Ask An Expert: What are WhatsApp Channels and how can my brand benefit?

Impressive user rates range from 80-90% in those aged 16 to 64 years old, and for over 65s it’s 58% – in short, exploring WhatsApp from a business perspective is definitely worth your while.

WhatsApp introduced WhatsApp Channels a few weeks ago (June 2023) – but what are they all about? How are they different to WhatsApp for Business?

WhatsApp Channels have been dubbed, by their creators, as ‘A Private Way to Follow What Matters’, delivering: “A simple, reliable, and private way to receive important updates from people and organizations, right within WhatsApp.”

Channels will be built inside your existing WhatsApp application, but within a new tab called Updates. This is where you’ll find Channels you can choose to follow if you’re interested – or create your own – and all this will be separate from your chats with family, friends, and communities.

In its most basic terms, Channels are a one-way broadcast tool for administrators to send text, photos, videos, stickers, and polls.

This presents a huge opportunity for larger-scale businesses and organisations to use this powerful communication tool to reach large numbers of subscribed customers and audiences directly – and very quickly – with updates, promotions, announcements, customer service notifications or any other relevant information.

This is something that’s been impossible to do en masse using WhatsApp before now, with limits on functionality and numbers of contacts being evident across Apple and Android devices.

To help your customers and clients select Channels to follow that are relevant to them, WhatsApp has built a searchable directory where they can find hobbies, sports teams, updates from local authorities, and loads more.

Users can also get to a channel, and hopefully go on to subscribe to it, from invite links sent in chats, email, or posted online. So it’s looking pretty accessible across the board.

By its own admission, WhatsApp is “aspiring to build the most private broadcast service available”, starting by protecting the personal information of both admins and followers.

So if you’re a channel admin, your phone number and profile photo won’t be shown to followers. Likewise, following a channel won’t reveal your phone number to the admin or anyone else, including the Channel’s other followers. Who you decide to follow is your choice and it’s private.

1. Instant Delivery:

One major benefit over using more traditional comms methods like emails or text messages is that messages sent via WhatsApp Channels are delivered instantly via push notification once someone is subscribed to your Channel. This ensures that important information is received right away instead of having to wait for recipients to open emails or text messages before they can see, and then act upon, your message.

2. Built-In Platform:

Because Whatsapp Channels is built into the platform itself, this means you can share content across multiple platforms including Facebook Messenger. This makes it easier for businesses to spread their message to a wider range of audiences, increasing the chances of successful engagement.

3. Cost-Effective:

Using Whatsapp Channels can also save businesses money in terms of communication costs, since there is no need to pay extra fees for software that sends out text messages, for example.

The main difference between WhatsApp Channels and WhatsApp for Business is the way they are used by companies to communicate with their customers.

WhatsApp Channels are designed for businesses to broadcast messages in bulk to all subscribed users on their channel, while WhatsApp for Business is designed specifically for customer service.

Convinced you need to try out Channels for your brand? Hold your horses for now – as of June 2023, it’s currently only available to a select few organisations and ‘global voices’ in Colombia and Singapore. This is to give WhatsApp the chance to build, learn, and adapt the experience before rolling it out further.

It’s looking likely that Channels will be landing in more countries over the coming months, providing the ability for anyone to create a Channel.

As specialists in Public Sector PR, we think Channels could be an invaluable resource to help combat bounce rates and newsfeed over-saturation, distributing public service messaging quickly and effectively – we’ll be keeping an eye on any developments as they come.

Hannah Monaghan
Viva’s business development manager