Message templates are specific message formats that businesses use to send out notifications or customer care messages to people that have opted in to notifications. Messages can include appointment reminders, delivery information, issue resolution and payment updates.

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Template guidelines

Please consider the following guidelines to accelerate the template approval process:

  • Make your message template name clear. Instead of using a name like “template_014” use “bus_ticket_details”
  • Remember that someone outside of your business will be reviewing your templates. Providing more clarity gives reviewers context around how the template will be used.
  • Think about how your template sounds when read out loud. It should not sound promotional and avoid use of marketing language use of exclamation marks etc.
  • Review your templates once before submitting. Make sure there are no spelling or grammatical errors and variables are added in the correct format (two curly brackets on either side) and that no variables are repeated.
  • If you need to write a message template to re-open the 24-hour window, we would suggest starting with some mention of the previous conversation thread. e.g. “I’m sorry that I wasn’t able to respond to your concerns yesterday but I’m happy to assist you now. If you’d like to continue this discussion, please reply with ‘yes’.” or “I was able to do some follow-up based on our previous conversation, and I’ve found the answer to your question about our refund policy. If you’d like to continue our conversation, please say ‘yes’.”

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Template rejections

You cannot use WhatsApp as a channel to attempt to get users to re-engage with your product and/or resurrect churned users. If one or more of your templates have been rejected, it may have been for one of the following reasons:

Advertising, marketing, or promotional messages are not permitted.

Some examples of this include the following:

  • Offering coupon codes and/or free gifts.

  • Sales, discounts, promotions, product recommendations, offers including recurring content (e.g: timely information, a newsletter, any sort of subscription, a catalog)

  • Upselling or Cross-selling e.g. “Here is your boarding pass, with seat assignment and gate information. If you would like to save 10% on your in-flight dinner, order your meal through our app.”

  • Re-engagement: e.g. “your friend commented on your photo”, “your friend shared a new playlist” “top tweets from people you follow”

  • App downloads: e.g. “Download our mobile app to pay bills/recharges”, etc.

  • User takes action with a business that results in a notification for another user e.g. Company X: A buys a gift card for B, Company X notifies B , Company X can’t send a notification asking a user to share a promotion to a group in order for everyone to receive that promotion

  • Reminders or alerts

    that a user may have indicated interest in seeing e.g. Price drops, back in stock, points expiration - frequent reminders for a variety of things with the primary purpose of sending promotions / sale alerts / etc.

  • Cold call messages e.g. “Is now a good time to talk?”, “Thank you for your interest, can we speak now?”, “I tried contacting you but you weren’t available. When are you free?”, etc.

  • Sending a survey or poll to collect data e.g. “Hi, we’re interested in knowing how you feel about certain food groups. Do you mind participating in a survey?”

  • Inclusion of certain words or phrases that make the message template promotional (even though the content of your template may be fine)

WhatsApp does not approve message templates with floating parameters (,that is lines with just parameters and no text). In the below example, we’re referring to {{3}} and {{4}} as the floating parameters.

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TICKET NO: {{1}}

PASSENGER NAME: *{{2}}*

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{{3}} - {{4}}

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Incorrect formatting

Some examples of this include the following:

  • Message templates with spelling mistakes will be rejected.
  • Make sure to use parameters like {{1}}, {{2}}, etc. and include the correct number of curly brackets (,that is 2 on the left side of the number and 2 on the right side of the number)

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Template containing potentially abusive or threatening content

Some examples of this include the following:

  • Message templates that threaten customers with a legal course of action will be rejected.
  • Message templates that threaten to add customers to a WhatsApp group with their friends and family to shame them if they don’t pay back their loans will be rejected.