How to Send 1000 Messages at Once on WhatsApp?

WhatsApp is the preferred social networking channel for businesses wanting to reach out, contact, and communicate with prospective clients. With a base of users, WhatsApp is THE place, where you are very likely to find a new customer, through the possibility of sheer numbers.

As a business, there would be times, when you may want to send certain messages in a bulk. WhatsApp has a feature called Broadcast that offers businesses the possibility of sending 1000 messages at once.

Some Reasons for Sending Bulk Messages

What might some reasons or situations that might prompt you to send 1000 messages at once?

1. Informing customers about future events such as webinars
2. Introducing customers to an entirely new product
3. Informing customers if businesses are closing certain stores or certain product lines
4. Sharing information about discount offers and coupons
5. Keeping customers informed about products that are back in stock
6. As brand communication in service of strengthening brand recall

The Broadcast Feature

This is a unique feature of WhatsApp that allows businesses to broadcast messages in bulk to their customers. WhatsApp allows businesses to send messages to a maximum of 256 recipients simultaneously. For this to happen, customers need to have the numbers of the customers on the phone. This ensures that the businesses are not spamming others with their content. The broadcast message appears to customers as an individual message.

How to Set Up the Broadcast Feature

Following are the simple steps to set up the broadcast feature:

1. Go to your WhatsApp Business Account
2. Go to Chat, click on Menu and select New List
3. Key in/search for the contact names to whom wish to send bulk message
4. Select the names of the contact by pressing on + button
5. Press Ok
6. Press Create

Some Constraints

However, there are also some constraints in using this feature:

1. Businesses can only send messages to those whose numbers they have saved in their contact list. So, any new numbers that haven’t been saved, cannot be added to the broadcast list.
2. There is an upper limit on the number of people that businesses can reach out to using the broadcast feature. This is set at 256 people. If you need to send messages to more than 256 people then businesses would need to create another distinct list.
3. WhatsApp Business does not support third-party integrations. This means that if you want to transfer your data from WhatsApp Business, to say a CRM, then, it cannot be done in an automated manner. You would need to do it manually. That is going to be a very uphill task if you are dealing with thousands of customers.

So, what is the way to send 1000 bulk messages, then?

There is a way. Sign up for WhatsApp API. With WhatsApp API, you can send between 1000 to unlimited bulk messages in a day.

WhatsApp API is an API by WhatsApp offered to select third parties (called Business Solution Providers or BSPs) to build a variety of applications that use WhatsApp for business promotion and selling of products and services. Whereas WhatsApp Business is intended to introduce small businesses to WhatsApp as a reach-out marketing/selling tool, with WhatsApp API, WhatsApp is creating an entire ecosystem of applications and products such as Chatbots, CRMs, and so on, that businesses can use to promote their products and services.

With WhatsApp API, WhatsApp is empowering businesses to leverage WhatsApp’s incredible user base and not only contact WhatsApp users but also connect with customers and drive sales or deliver great customer service.

Since it’s an API, the app and front-end interface is developed by BSPs such as BotSpace

Contact us for more details.