6 tips to minimize your WhatsApp Business cost

Meta knows the value of WhatsApp Business to brands. So it charges per conversation you have with a customer. Here are some tricks to keep your cost down. 

Each conversation you have with a customer costs you a small sum of money (€0.0456-0.1131 in Germany). 

When you see the benefits of WhatsApp Business, it's no surprise. Open rates can be as high as 85%.

Our mission at charles is to help you increase the return WhatsApp brings you. Part of that is keeping your conversation costs down. 

Here we share their 6 tips from our Success team to minimize the costs of WhatsApp marketing. 

First, what are the costs of WhatsApp Business?

Before you can cut the costs of WhatsApp Business and WhatsApp marketing, you need to know what the costs are.

As a medium to large business wanting to start with WhatsApp Business, it's likely you'll use the WhatsApp Business Platform (API). To use the WhatsApp API, a common option is to use a software platform from a WhatsApp Business Solution Partner (like charles). (You can also use a Tech Provider or TechPartner, or build the software yourself.)

With this in mind, the main costs are usually:

1. Cost per conversation to WhatsApp you have with a customer 
2. Platform fees: monthly software subscription fee plus possible conversation fees
   

You can see out our guide to WhatsApp Business costs.

There may be more costs involved than with other channels like email, but many of our customers are seeing good results.

6 ways to save WhatsApp Business costs

We asked our success team for tips to save costs in WhatsApp marketing, and here's what they said:

1. limit numbers of WhatsApp campaigns

We recommend you send no more than 2-3 marketing campaigns per user per month. 

This way, you keep engagement high and conversation costs low. 

2. Keep your WhatsApp messages relevant

In WhatsApp, as with other channels, the more relevant your WhatsApp message is, the more likely a customer is to engage. The more they engage, the more likely they are to buy from you. 

So only send messages to customers who you think will be interested in what you have to say. This means selecting targeted audience and tailoring your message accordingly.

For example, you could send a WhatsApp campaign about a new sweater to people who bought a similar sweater from you last year. You could send information about a sale to someone who bought from you recently so you know they're warm to your brand.

How does segmenting your audience save you money? 

1. You send fewer messages on average because you send content only to recipients who are potentially interested
2. Your content becomes more relevant to each individual subscriber, which makes them more engaged and ideally likely to purchase

Segmenting audiences with conditions in the charles platform

If your messages are relevant to your recipients and they even get a discount or access to exclusive offers every now and then, they'll actually want to hear from you. 

This way you a) save costs, b) avoid annoying customers and b) build close and personal customer relationships.

3. Use your 24h window to gather information

There are enough push channels in this world. A big benefit of WhatsApp Business is that you can have 2-way conversations with customers.

But this doesn't mean you have to actually use precious resources responding to conversations. You can automate all of this (with charles Journeys).

If you're sending out a WhatsApp marketing campaign anyway, the "Marketing conversation" you've already paid for covers anything you say in 24 hours. Take advantage of this 24-hour window.

We recommend using this time (or the campaign itself) to learn more about your customers. How? Ask questions using buttons as call to actions and automatically store answers.

You can automate WhatsApp conversations and store answers in automation tools like Journeys

In automation tools like Journeys, you can set up automated conversational flows to learn about customers: ask interactive questions about preferences like favorite products, colors, flavors and styles.

Customers' responses are automatically saved in their user profile as tags. These tags will help you segment your campaigns more finely in future.

4. Use your free Service conversations

The first 1,000 Service conversations (user-initiated conversations) are free for every WhatsApp Business account.

Take advantage of this by allowing your customers on your other channels to chat with you on WhatsApp.

When they start chatting with you, instead of you messaging them first, you pay the usually lower service conversation cost.

5. Use Click-to-chat ads 

You can set up "click-to-chat" or "click-to-WhatsApp" ads on Instagram and Facebook that lead to WhatsApp. Meta is trying to encourage their use, so WhatsApp conversations started by these ads are free.

Example of a click-to-WhatsApp

6. Finish conversations within 24 hours

Every conversation on your WhatsApp business account opens a 24-hour window after your first message, where all further messages are included in the price. 

We see that businesses sometimes miss this 24-hour window. If they want to reply after that, they need to set up a new WhatsApp message template, and pay for a new conversation. 

The result: you pay twice.

Don't let this happen. Always make sure you have people on hand monitoring your WhatsApp conversation feed and answering questions in time. Or set up automated replies.

In the charles Conversations feed, we show an alert icon next to conversations that are nearing 24 hours so that you don't miss them.

Check out our success stories

To understand the power of WhatsApp, who better to ask than the brands who are making it work?

See our customer stories to see which brands use WhatsApp marketing successfully, how they use it and the results they're achieving. 

Keep an eye on KPIs

In your budgeting and cost-saving efforts, it's important to have a good view of your metrics. 

Knowing how your campaigns are performing, which ones are doing well or not so well, and which ones are generating the most revenue will help you save or invest in the right places and learn how to design future campaigns.

Some WhatsApp Business Solution Partners offer analytics features in their platforms.

Analytics dashboard in the charles platform

In our WhatsApp Business KPIs article, we'll tell you which metrics are the most important.

Our takeaway: put quality first

We recommend designing your WhatsApp campaigns with the idea in mind that the channel may get a lot more attention in the near future. 

The question should not be "How do I spend the minimum?" but "How do I give my customers the best experience?"

Experiment with your channel and find the perfect way for your particular business to generate the most revenue per recipient (RPR).

See WhatsApp campaign examples.

Questions? Just ask. 

Get in touch and we'll set up an appointment to talk about your company's problems and find solutions together.