WhatsApp for Ecommerce: The Broadcast Playbook

A WhatsApp broadcast for ecommerce is one pre-approved message template sent to a chosen list of opted-in customers at once — each person receives it as a private 1:1 chat, so replies come back to you individually rather than into a group. For an online store it is the fastest way to put a launch, a sale or a restock in front of people who already bought from you.

But a broadcast is only one of the three tools a store actually needs. The other two are drip campaigns (a series of messages on a per-contact timeline) and order automations (messages triggered by a Shopify event). This playbook covers all three: what to run, which tool runs it, what each costs, and the order to build them in.

Everything below is something ConvoFly does today. Where a capability has a limit, it is stated rather than glossed over.

The three tools, side by side

Picking the wrong tool for a campaign is the most common ecommerce mistake — a "welcome series" built as three manual broadcasts is a scheduling chore that a drip campaign does by itself.

The category row has a direct cost consequence, covered further down.

Campaigns you broadcast

One approved template sent to a chosen audience, now or scheduled:

• New product launch — announce a drop with a hero image and a "Shop now" button. See media, buttons and offers.
• Flash sale or limited-time offer — a broadcast with a countdown and a copyable code. Urgency works here precisely because the message is read in the same app people use for their friends.
• Festive and seasonal — Black Friday, Eid, Diwali greetings plus an offer, one-off or on a recurring schedule.
• VIP early access — reward your best customers with a pre-sale. Flag them with a vip tag or a loyalty-score field you fill in, then target that segment.
• Follow-up to non-responders — chase only the contacts who didn't reply to a campaign, without re-blasting the list. Walkthrough: following up with people who didn't reply.
• Win back lapsed customers — target buyers who haven't ordered in a while using a date filter. Step-by-step: win back lapsed customers.
• Birthday offers — a daily send that wishes each customer on their birthday automatically. Step-by-step: birthday and anniversary campaigns.

Automated drip campaigns

A drip campaign is an ordered list of steps, each with its own template and a delay measured from the previous step — so a welcome sequence might be step 1 immediately, step 2 after 2 days, step 3 after 3 more days. Crucially, a drip stops the moment a contact replies, which is what stops it feeling like an unattended robot.

• Welcome and onboarding — when a new customer opts in, enrol them into a sequence that introduces the brand and the best sellers over a few days. Use dynamic enrolment so new opt-ins flow in without you touching it.
• Post-purchase check-in — a thank-you now, a care tip in a few days, a replenishment nudge weeks later. Strongest for consumables and anything with a predictable reorder cycle.

Because later steps only reach the people who haven't replied yet, a five-step drip does not cost five times a broadcast to the same list — the audience shrinks as the sequence does its job.

Order and checkout flows (Shopify-connected)

Connect your Shopify store and these run automatically whenever an order changes. They use pre-approved order-update templates, so they reach customers even when the customer hasn't messaged you recently:

• COD order confirmation — confirm cash-on-delivery orders with Yes/No buttons to cut fake orders and returns-to-origin. Ships as a ready-made flow you enable.
• Shipping and delivery updates — "order confirmed", "shipped", "delivered" and "cancelled" notifications are pre-built when you connect your store.
• Review request after delivery — trigger a feedback ask off the delivered event, while the purchase is still fresh.
• Abandoned-cart reminder — ConvoFly includes a ready-made abandoned-cart automation. Turn it on, add your own approved marketing template, and it sends a single reminder a short while after a checkout is abandoned. Today this is one reminder, not a multi-step chase.

What each of these costs to run

Since 1 July 2025 Meta charges per message, and "You are only charged when a template message is delivered" (Meta, WhatsApp pricing). For an online store, three rules from that page decide most of your bill:

• Marketing templates are charged on delivery, always. Launches, sales and cart reminders fall here.
• Utility templates delivered inside an open 24-hour customer service window are free; outside it they are charged. Most order updates land outside the window, so budget for them.
• Non-template messages are free and can only be sent while a window is open — which is what makes replies from your team cost nothing.

There is also a 72-hour free entry point: when a customer reaches you through a Click-to-WhatsApp ad or a Facebook Page button, all messages in that thread are free for 72 hours. For a store running acquisition ads, that is three days of unmetered conversation with a brand-new lead. Rates vary by country and category and Meta does not publish them inline, so check the current rate card before budgeting — the full breakdown is in what a WhatsApp broadcast costs.

Targeting the right shoppers

Every campaign is only as good as its audience. A segment is a saved live filter over your contacts — it re-evaluates on every send, so a "bought in the last 30 days" segment stays correct without maintenance. Build them from tags such as vip or cod, and from attributes such as city and order_total synced from Shopify.

Then personalize each message with the customer's name or order details, so one broadcast produces thousands of individually addressed messages rather than one obviously mass-sent one.

If your list lives in a spreadsheet rather than in ConvoFly — a supplier list, an event sign-up sheet — you can broadcast straight from a Google Sheet and it re-reads the sheet on every send, so rows added later are picked up.

Measuring what worked

Add click tracking to your links and watch the delivery report, which shows sent, delivered, read and failed for each recipient and exports to CSV. Two readings are worth acting on immediately: a high read rate with a low click rate means the offer is wrong rather than the timing, and a rising failure rate means the list is going stale.

Then turn the result into the next audience. Re-targeting by outcome lets you build a follow-up from a past campaign's results — the people who replied, didn't reply, didn't read, weren't delivered, or failed — so the second send is smaller, cheaper and more relevant than the first.

Keeping your number healthy at ecommerce volume

Stores send more than most businesses, so hygiene is not optional. Your number sits on a messaging tier that caps how many unique customers you can reach outside a service window in a rolling 24 hours: 250 → 2,000 → 10,000 → 100,000 → unlimited, with every new portfolio starting at 250 (Meta, messaging limits). Meta raises the limit one level within 6 hours when you are sending high-quality messages and have used at least half your current limit in the last 7 days.

That second condition catches people out: a store that under-sends to feel safe never climbs. The right posture is steady, wanted volume — which means honouring opt-outs instantly and capping frequency, both covered in opt-outs, frequency caps and number health. Your obligations under the WhatsApp Business Messaging Policy apply regardless of how the software is configured.

A 30-day rollout, in order

Building all of this at once is how stores end up with three half-finished campaigns. Build it in this sequence instead:

1. Week 1 — order flows. Connect Shopify and enable order confirmed, shipped and delivered. These are useful to every customer, they use utility templates, and they build a base of recent conversations.
2. Week 1 — opt-in and suppression. Turn on the frequency cap and import any do-not-contact list on the Opt-outs page before you send anything promotional.
3. Week 2 — your first broadcast. Follow the step-by-step guide, but send it to a small, obviously-interested segment first rather than the whole list.
4. Week 2 — read the report. Check delivered, read and click rates before scaling the same message wider.
5. Week 3 — welcome drip. Build a two or three step welcome sequence with dynamic enrolment so future opt-ins are handled without you.
6. Week 3 — abandoned cart. Enable the ready-made automation and attach your own approved marketing template.
7. Week 4 — retarget. Take your week-2 campaign and re-target the people who didn't reply with a different angle. This is usually the cheapest revenue in the whole list.
8. Ongoing. Add the seasonal, win-back and birthday campaigns once the always-on flows are running themselves.

Sending to your whole list before you have a single automation running is the mistake worth avoiding — it spends your daily allowance and your goodwill on the least targeted message you will ever send.

Honest limits worth knowing before you plan

• The abandoned-cart automation sends one reminder, not a multi-step chase. Plan around a single well-timed message.
• Order flows need Shopify connected. Broadcasts and drip campaigns work with any opted-in contacts regardless of your platform, but the order-event automations do not.
• A big list will not go out instantly. Beyond the tier cap, bulk sending is paced, and the composer shows an estimated sending time next to the recipient count so a long send reads as progress rather than a fault. See messaging limits and tier caps.
• Every promotional message needs an approved marketing template. You cannot free-type a sale announcement to a customer who hasn't messaged you recently.