WhatsApp templates

WhatsApp only lets businesses start a conversation with a pre-approved template. In Marketing, that means a WhatsApp campaign is always one of your approved Twilio Content Templates with its variables filled in. There is no free-form WhatsApp message. Setup is covered in Setting up the channels.

Syncing templates from Twilio

Marketing reads your templates from Twilio’s Content API, together with their WhatsApp approval status:

• when the template list loads,
• when you click Sync templates in the campaign form,
• when a WhatsApp campaign is saved or sent, and before every batch.

Each template appears with its status: approved templates first, marked [APPROVED], then pending, rejected, paused, unsubmitted or unknown. If a template you expect is missing, check its approval in Twilio. Only approved templates can be used.

Template variables

When you choose a template, the form shows its body as a read-only Template preview and one field per variable (Variable 1, Variable 2, …). Fill a variable with fixed text, a personalisation placeholder such as {customer_first_name}, or both. Each recipient gets their own values. A variable left empty is sent empty.

Before every batch

Each time a batch is about to go out, Marketing checks that:

1. the template can still be read from Twilio,
2. it is still approved,
3. it has a template SID, and
4. a Messaging Service SID is set.

If any check fails, the batch stops before anything is sent. The campaign stays queued, so you can send it again once the problem is fixed. That might mean a template paused by WhatsApp or a Twilio account you can’t reach.

Sending and testing

• Send test template sends the selected template, with your variables filled in, to a number you type.
• Manual Template Send sends a template to a free-form list of numbers or to selected customers, without a campaign.
• Delivery, retries, logs and the suppression list work as for the other channels. See Sending, logs & suppression.