WhatsApp Business for marketing: template, opt-in, cost

Marketing on WhatsApp Business without being banned comes down to two records: an opt-in you can show for every number, and a message Meta has approved before it goes. On the free app the message is a broadcast and costs nothing. On the API it is a marketing template at about R0.62 a number. Here is how to use WhatsApp Business for marketing at both sizes, which takes an afternoon to set up and a minute a month to run.

Before you start

• A verified business number on the WhatsApp Business app or, for the API, a Meta Business account that has passed verification.
• A written record of where each customer agreed to hear from you. Meta's business policy is plain about it: you may only contact people if "you have received opt-in permission from the recipient confirming that they wish to receive subsequent messages or calls from you."
• One person who owns the STOP replies. Not a shared inbox, a name.

Step 1: pick the tier by counting the list

Under 500 customers, the free app does the job. Two broadcast lists of 256, built from labels, reach 300 people who have saved your number. Our earlier draft on WhatsApp broadcasts covers the taps. Over 500, or the day a second person has to answer replies, you are on the API, and everything below applies to both.

Step 2: write the opt-in down, per number

Open a spreadsheet with four columns: number, name, where the consent came from, date. A signed quote, an account application, a tick box on the website. A number with an empty third column does not get messaged. This is the record the ban question turns on, and the phone does not hold it.

Step 3: put the click-to-chat link on the invoice

Every invoice and quote you send carries a wa.me link to the business number. A customer who taps it has started a conversation, saved you as a contact if they want to, and given you a number you did not have to type. In the app, load the catalogue with the five products that matter, so the reply to "what is the special" is a tap and not a paragraph.

Step 4: write the template as one message

On the API, anything your business starts must be a template. Write the month-end special in one paragraph with placeholders for the name and the offer, and end with how to opt out: "Reply STOP and we take you off." The opt-out line is not politeness. The same policy requires you to "respect all requests" to opt out, "including removing that person from your contacts list."

Step 5: submit it and wait for APPROVED

Templates are reviewed on creation. Meta's guidelines say the In-Review status "can take up to 24 hours" and that a template must have a status of APPROVED before it can be sent. Submit on Monday for a Thursday send. A rejection usually means the copy reads as something else, so rewrite rather than resubmit.

Meta's new WhatsApp Business MCP server, reported by TechCrunch on 15 September, lets a developer's coding agent do the API account setup, write and edit templates, send test messages and check webhooks. That means Claude, Cursor, Codex or ChatGPT. It is for developers on the API, not for the app on a phone. Read it as a signal: the template, not the message, is the unit of WhatsApp marketing.

Step 6: check the category Meta gave it

A marketing template to a South African number is about $0.0379, roughly R0.62 at R16.24 to the dollar. A utility template, the delivery note or the invoice, is about $0.0095 from October, roughly R0.15. Meta assigns the category and you are responsible for reviewing it. A special priced as marketing is the right category. A delivery note that got classed as marketing is four times too expensive, and the fix is the wording.

Step 7: send to the opted-in list only, mid-morning

Send to the numbers with a filled third column and nobody else. Mid-morning lands outside load shedding in most of the country and gives the day for replies. 300 marketing templates is about R185. Replies to you are free; your replies past 1 000 a month are billed from 1 October, so an offer that starts 300 conversations has a second cost.

Step 8: process every STOP the same day

Remove the number, mark the spreadsheet, and never send to it again. Direct marketers also have to register with the National Consumer Commission's opt-out registry and cleanse the list against it monthly, as the broadcast draft sets out. WhatsApp is a direct marketing channel under the Consumer Protection Act as much as a call is.

What breaks a WhatsApp Business marketing message here

The opt-in you cannot show. A list built from every number that ever phoned the office is the profile of a number that gets reported, and Meta does not publish the threshold. POPIA section 69 requires consent for electronic direct marketing unless the person is an existing customer who was given the chance to opt out.

The customer who sees the machine. Gallup's Bentley-Gallup Business in Society survey, published on 19 August, found 66% of Americans aged 18 to 29 view a business using AI to create its adverts negatively. That is a US figure about ads, not a South African figure about WhatsApp, and it still points the right way. A template written like a person, signed by a person, gets fewer blocks than one that reads as a system.

Data. A customer on a prepaid bundle does not open a PDF. Keep the offer in the text and the catalogue in the app.

When this stops being enough

The list lives in a phone, the consent record lives in a spreadsheet, and the invoice history lives in the accounting package. The day those three disagree, a special goes to somebody who opted out or to a number that changed, and the ban risk is the least of it.

That is the point at which the customer record has to be one record. The number you message, the consent against it, the balance and the last order all read from the same place, and the send list is generated rather than typed. That is the automation work Zorah does for South African businesses, and the sales and CRM side is where that single record lives.

On Monday, open the spreadsheet from step 2 and count the empty third columns. That number is the size of your ban exposure, and it is fixable before month-end.