WhatsApp testing and piloting: send limits and ramp up content
Before your first big campaign launch, you must 'warm up' WhatsApp with testing and piloting. This is necessary to get to know the platform and build good sender reputation with WhatsApp, including boosting your send limit:
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.
It's a good idea to aim to increase your send limit ahead of your first big campaign launch through testing and piloting, even if you don't require it yet to reach your whole audience.
Staff tests
You must send some test content amongst staff members before launching your first big campaign on WhatsApp. Ensure you have at least five staff members to help with testing by engaging with content sent. If you don't have enough staff available, ask your account manager for help from the Movement team, we'd be happy to get involved!
This will help to boost your sender reputation with WhatsApp. It also gives an opportunity to get familiar with the platform, iron out any issues and ask your account manager any clarifying questions, so when it comes to your launch day, you’re all set.
Pilot with supporters
Once you've completed a few successful staff tests, you're ready to begin piloting with supporters.
Note: You can build an audience of your most engaged supporters for your pilot - those supporters who are most engaged generally are the most likely to engage positively with your WhatsApp pilot.
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.
This pilot content is valuable in terms of increasing your send limits and priming your audience and also illuminates what type of content is landing best with your supporters on this new channel.
You could use these pilot sends 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 try before your big campaign launch day!