Warming up WhatsApp: send limits and ramp up content

There are a few reasons to 'warm up' WhatsApp before your first big campaign launch:

Send limits

As a spam prevention measure, Meta increases send limits as senders build up good reputation on WhatsApp.

When you first join WhatsApp, your send limit per day will be 1,000. The next stages are 10,000 and then 100,000.

There’s no set time scale or rules on how or when send limits are increased but we’ve found these things can help:

Consistently send at or close to your send limit
Having good deliverability with few messages bouncing - in other words, an up to date, engaged audience
Few spam reports - an audience who know who you are and are engaged with your content

It can take a few sends to move between send limit caps and we’ll update you when your limit has changed.

If your sender reputation suffers for any reason, it is possible you may fall back to your previous send limit. We’ll aim to ensure this doesn’t happen but if it does, we’ll alert you and investigate exactly why your limit decreased, for example, because you hadn’t used WhatsApp for some time or had a higher than usual bounce rate. You can always build up again.

You may want to increase your send limit ahead of your first big campaign launch to reach your whole audience. In this case, we suggest sending low bar campaigns to engaged members to help build your reputation within the platform.

Priming your audience

With WhatsApp being a new channel, it’s best to start with lower bar asks that your supporters are more likely to engage with, for a few reasons:

Better engagement means your send limit will likely increase sooner
Priming your audience will mean they’re more likely to engage when your big campaign launch happens
You’ll build trust with your audience on a new platform, increasing sense of community and engagement, so you can expect greater success with higher bar asks in the future, for example, fundraising with your WhatsApp community

You may want to start with a simple ‘yes/no’ ‘Quick Reply’ question to kick things off.

Testing, testing!

It’s always a good idea to send some ‘test’ content before launching your first big campaign on WhatsApp. This gives an opportunity to iron out any issues and ask your account manager any clarifying questions, so when it comes to your launch day, you’re all set.

This ‘test’ content can still be valuable, in terms of increasing your send limits and priming your audience as above but also to see what type of content is landing best with your supporters on this new channel.

You could use this ‘test’ content to gather insight into what your supporters would like from you via WhatsApp or to get a better sense of what type of content lands best and when. There’s a lot to choose from with WhatsApp, with rich media like voice notes, videos and images, which can be both sent and received, so there’s plenty to test out before your big campaign launch day!