WhatsApp Broadcast Messages: How to Send Them Without Getting Blocked
How WhatsApp Business broadcasts really work: templates, categories, opt-in, what each message costs, and the habits that keep your number's quality rating green.
A WhatsApp broadcast from the Business app goes to 256 people who have saved your number. A broadcast through the WhatsApp Business API goes to as many people as you like, whether or not they have saved you, using messages Meta has approved in advance. That second version is the one businesses mean when they say "WhatsApp broadcast automation", and it comes with rules. Follow them and it is the highest-open-rate channel you have. Ignore them and Meta throttles your number within days.
Broadcasts are templates
Outside the 24-hour customer service window, the only message you can send on the API is a template: a message Meta has reviewed, with placeholders for names and order numbers. A broadcast is a template sent to a list. You submit the template once, Meta approves it (usually within minutes for anything ordinary), and from then on you can send it to anyone who has opted in.
Templates carry a category, and the category sets the price:
| Category | Used for | India rate per delivered message |
|---|---|---|
| Marketing | Offers, launches, re-engagement | ₹0.8631 plus GST |
| Utility | Order updates, reminders, confirmations | ₹0.1150 plus GST |
| Authentication | One-time passcodes | ₹0.1150 plus GST |
Meta assigns the category during review based on the content, and it will reclassify a "utility" template that is really a promotion. Write the template for what it is. The full rate card and the free cases are in WhatsApp API pricing in India.
Opt-in is not optional
Meta requires that a person has agreed to receive messages from your business before you send them a marketing template. Agreement has to be clear and tied to WhatsApp: a checkbox on a form, a reply to a message that says what they are opting into, a keyword they sent. A phone number scraped from an order, a business card, or a customer list from another channel is not opt-in.
This is enforced by the people you message, not only by Meta. Every recipient can block or report your number from the first message, and those actions feed your quality rating.
The quality rating is the whole game
Every WhatsApp Business number has a quality rating, green, yellow or red, derived from how recipients react in the last seven days: blocks, reports, and whether people reply at all. A number that drops to red has its messaging limits cut, and repeated drops get it restricted.
The habits that keep it green are not mysterious:
- Send to people who asked. Opt-in is the single biggest factor.
- Send less, to fewer. A monthly message to 3,000 engaged contacts beats a weekly message to 30,000 cold ones, on every metric including revenue.
- Give them a way out. Include "reply STOP to unsubscribe", and honour it the same day. Arolead records the opt-out on the contact so they are excluded from the next send.
- Send at a reasonable hour in the recipient's timezone.
- Personalise the first line. A name in the placeholder is not personalisation; a reference to what they bought or asked about is.
What a good broadcast looks like
A garment brand with 2,000 opted-in customers sends one template on the first of the month: a new collection, a photo, one line about free shipping over ₹999, and a "reply STOP" footer. Delivered to 1,900, read by 1,500, replied to by 120. Those 120 replies open a 24-hour window each, and every message the brand sends back inside it is free. The cost of the whole campaign is the 1,900 deliveries at ₹0.8631, about ₹1,640 plus GST. The replies are where the sales happen, and they cost nothing.
Do not use broadcasts for what the window is for
The most expensive mistake is sending templates to people who are already talking to you. If a customer messaged you yesterday, you are inside the window and a normal message is free. A template sent inside the window is still billed if it is marketing. Arolead's inbox checks for an open window before it offers you a template, so a reply that can be free is sent free.
Sending from Arolead
Broadcasts in Arolead use your own WhatsApp Business Account, connected through Meta's Embedded Signup. You pick a template, a segment of your contact list built from tags, and a time. Delivery, read and reply status come back per recipient, and replies land in the same inbox as your Instagram DMs. Meta bills you for the messages directly, at its published rates, with no markup from us.