WhatsApp has over 2.5 billion active users and has been downloaded five billion times. Over 100 billion WhatsApp messages are sent every day.
Does your campaign use WhatsApp?
WhatsApp is a powerful tool for political campaigns (Tactical Tech)
- Messages come directly to the user's phone, from known contacts, and feel ‘personal’
- Immediacy of message delivery can create a feeling of urgency about particular topics
- Can be used to penetrate rural communities that don't have access to other platforms
- Send documents up to 100Mb
- It is cheap/free with encrypted communication
- Target individuals with personalized messages
Personalize your WhatsApp messages
Email campaigns personalize messages to improve response rates. Personalization works for WhatsApp messages too. How do you personalize campaign WhatsApp messages to send your contacts? How can images specific to the recipient be automatically attached to a WhatsApp message? TellThem.
WhatsApp message personalization made easy
Consider a simple use case: you'd like to send personalized WhatsApp messages to ten contacts. Each message should per personalized with a different greeting, message and image. This is how TellThem makes it fast and simple to do. You can do a lot more with the app, but this example shows the method.
1. Sign into your WhatsApp account on your phone and connect it to the WhatsApp app on your desktop computer. Go to TellThem.ap
2. Download the default template in which you can add your list of contacts and the message you want to send them. You can also include links to files, images, memes and videos in your message. This example uses this image stored on Google Drive.
3. Share your Google Sheet with sheetapi@sheetapi-255310.iam.gserviceaccount.com
4. Copy your Google Sheet URL and paste it in the TellThem.app
5. Hit SEND to send out customized WhatsApp messages to the people in your list
6. Send messages in compliance with WhatsApp Terms of Service
Customized WhatsApp messages
WhatsApp adoption
Hispanics use WhatsApp more than any other ethnic in the US
"Almost half (49%) of Hispanics use the app, according to a new report from the Pew Research Center. That makes perfect sense, considering it’s the dominant messaging platform in Latin America. The popularity of WhatsApp applies to US immigrant communities more broadly, who use it to communicate with family and friends in their home countries or elsewhere in the world. The immigrant-founded app rose to global ubiquity in part because of the low costs of communication compared to SMS or calls." - Quartz
For Millions of Immigrants, a Common Language: WhatsApp
"More than a billion people regularly use WhatsApp, which lets users send text messages and make phone calls free over the internet. Because it’s free, has a relatively good record on privacy and security, and is popular in so many parts of the world, WhatsApp has cultivated an unusual audience: It has become the lingua franca among people who, whether by choice or by force, have left their homes for the unknown. Adoption of WhatsApp often follows a curious pattern — older relatives often suggest it to younger ones, rather than the other way around." - NY Times
WhatsApp encryption
"WhatsApp's end-to-end encryption is used when you chat with another person using WhatsApp Messenger. End-to-end encryption ensures only you and the person you're communicating with can read or listen to what is sent, and nobody in between, not even WhatsApp. This is because with end-to-end encryption, your messages are secured with a lock, and only the recipient and you have the special key needed to unlock and read them". This encryption makes WhatsApp ideal for voting rights and other nonprofits that need to securely send documents to individuals.
Tell Them
TellThem (a DemLabs app) makes it easy to customize and send WhatsApp messages. This version of the app can currently be used for free. It is restricted to ten contacts and three customized fields.
Learn how TellThem can help your nonprofit or progressive campaign here.