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If you're using WhatsApp marketing, you must know how important it is to increase your WhatsApp contact list. But like most businesses, you might also be focused too much on the growth factor and neglect the maintenance part.
The truth is WhatsApp marketing campaigns generate a good return on investment. It offers the highest open rates compared to other channels. And businesses are able to convert most of the WhatsApp leads. But this is only possible if your WhatsApp contact list is healthy.
Now, what's a healthy WhatsApp list? And why do you need it? In this blog, we will answer these questions and provide you with some ways to clean your messy WhatsApp list.
Without further ado, let's jump right in!
What Is a Healthy WhatsApp List?
Before exploring why you need a healthy WhatsApp contact list and how to maintain one, we first need to understand what a clean broadcast list actually is.
A healthy contact list on WhatsApp consists of users who engage and are interested in hearing from you. And when you remove unengaged users from your list, it will become relatively smaller.
But as they say, bigger is not always better.
A small WhatsApp list with high-quality and engaging contacts will always outperform the huge list of people who don't want your products/services. And as a cherry on the cake, it's much easier to maintain smaller WhatsApp lists.
That said, let's look at some reasons why you should care to have a clean WhatsApp list.
Why Is It Essential to Have a Healthy Contact List on WhatsApp?
If you're wondering how cleaning your contact list on WhatsApp can help your business, here are some points you need to look at.
Increases the Open Rate
It's simple math. You want all your WhatsApp subscribers to open the messages you send. And the best way to ensure this is to eliminate the customers who have not opened/engaged with your messages in a long time.
Removing such customers from your contact list increases the ratio of interested customers to uninterested ones. And when your list has only healthy customers, most of your messages will be opened.
So yes, having a clean WhatsApp contact list can help you increase your open rate.
Helps Increase ROI
As we mentioned earlier, WhatsApp generates a good return on investment if you have a solid campaign strategy. Customers are 50% more likely to respond to messages you send on WhatsApp compared to other platforms. But this statistic holds true only for customers who are interested in your business.
If your contact list on WhatsApp is not clean, your messages will also reach customers who don't need your product. So, the conversion rate will be lower, dropping your ROI.
Lower Your Sending Costs
So far, we've understood how an unclean WhatsApp broadcast list can drop your Open rate and ROI. And the biggest reason behind it is that you're sending WhatsApp messages to customers who are not just not interested.
But from a financial perspective, you also lose a lot of money on those customers who don't engage with you on WhatsApp. Because every time you send a message to your contacts, you have to pay some charges. And unopened messages never generate any revenue to cover those charges.
With a healthy WhatsApp contact list, your sending costs will drop because you'll no longer be sending WhatsApp texts to uninterested customers.
Increased Data Accuracy for New Strategies
It always feels great when you hit benchmarks for WhatsApp opt-ins. Let's say your number of WhatsApp contacts just crossed a hundred thousand. That's great news! But if you're holding on to unengaging customers and dead leads for stat padding, you're doing no good to your business.
A good strategy is always based on a good and healthy dataset. And if the dataset is not clean, it'll be a false representation of your ideal customers. Therefore, it's essential to cut the list down to its true size by removing unengaging, uninterested, and complaining customers.
Avoid Complainers
You need to understand that customers stay with brands only for a certain time. Your messages are not going to be relevant to them forever because they might not need to product/services again.
But if you keep sending them messages even after that period, then they're going to reach out to your customer support team with a complaint. And a complaining customer is never good for any business.
In a healthy WhatsApp contact list, you only keep customers who need your products. These customers will not complain, saving your supporting team some time and effort.
Saves You From Getting Reported
What do you think is the worst thing that can happen to your WhatsApp business account? It can get suspended if a lot of your customers report you for spamming them on WhatsApp.
And an unhealthy WhatsApp contact list is one of the biggest reasons why customers report businesses. See, they don't want to receive messages from you. It's not just one or two customers. An unhealthy list can have hundreds or even thousands of such customers.
These customers, when irritated, can "block" or "report" your business. And WhatsApp tracks the number of these two as a "quality metric." When the number goes higher, WhatsApp can limit the number of messages you can send per hour and, in the worst cases, the suspension.
Enhances Your Online Reputation
Unopened messages, reports/blocks from users, and complaints ruin your online reputation. And you don't want to come across as a spammy brand, a brand that keeps sending messages desperately hoping to get a sale.
The internet shows no mercy on such brands. It's like a dry forest. Once the reputation goes down, the fire spreads quickly. Soon the customers who don't have an issue with your messages will also start blocking you.
But when you increase your WhatsApp list, while also keeping it clean, customers will have no reasons to call out on you. And your online reputation will stay intact.
How to Clean Your WhatsApp Contact List?
Now we know how beneficial it can be for businesses to have a clean contact list on WhatsApp. And the first step is to switch focus from how to grow your WhatsApp contact list to what you can do to keep it clean.
Once your existing WhatsApp contact list is clean, then you can work on growing it and maintaining hygiene simultaneously.
By implementing the below-mentioned WhatsApp contact list best practices, you'll be able to keep the list clean and improve your open and conversion rate too.
Get Double Opt-in Confirmation
Sometimes customers click on the WhatsApp opt-in box in a hurry to complete the transaction or sign-up. But they don't want to hear from the brand on that platform.
Such customers are going to complain later because though it was them who gave you the permission, their intention was only to complete the transaction.
To avoid getting complaints from these customers, you should trigger an automated text on WhatsApp to confirm the subscription. You should also mention the types of messages they'll be receiving here if they confirm it.
Doing this will ensure that both you and your customers agree on the exchange of messages, and your customers should have no problem with it.
Keep Your Lists Segmented
When customers opt-in to receive WhatsApp messages from you, they expect that you'll send them relevant messages at the right time. No customer wants to receive a notification late at night. And if that notification is irrelevant, they'll get angry.
Therefore, creating a smaller and segmented group of customers is essential. It significantly improves your WhatsApp results by ensuring that you send the right message to the right people at the right time.
A contact list can be segmented based on multiple metrics like geography, age, gender, purchase behavior, and much more.
There might be some locations where you stopped operating, or some customers might not have purchased for more than a year. Your messages are no longer relevant to those customers. And that's how with the help of the segmentation, you can clean such customers from your contact list.
Survey Your Customers Often
Even if a customer doesn't need your product right now, they might still tolerate your WhatsApp messages in the hope to get good deals. But no one knows the tolerance threshold of customers better than themselves. And the best way to identify this threshold is by surveying them.
As we mentioned earlier too, your brands become irrelevant to customers after a period of time. For example, if you deal in baby products, your business will only be relevant for parents whose kids are under 5-6 years. Once they grow older than that, the parents will no longer need your products.
Surveying your customers from time to time can help you keep the list clean by giving you a list of customers who don't want to receive messages from you.
Monitor Metrics of Campaigns
When you run campaigns on WhatsApp, you expect most of your customers to engage with them. But not all customers engage. You can analyze metrics like open rate and CTR to calculate the number of customers who are not engaging.
By tracking who's not responding and engaging with your messages, you can actively identify uninterested customers. Deleting such customers from your contact list on WhatsApp will make it cleaner and more effective.
Clean the List at Regular Intervals
If you want your WhatsApp list to be clean, it's a good practice to segment contacts, survey customers, and monitor campaigns at regular intervals. This way, you'll be able to identify the uninterested customers before they are irritated.
And you'll also be able to remove the customers who've not engaged with you in a long time. Because if they have not engaged in a long time, then most probably, they've lost interest in your business or don't need it anymore.
Final Words
By cleaning your WhatsApp list, you can generate immediate positive results, bringing greater returns on time, efforts, and money you invest in your WhatsApp marketing campaigns.
The negative effect of an unhealthy contact list on WhatsApp is cumulative, so waiting for the damage to surface will only do more harm.
It is essential that you keep monitoring your WhatsApp campaigns regularly to get insights on customers. You should also track the engagement you get from your recipients for identifying the ones you should remove. And this is where WhatsApp business API comes in.
With WhatsApp Business API, you can track, optimize, and automate your campaigns. And to get started, you can reach out to QuickReply.ai.
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