How to Improve Your WhatsApp Open Rate for Better Customer Engagement and Conversions

Learn how to improve your WhatsApp open rates with these best practices.

When we look at the world of eCommerce businesses, WhatsApp Marketing has taken over a lot. It is being used extensively by online businesses for marketing, sales and customer support. The platform has all the tools and potential for helping any business to prosper if used strategically.

But like in any other traditional platforms that are popular, businesses are faced with the issue of cluttered customer inboxes on WhatsApp too. User inboxes are now fuller than it ever was, with more brands entering WhatsApp.

Similar to how it is in email inboxes, businesses are now finding more of their WhatsApp broadcast messages going unnoticed. Due to this, businesses are losing a lot of potential sales on WhatsApp. Hence, addressing the issue of decreasing open rates should be a necessary part of any WhatsApp marketing strategy.

So, the question is; how can you improve your business’s WhatsApp open rate? We are here with the answer!

What is the Average WhatsApp Open Rate?

WhatsApp is undoubtedly one of the most popular messenger apps in the world, and it gets used A LOT! If you are an average WhatsApp user, how many times have you opened your WhatsApp to simply check messages, look at WhatsApp status posts or at least reply to someone? These statistics reveal how big a part WhatsApp occupies in the everyday lives of people.

Based on statistics, an average WhatsApp user spends at least 38 minutes a day on WhatsApp. That time frame itself has led to more than 100 billion messages being sent on WhatsApp each day across the globe!

Looking at some WhatsApp business statistics we can understand that the average WhatsApp open rate for most campaigns is 47%. 

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When compared to other channels, WhatsApp’s 47% is a significantly higher open rate. But without proper strategies in place to enhance your WhatsApp broadcast campaigns, this figure can be pretty hard to achieve.

But we have some tips that will help you level up your WhatsApp marketing strategy.

How to Improve your WhatsApp Open Rate?

Achieving higher open rates is the only way to ensure that all your WhatsApp marketing strategies are positively impacting your growth. These are some of the tried, tested and proven tips that help increase WhatsApp open rate for your broadcast campaigns. Let’s begin.

1. Preview Texts

The importance of previews in determining the fate of your broadcast message is pretty obvious if you think about it. The preview text of a WhatsApp message is the text that gets shown before the message gets opened. It’s the first thing that gets noticed when you send a message to a customer.

This can reveal a lot about the nature, purpose and contents of a WhatsApp message to the user. And more importantly, it is capable of making a customer interested or disinterested in that particular message, similar to how email subject lines function. In short, a good preview text makes all the difference. Let’s look at an example.

If the preview text reads something like “Hey Carson…”, there is zero excitement going into it. And no matter how fantastic the content of the message might have been, the preview failed to capture the customer’s interest. This is why you need to focus on crafting a good preview text for your broadcasts, to improve your WhatsApp open rate. Here are a few good preview text examples that can be employed for your WhatsApp messages;

• Return to Complete Purchase!
• Your Cart is waiting for you!
• {Product name} will look amazing on you!
• Enjoy Free Shipping!
• Over 5000 Purchases in the last 24 hours!
• Festival Sales Going LIVE!
• A simple reminder!
• Special Prices Alert!
• Festival Greetings!

2. Segment Your List

Segmenting your WhatsApp broadcast list is an essential part of your marketing campaign. This is important in order to ensure the right broadcast message is being sent to the right customer. 

Also, customer segmentation lets you study your customers on a deeper level. The customers can be segmented based on age groups, region etc and tailor content that is unique to each customer group’s unique needs.

By segmenting your customer list, you can also create targeted campaigns that are contextual and relevant to different customers. By adding relevance to your WhatsApp messages, you stand a higher chance of improving your brand’s WhatsApp message open rate.

3. Use Customer Actions as Triggers

Customer actions on the store are great cues for reaching out with promotions or other WhatsApp messages. A follow-up message for a customer action stands a higher chance of getting noticed and being opened than other messages. This is a great tip to improve your WhatsApp open rate, as follow-ups are expected and appreciated by most customers.

Various actions done by the customers can be used as triggers to send WhatsApp broadcasts. For example, when a customer makes their first purchase you can send a message confirming the purchase right away, congratulate them, and even add further product recommendations to the message.

If a customer is looking for a particular product and is browsing for it, you can send a message recommending similar products or showcase offers and discounts on such products.

Or if a customer abandons their shopping cart, you can reach out with a simple abandoned cart reminder, ideally within a couple of hours. With an abandoned cart, it is also better to reply within 24 hours. Responding within the appropriate time frame after such customer action, ought to help capture customer attention more effectively for your WhatsApp messages.

4. Get The Timing Right

Like it is for many other things in life, for the success of your WhatsApp Broadcasts too, timing can make all the difference. What time of the day are you sending your message? What day of the week is it? Whether it’s a work day or the weekend- all these are factors that need to be considered.

Knowing when is the right time for the right broadcast type can be the difference between getting a higher WhatsApp message open rate and getting unnoticed altogether.

Let’s say you are running a WhatsApp broadcast campaign to promote new products. Sending a promotional message at midnight will miss the mark, and no one will be reading your messages. Similarly sending promotions or other messages during office hours might also be counterintuitive. 

There is no one golden hour per se when it comes to the right time for sending WhatsApp broadcast messages but carefully considering and planning when to send, should also be part of your WhatsApp marketing strategy.

5. Make Use of WhatsApp Status Features

WhatsApp has a lot of features that enable marketers to unleash a whole new world of potential in the way marketing is done today. And among them, one of the most powerful tools is the story feature that WhatsApp offers. Brands have started using stories to promote products, offer support and much more.

WhatsApp status is popular and is used by a lot of people. Half a billion WhatsApp accounts use the Status feature on WhatsApp every day. This makes up one-fourth of the entire active WhatsApp user population. These numbers are convincing enough for any marketer to include the story feature in their WhatsApp marketing strategy.

Post a story on your WhatsApp business account that can nudge people to check their messages. Having the right tone of voice and appeal to these stories can successfully drive customers into opening their messages.

6. Use Other Channels

Improving WhatsApp open rates can be tricky when you are thinking about only WhatsApp alone in your strategies. Bring in other channels when needed to increase your campaign effectiveness. These channels can be email or any other social media channels like Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and so on.

These channels can bring in an even more diverse set of features, which can be used to remind and nudge people into checking the WhatsApp messages that you sent. Linking your WhatsApp Business account to your social media channels is also a great idea. 

You can also share social posts that say- “Don’t forget to check WhatsApp for an exclusive deal!” or “Check WhatsApp for our latest updates!”

This way, you can successfully use multichannel marketing to get the most out of your WhatsApp Business, while boosting your WhatsApp message open rate.

7. Create a Cliff-hanger

Your WhatsApp marketing strategy doesn’t have to stop when you get a customer to open your broadcast message. You need to ensure that the content of your message isn’t underwhelming or overwhelming to successfully engage the customer. 

And it’s always better to go a step further here- to every WhatsApp broadcast campaign that you run, make sure you add something that makes people look forward to your future messages. Your messages should be intriguing enough for customers to be hooked to them. 

Creating a good cliffhanger and reinforcing what buyers can expect from your next message is a great idea as this assures a consistent improvement in WhatsApp open rate in the future as well.

Ensure Better Marketing with Improved WhatsApp Open Rates

We know how critical each unopened message can be, as it affects the efficiency of your WhatsApp broadcasting campaigns. Your exciting promotions and important updates all go to waste if the buyer doesn’t notice it or open the message. Low open rates, therefore, translate to losing a lot of potential sales. And that means, there is a need to strategize your broadcast campaigns.

For efficient marketing, businesses need a planned WhatsApp marketing strategy that can improve their WhatsApp message open rates.

Quickreply.ai is a highly effective WhatsApp Business API solution provider with which you can plan strategic Broadcast campaigns for higher WhatsApp open rates.

Get Quickreply.ai today!