Which Customer Groups Should You Separate for WhatsApp Campaign Messages?

Before you send a WhatsApp campaign message, separate six groups from the rest of your customer list: customers who ordered recently, customers who have not ordered for a long time, members who have never ordered, customers with a high order value, customers who have bought from the campaign category before and customers who return items often. For each of these groups, something changes: the offer, the first sentence of the message or the decision to send at all. Every other customer with communication consent gets the general campaign message.

The cost of sending everyone the same message

Sending one message to your whole list costs you in two ways. The first is money: every message you send to a customer who will not be interested in the offer is a fee paid for nothing. The second comes from WhatsApp’s own rules. Under the WhatsApp Business Messaging Policy, users can block or report businesses, and WhatsApp may limit the number of messages a business can send based on this feedback.

According to Meta’s developer documentation, WhatsApp may also limit the number of marketing messages a user receives from businesses in a given period. The same page says that every marketing message delivered counts toward this limit, and that one of the factors behind the limit is the person’s read rate for these messages. An irrelevant message makes it more likely that you will be blocked; if it goes unread, it can also reduce the number of marketing messages that can reach that customer.

That is also why it helps to take customers who have not opened any of your messages in recent campaigns out of the general list. If your tool shows whether a message was read, write to these customers only when the campaign is for a category they have bought from before.

The six groups to separate

We covered the general logic of dividing customers into groups in our article on customer segmentation. You separate the groups below when you choose recipients in WhatsApp bulk messaging, either by uploading a separate list for each group or, if your tool allows it, by filtering the recipients.

1. Customers who ordered recently

A customer who learns from your message that the product they bought at full price last week is now discounted will not be happy. They may ask you to refund the difference, or they may return the product and order it again. Take customers whose order has not been delivered yet, or whose return window is still open, off the general campaign list. If you still want to message this group, feature a product that complements what they bought rather than the product itself:

Hello {{customer name}}, thank you for your {{product name}} order. This week there is {{discount rate}}% off in our {{complementary category}} category. You can browse the products here: {{category link}}

2. Customers who have not ordered for a long time

What counts as “a long time” varies from store to store. You can start by looking at how often your customers normally order and putting anyone who has gone twice that long without ordering into this group. Telling this customer that “the seasonal sale has started” is not enough, because they most likely did not buy during your earlier campaigns either. Open the message with the category they last bought from, and keep the offer personal and valid for a short time only.

If the customer is already receiving messages from an automated win-back flow, take them off the campaign list so that they do not get two different offers in the same week. Pushouse has a module for this, WhatsApp We Miss You: the “becoming less active” and “lost customers” groups form automatically based on purchase history, and the flow stops when the customer places an order.

3. Members who have never ordered

Along with price, hesitation often keeps people in this group from placing a first order: will the size fit, when will the order arrive, are returns easy? Answer these questions in the campaign message, and lead with free shipping or easy returns rather than a bigger discount. If you have already sent the member a first-purchase incentive code, state clearly in the message whether that code can be combined with the campaign discount.

4. Customers with a high order value

An extra discount for a customer who already spends a lot usually means giving up profit. Offer this group priority rather than a lower price: tell them about the campaign a day before everyone else, and give them first access to the sizes you expect to sell out or to the new season. Set the threshold from your own data. Customers who are clearly above your average order value and have placed more than one order are a reasonable starting point.

5. Customers who have bought from the campaign category before

If the campaign covers a single category, write first to the customers who have bought from that category before. Mention the category by name in the first sentence of the message, and make the link go straight to that category instead of the homepage. Send a baby-category campaign to someone who has never bought a baby product and you give them a reason to block you. If the campaign covers the whole store, separate only the customers who have bought from your two or three best-selling categories, and open each group’s message with its own category.

6. Customers who return items often

Sending a discount to a customer who returns most of their orders drives up your shipping and operating costs. Keep this group out of campaign messages that include a discount. If you do not want to cut off contact completely, write to them about something that does not involve a discount, such as the size chart, new arrivals or the in-store pickup option. Because this is a promotional message too, the consent requirement applies just the same. Decide for yourself where to draw the line, and do not put a customer with only a few orders into this group because of a single return.

When a customer falls into two groups

Each customer should get only one message per send. To avoid overlaps, put the groups in priority order and assign each customer to the first group on the list that they fit. For most stores, this order is a good place to start:

1. Customers who return items often (no discount message)
2. Customers who ordered recently (taken off the general list, or sent a complementary-product message)
3. Customers with a high order value (early access)
4. Customers who have not ordered for a long time (personal offer)
5. Members who have never ordered (shipping and returns information)
6. Customers who have bought from the campaign category before (message that opens with the category)
7. All other customers with communication consent (general message)

The list puts the groups where you restrict sending first and the groups where you change the offer next; the group where only the wording changes comes last.

Customers to take off the list entirely

First remove anyone without communication consent and anyone who has told you they do not want to receive messages. Under Article 6 of Türkiye’s Law No. 6563 on the Regulation of Electronic Commerce, commercial electronic messages may be sent to recipients only with their prior consent; under Article 8, a recipient may refuse these messages at any time without giving a reason. The Regulation on Commercial Communication and Commercial Electronic Messages, which is based on this law, also treats consent as invalid unless it is recorded in the Message Management System (İleti Yönetim Sistemi, İYS), Türkiye’s national system for managing consent to commercial electronic messages; a commercial electronic message cannot be sent to a recipient who has no consent on record in İYS.

The WhatsApp Business Messaging Policy points in the same direction: you may message a person only if they have given you permission, and you must comply with requests to opt out. We also recommend leaving customers out of the campaign if they have an open complaint or an unresolved support request, if their order is delayed, or if their message could not be delivered in the previous campaign because their number turned out to be invalid.

How many groups do you need if your customer list is small?

For a list of a few hundred people, writing six separate messages is usually not worth the effort. Start with three splits: remove customers who return items often, keep customers who ordered recently out of this campaign, and write a separate message for customers who have not ordered for a long time. Everyone else gets the same message. Separate a group only if it is large enough to justify a message of its own and its offer or link is really different.

The data you need to build the groups

For the six groups, the following information per customer is enough: the date and status of the last order, the number of orders, the average order value, the categories they have bought from, the number of returns and communication consent. You can build the groups from this information by hand in Excel, but you have to start from scratch for every campaign. On Pushouse’s Website AI Reporting screen, you describe the audience you are looking for in a sentence, for example “bought trousers in the last 60 days but did not buy a sweatshirt.” The screen shows the number of people and how many of them can receive a message, and you send the list directly to bulk messaging.

On the day you send, note how many people are in each group and how many of them have communication consent; you will need these numbers when you compare results. Remove from this send any customers who are still receiving messages from an automated flow such as win-back, first purchase or cart recovery. Also check that no customer is on two lists at once. Click the link in each group’s message to make sure it goes to the right category or product, and check that the coupon code is set up for that group and has the right expiration date.

When writing the text for each group, you can draw on our 10 campaign message examples. After sending, compare the results group by group, because the overall result does not show which split worked. For the technical side of sending, see our article on sending bulk WhatsApp messages, and to try this with your own customer list, get in touch with us.