Opt-In and Opt-Out

When it comes to sending any marketing message through WhatsApp, it is very important to make sure that you have the consent of the recipient to be able to send the message in the first place. Else, they might block your account and if that keeps happening, you fall at the risk of getting your account banned from WhatsApp altogether.

How to Get your Customers to Opt-in

If you have a list of your customers' phone numbers, and you want to run promotional campaigns using those numbers, it's ideal that you run an initial campaign where you ask them to select if they'll be willing to receive these messages. You can create a template from the 'Manage Templates' section of the 'Integrations' tab of MyAlice. The template can look something like:

Hi there, thanks for being a valued customer of [Your Company]. We're planning to send promotional messages through our WhatsApp number to make sure our loyal customers such as yourself are always in the loop every great deal that we offer. Would you be interested in receiving these messages?

Add two buttons 'Yes' and 'No' and connect these buttons with a sequence on our Automation tab. In those sequences, add a respective response. For example, if someone selects 'Yes', add a response such as: 'Thanks for your consent. We look forward to having you with us'.

Then, use a 'Set Attribute' block to essentially tag the users with an attribute. For those who select 'Yes', set the attribute 'opt-out' as 'N' and for those who select 'No', set the attribute 'opt-out' as 'Y'.

Make sure you're only using the attribute 'opt_out' and setting the values as 'Y' or 'N'. If you do, from next time, MyAlice will not send any message to them during your next broadcasts and only send to those who actually wants to receive them.

How to Get your Customers to Opt-out

If the above process is something you want to avoid, you can implement this process in your regular campaigns as well and allow your customers to opt out after they've received the message from you. This essentially gives them an option to set their preferences rather than blocking your account directly.

To do that, make sure you're adding a footer in the WhatsApp Message Templates that you use for your campaigns. The footer can be something like:

Type 'Stop' if you don't want to receive these messages / Type 'Unsubscribe' to stop receiving these messages

Next step would be to create a sequence on the Automation tab. There, you should create a 'Keyword' rule with the keyword (i.e. Stop or Unsubscribe) you used in your template's footer.

You can add a 'Text Block' with a response that can be something like:

Alright you won't receive these messages from us. Thanks for your time!

Final step is to add a 'Set Attribute' block with the attribute 'opt-out' and the value set as 'Y'.

Once done, whenever your customers receive the template message, they'll be able to opt-out of it instead of blocking your account. And if they do, MyAlice will not send any message to them during your next broadcasts, even if you upload their number in the list of recipients.