Scheduled

What it does

A scheduled campaign sends one approved WhatsApp template to the audience you choose, either immediately or at a future date and time.

When to use it

Use it for any marketing send: a promotion to a single segment, an announcement to everyone who has opted in, or a message prepared in advance and timed for a particular morning. You can also queue the same message for several segments at once, send a reminder to the people who have not submitted a response to an earlier campaign or tapped its tracked link, or repeat a sent campaign with Schedule again on its page under WhatsApp → Sent (see Sent campaigns).

Only contacts who have opted in are included. Read the consent rules before sending to a new audience.

Steps

1. Open WhatsApp → Scheduled and select Schedule campaign.
2. Enter a Name. This is how the campaign appears in your lists, up to 120 characters.
3. Optionally fill in AI context (optional): background the assistant can use when customers reply, such as competition terms, prices, flavours or case sizes. Customers never see this text directly. Up to 2,000 characters.
4. Optionally choose a Task (optional), or leave it on No task. Responses the assistant records are shown against this campaign. See Tasks. If you have not created any tasks yet, this field does not appear — add one under AI Tools → Tasks first.
5. Optionally choose a Tag (optional), or leave it on No tag, to group this campaign with related work. See Tags.
6. Choose the Channel the message is sent from, then the Template. Templates are listed with their language, and only approved templates on that channel can be selected. See WhatsApp templates.
7. Under Audience, select Choose audience. Use Search segments, tags or campaigns… to find a segment, tick the ones you want, or under Send to everyone tick All customers or All contacts. To chase people who have not responded to an earlier campaign, tick it under No submission for a campaign or No click on a campaign instead; see Send a reminder. A send-to-everyone or reminder choice cannot be combined with segments. Segments are grouped under their tag, with anything untagged under Untagged. Each segment you tick appears as a chip below the box; select the chip to remove it.
8. Under Schedule, select Send now, or Schedule for later and set Date and Time. Nothing is selected to start with, so you always choose when a campaign sends. A later time must be more than 5 minutes from now. Date and Time use the clock on the device you are working on, while your lists show the campaign in your company's time zone (Admin → Settings), so after saving check Scheduled for on the campaign page is the time you intended.
9. In Template parameters, fill in every value the template needs: Header, Body and Buttons placeholders, and header media where the template uses an image, video or document. For a Visit website (tracked) button, enter the full web address in the button's destination URL field, starting with https://; ProConnect records each contact who opens it. Flow buttons need no value — the form says so beside them. The preview beside the form updates as you type.
10. Optionally send yourself a test. Under Test message, enter one or more Phone numbers, then select Send test message.
11. Select Schedule campaign at the bottom of the form, then confirm in the dialog.

Audience options

Each option shows its contact count while you choose, so you can check the size of a send before committing to it. For a reminder the count is how many people have not responded right now; it falls as submissions or clicks come in, and the reminder only goes to those still outstanding at its send time.

If you tick more than one segment, one campaign is created for each segment, at the same time and with the same message. Audiences are not merged or deduplicated across segments, so a contact in two of the chosen segments receives the message twice. The button then reads Schedule 3 campaigns, with the number you selected.

Send a reminder

A reminder chases the people who received an earlier campaign but have not responded to it. There are two kinds:

• No submission: for a campaign with a flow or task. It goes to everyone who has not completed the flow, or whose task the assistant has not recorded. Reading the message, tapping a link or replying in the chat without completing the flow or task does not count.
• No click: for a campaign whose template has a Visit website (tracked) button. It goes to everyone who has not tapped that button. Reading the message or replying does not count.

Anyone who responds between scheduling the reminder and the moment it sends is left out. A campaign with both a flow or task and a tracked button can have either kind.

1. Open WhatsApp → Scheduled and select Schedule campaign. Alternatively, open the original under WhatsApp → Sent and select Schedule reminder (when the campaign can have both kinds, choose Didn't submit or Didn't click from its menu), which ticks it for you; skip to step 3.
2. Under Audience, select Choose audience and tick the campaign under No submission for a campaign or No click on a campaign. Only campaigns from the last 60 days that have finished sending are listed, newest first, each with the date it was sent and how many reminders it has had.
3. The form fills in the original campaign's name with " reminder" added, its AI context, Task, Tag, Channel and Template, with the template values it was sent with. Change any of them, for example pick a template worded as a reminder. The channel stays fixed to the original's.
4. Set the schedule and select Schedule campaign, then confirm.

On WhatsApp → Scheduled the audience reads No submission for or No click on followed by the campaign name, and the predicted audience is the number of people still outstanding. Once sent, the reminder appears under WhatsApp → Sent with a Reminder badge, and the original campaign's page lists it under Reminders with a combined submission or click rate. See Sent campaigns.

A campaign can have up to three reminders of either kind, one scheduled at a time. To send a second reminder, pick the original campaign again, not the first reminder: each reminder goes only to the people who have not responded to the original or to any reminder so far.

Send a test message

The Test message card appears once you have chosen a channel and a template. Add the phone numbers you want the test sent to with Add phone number, up to 10, and select Send test message. Each number reports back separately, so you can see which tests arrived. If a number has not opted in you are asked to confirm before it is sent. Test messages are always sent from your first WhatsApp channel, so a template that only exists on another channel cannot be tested this way.

What you'll see

WhatsApp → Scheduled lists your campaigns by send time, earliest first, with Name, Template, Audience, Tag and Scheduled at. Each row also shows a Predicted audience count: the number of contacts that audience covers. Dates and times are shown in your company's time zone, set in Admin → Settings. Before you schedule anything the list reads No scheduled campaigns yet.

Selecting a campaign name opens it. The page shows Campaign name, Template name, Template language, Flow (when the template has a flow button; select it to open the flow), Audience, Tag, Predicted audience, Channel, Scheduled for and Created at, plus AI context and Task when you set them, alongside a preview of the message exactly as customers will receive it.

The predicted audience is an estimate of the contacts the audience covers, and it can change between scheduling and sending as contacts opt in, opt out or move in and out of a segment.

Once a campaign has been sent, it appears under WhatsApp → Sent, where you can see delivery and reply figures. See Sent campaigns.

Edit a scheduled campaign

1. Open WhatsApp → Scheduled and select the campaign name.
2. Select Edit.
3. Change the details, audience, template values or schedule. On the edit form the audience is a single choice, not several.
4. Select Update campaign and confirm in the dialog.

Edit a campaign before its send time. If you change the template, the parameter fields are refilled with the values saved on this campaign, which may not suit the new template, so check every field and the preview before saving.

Delete a scheduled campaign

1. Open the campaign and select Delete.
2. In Delete scheduled campaign?, select Delete to confirm, or Cancel to keep it.

If something goes wrong

• The scheduling button is unavailable: a campaign needs a channel, a template, an audience and a valid send time. Complete each one and the button becomes active.
• "Choose Send now or Schedule for later.": under Schedule, pick one; for a later send, set Date and Time as well.
• "Scheduled time must be more than 5 minutes in the future.": pick a time further ahead, or choose Send now. Check the date as well as the time.
• "Text you add can't contain line breaks, tabs or more than 4 spaces in a row.": WhatsApp refuses these in the text you fill into a template. Put the text on one line and remove the extra spaces.
• "With your text added the message is … characters; WhatsApp allows up to 1,024.": shorten the text you've added, or choose a template with less fixed wording.
• "Please select an audience.": open Choose audience and tick at least one segment, or All customers or All contacts.
• "A send-to-everyone audience cannot be combined with other selections.": either send to everyone, or send to segments, not both. Untick one side and save again.
• "A reminder audience cannot be combined with other selections.": a reminder goes to one campaign's outstanding contacts only. Untick the segments and save again.
• A campaign is greyed out under No submission for a campaign or No click on a campaign: the reason is shown beneath it. This campaign has not finished sending clears itself once sending completes. This campaign failed to send cannot be reminded; schedule it again instead. A reminder for this campaign is already scheduled or sending means wait for that reminder, or delete it under WhatsApp → Scheduled. This campaign has already had 3 reminders is the limit. Reminders can only be scheduled within 60 days of the original campaign means it is too old to remind. Reminders are sent from the original campaign means pick the original rather than one of its reminders.
• The campaign you want to remind is not listed: only campaigns sent in the last 60 days that asked for a response are offered: No submission for a campaign lists campaigns with a flow or task, No click on a campaign lists campaigns with a Visit website (tracked) button. A campaign with neither, such as one with an ordinary website button, cannot be reminded. Older campaigns cannot be reminded.
• "A reminder must be sent from the same channel as the original campaign.": the channel was changed after the campaign was picked. Choose the campaign again to reset it.
• "Original campaign not found.": the campaign could not be read. Reload the page and pick it again.
• "No WhatsApp channels configured for this company.": set up a channel under WhatsApp → Channels before scheduling, or contact your onboarding manager.
• "No templates found for this channel.": the channel has no usable templates yet. Create one under WhatsApp → Templates and wait for approval.
• "No audience segments are available.": create a segment under WhatsApp → Segments, or send to All customers or All contacts.
• "No segments or tags match your search.": clear the search box in Choose audience; the segment may be named differently or filed under another tag.
• "No tags yet.": tags are optional. Use Create tags to add one if you want to group campaigns.
• Send test message is greyed out: one of the numbers is invalid — the field shows Enter a valid phone number. Correct or remove it. You can test up to 10 numbers.
• A test message fails: the reason is shown under the number. Check the number is correct and in full international format, and that every template value is filled in.
• "Template not found" or "No WhatsApp channel configured" on a test: test messages are sent from your first WhatsApp channel, so a template that only exists on another channel cannot be tested. Schedule the campaign and check the preview instead, or contact your onboarding manager.
• "Unable to save campaign" for a task, tag, segment or channel: the item may have been deleted or renamed while you were working. Reload the page, choose it again and save.
• The predicted audience shows a dash or no number: the count could not be worked out at that moment. Reload the page; if it stays empty, contact your onboarding manager.
• "Campaign not found." or the campaign page will not open: the send time passed while you were editing, so the campaign has already gone out. Find it under WhatsApp → Sent.
• The message preview is missing on the campaign page: the template could not be loaded. Check it is still approved under WhatsApp → Templates before the send time.