Learn about the WhatsApp marketing mistakes that can cost you sales and revenue.

50 million businesses across the globe use WhatsApp for marketing and sales.

WhatsApp is now a popular channel for marketing and sales, just as email and SMS are. eCommerce brands use it for promotions, marketing, sales, and customer support communications.

But although it holds a lot of potential, mistakes made on WhatsApp can cost businesses heavily.

After running thousands of WhatsApp campaigns, we’ve made this list of mistakes you should avoid at all costs.

WhatsApp marketing mistakes that will cost you sales and money

1. Not Following UP

Say, for example, you set up WhatsApp for your customer support. Customers start to reach out to you with queries about products, etc. But it soon turns into a one-sided conversation because you don’t respond to their messages.

Not only will you lose the money you spent on your WhatsApp setup, etc., but you might lose customers too.

Studies show that 52% of customers expect brands to respond to their queries within seven days. But in the world of WhatsApp, conversations happen in real-time, and customers have become increasingly impatient.

To avoid this mistake, you need to automate the process to ensure your customers don’t have to wait too long. Use a WhatsApp automation app to respond to their queries. It helps to provide them with quick support. It can add to their satisfaction level.

Automating your WhatsApp chats with an intuitive app can help you:

• Respond to customers in real-time
• Solve low-level, basic queries within seconds
• Set up WhatsApp drip campaigns to drive campaigns forward
• Engage customers with timely communication

2. Spamming Your Customers

An average person receives more than 100 messages via different channels every day. In such a scenario, if you spam your customers on WhatsApp, it might backfire.

These are some things that could come across as spam:

• Sending the same message multiple times
• Sending irrelevant messages
• Sending too many messages back to back

According to psychological studies, spam can come across as pushy. It annoys people. And quite often, people either stop opening those messages or opt out of the list.

That is why you should ensure you don’t come across as spam. Here’s what you can do:

• Plan your WhatsApp campaigns so that you don’t end up sending random or too many messages
• Use WhatsApp marketing apps that have auto duplicate checks, which ensure you don’t send the same messages repeatedly
• Create well-designed messages with catchy copy that attracts people’s attention in and engages them

3. Sending Messages Without OPT-IN

Sending promotional and marketing WhatsApp messages without customers’ consent is illegal. Consumers prefer to receive WhatsApp marketing messages only from brands they have opted-in.  

And so, if you send messages without customers’ permission, you could get blocked, or put-off customers and they might block you.

To avoid the risk of getting blocked or reported, you should ensure you send WhatsApp messages only to customers who have opted in for your WhatsApp messages.

• Always send an opt-in and opt-out option in all your messages
• The first message you send to your new leads should always be an opt-in message. It’s the best way to build your WhatsApp list and start your relationship with new leads on the right note

4. Sending Messages to Non-Responsive Contacts

What do you do if your customers don’t respond to your WhatsApp messages? For example, they don’t open your message, don’t click, or don’t reply to your follow-ups

Do you continue sending them more messages? Because after a point, it’s futile and a waste of your time and money.

One of the best practices is to keep contact lists updated — remove wrong numbers, opted-out contacts, non-responsive numbers, etc.

By keeping your contact list updated, you can reduce marketing costs, avoid getting blocked by customers, and improve your campaign performance.

However, removing a contact from your list because they didn't respond to you isn’t the right solution. It’s possible that they’re busy or not interested in your messages during a particular period of time. And that they still want to be on your list.

An effective hack to tackle this issue is to have a WhatsApp marketing app that is smart enough to filter out non-responsive contacts. For example, when a customer doesn’t respond within a day, a week, a month, or to your last few campaigns, etc., the app will filter out those contacts.

5. Sending Messages at The Wrong Time

80% of messages sent on WhatsApp are read within five minutes. Hence, untimely messages could hurt your campaigns.

Here’s why: say, for example, you send a promotional message at 11 am on a Monday. That’s the time when your customers are most probably going to be at work. So, they’re either going to miss reading your message, ignore it, or get annoyed with it.

Solution:

• Identify the right moment in customers’ journey when your marketing messages would be most relevant
• Plan your marketing campaigns in advance with the time and date for sending messages
• Send response messages as soon as possible – it helps improve your campaign performance
• Use a WhatsApp Business API that allows you to select your preferred time and day to send messages
• Speedy responses can make your marketing campaigns more effective. For example, sending messages in real-time based on customers’ behavior on your website

6. Not Segmenting Your Customers

Say you have thousands or lakhs of customers on your WhatsApp list. And you’re running a promotional campaign for one product.

Every product in your store won’t cater to all your customers. It may be irrelevant to many. So, when you send a promotional message to all customers without giving it a thought, it could cause harm.

• It can come across as spam
• It’s a waste of your money and effort to send the message to the entire WhatsApp list
• Customers feel you don’t provide personalization
• You don’t meet your marketing goals

The solution: use a WhatsApp tool that helps you with segmentation. Segmentation is a critical step in marketing automation. If you want to approach your marketing plan with the right processes, segment your customers for WhatsApp marketing.

7. Not Personalizing Messages

Here’s the truth – almost every other brand is now using WhatsApp for marketing and sales. And your customers are receiving messages from other brands too. In this overflow on WhatsApp, how are you going to make sure you stand out?

The answer: personalization.

90% of consumers find personalization appealing.

That said, today’s customers expect deeper levels of personalization — more than adding first names to your messages.

If you want to truly benefit from personalization, take it to the next level:

• Personalize specific elements of the WhatsApp message
• Add an image of the specific product
• Have personalized call-to-action based on where customers are in their journey
• Offer personalized incentives

By personalizing WhatsApp messages, you can improve open and click-through rates. It also has long-term effects such as improved loyalty, better customer experience, word-of-mouth marketing, etc.

Here’s an example of a WhatsApp with links to personalized images and CTA relevant to the customer:

8. Not Formatting Your Messages

Are your WhatsApp marketing messages a mess? Are they text heavy and difficult to read? Are your messages bland and boring? Are they without emojis and visual breaks?

The above mistakes are a perfect recipe to make customers hate your marketing communication.

If you’re making any of these mistakes, your customers are most likely to:

• Not register the message
• Forget your brand
• Not feel persuaded to take any actions
• Not feel emotionally stirred or connected
• Not find any value in your messages

A visually-appealing WhatsApp marketing message can bring you closer to your goal faster. Here’s how to get your messages right:

• Ensure there are no spelling mistakes
• Format the message correctly, leave enough breathing space
• Use emojis to create visual breaks
• Highlight important text
• Have a clear CTA

Learn more about formatting WhatsApp messages for marketing.

9. Sending Lengthy Messages

Reading is a complex activity for the human brain that involves more than just a few faculties. Hence, it is difficult to comprehend long texts.

Also, the human brain is wired to avoid doing difficult tasks. Hence, if we see a text heavy message on a small screen, we associate it as being difficult, and so we rather avoid it.

So, if you’re sending long paragraphs in your WhatsApp messages, you’re causing big damage to your campaigns.

Instead, here’s what you can do:

• Send short auto responses
• Break down messages based on the customers’ actions
• Keep sentences short and words simple
• Ensure clarity and focus in your message
• Focus on only one aspect in every message
• Use automated responses for generic queries

10. Not Sending Welcome Messages

First impression is the last impression. So, what kind of impression are you leaving on your customers?

Say, you acquired a new customer. What is your immediate action? If you’re not making an effort to make your new customers feel comfortable, delighted, and valuable, consider them lost.

Skipping the welcome message might come across as a small mistake, but it’s one of the biggest.

But sending a welcome message manually every time you have a new customer is impossible. That’s why you need a WhatsApp welcome bot. The bot will do this job for you.

Moreover, it will send the welcome message in a timely manner soon after your new customer signs up to your list or makes a purchase on your site.

11. Use Images and The Right Ones

Are your WhatsApp marketing messages only text? Do you not include an image of the product when you send a back in stock message?

The human brain retains 65% of information when there’s a visual image paired with the information.

But, 23.7% of marketers say visual content is the biggest challenge for them. If you are amongst this number, it’s time to rectify this mistake in your WhatsApp strategy.

Do this:

• Use impressive images in your sale broadcast
• Ensure good quality product images
• Include images for abandoned carts, back in stock messages, etc.
• Always pick the first image of the product from your Shopify store. It has better recall value

Learn more about creating WhatsApp images that convert.

12. Not Tracking Your Campaign Performance

No matter how good you think your WhatsApp campaigns are, if you don’t monitor its performance, you will never know if it’s working for you or not.

That said, it’s also important to measure different metrics. Choose the metrics based on your campaign goals.

• Open rate
• Click-through rate
• Response rate
• Conversion rate
• Bounce rate
• Opt-out rate

Once you measure these metrics, the next step is to optimize your campaigns. If you find that some messages aren’t driving results, tweak them. Try A/B testing to figure out what works. Use a WhatsApp marketing app that has ROI oriented analytics to help you out. If you don’t optimize your WhatsApp marketing campaigns, all your efforts and resources would go to waste.

How to Avoid Mistakes in Your WhatsApp Marketing Campaigns?

Automation is key to ensure you don’t end up making WhatsApp marketing mistakes. Your WhatsApp automation bots will carry out all the repetitive and generic chat tasks for you.

The app can chat with multiple customers simultaneously. Respond to queries with relevant answers that help drive customers forward in their journey, and much more.

QuickReply.ai is the best WhatsApp Business API Solution Provider with 40+ chatbot workflows to cover all aspects of your eCommerce site.

Explore how you can put QuickReply.ai to work for your Shopify business.

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Learn More:- https://www.pinklemonade.in/marketingmaximus/whatsapp-business-its-everything-your-brand-needs

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FAQ's

Q.1 What are the Benefits of WhatsApp Marketing?‍

A1. The premise of WhatsApp is safe and private from unwanted access is one of its main advantages. Users can speak with one another in a secure environment without worrying that their data will be compromised.

‍Q2. How can WhatsApp automation help in  WhatsApp Marketing?

‍WhatsApp Business API assists companies in boosting their customer base while also lowering customer service costs and fostering highly customized customer experiences. Business owners can automate every step of the message flow to completely remove human interaction from their sales operations. A reminder for a certain day is only one example of the pre-approved messages and notifications that businesses can use to actively inform customers. Using the WhatsApp Business API, businesses may access a wide range of extra services. Here are some of the notable advantages that WhatsApp Business automation can provide:1. swift and automatic client support. Instantaneously respond to consumer and product inquiries3. improving data collecting and analyzing consumer behaviour4. reduces operating costs associated with customer service

‍Q3. What is WhatsApp's marketing and how is it done?

‍A3:- A type of messenger marketing called WhatsApp marketing is promoting a brand via WhatsApp. Brands can use this channel to reach a large audience, forge enduring connections with consumers, and boost sales. Like other forms of marketing. WhatsApp marketing is done like any other marketing.

A. Set objectives and KPIs.

B. Decide who your target market is.

C. Get the company app.

D. Make a brand persona for your target market.

E. Make a list of contacts.

F. Create your communication with your goal in mind.