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How often should you message customers on WhatsApp?

There is no universal number, but there is a way to find yours — and clear signals that tell you when you have crossed the line.

Ask ten marketers and you will get ten answers, most of them made up. The honest answer is that the right frequency depends on what you sell and what you are sending — but the signals that tell you when you are wrong are the same for everyone, and they are easy to watch.

Start from the message, not the calendar

The wrong way to plan is "we will send two campaigns a month". That is a quota, and quotas get filled with whatever is available, which is how businesses end up sending a sale announcement to people who bought yesterday.

The better question is: does this message do something for the person receiving it? Order updates can be frequent because every one of them is useful. Promotions cannot, because most of them are useful only to you.

A practical split: transactional messages as often as the events happen, marketing messages as rarely as you can bear.

Rough starting points

If you need a number to start from, and you are messaging an opt-in list of your own customers:

Order and delivery updates — as many as the order generates. Nobody complains about knowing where their parcel is.
Appointment or renewal reminders — one, plus one closer to the date.
Promotional broadcasts — start at two a month and only increase if the response holds.
Re-engagement to lapsed customers — a couple a year, and make each one count.

These are starting points, not rules. The list below is what actually tells you.

The signals that matter

Watch these across campaigns rather than within one:

Opt-out rate. The clearest signal there is. A small trickle is healthy — it means people know how to leave. A jump after a specific campaign tells you exactly which message was unwelcome.
Read rate drifting down. People have not left, but they have stopped caring. This usually precedes opt-outs.
Replies drying up. If a channel that used to produce conversations stops, the audience has recategorised you as noise.
Ban risk and delivery warnings. Rising signals here are the platform telling you the same thing your customers are.

When two of these move together, reduce frequency before you lose the list.

Segment instead of sending less

The usual conclusion is "send fewer campaigns". Often the better fix is to send the same number of campaigns to fewer, better-chosen people.

A customer who bought last week and a customer who last bought a year ago should not get the same message at the same rate. Splitting a list by recency, category or location usually raises response and lowers opt-outs at the same time, because each message is relevant to more of the people who receive it.

The test worth applying

Before scheduling anything, read it as if it arrived on your own phone, between a message from your bank and one from a friend. If your honest reaction is "why are they telling me this", it is not a frequency problem — it is a message problem, and sending it less often will not fix it.

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