Channels — WhatsApp

WhatsApp campaigns require Starter or higher and a connected WhatsApp Business account (Meta Business Platform). Connecting WhatsApp isn’t self-serve yet — contact support@tryordinary.com to have it enabled for your store.

Send approved-template messages to customers you choose. Left nav → Channels → WhatsApp.

The list

One row per campaign you’ve created. Columns:

• Name — internal label.
• Template — the approved template name from your Meta Business.
• Customers — how many recipients are on the campaign. On a Draft, click it to choose recipients.
• Sent — messages sent successfully.
• Failed — messages that couldn’t be delivered.
• Status — Draft / Sending / Completed.
• Created — when you created the campaign.
• Sent At — when the campaign was sent.

Drafts can be edited or deleted from the row’s icons.

Creating a campaign

Click Create Campaign.

1. Enter a Campaign Name (internal only).
2. Pick a Template. Only templates Meta has approved for your WhatsApp Business account appear.
3. Save. The campaign appears in the list as a Draft.

Choosing recipients

On a Draft, click the Customers count to open the customer picker. It lists customers with their phone, email, orders, total spent, last order, days since their last order, and when they last received a WhatsApp message from you. Narrow the list with filters for days since last order, customer since, tags and number of orders, and sort it to find the customers you want.

Send only to customers who have agreed to receive WhatsApp marketing from your store.

Sending

Open the send flow on a Draft. You’ll see a Send Campaign preview, then a Confirm Send step — click Yes, Send Now to start. Sending can’t be undone. A progress bar shows messages going out, and the campaign moves to Sending, then Completed.

There’s no scheduling: a campaign sends when you confirm it.

Template rules

WhatsApp requires templates be pre-approved by Meta. Ordinary doesn’t let you bypass this. If a template you want doesn’t exist:

1. Create it in Meta Business Manager.
2. Wait for Meta’s approval.
3. Reopen the campaign form — the new template will appear.

Delivery outcomes

Each message is either sent or failed, counted in the Sent and Failed columns. Failures usually mean:

• Invalid phone number format
• Recipient blocked the business on WhatsApp
• Rate limit from Meta

Individual failures don’t block the rest of the campaign.

Compliance notes

• Who can receive a campaign is decided by the customer’s marketing consent in Shopify:
  • WhatsApp marketing: Subscribed — included.
  • WhatsApp marketing: Unsubscribed, Pending or Redacted — never included, whatever their SMS consent says.
  • No WhatsApp consent on record (Shopify shows “Never subscribed”, the default when your store doesn’t collect WhatsApp consent) — included only if they’re subscribed to SMS marketing.
• The audience list shows only eligible customers with a phone number, plus a count of how many were left out for no consent.
• Consent is re-checked with Shopify for every recipient right before the campaign sends. A customer who unsubscribed, or whose phone number changed, after being added shows as Skipped rather than sent. If Shopify can’t be reached at that moment, the message isn’t sent and shows as failed.
• WhatsApp campaigns need your Shopify store connected, because consent is checked there.
• Consent comes from Shopify. To change a customer’s WhatsApp or SMS marketing status, update it in your Shopify admin.
• If your store has the Manual WhatsApp tab (sending to an uploaded CSV of phone numbers), the same consent rule and the same check with Shopify apply there. Each row is matched by phone number to one of your customers, and only eligible customers are messaged, at the phone number on their customer record. Rows that don’t match a customer, don’t have consent, repeat an earlier number or can’t be read as a phone number are skipped. After sending you see how many were sent, failed and skipped for each reason.
• Template messaging falls under WhatsApp Business Policy — review Meta’s guidelines before sending transactional-coded templates to marketing audiences.

Related articles

• Customer lists and segments — find the customers you’ll target.
• Customer lifecycle stages — lifecycle stages to plan campaigns around.