WhatsApp to Let Users Block Business Marketing Spam

Over the past few years, WhatsApp Business has expanded to more than 200 million monthly consumers

This suggests that numerous businesses are sending messages to users, with some of these messages potentially falling under the spam category. The sole alternative for customers was to either permit them to send messages and offers or disable the business account entirely. That is finally changing with WhatsApp.

The company is currently in the process of evaluating novel methods for users to provide feedback to businesses regarding the types of messages they would prefer to receive or not receive. This entails the use of controls such as “stop/resume” and “interested/not interested” for certain categories of messages.

Meta has announced that it will commence testing interactions on a global scale. For instance, the screenshot below enables users to either indicate their interest in receiving “offers and announcements” or avoid it. Additionally, they have the option to discontinue receiving this form of message. Resuming messages will be an option for users in the future who desire to receive offers from a brand during a festive season.

Businesses have the option to deliver messages through WhatsApp’s API based on one of four categories: marketing (offers, new products), utility (order updates, account balance), authentication (one-time passwords), and service (customer inquiries).

Although these categories are present in the backend, customers were previously unable to cease receiving one form of message while continuing to receive others. For example, you may desire to receive purchase updates and authentication codes from an e-commerce site; however, you were unable to manually provide this feedback if you were not interested in marketing communications.

Unlike email, a phone number associated with WhatsApp is the principal communication channel for a significant number of users in countries such as Brazil and India. In contrast to email, WhatsApp did not provide an option to unsubscribe from promotional communications. This resulted in an overload of spammy business communications for users.

The organization has been contemplating the implementation of new messaging controls for business purposes. Nikila Srinivasan, Meta’s VP of product management for messaging monetization, suggested this feature during a September conversation with TechCrunch on the eve of a WhatsApp Business event in India.

Our commitment is to keep you informed about your interactions and engagements with enterprises. Secondly, the most effective way to avoid engaging with them is to report and block them. This lets us know this isn’t a business you want on the platform. Additionally, we are starting to explore ways to offer users more preferences, allowing them to express a deeper level of detail, she said.

Srinivasan also said that educating businesses and helping them understand how some campaigns don’t adhere to the platform’s or users’ standards will reduce spam.

The company began limiting the number of marketing messages that an individual can receive in a day earlier this year, without explicitly defining the limit.

WhatsApp advertised itself as a platform for individuals to engage in private conversations for an extended period of time. In the past few years, the organization has implemented capabilities that enable users to establish and participate in communities, disseminate messages as a creator or publisher, and engage in direct communication with customers. The application includes sections for both broadcast channels and communities.

Nonetheless, business communication continues to appear in the primary conversation inbox, and there is no practical method of filtering it. The company stated in its Q3 2024 quarterly call that the WhatsApp Business platform is a significant growth driver for the revenue of its family of other applications, which totaled $434 million during the quarter. The company must strike a balance between the need to generate revenue and the risk of alienating its core WhatsApp users by inundating them with business messages.

When we inquired about this balance and the possibility of having a separate location for business messages, Srinivasan pointed out that several of the newer WhatsApp features are optional and distinct from the main inbox.

“The primary objective of WhatsApp is to remain in your inbox.” I particularly appreciate the drive we have to support businesses as they consider the possibility of creating a unique experience for them. “We are investing in user controls and educating businesses because we aspire to establish a high standard for what is truly appropriate to appear in your inbox,” she expressed.