WhatsApp Business is reducing utility message rates and increasing marketing message rates. A change that aims to encourage business communication and reduce spam.

The new utility rates will take effect on August 4, while the marketing conversation rates will take a couple of months longer, as they will take effect on October 4. This is the first change to conversion rates since WhatsApp moved from a flat rate to charging by category.

The platform has sought to address user complaints about the increase in spam messages on WhatsApp over the past year. With this rate change, the company has implemented the first measures to protect users.

Another measure they tried to implement earlier this year was restricting marketing messages sent to users in India through “Marketing Template Message Limits per User” guidelines. In this way, Meta blocks messages it deems “less likely to be read” to avoid saturating users.

From Meta, they explained to TechCrunch that they are working to find the right combination of tools to maintain an excellent experience when sending messages to businesses via WhatsApp. The brand's goal is for WhatsApp to become the main communication channel between brands and customers.

How do WhatsApp Business rates work?

Meta offers four different rates for its messaging services: marketing (offers, new products), utility (order updates, account balance), authentication (one-time passwords), and service (customer inquiries).

The rates are different in each country. For example, in Spain, the marketing fee is €0.0509, while in India, marketing fees range from $0.0099 to $0.0107 (+8%), and conversion fees are down by 67%.

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WhatsApp is evolving into what could be called a ‘super app’ or ‘a full-featured app’. Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta, presented at its annual Conversations conference in Mumbai (India) some of the new features we will be able to see in WhatsApp for the rest of the year, chief among them a revamp of their payment capabilities.

WhatsApp Chat in India will allow people to add items to their cart and send a payment using any method they want: supported UPI apps, debit and credit cards, or other options; for this, they have relied on their partners Razorpay and PayU.

However, this was not the only novelty presented by the company; they also talked about the increase in the fluidity of the chat or the possibility of verifying the accounts of companies in WhatsApp Business.

WhatsApp Flows to offer better customer experiences 

Another new feature they have introduced is Flows, which will allow companies to offer more experiences to their customers, such as quickly choosing a seat on the train, ordering a meal, or booking an appointment, all without leaving the chat. 

With Flows, businesses can provide comprehensive menus and customizable forms that cater to different needs. Flows will be available to businesses worldwide through the WhatsApp Business Platform in the coming weeks.

Meta Verified among the new functionalities 

Finally, the latest addition is Meta Verified, which will let users know that you are chatting with the right company. To sign up for Meta Verified, businesses must prove their authenticity to Meta and, in return, will receive a verified account badge, enhanced account support and anti-phishing protection.

For companies interested in signing up, Meta Verified will include additional premium features, such as the ability to create a custom WhatsApp page that is easily discoverable via web search and multi-device support so employees can respond to customers. We will begin testing Meta Verified soon with small businesses using the WhatsApp Business App before making it available to all businesses on the WhatsApp Business Platform in the future.

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Carrefour is testing Whatsapp as a new sales service in France for the Christmas campaign. Between December 5th and 21st, customers can buy around a hundred Christmas products via WhatsApp's instant messaging application.

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Carrefour tests Whatsapp with a Santa Claus Bot

To launch this initiative, the company has installed a Carrefour Santa Claus bot on the platform. For the first time, it allows customers to make Christmas purchases in four non-food product categories (toys, high-tech, gaming, and small appliances) from a selection of the 100 most requested references. 

After finalizing the basket on WhatsApp, users will be directed to Carrefour's online store to make the payment. After this, the products will be delivered to the home. The company's goal is to offer in the future an experience that integrates payment in the WhatsApp application. 

“As you know, at Carrefour, we don't want to miss any innovation. With this Social Commerce expertise, we want to understand the new uses and expectations of our customers. We are also adapting our technical capabilities to manage order flows from external social media platforms to our e-commerce site.”

Elodie Perthuisot, executive director of e-commerce, data, and digital transformation, Carrefour Group.

Other significant brands already selling via WhatsApp

Carrefour's bet on Whatsapp is one of many attempts by well-known brands to channel the selling power of popular social media. Among them, we want to highlight three examples: 

1. Estée Lauder was the first large cosmetics company to give customers customized skincare advice via WhatsApp. In 2020, at the height of the COVID-19 epidemic, Liv, an AI chatbot, was created to take the role of the in-person consultations that clients had in department stores in the past. 

Customers could learn how to use the brand's products through these online discussions, get advice on maintaining an efficient skincare routine, and place orders to buy these products via Whatsapp.

2. Absolut Vodka used WhatsApp to promote a live product launch event in Argentina. Customers were urged to message a chatbot doorman named Sven to persuade "him" that they deserved one of the two tickets that were still available. Over the course of three days, this campaign generated more than 1,000 messages from 600 people.

In this case, Absolute went for a ‘live-shopping’ approach to selling with Whatsapp. 

3. Hellman’s Mayonnaise assisted customers in preparing a meal. The concept was simple: open their website and enter your phone number.  An online chef contacts you via WhatsApp and gives you cooking lessons depending on the ingredients you have in your refrigerator. The clever part of the campaign was that it encouraged consumers to use Hellman's mayo in novel ways while also capitalizing on the one-on-one feel of WhatsApp to foster brand loyalty.

13K signups and a 99.5% approval rating speak for themselves regarding the results. After the campaign's success in Brazil, where WhatsApp is the largest social media and communications platform, it was quickly introduced in Chile, Uruguay, and Argentina.

So, all in all, it seems Whatsapp keeps growing in popularity as a sales channel. And any brand that wishes to remain relevant and profitable, should keep tabs on this popular social media.

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Mark Zuckerberg, in one fell swoop last Wednesday, announced the dismissal of 11,000 employees of Meta, parent of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, a cut of 13% of the company's total workforce. 

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Zuckerberg acknowledged that he made mistakes in making large investments "I accept responsibility for these decisions and for getting to this point," he noted on his blog. He also apologized for his over-optimism in the company's growth, which led him to overstaff.

"I know this is hard for everyone and I am especially sorry for those affected," he added.

The market reaction to Meta's massive layoffs 

Investors thought that Meta’s massive layoffs were the right call as Meta's shares went up after the announcement, rising 6.36% late in the trading day.

The announcement of the layoffs also included a freeze on any new hiring until at least the first quarter of 2023.

Since Facebook's founding in 2004, the real wunderkind of the current web, the mother of all social networks, has been making significant and steady hires. At the end of September, the conglomerate had 87,314 people, the largest number of workers it had ever had on its payroll.

‘Over-contracting’ in times the good times

The staff cuts are the deepest of all the company's personnel cuts and are spread across departments and regions, although some areas, such as recruitment and business, have been more affected than others. The sifting even affects Reality Labs, the division that houses the metaverse, the future, and projects.

"At the beginning of covid, the world moved rapidly online and the growth of digital commerce led to a huge expansion of revenues," he stressed.

In his argument to justify the over-contracting, he qualified that "many predicted that this would be a permanent acceleration, which would continue after the pandemic was over".

Elon Musk Twitter massive layoff was dwarfed 

Meta - former Facebook -  for many years seemed to have no limits and be capable of overcoming the serious problems regarding user privacy, and many other controversies. 

But now, the economic pressure has pushed Meta to undergo a massive cutoff that - among other things - was manifested in a layoff three times the size of the recent Twitter layoff. 

But also Shopify fired roughly 10% of the staff, and many other tech companies like Snapchat and Salesforce have announced massive layoffs also. 

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Meta - WhatsApp parent company - has announced an alliance with the e-commerce company JioMart from India. Through this, they have launched a service that allows purchases to be made entirely in the chat, without the need to leave the application or be redirected to another platform. This is the first region in the world to test this new Whatsapp functionality, and if it works, it could be a game changer for global e-commerce. 

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Consumers will be able to buy, without leaving WhatsApp

Mark Zuckerberg posted the news on his Facebook profile in a statement expressing his excitement about this update.“Excited to launch our partnership with JioMart in India. This is our first-ever end-to-end shopping experience on WhatsApp — people can now buy groceries from JioMart right in a chat. Business messaging is an area with real momentum and chat-based experiences like this will be the go-to way people and businesses communicate in the years to come” 

This experiment could prove critical for the future of WhatsApp as an e-commerce platform by itself, with over 500 million Indians who make use of WhatsApp every month.

This new service reduces all the steps required to make an online purchase on the WhatsApp platform itself. Indian consumers will be able to access the catalog, add the desired products to the cart, set the shipping address, and make the payment, all from the application.

How to buy through this new WhatsApp service

The mechanics are very simple. To begin, the user only has to start a conversation with the JioMart supermarket, the chat continues to work through the phone number of this, with a "Hi" will suffice. After that, a pre-determined message will appear encouraging you to start the shopping experience. Just click "get started" and "view catalog" to access the supermarket catalog and buy any product desired. 

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Mark Zuckerberg announced the opening of WhatsApp to any business globally, via WhatsApp Cloud API. The announcement was made at the inaugural Conversations conference held by Meta. 

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“The best business experiences meet people where they are. Already more than 1 billion users connect with a business account across our messaging services every week. They're reaching out for help, to find products and services and to buy anything from big-ticket items to everyday goods. And today, I am excited to announce that we're opening WhatsApp to any business of any size around the world with WhatsApp Cloud API”, Zuckerberg said. 

What will be the use of WhatsApp Cloud API?

According to Zuckerberg's announcement, the WhatsApp Cloud API will be an "all-in-one" platform. It will also be a more advanced alternative to WhatsApp Business.

Through this new option, big companies will be able to market their products in the same way as they do in the Business version, but with the difference that they will now be able to serve more people and respond to messages faster thanks to the help of new bots.

WhatsApp Cloud API will function as a database through which companies will be able to store customer contacts and other relevant information without the need to go to other external servers. In addition, as specified by the creator of Facebook, everything will be in the cloud with extreme security.

To use this application, companies will be capable of creating their profile with contact data, description and products, while having access to different messaging tools according to their needs. This service will be free and operated entirely by Meta. 

In order to personalize and improve the user experience for customers, companies that want to move from WhatsApp Business to the Cloud API will need to contact an application provider.

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