Overview

WhatsApp requires all message templates be approved before they can be used to send business-initiated messages to users. Message templates that don't meet the criteria or usage guidelines will be rejected or recategorised. This guide explains our recommendations and best practices for improving the likelihood that your templates will be approved and correctly categorised by WhatsApp.

What You Need To Know

Template overview 🔗

WhatsApp Templates are used to send outbound, business-initiated notification and marketing messages to WhatsApp users that have opted-in to receiving your messages, but have not responded to you in at least 24-hours. 

Templates are typically notification-type messages like delivery alerts and appointment reminders, or marketing and promotional messages like sale reminders and product launch announcements. The following categories are supported:

• Marketing: Send promotional offers, product announcements, and more to increase awareness and engagement.
• Authentication: Send codes that allow your customers to securely access their accounts. Message body is controlled by Meta. Must include a "Copy Code" button.
• Utility: Confirm or suspend an existing transaction, change or update a transaction, account, billing, or payment notification

Templates must be submitted to WhatsApp and approved before they can be used. 

Forbidden use cases 🔗

For an extensive list of allowed and forbidden use cases and business verticals, see What use cases and businesses are allowed to use WhatsApp on Twilio.

Template restrictions and rejection reasons 🔗

Meta enforces strict guidelines in their WhatsApp template approval process to reduce the potential for abuse and spam attacks. The following are some common reasons why Meta will reject templates.

• Template purpose is not clear, concise, or well-written. For example, Hi, {{1}} {{2}} Thank you. is vague and not clear how it would be used or what the placeholder values represent.
• Template placeholders are not sequential in order. For example, {{1}} and {{2}} and {{4}} are included but the placeholder {{3}} does not exist in the template.
• Template placeholders cannot be right next to each other like {{1}} {{2}}.
• Template content is identical to the content of another existing template.
• Template body cannot start or end with a placeholder.
• Template body cannot have more than two consecutive \n newline characters.
• Templates with Text headers cannot have emojis, asterisks, formatting markup, or the \n newline character.
• Newlines are forbidden within placeholders. More information on this Facebook limitation here
• No more than 4 consecutive spaces are allowed in message templates.
• Templates with Media headers (video, image, document) must include a sample with their submission.
• Template is abusive or threatening in nature, such as containing content threatening to take legal action against a user.
• Call to action button URL contains a direct link to WhatsApp, such as "https://wa.me/14154443344", which Meta does not allow.
  
  

Template recategorisation and best practices for writing WhatsApp templates

Meta has strict criteria for what kind of content can be used in each WhatsApp template category and this can make it challenging to ensure that your utility templates are not recategorised to marketing. To help prevent recategorisation, you can see a PDF explainer from Meta with examples of templates that fit into each category here and below are some quick guidelines to help you:

• Utility:

  • Do make sure the template is triggered by a user action or request

  • Do make specific reference to the active or ongoing transaction, account, subscription or interaction to which the template relates

  • Do not mix content in utility templates, eg. don’t include any promo offers in an order update because this will be classified as marketing

  • Do see Meta’s documentation for examples of Utility content and layout here.

• Authentication:

  • Authentication templates are very restricted and must adhere to the following:

    • WhatsApp’s preset authentication message templates must be used, including optional add-ons like security disclaimers and expiry warnings

    • A one-time password button must be present (copy-code or one-tap)

    • URLs, media, and emojis are not allowed for authentication template content or parameters. Additional length restrictions of 15 characters also apply to parameters

    • Do use the “whatsapp/authentication” content type on the content template builder to create templates that automatically and easily comply with the above requirements

• Marketing:

  • Do choose marketing templates to achieve a wider range of goals, from generating awareness to driving sales

  • Templates will be categorised as Marketing if:

    • Content does not fall clearly into either Utility or Authentication categories

    • Templates contain mixed content (e.g. Both utility and marketing, such as order update with a promo or offer)

    • Templates where contents are unclear (e.g., contents are only a single placeholder or “Congratulations!”)

  • Do see Meta’s documentation for examples of Marketing content and layout here

General guidance:

• Templates should be as short as possible to get the necessary information across
• Templates must not have any grammatical or spelling mistakes. Templates that include major spelling or grammatical mistakes are likely to be rejected. Templates with minor punctuation errors or grammatical inconsistencies may be approved, but should be avoided
• When submitting your Template in Console, ensure you select the appropriate message type and language
• Once your Template is submitted and approved, please ensure that you are replacing the placeholder(s) with actual values while testing your templates
• Get feedback from your teammates or coworkers to ensure the template you’ve written is clear and free of errors
• Make sure your customers understand why they received your message – you can remind them of the reason why they originally gave you permission to send them messages. For example:
  Hi {{1}}, thanks for your order {{2}} placed on {{3}}. Your order has shipped.
You can get a tracking update anytime by replying TRACK.
• Avoid sending surveys or using the word survey. Instead, you may ask the customer for their feedback
• Avoid starting or ending your template with a placeholder (such as{{1}}, This is a template.orHello, This is a template. {{1}}), as these will likely be rejected