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WhatsApp Automation via 360 Dialog

By Emily Tischler
May 2, 2022

We strongly recommend you to use the new FREE WhatsApp Official integration.

nerDigital Chatbot Marketing allows you to easily create WhatsApp bots to automate conversations between your business and your customers.

We partnered with 360Dialog, an official WhatsApp Business Partner, to allow you to create powerful WhatsApp bots for your business.

You can use the WhatsApp channel on our free plan but you need to pay 360Dialog $5 USD/month (fixed) to have access to the official WhatsApp Business API.

360Dialog offers the best price on the market. for only $5 USD you get:

✔️ Unlimited number of contacts.
✔️ Unlimited Free sessions message (Inbound/outbound).
✔️ No additional cost for sending template messages.

You will need to sign up to 360Dialog using our partner link in order to get the price of $5 USD/month.

In order to create your 360Dialg account navigate to Settings > Channels > WhatsApp

Click on Create your account on 360Dialog link:

WhatsApp-Automation

After obtaining your API key from 360Dialg

You will need to enter your API key from 360Dialg navigate to Settings > Channels > WhatsApp and then click on Connect

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Then enter your API key in the opened window:

WhatsApp-Automation-360Dialg-API-key-.jpg

1- Using sandbox for testing purposes

You can test WhatsApp bots for free by creating a sandbox account. To get a test API key, send a WhatsApp message from your phone to the phone number 4930609859535 with the content START or you can click this link https://wa.me/4930609859535?text=START

Sandbox Host: https://waba-sandbox.360dialog.io

It is important to note that in the sandbox mode, the bot will work only for your phone number.

2- Using your business phone number

Use nerDigital partner link to create your account on 360Dialog. After creating your account, you should generate your API and use it in nerDigital Chatbot Solution. Click HERE to learn about the onboard process.

It is important to note that even if your business doesn’t have a verified Facebook business manager, your business can still start using WhatsApp bots today. You can have conversations with a maximum of 10 people/day if you don’t send documents as part of Facebook Business Verification. Upon submission of documents, your limit will be raised to 1500 conversations a day. And after Facebook approves your business, your business will be able to have conversations with an unlimited number of customers. If your business was not approved in 30 days, your WhatsApp bot will stop working. Please learn more HERE.

3– Business verification

It isn’t required to complete Facebook business verification to start automating messages on WhatsApp. Without business verification, your business will be able to

  • Respond to unlimited customer-initiated conversations.

  • Send business-initiated conversations (template messages) to 50 unique customers in a rolling 24-hour period.

4- Migrating your phone number from another Business Solution Provider

If you already using the WhatsApp Business API, use this nerDigital partner link to initiate the process of migrating your phone number from any Business Solution Provider to 360 Dialog. There is no downtime during the process of migration. if you want to learn more check the 360 Dialog documentation.

5- Use WhatsApp Template Messages on your flows

To send a WhatsApp template message, first sync your template messages by navigating to Settings > Channels > WhatsApp and click on manage templates.

After you sync your WhatsApp Template Messages, you are ready to use Template Message on your flows.

WhatsApp-Template-Messages-on-your-flows.jpg

Send a broadcast using WhatsApp Template Messages

Navigate to Broadcasting > Broadcasts

Click on Send button

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Click on Message Channel:

Send-a-broadcast-using-WhatsApp-Template-Messages-message-channel.jpg

Then choose WhatsApp Template Messages:

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Create new contact and Send WhatsApp Template message

You can send WhatsApp template messages to users that opted-in to receive a message from you on your website or any other external source. In this case, since the contact isn't available on your list of contacts on nerDigital Chatbot Marketing, you will need to create the contact before send the WhatsApp Template Message.

Step by Step

1 – Create a flow, and set WhatsApp as starting step and add your template message to the starting step.

Create-new-contact-and-Send-WhatsApp-Template-message.png

2 – Create the contact using Create User API, Zapier, Integromate, …
3 – If you use any custom field to personalize your template message, set the value of the custom field using Set Custom Field API, Zapier, Integromate, …
4 – Send the flow that contains the template message using Send Flow API, Zapier, Integromate, …

Important information

WhatsApp’s bots don’t support Quick Replies like Messenger bots, but you can still use Quick Replies on the flow builder and if a user sends a message that matches the Quick reply title, the content connected to the Quick Reply will be sent to the user. For example, if a user received this flow below, and send a message “2”, the bot will respond “BBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBB”.

WhatsApp-Automation.png

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