Broadcasts

Send approved WhatsApp and Messenger templates to your contacts with per-recipient delivery and reply tracking

Broadcasts#

Broadcasts live in Outbound in the sidebar. A broadcast sends one approved message template to a chosen audience of your contacts — a payment-reminder batch, a class-suspension notice, a delivery advisory — with every recipient's outcome recorded: sent, delivered, read, replied, failed, or skipped with the reason.

Replies land back in your normal inbox, where your agent answers them like any other customer message.

What each channel can do#

These limits come from Meta, not AlonChat. Messenger has no sanctioned way to message someone who never messaged your Page, and no organic marketing path — sending promos through utility templates can get a Page's messaging revoked.

Templates#

Outside Meta's 24-hour reply window, messages must use a pre-approved template. The Outbound → Templates library shows every template on each connected account with its review status.

Two ways to get one:

1. Install the ready-made reminders. One click installs AlonChat's payment, booking, and order reminder templates onto your own Page or WhatsApp account and submits them to Meta for approval.
2. Write your own. The editor asks what the message is for — a reminder, an announcement, or a win-back — and applies the right rules automatically. Write the body with numbered variables like {{1}}, give one example value per variable (Meta requires this), and submit. Approval usually lands within a day.

Approved templates can't be edited — that's Meta's rule. Changing one means submitting the next version, and templates already used by Workflows keep working.

The same library powers Workflow follow-up reminders, so a template approved once works in both places.

Sending a broadcast#

Outbound → New broadcast walks through six steps:

1. Channel — pick WhatsApp or Messenger and the connected account to send from.
2. Audience — filter contacts by tags or how recently they were in touch. A live count shows exactly who will receive it and who is skipped, with reasons: unreachable on the channel, asked to stop messages, no marketing opt-in, or already messaged within the last day.
3. Template — choose from the approved templates that fit the broadcast's purpose.
4. Variables — map each template variable to real data: the customer's name, a contact field, a saved attribute, or fixed text. Contacts missing a required value are blocked with a reason — a template is never sent half-filled.
5. Schedule — send now or later, and decide whether the broadcast waits out your quiet hours. An urgent notice like a class suspension can be set to send regardless.
6. Review — the summary, the audience numbers, and a test send to your own WhatsApp number (or, on Messenger, to a conversation you pick) before anything goes out.

Broadcasts send at a steady pace rather than all at once, which protects your account standing with Meta. Each plan has a per-broadcast recipient limit, shown before you send.

After sending#

Outbound → History keeps every broadcast with its delivery breakdown. Open one to see each recipient's status and timestamps, including who replied within three days of receiving it.

If Meta pauses a template mid-send — it occasionally does this for quality review — the broadcast pauses with the unsent recipients preserved, you're alerted, and a Resume button continues exactly where it stopped once the template is available again.

Good practice#

• Broadcast to people who expect to hear from you: enrolled parents, active customers, buyers with pending orders.
• Keep announcements factual and useful. On Messenger especially, anything that reads as a promo risks the Page's messaging access.
• Use the test send. Thirty seconds of checking beats a wrong date on two hundred phones.
• For automatic one-at-a-time reminders tied to a customer's own journey, use a Workflow follow-up instead — broadcasts are for one message to many people at once.