, here are the rules to stick by:

• 
  Legit WhatsApp API: Use legitimate WhatsApp API software like WhatTalk by Nakusikizia to ensure compliance and smooth operation.
• 
  Pre-approved templates: Templates for WhatsApp messages must be approved in advance, ensuring adherence to WhatsApp guidelines.
• 
  Business restrictions: Certain types of businesses are not allowed to use WhatsApp Business, including terrorist and criminal organizations, illegal goods and services, and regulated and restricted products, such as firearms, among others.
• 
  Unhealthy WhatsApp account: Having multiple numbers block your WhatsApp account can lead to an unhealthy account status, potentially impacting its functionality.
• 
  Opt-In Numbers: Obtain client opt-ins through various methods such as QR codes, email and SMS opt-in requests, click-to-WhatsApp ads, website opt-in prompts, and Google Ads opt-in campaigns. These approaches ensure that clients willingly agree to receive WhatsApp messages and prevent spamming.

If you abide by these rules, it’s unlikely that you can get blocked or banned by Meta.

WhatsApp Conversation for All Businesses in Kenya

As the number one customer engagement channel, WhatsApp is a true leader in conventional commerce. Here are some WhatsApp marketing tips and tricks:

• 
  Provide human and bot customer support.
• 
  Allow instant on-point routing to assign a human agent from a thread.
• 
  Create auto-reply updates for people who message you outside your operating hours.
• 
  Personalize and tailor your messages to the specific user’s needs.
• 
  Run WhatsApp retargeting campaigns and follow-ups.

• 
  Provide multilingual customer support.
• 
  Run loyalty and reward programs for customers.
• 
  Collect customer feedback and suggestions for improvement.
• 
  Share updates and promotions through WhatsApp statuses.
• 
  Regularly review, train, and refine your bot capabilities.

If you abide by these rules, it’s unlikely that you can get blocked or banned by Meta.

How WhatsApp Can Be Used

The table below summarizes different ways to use WhatsApp.

Usage Form	Function/ Benefit
Customer Support	Answer common questions people ask with an automated bot. On-point routing can also assign agents for each issue.
Internal & Mass Communication	Enables you to integrate WhatsApp into your CRM systems for internal communications and mass customer outreach.
Sales Pipeline	Initiates relevant action based on the activity someone takes on your business website or blog to enhance lead generation.
Marketing Channel	Allows marketers to engage with customers and prospects on a platform they already know, use, and trust.
Recruitment Process	With the rise of e-recruitment, WhatsApp allows recruiters to reach a large pool of candidates worldwide.
Payment Method	Thanks to WhatsApp Pay, you can send and receive money right where you chat with customers.

WhatTalk is Build For Your Specific Use Case

Chat automation is the need of the hour. Can’t find a solution to fulfill your needs? Our Chatbots developers have got you covered. Nakusikizia bot covers several industries, including but not limited to:

• 
  Concierge chatbots
• 
  Airline ticketing chatbots
• 
  Insurance claim chatbots
• 
  Recruitment chatbots
• 
  ECommerce chatbots
• 
  Education chatbots

• 
  Hospitality chatbots
• 
  
  Healthcare chatbots
  
• 
  Real estate chatbots
• 
  
  Banking and finance chatbots
  
• 
  Tourism chatbots

Embrace the Future with WhatsApp Marketing

WhatsApp Marketing offers businesses an effective and highly engaging channel to reach customers. As WhatsApp grows and evolves, businesses can expect new features and opportunities to enhance their marketing efforts and drive better results. 

Nakusikizia’s WhatsApp Marketing software, WhatTalk, can help supercharge your marketing with its captivating:

• 
  Click to WhatsApp ads
• 
  Broadcast campaigns
• 
  WhatsApp newsletters
• 
  Real-time analytics
• 
  Automation and chatbots

In other words, WhatTalk allows you to build and grow your audience on WhatsApp. You can revolutionize your customer service and make more conversions through WhatsApp marketing. 

2

Our Client’s Voice

Joseph Michaels

Senior Marketing Manager
I added extra agents to our business account so they could respond to consumer inquiries using Nakusikizia’s software. It is a comprehensive WhatsApp CRM tool with excellent customer service support

Frequently Asked Questions

Is WhatsApp Marketing Effective in Kenya?

Yes, WhatsApp marketing is effective in Kenya. Businesses are increasingly adopting it. And with providers like Nakusikizia entering the market, its usage is expected to grow. 

Moving forward, businesses will continue to leverage the power of WhatsApp marketing to improve and upgrade their customer engagement services.

How Effective is WhatsApp Marketing?

With over 2 billion active users worldwide, a 98% message open rate, and a 40%-60% response rate, WhatsApp is the most engaging marketing channel ever. 

 

With these numbers, WhatsApp can give your business the visibility it needs to grow and increase sales.

How Can I Attract More Customers Through WhatsApp?

To attract more customers on WhatsApp, integrate WhatsApp Marketing software, like Nakusikizia’s WhatTalk, into your business and watch it accelerate your marketing ROI. 

If you’re ready to attract more customers through WhatsApp, request a free trial of WhatTalk today.

How Do I Get Started?

If you want to join our pool of successful customers and meet your customers on their favorite platforms, claim your free trial of WhatTalk today. You can also book a demo for an explanation of how to use any of our products, and you’ll see the results for yourself.

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Author

Stan Wepundi

An expert content writer in the SaaS industry who specializes in WhatsApp marketing! When it comes to creating captivating content, you got covered. With a friendly and creative approach, your marketing, creative, and informative ideas to life. Elevate your WhatsApp marketing with his expertise today and watch your content shine! 🚀📝

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