Broadcasts & WhatsApp Templates

Overview

Both features live on the ChatGenius portal under their own sections, and they always work together:

• WhatsApp Templates are pre‑written messages that Meta reviews and approves. Once approved, you can send them to any WhatsApp contact, including people who haven’t messaged you in the last 24 hours.
• Broadcasts are campaigns that send one approved template to a list of contacts you pick by tag. You choose the template, pick the tags, preview the audience, and either send now or schedule it.

Meta bills your WhatsApp Business Account directly per message based on the template’s category and the recipient’s country. ChatGenius does not mark this up; you pay Meta the same as you would using their console.

Plan Requirements

Templates and broadcasts are bundled with WhatsApp access:

• Free and Creator plans: WhatsApp is not included, so neither feature is available.
• Professional ($99/mo): 500 broadcast recipients per month.
• Business ($297/mo): 5,000 broadcast recipients per month.
• Trial (Creator 7‑day free trial): broadcasts are disabled during the trial; you can build templates only after upgrading to a paid plan with WhatsApp.

One recipient counts as one against your monthly cap regardless of how many messages they replied with. A broadcast that would go over what you have left this month is blocked before it sends.

Beyond your ChatGenius plan, both features require WhatsApp to be connected and a payment method to be on file in WhatsApp Manager. See Connect WhatsApp › The Payment Method Step for the one‑time setup.

How Templates and Broadcasts Fit Together

Every WhatsApp broadcast is just a template send, repeated for many recipients. That means the order of operations is fixed:

1. You write a template in ChatGenius and submit it to Meta for review.
2. Meta approves it. This usually takes a few minutes to 24 hours. The template now sits in your library with status Approved.
3. You build a broadcast that uses that approved template, pick the audience by tag, fill in any dynamic values, and send.

Templates outside of broadcasts: any approved template can also be sent to a single contact from the conversation view when you need to reach someone outside the 24‑hour service window. Broadcasts and one‑off sends use the same approved templates.

Creating a Template

Open WhatsApp Templates in the ChatGenius portal and click New template. The form opens in a window with the template on the left and a live iPhone preview on the right that updates as you type.

• Name. Lowercase letters, numbers, and underscores, starting with a letter (e.g. appointment_reminder). Up to 100 characters. This is what Meta indexes the template by.
• Language. Pick the language Meta should review the template in.
• Header (optional). Text up to 60 characters (one variable at most), or a file: an image (JPG or PNG, up to 5 MB), a video (MP4 or 3GP, up to 16 MB), or a PDF (up to 100 MB). The file you upload is the sample Meta reviews, so use a real one.
• Message (required). Up to 1,024 characters. Use variables like {{first_name}} for anything that changes per person (see Variables).
• Footer (optional). Up to 60 characters. Common use: opt‑out wording like Reply STOP to opt out.
• Buttons (optional). See Buttons.

The preview shows the message the way it will look in WhatsApp, with your example values filled in.

Template Categories

Meta puts every template in one of three categories, which affects both the review and the per‑message price:

• Utility. Account updates, order and delivery updates, appointment reminders, confirmations. Templates you create in ChatGenius are submitted as Utility, the cheapest category and the quickest to approve.
• Marketing. Promotional offers, announcements, newsletters, re‑engagement. Reviewed more strictly and priced higher. Templates made in WhatsApp Manager under Marketing are imported and work in broadcasts.
• Authentication. One‑time passwords and verification codes, in a format Meta sets.

Meta can move a template to another category during review. The category shows on each template.

Variables

Anything that changes per person goes in as a variable. Type {{first_name}} (or any name you choose, lowercase letters, numbers and underscores) anywhere in the message, and the form adds an example field for it. Meta needs a realistic example for every variable to approve the template.

• Use clear names: {{first_name}}, {{order_number}}, {{appointment_time}}.
• Reuse a name to repeat the same value in two places.
• Templates made in WhatsApp Manager with numbered variables ({{1}}, {{2}}) work too.

When you build a broadcast, each variable can be the same text for everyone, or the contact’s first name with a fallback for people who have no name saved.

Buttons

A template can have up to 10 buttons:

• Quick replies. Tappable buttons that send a preset reply back into the conversation, like “Confirm” or “Reschedule”.
• Links (up to 2). Open a page in the browser. A link can end in a variable, so each broadcast can send people to a different page (for example a different offer).
• Call (1). A one‑tap phone call. Enter the number with the country code.

Labels can be up to 25 characters. You can mix types; quick replies always show first, as Meta requires.

Submission & Approval

Clicking Submit to Meta sends the template for review. From then on it has one of these statuses:

• Pending. Meta is reviewing. Most utility templates clear in minutes; the published limit is 24 hours.
• Approved. Ready to use in broadcasts and one‑off sends.
• Rejected. Meta declined it. The reason shows on the template. You can edit a rejected template and click Resubmit to Meta.
• Paused. Meta stopped an approved template because people blocked or reported it. It can’t be sent while paused. Meta lifts the pause on its own after a few hours, or you can reword it and resubmit.
• Disabled. Meta turned it off after repeated quality problems. Make a new template with different wording.

The tabs at the top of the page show how many templates are in each status.

Status Updates, Quality, and Delete

Statuses update on their own: Meta tells ChatGenius as soon as a template is approved, rejected, paused, or moved to another category, and the page checks again when you open it (and when you come back to it while a template is pending). Templates you build in WhatsApp Manager are imported, and templates deleted there are removed.

Each approved template shows Meta’s quality rating. A falling rating usually means people are blocking or reporting the message, so review the wording before you send it again.

Delete removes the template from ChatGenius and from your WhatsApp Business Account. If a template has several languages, you can delete one language and keep the rest. Deleting a template that a scheduled broadcast uses makes that broadcast fail.

Creating a Broadcast

Open Broadcasts and click New broadcast. Everything is on one screen, with a WhatsApp preview on the right that shows the message as the first recipient will see it:

1. Name. A label so you can find this broadcast later (e.g. April Promo).
2. Template. Pick an approved template. If it has variables, fill each one in, or use the contact’s first name with a fallback.
3. Who gets it. Pick tags (see Audience by Tags). The count of matching WhatsApp contacts updates as you go.
4. When. Send now, or schedule it (see Scheduling).

You can save it as a draft at any point and finish later. Before anything sends, ChatGenius checks it against your monthly recipient limit and asks you to confirm, because Meta bills each message.

Audience by Tags

Broadcasts reach contacts by their tags. Tags are added in Conversations and Contacts, and every tag your account has is listed.

Pick one or more tags, then choose how they combine:

• Any of these tags (default). Everyone with at least one of them. Use for broader audiences: spring‑promo or vip.
• All of these tags. Only people with every one. Use for narrow segments: vip and local‑customers.

Only contacts with a WhatsApp number are counted, and nobody gets the same broadcast twice, even with several matching tags.

Scheduling

Choose Send now, a quick pick (in 1 hour, tomorrow morning, next Monday), or any date and time. Times use your account’s time zone, which is set on the Connect page. Send and delivery times in a broadcast’s details show in your time zone too.

A scheduled broadcast can be changed until it starts: Edit it, use Change time, or move it back to drafts. For something you send regularly, Duplicate a past broadcast and adjust it.

Pausing, Cancelling, and Retrying

Each broadcast’s menu (and its details window) shows what you can do in its current state:

• Pause (while sending). Stops right away. What was sent stays sent; the rest waits until you resume.
• Resume (when paused). Carries on where it left off. Nobody gets it twice.
• Cancel (scheduled, sending, or paused). Stops it for good. People who haven’t received it won’t.
• Retry failed (once it has failures). Sends again to just the people it failed for. Useful when the failures were temporary.
• Duplicate (any broadcast). Opens a copy you can change and send.
• Delete (drafts, and cancelled broadcasts that sent nothing).

Throttling and Auto‑Pause

Broadcasts process in batches of 50 recipients per cron tick. The send rate is adaptive based on how Meta is responding: if Meta starts returning rate‑limit errors, the system slows down or pauses the batch for the next tick instead of pushing through and getting your account flagged.

A campaign auto‑pauses in three situations:

• Meta rate limit hit. Any rate‑limit error code from Meta pauses the campaign with a clear reason on the campaign card. Resume after a few minutes when the rate limit clears.
• High failure rate. If more than 5% of a batch fails for non‑transient reasons, the campaign pauses so you can investigate before burning through more recipients (and paying Meta for failed sends).
• Payment method removed. If Meta returns a payment error mid‑send (your WhatsApp Manager card was declined or removed), the campaign pauses with that reason. Add a working payment method back in WhatsApp Manager and resume.

Resuming a paused campaign starts from where it left off. Sent recipients are not re‑sent to.

Delivery and Reply Stats

Each campaign tracks five counters that update live as Meta reports back:

• Sent. Templates handed off to Meta successfully.
• Delivered. Meta confirmed the message reached the recipient’s device.
• Read. Recipient opened the message. Only counted if the recipient has read receipts enabled; some users disable them, so this number reads low even on healthy campaigns.
• Replied. Recipient sent any message back within 72 hours of getting the broadcast. Attribution is best‑effort: if the recipient already replied to a more recent broadcast, that one gets credit instead.
• Failed. Sends Meta rejected. Each failure has an error code and a plain‑language explanation. Common reasons: recipient not on WhatsApp, payment method missing, parameter count mismatch, header media unreachable.

Open a campaign to see the full recipient list with per‑recipient status. The list is exportable in case you want to follow up with failures by hand or feed delivered/read into a CRM.

Limits & Tier Access

What each plan gets:

Recipient counts reset on the first of each month. Broadcasts check what you have left before sending; one that would push you over is blocked with a message showing exactly how many recipients are left. Scheduled broadcasts count against the month they send in.

There is no per‑account limit on how many templates you can keep in your library, but Meta caps every WhatsApp Business Account at a few hundred approved templates total. You won’t hit this in normal use.

Meta Billing for Template Messages

Outside of ChatGenius’ subscription, Meta charges your WhatsApp Business Account directly for template sends. Pricing varies by category and recipient country:

• Utility templates are the cheapest, often a few cents per message in the US.
• Marketing templates are roughly twice the cost of utility.
• Authentication templates sit in between.
• Pricing differs by country; international sends cost more than domestic.

The exact rates live in Meta’s WhatsApp pricing documentation and are updated periodically. ChatGenius doesn’t add a markup; whatever Meta charges, that’s the cost. Your monthly Meta invoice arrives in WhatsApp Manager.

FAQ

Next Steps

You have the broadcast piece down. Other places to go from here:

• Connect WhatsApp, if WhatsApp isn’t connected yet or you haven’t confirmed your payment method.
• Team Inbox & Tags, for how to apply the tags that drive broadcast audiences during everyday conversations.
• Flow Builder, to build conversational flows that can react to broadcast replies (confirmations, reschedules, opt‑outs).
• Contacts, to see how broadcast replies feed into contact scoring and segmentation.

Stuck on a template that won’t approve or a broadcast that won’t send? Email [email protected] with the template name or campaign ID and we’ll pull the Meta‑side response and tell you exactly what to fix.