WhatsApp Business API Messaging Rate Updated on 1 August 2024

Greetings to our latest article, which discusses the effects of Meta’s recent pricing changes for businesses using WhatsApp as a platform for business-to-customer conversation. 

WhatsApp Conversation Categories Impacted by the Price Change

Communications are 24-hour message threads among businesses and their customers. The session opens and is charged when messages are delivered to customers. The measurement can determine how the messages are classified is explained below:

1. Marketing—This allows you to acquire a wide range of plans, from developing awareness to bringing in sales and retargeting clients.  Examples include new services, launches, feature announcements, upsell/cross-sell campaigns, and promotions/offers. 

2. Utility—This allows you to follow up on customer actions or needs. Examples include order/delivery management, account updates, payment tracking, reminders, feedback surveys, and opt-in confirmations.

3. Authentication – Allows you to verify the users with OTPs (one-time passwords), potentially at several steps in the login process. Examples are account recovery, account verification, and integrity challenges. 

Spotlight of the WhatsApp Business Price Change

Meta’s WhatsApp business pricing changes noticeably: the price of utility and authentication messages is reducing, whereas marketing message costs are increasing. The approach behind these changes is complicated. A slight change in pricing increases the cost of the WhatsApp marketing message. Meta encourages businesses to have more thorough and targeted conversations that drive higher value (ROI) proportional to the new price. 

The motive is to lower the volume of untargeted, bulk messages that sometimes lead to bad user experience and minimum ROI. The pricing strategy also encourages organizations to create more interactive and engaging information, aligning with Meta’s recent endeavors like template cost and frequency capping. 

The modest price expansion for marketing messages in India is carefully measured to enhance message quality without complicating businesses, especially in a price-sensitive market like India. Plus, by creating nontargeted messaging, the approach fights spam and enhances the entire user experience over the channel.

Getgabs has anticipated and trained for this massive cost transformation towards conversational customer experience. Ahead of the competitive market, we have created the Getgabs conversation cloud to support their customers’ business segments, start communication with the right client at the right time, and interact in rich two-way conversations powered by AI.

Our channel authorizes the business to initiate thoughtful communication with the right audience at optimal moments around platforms like WhatsApp, Google’s RCS, and SMS. It allows them to build sophisticated multi-platform workflows to match their engagement, reach, and price goals. 

Such transformations mark a pivotal transition to prioritizing quality and creativity in enterprise messaging. Here is a deep look at the specifics and how they suit the future of intelligent conversational CX.

Core Principles Bring the Evolution

There are basic principles that bring about changes. Have a look at them:

1. Improved targeting and creativity: The recent changes in pricing, with the template pacing and frequency capping, show the requirements for high-quality targeting and creativity. Messages not including such elements lead to a poor user experience and are growing flagged as spam.

2. Value in utility messaging: Utility messages give clients direct, tangible advantages on advanced and creative journeys that are now more cost-effective. This cost strategy allows the business to focus on providing high-value engagements. 

3. Preventing ineffective marketing: Businesses that survive with ‘dumb’ marketing strategy messages—untargeted and non-creative—will suffer higher charges and penalties, requiring more innovative, modern, and strategic conversation efforts.

What’s Changing?

1. Utility messages: A more accessible price

Utility messages that provide meaningful and direct value to clients will see unit prices reduced. These messages often include creative, advanced journeys like delivery updates, customer support interactions, and transaction notifications. This transformation underscores the essence of enriching the consumer experience with timely and valuable details. 

The price of utility messages will lower around markets. 

The price reductions in the countries are:

• 67% in India
• 54% Saudi Arabia
• 77% in Brazil
• 21% in the UAE
• 62% in Mexico 

And the changed prices will be live in the following countries by 1 August 2024. 

2. Marketing messages: A call for higher standards

On the other hand, the unit price for marketing messages will grow. The shift in price emphasizes the requirement for interactive and targeted messaging. Untargeted and non-creative marketing messages are no longer bearable; they conceal delivery rates, heighten the risk of being labeled as spam, and diminish read rates. 

The price increase in the countries will be as follows:

• 8% in India
• 12% in Saudi Arabia
• 13% in the UAE

These price increases will be live by 1 October 2024. 

3. Authentication messages: Higher read rate delivered at an efficient rate

Authentication messages are time-effective and high-priority business messages that can deliver a higher read rate on WhatsApp. Now, they also come at a minimum cost to the company. Every message that requires a higher and instant-read rate, like OTPs, account recovery, or account verification, comes under this messaging category. The authentication message could vary around significant countries.

The price reductions in the following countries are: 

• 7% in India
• 71% in Brazil
• 62% in Mexico
• 17% in Indonesia

The changes in WhatsApp pricing have been live for authentication messages from 1 July 2024.

You can check the Meta Rate Card for region-wise charges for every message category.

Getgabs: Your Partner in Intelligent Conversational Engagement

More businesses will use WhatsApp to facilitate conversational journeys in light of the recent price changes to all message types. This change will improve customer experience by turning these channels from cost to revenue centers.

To better grasp this, consider the following analogy: web services grew exponentially because internet bandwidth, networking, and storage costs decreased. Similarly, conversational experiences will significantly increase as communications costs decrease. Companies will greatly benefit from this trend if they understand its implications and use it to enhance the consumer experience.

Anticipating this trend, Gupshup created the Conversation Cloud, a cutting-edge technology that helps businesses manage conversations. This platform is intended to assist companies in navigating and profiting from evolving technology of conversational engagement.

We are operating closely with our top & potential clients to provide effective and intelligent CX by:

1. Brings more conversation per message

All messages shared are a chance to create a conversation with your clients. With every message shared with clients, a 24-hour session window initiates ticking. Only some of our most successful consumers have gone apart utilizing the messages to optimize the 24-hour window session. We have seen businesses globally bring 6X revenue through a conversational strategy and change the thought of the conversational stack from being a cost center to a revenue center, all while enhancing the entire customer experience.

2. Precisely split your customers

The conversational cloud’s campaign manager module offers companies insights into which customers are interested in engaging and completing the required message goal, hence giving more predictability of the results they may drive with every message.

3. Intelligent channel failover

The platform’s intelligent CPaaS module works beyond one medium. It authorizes the brand to start meaning with the right audience at the right time, around channels such as Google’s messages, SMS, and WhatsApp.

4. Powered communication with AI

The growth in conversation CX is growing month on month. And various companies did not expect the burgeoning influx of interactions around the client’s journey. With Getgabs’s conversational AI module, we are making it easy for businesses to interact in rich, two-way communication powered by advanced AI.

We are passionate about such advancements and the potential for these transformations to improve the quality and effectiveness of business messaging.

Strategic Factors for Business Utilizing WhatsApp Business API

• Develop creative communications: The change from one-way broadcasts to dynamic, two-way communication is crucial. Contacting clients in thoughtful dialogues adds value and creates lasting relationships. 
• Prioritize targeting and customization: Creative conversation hinges on specific targeting and customization. Knowing and splitting your customers correctly enables you to offer messages that resonate on a personal level.
• Intelligent marketing optimization: Tackle the ability to ignore dormant users, optimize your messages optimally for high impact, and optimize conversion rates. Intelligent optimization is a factor in bringing better engagement and acquiring higher ROI.

Conclusion

Enterprises relying on outdated, one-way messaging techniques will need help to adapt, threatening the creativity of their client’s campaigns and marketing budgets. Businesses dependent on BSPs would face diminishing returns and charges for subpar messaging techniques. 

Meta’s message is simple: text intelligence now trumps sheer volume. Splitting, customizing, and targeting your interactions ensures the delivery of the right texts at the optimal time to the right customers.

We are eager for these transformations and the opportunity to present such changes to improve the quality and creativeness of business messaging. Connect with us to learn how Getgabs can help your business beyond one-way texting and bring conversations that boost growth!

You can save more costs exclusively through Getgabs, as Getgabs does not add markup costs to Meta message rates. Sign up with Getgabs at.