What Is a WhatsApp Template Message?
WhatsApp message templates are a powerful way to send significant data to clients and it is a pre-constructed normalized message that you can reuse for your WhatsApp campaigns. You can utilize them to deliver reminders, notifications, or customized updates. It is also known as a highly structured message (HSM).
Templates can be text-only or include media, like images, videos, documents, and action buttons. You can customize your templates by adding variables.
Why are WhatsApp templates so important?
There’s the free WhatsApp Business Application however it doesn’t allow you to send promotional messages to in excess of 265 contacts all at once, Here in lies its significance of WhatsApp Business API.
In WhatsApp Business API, we can’t send outbound WhatsApp messages without creating templates. Templates are fundamental for WhatsApp campaigns.
templates need to be approved by Meta before being sent to contacts. Because Meta wants to protect the end user experience, it requires every mass message to be submitted for approval before it can be sent.
That applies to both transactional and promotional messages.
How to create a WhatsApp Template?
A typical format has a few fields you’ll need to finish. It’s important to understand each of these fields and what they do.
Name: What your template is called.
Type: The type of media your template is using: Text, Image, Audio, Document.
Language: The language of your template.
Content: The text copy of your template.
Variables: These are custom fields you can call on.
Buttons: In a new addition to templates, you can now choose either Quick reply or Call to action buttons as part of your Message Templates. These buttons cannot have the text of more than 20 characters (do note, emoji, newlines, and underscores are not allowed and placeholders are not supported in Buttons).
Rules for Creating WhatsApp Templates
When creating a message template. that should comply with their Message Template Guidelines:
1.Naming of Templates – The template name should contain only lowercase alphanumeric characters, with the only special character allowed being the Underscore (_).
2.Format of Templates – Your WhatsApp templates cannot be more than 1024 characters. They also cannot contain newlines, tabs or more than 4 consecutive spaces.
3.Content of Templates – Advertising, marketing or promotional messages are not permitted. You can’t promote goods and services restricted by WhatsApp (e.g. prescription drugs, cigarettes, alcoholic beverages, weapons, etc.). doesn’t allow asking people for financial data or other sensitive identifiers.
4.Format of Variables – Variables must be called upon using a double flower-bracket numeric system – {{#}}. The # represents the variable index. Variables should begin counting at {{1}}.