Before you send one campaign announcement to your whole list, separate six customer groups: 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 group, something changes: the offer, the first sentence of the message, or the decision to send at all. Every other customer with consent to commercial messages gets the general campaign message; a customer without consent goes into no group at all.
By the end you will be able to draw the line for each group from your own order data, decide which message a customer gets when they fit two groups, and know who comes off the list entirely. If your list is only a few hundred people, you will also see which three splits are enough and what to check on the day you send.
The cost of sending everyone the same message
Sending one message to your whole list costs you in two ways. The first is money: according to Meta’s pricing documentation, every message sent with a marketing template on WhatsApp is charged, and the charge applies once the message is delivered. You pay for the message that reaches a customer who was never going to be interested in the offer, too. The second cost 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 it is the person’s recent read rate for marketing messages. An irrelevant message can give the customer a reason to block or report you; if it goes unread, it can also reduce the number of marketing messages that can reach that customer.
For the same reason, it pays 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 covers 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. Under Türkiye’s Distance Contracts Regulation (Mesafeli Sözleşmeler Yönetmeliği, the rules for online and other remote sales), a consumer can withdraw from the contract without giving any reason during the fourteen days that start on the day they receive the goods, apart from the exceptions the regulation lists; they can also use this right before delivery. Take customers whose order has not been delivered yet, or was delivered less than fourteen days ago, off the general campaign list. If your store offers a longer return period, draw the line at that period instead.
A customer you take off the list may still see the sale on your site or on social media. If the campaign also covers the product they have just bought, tell your customer service team in advance, so the answer to a customer asking for the price difference is settled before you send.
If you still want to message customers who ordered recently, feature a product that complements what they bought rather than the product itself, and send the message after the order has been delivered. A message like this, with a discount in it, is not an order notification, so it can go only to customers who have consented to commercial messages. Türkiye’s Regulation on Commercial Communication and Commercial Electronic Messages does not allow any product to be promoted or advertised in notifications about a purchase or a delivery (Article 6). Instead of adding the offer to the bottom of the shipping notification, send it as a separate campaign message:
{{store name}}: Hi {{customer name}}, we hope your {{product name}} turned out just as you expected. This week there is {{discount rate}}% off {{complementary category}} items that go well with it, valid until 23:59 on {{end date}}: {{category link}}
If you would rather not receive campaign news, tap “Stop promotions” below.
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.
A personal offer means the code should be personal and single-use as well. If a code anyone can use gets passed around, customers who would have bought anyway, without needing this offer, can use the discount too, and the budget you set aside for winning customers back can end up with them.
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
Hesitation can hold back a member who has never ordered as much as price can: 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 in one sentence whether that code can be combined with the campaign discount. There is a legal reason to spell out the conditions as well: for commercial communication that offers a discount or a gift, Article 5 of Türkiye’s Law No. 6563 on the Regulation of Electronic Commerce requires that the customer can find the terms of the offer easily and read them without room for misunderstanding.
On platforms that keep member accounts and guest orders apart, someone who bought as a guest can show up in this group by mistake. Check the list against your order records by phone number; writing “for your first order” to someone who has already ordered from you shows that you do not know them.
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. If your average order is 900 TL, you could start with customers whose orders average more than 1,800 TL and who have bought at least twice in the past year; the figures are only an example.
Only include customers whose last order falls within the limit you set for customers who have not ordered for a long time. For a customer who has spent a lot in the past but has gone beyond that limit, the personal offer from the second group is a better fit than early access. For the wording of an early-access message and of the other stages of a campaign, see our 10 campaign message examples.
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 in the past. 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.
A single purchase does not always mean lasting interest. A customer who bought something from the baby category once may have given it to a friend as a present. In narrow categories that people often buy as gifts, look for at least two purchases or a purchase within the past few months.
6. Customers who return items often
Sending a discount to a customer who returns most of their orders can drive up your shipping and operating costs. Keep them 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; a customer with at least four orders who has returned more than half of them could be an example starting point. Leave out returns caused by the store, such as the wrong size being shipped, a faulty product or damage in transit; the cause of those returns lies in your own processes. 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:
- Customers who return items often (no discount message)
- Customers who ordered recently (taken off the general list, or sent a complementary-product message)
- Customers with a high order value (early access)
- Customers who have not ordered for a long time (personal offer)
- Members who have never ordered (shipping and returns information)
- Customers who have bought from the campaign category before (message that opens with the category)
- 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.
Example: how a list of 6,000 breaks down
The figures below are hypothetical. A clothing store with 6,000 customers who have given communication consent is preparing an end-of-season sale that applies to every product. Working through the list in the order above, the store leaves 150 customers out of the campaign because they return items often. Another 400 customers whose order is on its way, or was delivered less than fourteen days ago, get no message in this campaign. Of the rest, 300 high-value customers hear about the sale a day early, 1,500 get the message with a personal code because they have not ordered for a long time, and 1,000 members who have never ordered see the message that leads with free shipping and easy returns.
Of the remaining 2,650 people, 1,200 have bought from the two best-selling categories, say dresses and shoes, and get two separate messages that each open with their own category; the other 1,450 get the general message. The result is six separate messages and an exclusion list of 550 people. Because every customer is placed in the first group they fit, nobody receives two announcements for this campaign. Had one of the groups come to only a few dozen people, adding it to the general list without writing a separate message for it would have been enough.
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; this is where the legal answer to “who should receive a WhatsApp campaign message?” begins. 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, 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. If you are not sure under which permission type the consents you collect for WhatsApp should be recorded in İYS, settle this with your legal adviser before your first send.
The WhatsApp Business Messaging Policy points in the same direction: you may message a person only if they have confirmed that they want to receive messages from you. You must also comply with a person’s request to stop or opt out of your messages, even if they make that request outside WhatsApp. A customer who sent you a product question or placed an order over WhatsApp has not thereby agreed to receive campaign messages; we explain how to ask for that permission within the chat in our guide to selling on WhatsApp.
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. A discount announcement sent to a customer whose problem has not been solved can leave the impression that their complaint was ignored, and invalid numbers only inflate the count of undelivered messages in your sending report.
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. Before adding more groups, consider growing the number of customers who have given consent; we explain how to ask for messaging consent on the sign-up and checkout forms in our guide to increasing e-commerce sales.
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 the reasons for them, 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; a group made up of customers without communication consent does not become a message list, and no discount is suggested for customers who return a lot. You can download the list as an Excel file or send it directly to bulk messaging.
Check lists and links on the day you send
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.
To read the results group by group, tag each group’s link separately. In the UTM parameters you add to the link, the campaign name can stay the same for everyone while the utm_content value changes by group, for example “long-inactive”, “early-access” or “first-order”. If you use personal codes, starting each group’s codes with a different prefix does the same job. The overall result does not show which split worked; once you compare clicks and orders group by group, you can see which group to keep for the next campaign and which one to fold into the general list.
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.
