New Ways for Businesses to Do More with Messaging

Today at Conversations in São Paulo we’re introducing several new business messaging features to make WhatsApp and Messenger the best way for businesses to connect with their customers and do more with conversations.

Introducing Marketing Messages with Optimizations to Drive Better Performance

Sending relevant, timely and valuable messages is an excellent way to re-engage customers who want to hear from your business. Starting today, businesses using Ads Manager to send marketing messages on WhatsApp will have the option to provide Meta with their subscriber list and our AI systems will recommend the right subset of recipients based on the outcomes they care about the most – like helping turn a lead into a conversion or generating awareness for a new product. This means businesses using these marketing messages with optimizations can see better ROI, and their customers will get messages that are more relevant to them.

For example, in early testing, Brazilian financial technology business Infinite Pay compared marketing messages with optimizations to their existing strategy and saw a reduction of 30% in cost per page view and a 20% increase in click-through rate.

Businesses using the WhatsApp Business Platform or Marketing API will soon be able to work with a partner to benefit as well.

Drive Stronger Results for Your Business With Conversions API for Business Messaging

Conversions API allows businesses to connect marketing data from their website, app, store or messaging channels with Meta so they can measure and improve ad performance across Meta technologies. Now available, Conversions API for Business Messaging enables businesses to easily view performance trends such as leads and sales generated by ads that click to message, A/B test different strategies, and access down-funnel ad optimizations to improve ad performance.

Conversions API previously supported web, app, and offline events, and it is now expanding to support messaging events across Messenger, Instagram and WhatsApp. For Business Messaging, this also enables our new purchase optimization, which offers advertisers the ability to drive more sales and reduce costs by reaching customers most likely to purchase. A recent Meta case study with LifeGreen demonstrated 2X purchases, 49% lower cost per purchase, and 23% higher return on ad spend from its campaign optimized for purchases, compared to its previous campaign approach.

Bringing AI for Businesses to WhatsApp

As Mark Zuckerberg shared, “Our vision is not simply to build a single AI assistant, but rather to enable lots of different AIs that can serve different purposes — including for businesses. Any business should be able to quickly stand up an agent that can talk to customers, provide support and facilitate commerce.”

For WhatsApp Business app users, we’ll soon begin testing AI support from Meta to help small businesses respond to customers, create engaging ads and get support using our business tools.

• First, businesses will be able to activate AI in their chats with customers to provide support and sell, which can significantly improve the quality and speed of services they provide.

• Businesses will also be able to get AI’s assistance when creating a Facebook or Instagram ad that clicks to start a WhatsApp chat, so they can more easily and efficiently drive customers to their messaging experience.

• Finally, we’re exploring ways to let businesses engage an AI directly within the WhatsApp Business app to ask questions and get help using features – like if they want to learn how to create a quick reply or add a catalog item, for example.

We’ll be testing these capabilities with select businesses before expanding to others using the WhatsApp Business app in the coming months.

Build Credibility with Meta Verified on WhatsApp

We’re beginning to roll out Meta Verified today to small businesses using the WhatsApp Business app in Brazil, India, Indonesia and Colombia. With Meta Verified, we’re making it easier for businesses to establish a presence on WhatsApp, build credibility with customers and grow their brand so people can feel more confident in reaching out.

Eligible businesses that are interested in becoming Meta Verified and pass our verification checks will get a verified badge, impersonation protection, account support, a verified channel and premium features, including a custom WhatsApp page that’s easily discoverable via a web search and enhanced multi-device support so multiple employees can respond to customers to provide better service. You’ll see the ability to subscribe to Meta Verified right in the app along with which of the available Meta Verified subscription toolkits is right for you. We look forward to hearing the value Meta Verified brings to businesses so we can expand to more businesses and countries soon.

Bringing Marketing Messages to the WhatsApp Business App

For WhatsApp Business app users in several countries, including Indonesia and Mexico, we're now rolling out the ability to send marketing messages to their customers in a faster and more efficient way. Rather than having to manually send the same message to multiple customers, this optional, paid feature allows businesses to reach a larger audience with a personal message that includes their customer's name and customizable call to action buttons - and schedule the day and time the messages are sent. Businesses can send these messages to specific customer lists such as those with a select label (like “VIP customers” or “new customers”) and then see how they’re performing through insight metrics such as read and reply rates. We’ll bring this to more countries across the world this year.