In this guide, we'll unravel the various WhatsApp account types, helping you pinpoint the one that's a perfect match for your business. Stay tuned as we embark on this journey to simplify your WhatsApp marketing strategy!
What are the Types of WhatsApp Accounts?
Understanding the different types of WhatsApp accounts is crucial for leveraging this platform effectively. So without further ado... let's jump right into it!
There are three types of WhatsApp accounts:
3. Official WhatsApp Business Account
Let's delve into what each type offers, its features, and its benefits.
Personal WhatsApp account
The Personal WhatsApp Account is the familiar everyday tool that most of us use to communicate with friends and family. Installing and using is even fairly simple, requiring nothing more than a smartphone, the WhatsApp app, and your phone number to get started.
Key Features & Benefits:
- Simple Messaging: Designed for effortless communication, it allows you to stay in touch with friends and family.
- Personal Communication: Ideal for one-on-one interactions, making it perfect for personal use.
Here is a quick guide to WhatsApp business greeting messages with examples & best practices: Click Here to Access
Also, you can download these templates HERE
WhatsApp Business Account
Designed for small businesses, the WhatsApp Business Account helps separate your professional life from your personal one. Available for free, it's the perfect WhatsApp platform for engaging with up to a thousand customers per month. Key features include a customizable Business Profile, away and greeting messages, quick replies for efficient customer interactions, and conversation labels for organizational ease. Additionally, the catalogue feature showcases your products or services, and the ability to send broadcast messages keeps your customers informed. This account strikes the right balance between personal touch and professional management, making it ideal for small businesses looking to enhance their customer communication on WhatsApp.
Features
- Business Profile
- Catalogue
- Quick Replies
- Greeting Message
- Away Message
- Message Labels
- Short Link
Most of these features can be found in the "Business Tools" section. You can navigate there by tapping⋮ > More options > Business tools in the top right corner of your WhatsApp Business App.
Now let's talk about each of these features in detail.
Business Profile
Craft a comprehensive business profile on WhatsApp to provide your customers with essential information such as your business address, description, email, and website link. This serves as the first point of interaction and helps in building trust.
Catalog Feature
Leverage the catalogue feature to showcase your offerings, allowing you to list up to 500 products or services directly on your profile. This not only makes it convenient for customers to browse and learn about your products but also facilitates easy sharing among their networks, potentially widening your customer reach.
Quick Replies
Enhance your response efficiency with quick replies, which are pre-set messages for common queries. This feature supports not just text, but also GIFs, images, and videos, allowing for a more engaging and faster communication process.
Greeting Messages
Set up WhatsApp greeting message to automatically welcome new customers or re-engage those who haven't interacted with your chat for over 14 days. You have the flexibility to target these messages based on customer segments, such as
- Everyone: Send the greeting message to anyone who messages you
- Everyone not in your address book: Send the greeting message to contacts that aren't in your contact list
- Everyone except: Send the greeting message to all numbers except a select few.
- Only send to: Send the greeting message to select recipients
Away Messages
Configure away messages to automatically inform your customers when you are unavailable. These messages can be customized to activate during specific hours or in response to select contacts, ensuring continuous communication even when you're not actively managing chats.
Message Labels
Organize your chats and customers effectively with labels. These can be colour-coded for easy identification and applied to entire conversations or specific messages, helping you manage your business communications with greater ease.
Short Link
The short link feature provides you with a unique URL that opens a direct chat with your business when accessed. This link, automatically generated upon setting up your account, can be shared to facilitate easier initiation of conversations by customers, enhancing accessibility to your business. Your short link can be found under the "reach more customers" section in Business Tools.
Each of the above features is designed to streamline communication and enhance customer engagement, making the WhatsApp Business app an essential tool for small businesses looking to expand their digital presence.
Note:
Please note that a single phone number cannot be simultaneously linked to both a personal WhatsApp account and a WhatsApp Business account. Should you choose to open a WhatsApp Business account using a number currently associated with a personal account, you will be prompted to transfer your existing account information, including chat history and media, to the newly created WhatsApp Business account.
WhatsApp Business API
The WhatsApp Business API is different from a regular app because it doesn't come with its own front-end interface. It works as a programming interface that allows you to connect to WhatsApp API’s endpoint. This allows larger businesses to integrate their business systems such as CRM and marketing platforms directly with WhatsApp API.
Tailored for growing and large businesses, the WhatsApp Business API offers additional advanced features. It lets you set up WhatsApp automation, team inbox, unlimited WhatsApp broadcast, send various notifications like transactional messages, shipping updates, abandoned cart alerts, order statuses, and collect feedback or product reviews. This makes it a powerful tool for businesses that need to communicate with many customers on a large scale.
Wanna know about WhatsApp Business API in detail? Here is your 2024 Ultimate Guide to WhatsApp Business API - Click Here to Read
Key Features
Here are some of the key features of the WhatsApp Business API platform:
- Leverage shared team inbox where multiple team members can manage customer communications at the same time
- Send unlimited WhatsApp broadcasts to saved and unsaved contacts
- Send interactive messages with carousels, quick reply buttons, cards, and more
- Setup WhatsApp chatbots and automate your customer queries
- Setup high-level WhatsApp automation and respond to customer queries in seconds
- Send alerts and reminders, promote products and services, and all kinds of business notifications
- Track real-time analytics and KPIs of team members and your WhatsApp marketing campaigns
- Seamlessly integrate with third-party apps, CRM, and marketing platforms
- Green tick verified WhatsApp Business profile
To be able to leverage these features you'd need a WhatsApp API platform like DoubleTick. We are one of the top WhatsApp Business API solution providers that offer all the above pre-build features in a single platform that empowers your sales team to sell more in less time. With DoubleTick you can send bulk WhatsApp broadcasts to unlimited saved and unsaved contacts, set up smart WhatsApp automation, leverage our AI-powered WhatsApp chatbots to automate customer queries, take advantage of our order booking bot to receive orders on WhatsApp, send order status alerts, abandoned cart recovery notifications, collect customer feedback, product review requests, and more.
Here is your one-stop guide to WhatsApp Broadcast: Click To Read
Which WhatsApp Platform is Best for You?
If you're just starting up, perhaps selling a few items each month, using your personal WhatsApp account can be quite easy and handy. But as your business begins to grow and the volume of sales increases, you might find that this setup no longer meets your needs. At this point, upgrading to a WhatsApp Business account becomes crucial. This version is crafted to segregate your personal and professional conversations, providing a more structured and professional way to communicate with an expanding customer base.
As your business continues to scale and aims to reach a wider market, the logical progression is to move to the WhatsApp Business API. This platform is designed with growing businesses in mind, offering sophisticated features that facilitate a more efficient management of customer interactions. The WhatsApp Business API enables the use of automation in marketing, sales, and customer service, helping to maintain high engagement levels with your audience, which in turn, can significantly boost conversions and sales.
In essence, starting with a Personal WhatsApp Account is just the beginning of your digital communication journey. As your business requirements evolve, transitioning to WhatsApp API is the best idea to meet the growing demands of your business.
Up next let's explore how to get access to WhatsApp Business API?
How to Get WhatsApp API?
There are two ways to get access to WhatsApp API:
2. Through a WhatsApp API Solution Provider Like DoubleTick
Let's talk about the pros and cons of each in detail.
Directly Through Meta
You can directly apply for the official WhatsApp Business API from Meta but going down this path isn’t particularly efficient. If you're a mid-scale company you'd need a developer to set up the API which is too labour-intensive, technically challenging and time-consuming. However, this allows for more customization and control over your integration.
With this option, you only pay for the service you use and can also scale the product in-house as your business grows.
In terms of support, you'll get limited technical support from the Meta team and you'll have to rely on your own resources or seek help from online communities if you encounter any issues.
Of all the cons, One of the major disadvantages is that Meta doesn't support Indian credit cards making it difficult for Indian businesses to avail the service directly.
Here are the easy ways to add WhatsApp to your website for FREE: Click HERE to Read
Get It Through a WhatsApp API Solution Provider
Going with a WhatsApp solution partner is one of the best and easiest ways to get access to WhatsApp API. Your WhatsApp solution partner, like DoubleTick, will get quick approval and can swiftly set up the WhatsApp Business API platform for you. For instance, with DoubleTick, the process takes between two to three days.
At DoubleTick, we’ll handle the entire setup process for you so that you can access pre-build and ready-to-use advanced features like bulk broadcasting, WhatsApp chatbots, order booking bots, campaign and team analytics, differentiated WABA numbers, custom integrations with any third-party business tools you use and much more. With DoubleTick the possibilities to scale your business are endless.
For Indian businesses, DoubleTick can work as a charm as we can manage billing with Meta on your behalf, and offer much more flexibility in terms of payment options. This way, you can easily manage your budget and have a more efficient billing process. You can pay via a wide range of payment gateways—Stripe, Razorpay, Worldpay, and more—depending on what’s easiest for you.
We also support you with dedicated AM, handholding till you get through the product features and use cases, and 24x7 support via phone call, WhatsApp, or email. We also have direct connections with Meta’s support team that can help resolve any technical issues quickly and efficiently.
How To Get DoubleTick?
Kindly email us at grow@quicksell.co or Click the Below Banner to get a FREE DEMO to learn about our product offering, features and pricing plans.
Now transform WhatsApp into the ultimate sales engine to delight customers and drive revenue with DoubleTick!
Or Download the application from the Playstore or Appstore
Why DoubleTick?
If you're looking for the best MarCom tool that can send unlimited messages to your customers on WhatsApp without getting blocked then DoubleTick is the best business solution for you. Here are a few of the top reasons to sign up with DoubleTick WhatsApp API.
- Super intuitive, easy to use and mobile-friendly.
- Bulk broadcast your messages and catalogue to unlimited saved and unsaved contacts.
- Automate WhatsApp marketing by scheduling your broadcast messages.
- Stay on top of your WhatsApp marketing campaign with real-time analytics and detailed reports to track your metrics and fine-tune your approach.
- Single WhatsApp number for your entire company with a cloud-based team inbox and role-based access.
- End-to-end automated catalogue sharing and order booking via AI-powered commerce BOT.
- WhatsApp automation via AI-powered active WhatsApp chatbot that can answer customers’ queries, send automated anniversaries & birthday wishes, abandoned cart notifications, pending balance reminders, bills and all kinds of alerts to customers.
- Choose your favourite tools such as Shopify, Zapier, Google Sheets, WooCommerce etc. and integrate them with DoubleTick in just a few clicks.
- Differentiated WABA numbers cater to cross-functional teams, ensuring specialized handling of diverse business operations.
- Block unwanted messages and maintain the quality of your business interactions.
- Number masking so that your customer data is saved with you.
- Integrate personalised URLs with your communications and track the click rate in real-time.
- 24/7 Customer support is available on call, WhatsApp or email.
Read more about DoubleTick here - What is DoubleTick and How This Could Be Your Greatest WhatsApp Marketing and Sales Tool
How to Get DoubleTick for FREE?
Step 1: Download the DoubleTick App
Navigate to the Play Store or Apple Store and download DoubleTick. You can also download the app here:
iPhone Users: Download Here
Android Users: Download Here
Step 2: Sign Up for a Free Demo Account
Before you commit, we want you to experience the power of DoubleTick firsthand. Sign up with DoubleTick and access the platform, where you can explore and test the features of the product.
Looking to get WhatsApp Business API for FREE?
CLICK HERE to know how to get WhatsApp Business API for Free
Wrapping Up!
In essence, for businesses eager to actively use WhatsApp as a marketing and sales channel, opting for the WhatsApp Business API is highly recommended. Leveraging tools like DoubleTick even simplifies the journey. From registration and creating your business profile to setting up your WhatsApp catalogue and automating communications via WhatsApp chatbots we'll take care of everything. We'll also ensure you've a seamless experience in selling and engaging with your customers on WhatsApp.
Check DoubleTick Pricing HERE
WhatsApp Business API Conversation Cost Explained: Click Here to Access the Guide
