Broadcasts

Send an approved template to many contacts at once — now, later or on repeat: audiences, exclusions, per-recipient variables, drafts, delivery status and re-targeting.

A broadcast sends one approved template to many people — one real message each, through your own number, with per-recipient personalisation and per-recipient delivery status. It is not a group message: nobody sees anyone else.

WhatsApp → Broadcasts is the one place for them. New broadcast opens a four-step wizard, and its last step decides whether the broadcast goes out now, once at a time you pick, or on a repeating schedule. Members with the Agent role or above can create one.

A broadcast is always a template send, because most of the audience will be outside the 24-hour window. Only Approved templates are offered.

Step 1 — Template

Pick from your approved templates. Each card shows the name, Meta category, body and language. If the list is empty, create one first: Message templates.

Changing the template later in the wizard clears every value you had filled in — variables, header media, button values, carousel cards. They are keyed to one template’s shape, so carrying them across would send the wrong things without saying so.

Step 2 — Audience

Audience	What it means
All Contacts	Every contact in this workspace
Filter by Tags	Contacts carrying any of the tags you pick
Saved Segments	One or more segments, unioned
Custom Field	A custom field that is, is not or contains a value
Upload CSV	A list of phone numbers, with optional names
Re-target a broadcast	The recipients of an earlier broadcast, by outcome

Re-targeting offers three outcomes, and they mean different things:

• Didn’t reply — reached them, but they never wrote back.
• Didn’t open — delivered, but never read.
• Failed to deliver — never reached them at all. A retry, not a nudge.

Exclusions

Two exclusion pickers apply to every audience type, not just segments: exclude tags and exclude segments. “Everyone except last month’s buyers” is the shape most suppression lists take.

Who is always dropped

Regardless of the audience:

• Contacts who have opted out. Somebody who replied STOP (or tapped an opt-out button) is skipped, and there is no way to switch that off. If everyone in an audience has opted out, the send is refused with the count so it does not read as a broken filter.
• Contacts with no phone number. An Instagram-only contact cannot receive a WhatsApp message.

An estimated recipient count is shown as you build the audience, with both rules already applied. The review step shows the exact count, worked out by Watx for every audience type.

CSV uploads

Numbers are converted to international format using your workspace’s country setting. Rows that cannot be parsed are skipped. A number that already exists as a contact is matched rather than duplicated; a new number becomes a contact with the source broadcast.

Step 3 — Personalize

Each placeholder in the template gets a mapping type:

Mapping type	What it sends
Static Value	The same text for everybody
Contact Field	The contact’s Contact Name, Phone Number, Email Address or Company
Custom Field	The value of one of your custom fields for that contact

Everything the template needs beyond the body is collected here too — header media (typed URL or picked from the media library), header text, a location pin’s four fields, URL-button and copy-code values, and each carousel card’s media, body values and button values. Those are the same for everybody in the audience; only the body mapping varies per contact.

A live preview renders the message using your first real contact’s values.

You cannot continue until every placeholder is mapped: Meta rejects the whole message on one missing value.

Step 4 — Review and send

Broadcast name — only your team sees it.

When should it go out?

Choice	What happens
Send now	Starts going out as soon as you confirm
Schedule	Goes out once, at a date and time you pick
Repeat	Goes out daily, weekly or monthly, until you stop it

Schedule and Repeat are covered in Scheduled and repeating broadcasts. Repeat is not available for an Upload CSV or Re-target a broadcast audience.

Summary — the template, its language, the audience in words, and how many people it reaches. For a scheduled or repeating broadcast the count is labelled Would reach today, because the audience is worked out again when it sends. Opted-out contacts that were skipped are counted beside it. If nobody in the audience can be messaged, the page says so and the send button stays disabled.

The messaging limit card warns when the audience looks larger than your remaining daily allowance. It never blocks the send — the usage figure behind it counts broadcasts only, so it is a floor rather than a total. It is not shown for a repeating broadcast.

The button follows your choice — Send broadcast, Schedule broadcast or Start repeating — and a confirmation dialog repeats the name, the count and, for a schedule, when it goes out.

Drafts

Save as draft keeps everything you have filled in: the template, the audience (an uploaded list included), and every variable and send-time value. Drafts are listed in the Drafts tab.

Continue editing reopens the wizard with the draft filled in, and its button becomes Update draft. Sending or scheduling a draft replaces it — it leaves the Drafts tab and appears in History, Scheduled or Repeating.

If the draft’s template is no longer approved, the wizard says so and asks you to pick another.

Duplicating a broadcast

Duplicate — in a row’s menu, or on a broadcast’s page — opens the wizard with the same template, audience and values, named ”… (copy)”. Use it to send something again, or to change a scheduled broadcast.

A sent broadcast does not keep an uploaded list, so a duplicate of one asks you to upload the list again.

What happens after you press send

The broadcast is accepted, then fanned out into one job per recipient.

Status	Meaning
Draft	Saved, never sent
Scheduled	Waiting for its send time
Queued	Accepted; the fan-out has not started yet
Sending	Messages are going out
Sent	Finished; at least one message went out
Failed	Finished with nothing sent at all, or a scheduled broadcast that could not start — the reason is shown
Cancelled	A scheduled broadcast you cancelled; nothing was sent

Per-recipient status is the ladder Meta reports: Pending → Sent → Delivered → Read, plus Replied when the person writes back, and Failed with the reason.

Sending is deliberately paced — by default around 10 messages a second, which matches the tier every new number starts on.

Retries: a throttle from Meta or a network failure is retried with a growing delay. A rejection on the merits — an unapproved template, a bad parameter, a number that cannot receive template messages — is recorded and never retried, because it would fail identically every time. If the server restarts mid-send, the broadcast resumes: the recipient rows are the work list, and only the ones still pending are sent.

Common per-recipient failures you will see in the table: Contact opted out of marketing, No phone number on contact, Invalid phone number, and WhatsApp not configured.

The Broadcasts page

Four tabs, each with a count:

Tab	What it lists
History	Everything that has gone out, is going out, failed or was cancelled
Scheduled	One-off broadcasts waiting for their time — see Scheduled and repeating broadcasts
Repeating	Broadcasts that send on a schedule
Drafts	Unfinished broadcasts

A search box filters every tab by name or template. History also has a status filter: All statuses, Sending, Sent, Failed and Cancelled. A failed broadcast shows its reason under its name; a send made by a repeating broadcast shows a repeat icon and Repeats · followed by its name.

The row menu offers Open, Duplicate and, once a broadcast has finished, Delete. While a broadcast is queued or sending, it cannot be deleted — messages already in flight would leave the report inconsistent.

The page refreshes on its own while anything is sending, and shortly before a scheduled broadcast is due.

The broadcast report

Opening a broadcast shows six counters — Recipients, Sent, Delivered, Read, Replied, Failed — a funnel, and the full recipient list with a status filter and each failure’s reason. Export CSV downloads every recipient.

Under the funnel, three buttons start a follow-up broadcast to the people who didn’t reply, didn’t open, or whom it failed to deliver to. They open the wizard with that audience already selected.

The top of the page also says:

• when a scheduled broadcast sends, with Send now and Cancel;
• why a failed broadcast did not go out;
• when a cancelled broadcast was cancelled;
• that a draft is a draft, with Continue editing;
• which repeating broadcast a send belongs to, with a link to all its sends.

Duplicate and Delete are there too. Counters and the funnel only appear once a broadcast has started sending.

Plan limits

Broadcasts and messages both count against your plan. Before a broadcast is written, Watx checks that the whole send fits in the month’s remaining message allowance, so a large audience cannot start on a plan that would run out three-quarters of the way through. If it does not fit, the send is refused with the numbers and a link to upgrade. See Plans and billing.

A scheduled or repeating broadcast is checked when you set it up and again when each send goes out. A send the plan no longer covers is marked Failed with the reason.

Related

• Scheduled and repeating broadcasts — sending later, or on a schedule.
• Analytics — broadcast and template performance over a date range.
• Segments — building the audiences you send to.