With the excellence of WhatsApp Business APIs, business communication has taken a more personal turn, allowing businesses to reach their customers right where they are most active. Businesses are familiar with the WhatsApp business messaging platform and understand the importance of pre-approved templates. When a business sends messages outside the 24-hour window or uses template messages, the approved template, as designated by the meta, is what ensures your conversation remains compliant.
But there comes a problem when you pre-approved template somehow gets disabled on its own, re-classified, or rejected by Meta itself. This is a query we have been receiving for quite a while, and we have sorted out the solution. This guide will explain to you what to watch out for and what you, as a user, can do to tackle the risk.
What are WhatsApp Templates and What are Their Types?
WhatsApp templates are pre-approved message formats that businesses use to communicate with their customers. Each template is required to be approved by the operator (Meta) before use. With these, brands are enabled to easily send notifications, promotional updates, reminders, and alerts, following WhatsApp marketing guidelines that help businesses maintain the protocols of WhatsApp business messaging.
These messages contain variables like name, order number, and date, along with headers, CTA buttons, and footers that make the message look more interactive.
Basically, WhatsApp templates are of three types:
- Utility Message Templates: Includes transactional and informational messages like payment confirmations, order updates, and reminders.
- Marketing Message Templates: These message formats include promotional content like offers, campaign messages, and new product launches.
- Authentication Templates: This one comprises messages like user verification, like sharing OTPs and verification codes.
All these templates have rules, tone, and their respective use cases, to which brands must abide because if there is any mismatch between the words or their intent, the template will be auto-disabled or reclassified by Meta.
Why Do WhatsApp Templates Get Automatically Disabled or Reclassified?
So far, we have understood that WhatsApp templates are categorized into 3: Utility, Marketing, and Authentication Message Templates. If Meta determines that the template isn’t meeting the required bar of how the content of the template should be, then it will itself reject or reclassify your template. For example, Utility message templates get reclassified as Marketing message templates due to their content sounding friendly, warm, or promotional, rather than being factual in tone and content.
Another example can be of templates using phrases like “Get Today Only!” or “Limited time offer”, which automatically are a trigger of reclassification from utility to marketing templates because they may include a CTA or a promotional feel in the tone. So to summarize all this, auto-disablement or reclassification occurs when it is unable to meet Meta’s criteria of tone, words, and structure.
Why do Utility Templates Get Re-Classified as Marketing (Explained In Detail)
These are the common triggers for auto-disablement that TrustSignal has sorted for and that you should keep in mind:
- When there is a tone inconsistency between the template body and the CTA button, it may trigger marketing classification. Your template may reflect a utility message, but when you attach buttons like “See More”, “Check Out Now”, or “Redeem Now”, it categorizes your message template as a marketing one.
- When your message mentions or cross-promotes other offers, services that are, in simple terms, outside the core of transactional messages, Meta interprets them as promotional.
- If your CTA is geared towards buying a product or visiting the business’s website. For example, a transactional triggering message will be like, “Your payment for the order XYZ is confirmed.” This one is eligible for a utility message, but if this same message shifts or includes words like “Check Out Now!” or “Visit the store app now!”, then that makes the message a marketing triggering message.
- If your template promotes enthusiasm, emotions, and the use of Emojis that show emotions, or a tone like, “We are excited to have you…”, “Get yours now”, then Meta may treat it as marketing rather than a utility.
- Meta uses a guiding principle like the presence of a friendly tone and emoji, for example: “Hi (name), thank you for joining EatClub 😊” or “Let’s connect”, “Know More” to show a marketing tone.
What are the Effects of Re-Classification or Auto-Disablement of Your Templates?
Now that we know what triggers re-classification of WhatsApp templates, let’s get into knowing what happens after that:
- The messaging cost increases because the per-message cost of marketing messages is often costlier than that of utility messages.
- Since marketing templates may have tighter limits, there is limited reach and delivery restrictions due to that.
- There comes a need to submit the templates for approval in their correct category.
- Your template faces operational disruption because the workflow depends on a specific template, which, due to this mix-up in content, can’t be used or must be re-approved with a change in content type.
How Does Trustsignal Help In Managing Your WhatsApp Templates?
As your communication partner and service provider, we know exactly what your brand needs and how crucial the need for correct template content is. So, here are some of our key advantages to help you prevent and maintain WhatsApp template auto-disablement:
- Our WhatsApp Business API has built a new Auto-Disabling Engine that automatically identifies and disables templates that are re-classified. You can optimize the usage of your templates and reduce unnecessary spend without any hurdles.
- Be it any template-related issue, our team is available around the clock to resolve and assist you with rectifying template words, CTA tweaks, and helping with resubmission to Meta compliance.
- In order to see when your templates are approved or not, disabled or reclassified, we provide you with prompt logging and reporting of the status of your templates, so that you are aware of how everything is going.
- We are always abreast with providing our customers with which buttons to use and templates’ content, to help you stay compliant with the messaging guidelines by Meta.
- The rules of our workflow allow you to route any specific triggers in your message, be it transactional updates, reminders, or confirmations, to correct template mis-categorization and wrong-tagging.
Conclusion
The Auto-Disablement in WhatsApp templates is a result of many delays, an increase in costs, and a reduction in deliverability for your business. What we need is a clear-cut rule book to understand the “whats and hows” of this situation, so that we understand the proper usage of content, tone, categorization, buttons, and help make our messaging content of good use. With TrustSignal, you receive not only good communication services, but also a promise that we stand with you in combating such issues and help you scale your business, along with good communication.
With our WhatsApp Business API, your transactional and utility-led messages are fully factual, without a hint of promotional tone. We ensure thoroughness and monitor the health of your template on a regular basis to make it eligible for customer communication. With this approach, your WhatsApp messaging stays compliant and fruitful.
