Plan requirement
| Subscription | Suite Professional or higher |
| Access | Admin |
Starting a conversation with a customer rather than waiting for one. Proactive messaging, with the caution it needs.
Use it
- Have a WhatsApp or SMS channel connected first. Relay sends over those two and nothing else, so without one there is nothing to send with.
- Install the app. An admin has to do the setup.
- Build the audience from conditions on your user data: user tags, custom user fields, when the user was created, the standard user fields. Keep it under ten thousand people, because above that the search stops returning everybody and you will not be told.
- Write the message as a template. Headers, dynamic variables, hosted images, links, buttons and quick replies are available, and on WhatsApp a template also carries a language and a category.
- Test with a small group first, then watch what comes back.
Where it genuinely helps
- Telling customers about a problem before they find it.
- An update on something they are waiting for.
- A follow-up where you promised one.
Service messages, in other words.
The line
A support channel is a channel customers opened for help. Using it for marketing changes what it is, and people stop treating messages from you as worth reading.
That erosion is hard to reverse, and it costs you the channel for the messages that matter.
Expect replies
A proactive message produces responses, and they arrive in your queue. Sending to a thousand customers without staffing the replies turns a helpful gesture into a backlog.
Work out the expected volume before sending.
Consent and rules
Messaging channels have their own rules about proactive contact, and some require prior consent. Worth checking per channel rather than assuming what applies to email applies here. On WhatsApp the template itself has to be approved before you can send it, which is a queue of its own: prepare the template well before the day you need it.
Start small
A hundred customers, then read what came back. The response rate and the tone of the replies tell you whether to send the rest.
Make it easy to reply
A proactive message that reaches somebody who then cannot get an answer is worse than no message. Make sure the queue is staffed when it lands.
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