WhatsApp marketing campaigns for online stores: templates and segments

A WhatsApp campaign works for an online store when three things line up: the right customers (opted in and relevant), the right message (a Meta-approved Marketing template with one clear next step) and the right pace (inside Meta’s messaging limits, at a cost you worked out beforehand). This playbook from the WACRM guides walks through each part in order. The tool that runs it is WACRM Broadcasts & templates.

What is a WhatsApp marketing campaign for an online store?

It is a one-to-many send of an approved template to a chosen group of customers, with a commercial goal: a launch, a sale, a restock, a win-back. It differs from an order message, which answers something the customer already did, such as placing an order.

Meta sorts every template into a category, and the category decides both the rules and the price. Its template categorization guidelines describe Marketing templates as covering goals “from generating awareness to driving sales and retargeting customers”, while Utility templates must be non-promotional and tied to the customer’s own order or account.

Message type	Typical store use	Needs an approved template	Category
New collection, sale, coupon	Campaign to a segment	Yes	Marketing
Back-in-stock, price drop, win-back	Campaign to a segment	Yes	Marketing
Order confirmation, shipping update	Triggered by an order	Yes	Utility
Reply to a customer’s question	Inside the 24-hour window	No	Service

So a campaign is always Marketing, even when it feels helpful. Submitting a promotion as Utility to pay less is the most common reason a template is re-categorised or rejected; the template approval guide covers the review itself. Order messages are a separate flow, covered in the WooCommerce order status notifications guide.

Who can you message, and how do you prove opt-in?

You can message customers who agreed to hear from your store on WhatsApp, and nobody else. Keep a record of when and how each one agreed.

Meta’s opt-in rules have three requirements: the opt-in must clearly say the person is agreeing to receive messages, it must name the business, and it must comply with applicable law. Meta leaves the method to you and lists SMS, a website, a phone call (IVR) and in person or on paper as options.

A phone number collected only for delivery is not marketing consent. The opt-out and consent guide goes deeper on records and local law.

In WACRM, consent is stored per contact and per channel. A broadcast sends only to contacts with an explicit opt-in record; a contact with no record is treated like an opt-out and is skipped, and the campaign shows them as “No opt-in consent” instead of sending.

How do you build segments from store data?

Start from what customers bought and when, not from your whole list. A segment that matches the message is the single biggest lever on replies and on blocks.

Your store platform already holds the data; the Shopify and WooCommerce integration checklist covers connecting it. Shopify’s customer segments are dynamic, rule-based lists that group customers with similar characteristics and update as customers match or stop matching. In WooCommerce, the Customers report filters by number of orders, total spend, average order value, last active date and country, and its Download button exports the current view as a CSV that includes billing and shipping phone numbers.

From there, import the list into WACRM contacts, label the contacts, and build the segment in WACRM. A WACRM segment can filter by contact labels, by whether the customer’s 24-hour window is still open, or by a name or phone search. Segments are included from Advanced up; pricing lists the plans.

Five segments that work for online stores

Segment	Built from	Example message
Bought category X in the last 90 days	Store orders, label “buyer-x”	New arrivals in the same category
Viewed or asked about an out-of-stock item	Chat history, label “waitlist”	Back-in-stock note with a product link
Two or more orders	Orders count filter	A first look at a sale for repeat buyers
No order for six months	Last active filter	Win-back offer with one product suggestion
Chatted today, window open	WACRM open-window rule	Free-form follow-up inside the window, no template

The last row matters for cost: a customer whose 24-hour window is open can get a free-form reply, so a template is not needed there. The free service messages guide explains that window.

What makes a marketing template get approved and read?

A clear Marketing template with one offer, one link and an opt-out line gets approved and gets replies. Clever copy matters less than relevance.

• One purpose. One offer or one product per template; two calls to action split attention.
• Variables for what changes. The customer’s first name and the product name as variables, so one approved template serves many sends.
• A real next step. A button to the product page or “Reply to order”, not “Learn more”.
• An exit. “Reply STOP to stop offers” on every Marketing template.
• No vendor text. WACRM checks template text before it is saved and blocks tool self-promotion such as “Powered by WACRM”, plus broken placeholders.

Linen & CoMarketing template

Hi Ana, the new linen collection is in. You bought the linen shirt in spring, so we saved you a first look at the summer colours.

Reply STOP to stop offers.

Shop the collection

If you write templates often, the WACRM Templates screen can draft one from a short instruction and check a draft against the same policy rules before you submit it to Meta.

How many customers can you reach per day?

As many as your messaging limit allows. Meta’s messaging limits cap the number of unique WhatsApp users a business can deliver messages to outside a customer service window, within a moving 24-hour period.

1. 250 unique customers per 24 hours to start.
2. 2,000 once the business is verified, or after sending 2,000 delivered messages outside the window to unique users in 30 days with high-quality templates.
3. 10,000, then 100,000, then unlimited, raised automatically when usage and quality criteria are met.

Two details catch stores out. The limit belongs to the business portfolio and is shared by all its phone numbers, so a campaign on one number can use up capacity another number needed for order updates. And only messages outside the 24-hour window count, which is another reason to reply quickly to customers who write first.

WACRM paces a broadcast: it sends a batch of recipients every minute (60 per minute unless you set another pace), so a large segment goes out over time instead of all at once.

What does a campaign cost?

Count the customers you expect to reach, multiply by Meta’s Marketing rate for their country, and add nothing else: WACRM applies 0% markup on what Meta charges. Meta bills per delivered message.

Market	Meta Marketing rate, per delivered message	Cost of 1,000 delivered
India	$0.0118	× 1,000 = $11.80
Mexico	$0.0397	× 1,000 = $39.70
Brazil	$0.0625	× 1,000 = $62.50
United Kingdom	$0.0635	× 1,000 = $63.50
Germany	$0.1365	× 1,000 = $136.50

Rates are Meta’s USD list rates effective 1 October 2026, from Meta’s pricing page (checked 2026-11-01). There is no United States row because a US campaign cannot be sent: WhatsApp does not currently deliver Marketing template messages to users with US phone numbers (+1 with a US area code), per Meta’s per-user marketing limits page (checked 2026-11-13).

Worked example: a win-back campaign to 2,000 opted-in customers in Mexico costs 2,000 × $0.0397 = $79.40 if every message is delivered. Skipped contacts (no opt-in) and failed sends are not delivered, so they are not billed. For other countries, the message pricing calculator does the sum, and the message pricing guide explains the categories.

How do you run a campaign step by step in WACRM?

Pick a segment, pick an approved template, create a draft, then press Start. WACRM handles consent, pacing and safety stops from there.

• 1 · Segment

  Choose the segment, for example repeat buyers.

• 2 · Template

  Choose a Marketing template Meta has approved.

• 3 · Draft

  Set pacing per minute and an optional budget cap.

• 4 · Start

  Batches go out every minute; no opt-in means skipped.

1. Check the template status. On the Templates screen, the template must show as approved. A draft or rejected template has a Submit for review action.
2. Create the campaign. On the Broadcasts screen, pick the segment and the template, set the pacing and, if you want a hard ceiling, a budget cap in number of sends. The campaign is saved as a Draft.
3. Test on a small group first. Run the same template to a small segment of recent, engaged buyers and read the replies before sending to the full list.
4. Press Start. The status changes to Running, and the Sent, Skipped and Failed counts update as batches go out.
5. Pause if you need to. Pause stops the next batch; Start resumes from where it stopped. Nobody is sent twice.

What makes a campaign pause on its own?

A running campaign pauses itself, and shows the reason under its status, when:

• Meta pauses or disables the template, so it is no longer approved;
• the template’s quality rating drops, or your WhatsApp number’s quality rating drops;
• too many sends fail in a row;
• the campaign reaches its budget cap.

These stops protect the number. Fix the cause, then press Start to resume.

Which results should you track after a send?

Track four things: delivery counts, replies, opt-outs and quality. Together they tell you whether to send the next campaign to the same segment.

• Sent, Skipped, Failed. Shown per campaign. A high Skipped count means the segment holds contacts without opt-in; fix collection, not the send.
• Replies. Customer replies land in the team inbox, where each one opens a free 24-hour window for a follow-up. A WhatsApp AI agent can draft answers to the product questions a campaign brings in.
• Opt-outs. When a customer replies with exactly STOP or UNSUBSCRIBE (or BAJA, PARAR and other local keywords), WACRM records an opt-out for that contact and later broadcasts skip them.
• Quality. WhatsApp’s Help Center says that if many people report or block a business for spam it gets a warning, and if spam continues its marketing messages are suspended for three days. A rising block rate is a signal to tighten the segment.

Compare these numbers across segments, not only across campaigns. The segment that replies most is where the next offer goes first. Stores in every category, from fashion to food to electronics, can use the same loop, and the online shops solution page shows how it fits with order messages.

Run your next campaign with WACRM

WACRM Broadcasts & templates brings segments, approved templates, consent checks, pacing and per-campaign counts together on your own WhatsApp Business number, with 0% markup on Meta’s rates. If you would rather we plan and send campaigns for you, see Campaign management.