# WhatsApp Broadcasts

> Send one approved WhatsApp template to a list of customers from your own WhatsApp Business number, now or on a schedule, with opt-outs respected and an honest report of what went out.

Source: https://business.mysmartassistant.ai/docs/whatsapp-broadcasts

## Before you start

If Broadcasts is enabled for your workspace, **Broadcasts** appears under **Channels** in the menu. It is visible to the workspace Owner only, and only once a WhatsApp provider is connected.

Broadcasts go out through the provider you connect under **Integrations**: Meta WhatsApp or Automate Chats. Your business uses one provider at a time. If both are connected, the one connected last is used.

> **Note:** If you switch provider while a broadcast is still sending, that broadcast is paused. It is not sent through the other provider.

## Send a broadcast

Open **Broadcasts → New broadcast** and work through the steps.

_New broadcast: choose an approved template, with phone preview_

**On this screen:** the steps run across the top: **Template**, **Audience**, **Message**, **Schedule** and **Review**. **Choose an approved template** lists your approved templates with their category and language, with a search box and **Refresh**; **Preview** on the right shows the selected template's approval sample, because you fill in the real values in a later step. **Continue** moves to the next step.

1. **Template** — pick one of your approved templates. A template with a link button that changes per customer cannot be broadcast. It is shown greyed out with the reason.
2. **Audience** — choose one of these:
   - **A campaign**, then which of its calls to include (everyone, answered, did not connect, or never dialled) and over what period.
   - **A CSV file** of up to 50,000 rows with a header row and one person per row. Choose the phone number column and, if you like, the name column. Numbers without a country code are read as Indian (+91). Any other column can go into the message, with each person getting their own value.
3. **Message** — fill each `{{n}}` in the template from the contact's name or phone, your business name, phone or address, one of your own APIs (for example today's gold rate), or fixed text.
4. **Schedule** — **Send now**, or schedule a date and time in India time up to 30 days ahead.
5. **Review** — see the exact number of people, who was left out and why (same number twice, opted out, number not readable), and the first messages exactly as they will be sent.

The list is fixed the moment you press Send.

> **Warning:** Contact name always needs a fallback, because many contacts have no name. A CSV column left empty for some rows also needs a fallback, or those people are skipped and listed as **Not sent**.

A scheduled broadcast shows as **Scheduled** in the list, and you can cancel it from its page until it starts.

_Broadcasts list with progress_

**On this screen:** the **Broadcasts** tab lists each broadcast with its template, when it went out and its state (here **Finished**), plus a progress bar counting how many messages were accepted out of the total. Click a broadcast to open its report. **Opted out** is the opt-out list, and **New broadcast** starts another.

## Pace and WhatsApp limits

Messages go out steadily and within the WhatsApp limit for your number. To start, that limit is 1,000 different people in any 24 hours. It is counted over a rolling 24 hours, the way Meta counts it, not by calendar day.

If a broadcast is larger than your limit, the rest continue on their own as the limit frees up. Nobody is marked as failed because of the limit.

## Read the report

Each broadcast has a page with its results:

| Status | What it means |
| --- | --- |
| **Accepted** | The provider took the message for delivery. Delivered and read are not reported yet. |
| **Not sent** | The message was refused. The reason is shown. |
| **Not sure** | No answer came back in time. The message may already have arrived. |

**Send again** retries only the **Not sent** messages. **Not sure** messages are never sent again automatically, so nobody gets a duplicate.

From the broadcast's page you can also pause, resume or cancel it.

## Opt-outs

Add a number on the **Opted out** tab and it is left out of every future broadcast. Numbers cannot be removed from that list from the console.

> **Tip:** Review shows how many people were skipped because they opted out, so you can check the list is working before you send.

## Related

- [WhatsApp](https://business.mysmartassistant.ai/docs/whatsapp) for connecting a number and smart replies.
- [Custom APIs](https://business.mysmartassistant.ai/docs/custom-apis) for filling a message with live data.
- [Campaigns](https://business.mysmartassistant.ai/docs/campaigns) for building the call lists you can broadcast to.
- [WhatsApp AI automation](https://business.mysmartassistant.ai/features/whatsapp-smart-reply): where broadcasts sit beside smart replies and Auto-Call.