WhatsApp broadcast without getting blocked: what a broadcast is on the Platform, the four faults that end a number, and how to send one that works

What a broadcast is on the Platform

Not the phone app's broadcast list of 256 saved contacts. On the Platform a broadcast is a marketing template sent to an audience, each message charged at ₹0.8631 in India plus GST, delivered only to people whose numbers are on WhatsApp, and counted against the number's daily messaging limit. There is no cap on the audience beyond that limit, and no requirement that they have saved you — only that they opted in.

The four ways a broadcast ends a number

1. The list did not ask. A purchased database, a scraped list, an exhibition's sign-in sheet from two years ago. The blocks arrive in the first hour, the quality rating goes yellow the same day, and the messaging limit stops rising. Meta's rule and India's DPDP Act both require an opt-in that named you and WhatsApp.
2. Too often. Three messages a week to the same person is a block by the second week. Once a week is the ceiling; once a month is normal for most businesses.
3. No way out. A message with no STOP line is reported rather than declined. A STOP that does not work is reported twice.
4. A category that lies. A sale dressed as "your order update" is reclassified by Meta, the template is paused, and the number's rating drops with it.

What the rating does to you

Green, yellow, red, from the last seven days of blocks and reports. Yellow stops the messaging limit rising; red pauses templates and can restrict the number. The limit itself — 250 a day unverified, then 1,000, 10,000, 100,000 — only rises while the rating is green and you are using half of it. A broadcast that goes wrong is not one bad campaign; it is a smaller number for the next month. The quality rating guide has the mechanics.

A broadcast that works

• Audience built from consent, not from contacts: the people who ticked the WhatsApp box, replied YES, or messaged you and said yes to offers — with the source and the time on record.
• Segmented by what they told you. A launch to the leads whose brief it matches; a lane rate to the shippers on that lane; a new batch to the families who asked about that course. Never everything to everyone.
• One message, one purpose, a real reason to reply — a question, an offer with a date, a thing they asked about.
• A STOP line in every message, honoured at once in every language, everywhere.
• Sent at a sensible hour, and stopped for anyone who replies — a person in a conversation is not a person in a campaign.
• Measured on replies and deals, not on delivered.