Running a Marketing Campaign
From start to finish: connect your number, build a promotional message with a picture or PDF and buttons, send it to your list, and read the results.
Before your first campaign
You need three things in place. Each takes minutes, apart from Meta's own review steps.
| What | Where | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| A connected WhatsApp number | Setup → WhatsApp Accounts | Your own business number is fine. See below. |
| Contacts | Manage Customers | Import a spreadsheet or add people by hand. |
| An approved marketing template | Send a Broadcast → Message Templates | Meta must approve any message that starts a conversation. |
1. Connect your own number
You can connect a number you already own. What matters is that it's registered to the WhatsApp Business Platform, Meta's official service for businesses, which AIM Automate uses.
Have these ready before you start:
- A Facebook login that is an admin of your own Meta business portfolio (you can create one during sign-up).
- A public website on your own domain that shows your business name. A simple one-page site is enough.
- A number that isn't active on WhatsApp. If it's on the regular WhatsApp app, delete that WhatsApp account first. If your connect screen offers Keep WhatsApp Business App, you can connect a WhatsApp Business app number and keep using the app.
- Your trade licence or business registration for Meta Business Verification. This can come later.
Meta's daily limit, in practice
Until you complete Meta Business Verification, Meta lets your number start conversations with 250 new contacts a day. That's Meta's limit, not ours, and it applies on every plan.
The send screen shows it as a banner: "X of 250 new conversations left today from your number."
- The count is per contact: messaging the same person five times in a day counts once.
- If you send a campaign bigger than what's left, it still goes out and you get a warning. The messages over the cap will fail, and you'll see them in the Not delivered report with Meta's reason.
- The allowance works over a rolling 24 hours.
To raise the limit, complete Meta Business Verification in Meta Business Manager. Once you're verified and sending good-quality messages, Meta raises your limit in steps, all the way to unlimited.
The quickest way to move up is a clean record: message people who expect to hear from you, and keep blocks and reports close to zero.
2. Build the message
A campaign message is a template: an approved layout with your wording. Go to Send a Broadcast → Message Templates → New template.
- Category: Marketing. This is the category for offers, launches and promotions.
- Header: choose what sits at the top:
- Image: upload a sample JPG, PNG or WebP (up to 5 MB). Best for a product shot or an offer banner.
- Document: upload a sample PDF (up to 16 MB). Best for a menu, price list or brochure.
- Text: a short headline.
- Body: your message. Use
{{1}},{{2}}where you want personal values such as a name or an offer code. - Footer: optional small print, for example "Reply STOP to opt out."
- Buttons: up to three. Click + Add button for each:
- Quick reply: the contact taps it and it sends that text back to you. Use it to start a conversation ("Tell me more", "Book now"). Up to 3.
- Visit website: opens a link. Up to 2.
- Call phone number: dials you. Up to 1.
- Check the live preview. It shows the picture, text and buttons exactly as the contact will see them.
- Submit it for review. Meta usually replies within minutes to a few hours.
What Meta rejects
- Buttons whose text doesn't match what they do.
- A marketing message submitted as Utility to pay less.
- Vague or misleading offers, and anything that looks like it comes from someone else's brand.
3. Send it
Go to Send a Broadcast and click Send message.
- Audience: a single number for a test, or a segment for the real send. Once a segment loads, you can untick individual contacts.
- Message: choose Template, then pick your approved marketing template.
- Attach the picture or PDF. If your template has an image or document header, you'll see a field for it:
- click Upload image or Upload PDF to send a file from your computer, or
- paste a public link if the file is already online.
- Fill in the placeholders: one field for each
{{1}},{{2}}in the template. - Send. Messages go out at a steady pace that suits your plan, so your number isn't flooded.
Always send to a test group of one or two people first. Once a template is approved its wording is fixed, so fixing a typo means submitting a new template.
4. Read the results
Go to Reports → Message Delivery. The Delivery Reports guide covers it in full; here's the short version:
| Number | What it means |
|---|---|
| Sent | WhatsApp accepted it. |
| Delivered | It arrived on the contact's phone. |
| Read | The contact opened it. This is your "open rate". |
| Failed | It didn't arrive. The report tells you why. |
Each campaign gets its own row under By campaign, so you can compare one offer with another. Export CSV gives you the whole report (campaigns, segments, contacts and failure reasons) in one file.
A realistic first campaign
- Make a segment of your best 100 contacts.
- Build one Marketing template: an offer image in the header, a short body with
{{1}}for the first name, and two buttons, Shop now (link) and Tell me more (quick reply). - Send it to yourself first.
- Send it to the 100.
- The next morning, check the read rate and answer everyone who tapped Tell me more from WhatsApp Chats.
A campaign isn't finished when it's sent. The replies are the point, so make sure someone is watching the inbox for the next few hours.
