New Rich Features Support Deeper Customer Engagement on WhatsApp

New Rich Features Support Deeper Customer Engagement on WhatsApp

In August 2018, we launched the Twilio API for Whatsapp, enabling developers to reach their users directly in Whatsapp, using the same API they use for SMS. With over 1.6 billion monthly active users on WhatsApp, the Twilio API for Whatsapp allows you to meet your users where they are, in countries across LATAM, EMEA, and Southeast Asia where Whatsapp is the default messaging medium. 

Starting today, the Twilio API for WhatsApp supports read receipts and location messages, making one of the most popular rich messaging applications even more powerful.

Deliverability Insights to Improve Campaigns

In the world of SMS, insight into messaging often stops at deliverability. If you’re already building on the Twilio platform, you’ve likely used status callbacks or delivery receipts (DLRs) to help understand the efficacy of your messaging application. But that information can only go so far. You can see whether the message was accepted or delivered by Twilio’s carrier partners but are not able to confirm if your end-user ever saw the message.

To help you gain even greater insight into the preferences of your end-users, we now return a ‘READ’ status for messages that were read by the end-user. These insights allow you to measure campaign effectiveness and ultimately drive engagement with strategies like personalizing follow-ups based on whether the user read the previous message.

Improve Local Experiences with Location Support

Starting today, we are also extending the location message feature to all developers on the Twilio API for Whatsapp. Location messages open up new possibilities to provide delightful customer support experience.

For instance, consider the following scenarios:

• A business can send the closest store address to a user's location
• A customer can confirm the delivery address
• An end-user calling for assistance can share their location for expedient support

Location support is an extension to our continuous endeavor to provide a rich and universal messaging API for all developers, and the beginning of many more exciting launches to come. We can’t wait to see what you build with the Twilio API for Whatsapp!

Using the Twilio API for WhatsApp

Interested in getting started with Whatsapp? Check out our Quickstart to start developing in our Sandbox environment. While access to the Twilio API for WhatsApp is still limited, qualified businesses may also apply for a Business Profile.