WhatsApp Business for a shop: what to know beforehand

In Morocco, WhatsApp is the channel your customers actually open. It is also the one people get most wrong, because two very different products carry the same name.

The two professional WhatsApps

The free app is excellent at what it does: taking questions, answering them, showing a catalogue. If your need stops there, install it and do not read on.

It does have one hard limit: its broadcast lists only reach people who have your number saved in their contacts. For a shop with three hundred customers, that is almost nobody. It is the classic disappointment for those who try it for reminders.

The API is a service you connect to — never a phone. It is what loyalty platforms, online shops and banks use. It allows automatic sending, and imposes strict rules in exchange.

The three rules Meta imposes

1. Consent, above all

You cannot write to someone who has not explicitly agreed to receive your messages. Having their number is not enough — not because they ordered, not because they gave it to you for something else.

In practice you need a tick box, a sentence accepted at sign-up, or a message the customer sends first. And you need to be able to keep a record of it. Sending without consent is the fastest way to get your number blocked.

2. Pre-approved templates

Outside an ongoing conversation, you cannot write free text. You must use a template submitted to Meta and approved beforehand, with variables for the first name or the number of stamps.

Approval takes from a few minutes to a few days. A template can be refused — too promotional, too vague, badly categorised. Which means you cannot improvise an offer on a Friday evening: the template has to have been prepared in advance.

3. The twenty-four hour window

When a customer writes to you, a window opens: for twenty-four hours, you can reply freely, without a template. After that, you fall back on approved templates.

It is a common-sense rule dressed up as a technical constraint: Meta protects a conversation someone started, and regulates everything initiated by the business.

What it costs

Meta charges per message sent, and the rate depends on the nature of the message. Two categories concern you:

• Utility — a confirmation, an update responding to something the customer did. On the order of a few centimes of a dirham.
• Marketing — an offer, a reminder, something new. Several times more expensive: the order of magnitude is six to eight times utility.

These amounts shift over time and by country. What does not shift is the ratio between the two, and the practical conclusion that follows from it.

The combination that holds

If you also use wallet cards, you have a free and unlimited channel for everything routine. The split that works:

• Wallet — every stamp, every reward unlocked. Frequent, expected, and costs nothing.
• WhatsApp — the reminder after several weeks away, the birthday offer. Rare, and worth interrupting for.
• Email — for customers who left no number, and for anything long to read.

That split divides the bill by ten without the customer perceiving the slightest difference. The full calculation is in the guide on the cost of a loyalty programme.

What gets a number blocked

Meta watches one simple indicator: the proportion of recipients who block or report you. Past a threshold, your number is restricted, then suspended. It is not negotiable and it happens fast.

• Writing without consent. Cause number one.
• Too many messages. Three reminders a month is enough to irritate a loyal customer.
• Content that does not match what was agreed to. The customer agreed to news from their café, not a property offer.
• Offering no way out. A customer who cannot work out how to unsubscribe blocks you instead.

Where to start

• If you only want to reply to your customers: the free app, today, and nothing else.
• If you want to send automatically: you need the API, so a platform that handles it for you — integrating it alone takes a verified Meta Business account and development work.
• In every case, start collecting consent now, even if you are not sending anything yet. It is what will take longest to build up.

On that last point — how to ask for a number without putting the customer off — the guide on collecting customer details goes into detail.