Tutorial: send your first campaign

🎯 Goal

Send a personalised festive offer to your customers in Jaipur, and see who read it and replied.

🧰 What you need

• A connected number (Connect a number)
• A spreadsheet of customers who agreed to WhatsApp messages
• A payment method on your WABA in WhatsApp Manager

What you’ll build: a Marketing template with an image and a button, a segment Jaipur customers, a test send to yourself, the real campaign, and a follow-up to people who didn’t reply.

Step 1: create the template

1. Templates → New template. Name festive_offer_2026, language English, category Marketing, type Standard.
2. Header: Image. Upload a clear photo of your festive box.
3. Body:

   Hi {{1}}, our Diwali boxes are here! 🪔 Order before {{2}} and get free delivery in Jaipur.

   Examples: Ravi, 28 Oct.
4. Footer: Reply STOP to unsubscribe.
5. Buttons: Visit website Order now → https://yourshop.in/diwali, and Quick reply Stop promotions.
6. Submit to Meta. Wait for Approved (click Sync from Meta to refresh).

Step 2: import your customers

1. Prepare customers.csv with the columns phone,name,city.
2. Contacts → Import CSV. Map phone → Phone number, name → Name, city → Custom field.
3. Numbers without a country code are in: India (+91). Tag every imported contact: import-diwali. How did these contacts opt in?: how they agreed (for example Checkout / order).
4. Import and check the summary.

Step 3: build the audience

1. Campaigns → New campaign. Name it Diwali offer — Jaipur, choose Send now and tick Show these messages in the Inbox.
2. Audience → Filtered: city is Jaipur. Note the count.
3. Save segment as Jaipur customers.

Step 4: map the message and test on yourself

1. Message: pick festive_offer_2026. {{1}} → Per recipient → Name; {{2}} → Same for everyone → 28 Oct.
2. Upload the header image.
3. Before the real send, go back to Audience, choose Upload or paste, and paste your own number and a colleague’s.
4. Review → Send now. Check it on your phone: name, image, button, footer.

SSharma Sweets✓

Hi Ravi, our Diwali boxes are here! 🪔 Order before 28 Oct and get free delivery in Jaipur.Reply STOP to unsubscribe · 10:00

↗ Order now↩ Stop promotions

Message

What your test recipient sees.

Step 5: send to everyone

1. Duplicate the test campaign (row menu). Rename it, and set the audience back to Filtered → Start from a saved segment → Jaipur customers.
2. On Review, check for a warning about your daily messaging limit. If you’re over it, Schedule half for tomorrow.
3. Send now.

Step 6: read the report and follow up

1. Campaigns → Report: watch delivered, read and replied grow.
2. Look at Failed — grouped by reason and clean bad numbers from your list.
3. Two days later: New campaign → Retarget → Those who never replied, with a gentle Utility-style reminder or a different offer.

login.meapi.in/campaigns/41/report

• The campaign report: sent, delivered, read and replied, and how they grew over time.
• The Failed card lists failed messages grouped by reason, so you can clean your list.

Handle the replies

Create a flow with a keyword trigger Stop promotions that adds the tag no-promo and replies “Done — no more offers from us.” Exclude no-promo from future marketing segments.

Common mistakes

• Sending to the whole list without a test. A wrong variable mapping reaches everyone.
• No payment method in Meta, so every message fails with a billing error.
• Promotional wording in a Utility template, which gets rejected or re-categorised.

What’s next

A/B test your next campaign →Find the better offer.Tutorial: welcome + away + menu →Handle the replies automatically.