Overview
Meta is experimenting with new strategies to ensure that brands provide more meaningful experiences on the WhatsApp channel, ensuring effective engagement in marketing conversations.
As a result, starting on April 1st, 2024, a temporary pause on marketing message campaigns with low read rates will come into effect. This pause will allow companies to iterate on models with lower engagement before increasing volume.
How does the pause of message templates currently work?
If a message template reaches a low-quality rating (a status of Active - Low quality) or has a low read rate, it is automatically paused for a period to protect the quality rating of the phone numbers that used the template.
The durations of the pauses are as follows:
- First occurrence: paused for 3 hours
- Second occurrence: paused for 6 hours
- Third occurrence: disabled
When a template is paused (status Paused), it cannot be sent to customers.
What's changing
As a result, some changes will impact templates in this context, such as:
- Consideration of read rates as a component of quality evaluation for marketing templates. This metric will be analyzed along with traditional indicators such as blocks and reports.
- Implementation of a temporary pause on marketing message campaigns with low read rates. This pause will allow companies to iterate on models with lower engagement before increasing volume. The measure will take effect from April 1st, 2024.
Why are read rates being included in the quality evaluation?
Meta understands that read rates are a crucial metric of user engagement and interest, providing insights into the relevance and value of messages to people.
Controlling low-quality messages is expected to improve overall engagement metrics for the platform, resulting in a better return on investment for companies.
What is the threshold for read rates that can lead to a template being paused?
Meta has not provided a specific threshold, as it may vary over time depending on overall user engagement on the platform.
However, the FAQ provided by the company states that "most companies with strong customer engagement maintain read rates of 65-80%."
How will companies track the read rates of sent templates?
Companies can monitor message read rates in real-time through a dedicated dashboard in Business Manager.
It is also possible to receive a read event webhook for each message (if the user has enabled the "read receipts" setting) via the message webhook.
We, from Blip, can track this information through the PBI Active Notifications Report. It is worth noting that we only receive this data from users who have the read report enabled.
Will companies receive any notice when templates are at risk of being paused due to low read rates?
Meta will continue to provide notifications about changes in template quality, as it currently does.
These notifications will be sent through webhooks and Business Manager (WABA) when a template's status changes from green (good quality) to yellow (medium quality/alert) or from yellow to red (low quality/template paused).
For now, on the Blip platform, we won't have this information on the template registration page.
How does Meta define which companies/templates will enter the regularity mechanism?
According to the documentation, newly created marketing templates and resumed ones will be subject to the regularity mechanism. Selection criteria for regularity are mainly based on the quality history of your company's templates.
When using a newly created or resumed marketing template, messages will be sent normally until an unspecified limit is reached. Once this limit is reached, subsequent messages using this template will be held to ensure sufficient time for customer feedback.
If the feedback is positive and changes the template rating to high quality, the held messages will be released and sent normally.
What happens if the template is paused and disabled?
If the template goes through the pacing mechanism and, after being paused, the quality drops to "low" status, Meta will not deliver the remaining messages in the queue and will notify the company.
In the report we have in Growth, the description of messages that were not sent will be: "Something went wrong: Template is temporarily unavailable to use because it was paused due to low quality."
