The Conversational Channel feature is currently in Early Adopter phase for a limited number of clients only. If you are interested in participating in the Early Adopter phase, please speak to your Client Success Manager.
WhatsApp requires the users’ permission to receive messages. Both GDPR and the terms and conditions of Meta for businesses require the users’ opt-in to receive WhatsApp messages from a business via another channel before the first message is sent to the user. It is not allowed to send the user a WhatsApp message asking for their permission to send them more.
Obtaining and managing WhatsApp messaging opt-ins and opt-outs is the responsibility of the client using the Conversational Channel feature.
A method for managing WhatsApp user permissions
In the following sections, we would like to provide you with one of the possible methods for maintaining the opt-ins and opt-outs of WhatsApp users while adhering to the Meta terms and conditions and GDPR laws.
Collecting user permission
To send users WhatsApp campaigns via another channel or method, it is essential to obtain their permission. A common practice to give the users control over their marketing preferences is to use a preference center on the account profile of the user. It is suggested to include the WhatsApp opt-in preference along with other channels to opt in by the user (e.g. email, SMS, etc.).
If a preference center is not available and it’s not possible to update the account profile of the user, then alternatively, you can use the Emarsys Forms to create a simple opt-in form and embed it on the user’s account page.
Custom fields for storing user permission status
After enabling the Conversational Channel feature, the field Conversational WhatsApp Opt-In is available among the Emarsys contact records. You can use this field to set the permission status to either True or False based on the permission collected from the user.
Updating contact records
After the Emarsys implementation, our clients have automatic contact updates integrated between their own platform and Emarsys. For example, if a user signs up on your website, the new record is first created on your platform, then your Emarsys account is updated with the new record via an automated CSV upload or more commonly, via the Emarsys Update Contacts API endpoint.
The field ID of Conversational WhatsApp Opt-In is unique and you need to confirm it. To do so, you need to send a query via the List Available Fields API endpoint and fetch the updated list of all your field IDs. By searching through that list, you can associate the field ID of Conversational WhatsApp Opt-In with the respective opt-in field in your contact records. After the field ID has been created, it will remain static and the same across all contacts within your database.
Unsubscribe links
If you would like to allow the user to opt out from future WhatsApp campaigns within your messages (the user must have previously provided permission to receive your message), you can insert the URL of the preference center or account profile page in your campaign as a static link.
