WhatsApp has recently enforced stricter policies to prevent spam on WhatsApp.

This means that you now need to be more careful while using your WhatsApp Business API account with Serri  to prevent getting your account marked as spam.

In this doc, we share the guidelines following which will keep your WhatsApp Business API account active & safe and your quality rating high.

WhatsApp Optin

To initiate a conversation on WhatsApp, you must first get an optin permission from the customer, allowing you to send notifications on WhatsApp. There are many ways to collect the optin from customers which we have covered extensively in this blog.

There are 2 major things that your WhatsApp optin message must cover:

• It must state that the person is agreeing to receive WhatsApp messages from your business

• The message must include your business name

You can easily manage your WhatsApp Optins in Serri . Go to Manage👉Optin management👉Set your Optin & optout keywords👉Set a response for Optin & optout messages.

That's it. You can check out the complete details about the Optin management feature here.

WhatsApp Business API Messaging Policies

1. Make sure to Broadcast messages to only those users who have opted-in to your services. Ensure that you're not suprising, spamming, deceiving or misleading users with your WhatsApp Broadcast messages. Only contact users who have willingly:

• Given you their mobile number

• Agreed to be contacted over WhatsApp

2. Honor requests from people who don't wish to receive your WhatsApp communications & opt them out of your contact list. Spamming these users may lead to your WhatsApp API account getting blocked.

3. Keep your WhatsApp Quality Rating high - There are three types of Quality ratings - High (Green), Medium (Yellow), and Low (Red). Your quality rating is a clear representation of the type of people you're messaging. If you're messaging opted in users who have agreed to receive messages from you, there are high chances your Quality Rating will remain high.

However, if you Broadcast messages to users who don't even know you, your rating will get affected if these users decide to block your number on WhatsApp. If your Rating goes to Medium, try to refrain from Broadcasting messages for a week & let the rating climb back to High (Green).

You can easily monitor your WhatsApp Quality Rating from the Serri  Dashboard.

4. Don't Broadcast if your account is restricted - If you see that your account has been restricted, ensure that you don't send any further Broadcasts for the next 1 week. If you still don't see any changes, connect with our team via Live Chat & we'll help you out.

5. Always Include opt-out option in Template footer - Make sure that you provide an option to the user to opt-out of your WhatsApp notifications for all Template messages sent from your end.

How to maintain a good Quality Rating?

• Make sure you broadcast to users who have opted in to receive the messages, there are many ways you can opt-in a user like showing an opt-in box at lead generation or adding a WhatsApp button on website. You can check out more in this blog.

• In case you have some cold leads and are not sure if the users are opted in please send the template including a footer "reply stop to unsubscribe".

• Do not spam the user inbox with multiple marketing & promotional messages frequently. This might lead to them blocking your number & getting your quality rating down.

• Any time the quality rating goes to medium or low stop broadcasting for 4-5 days so that it returns back to high. You can still reply to incoming user queries in that period.