Everybody talks about WhatsApp automation—us, Landbotters, included. 

But how does that translate into practice? What does it take to automate customer communication via one of the most popular messaging apps? What kinds of results can you derive from WhatsApp Business API adoption?

To give you a better insight into this automation strategy, we prepared this step-by-step tutorial to develop an automated WhatsApp messaging campaign using Landbot, Airtable, WhatsApp, and Make. A campaign that took us from a 5% to 25% engagement rate in a blink of an eye. 

Engaging PQLs: From Email to WhatsApp

One of the main sources of PQLs (Product Qualified Leads) for our sales team was email-powered outreach to Landbot users in the free plans who perform certain key actions that indicate that they are interested in becoming a customer. These tasks were an indicator they needed help from our sales team. So, once they triggered the assigned actions, we sent them an email suggesting they book a call with a Landbot expert so we can help guide them on their way.

However, we realized that this strategy had a problem—the contact channel. 

The contact channel was not fulfilling our needs as it is too saturated and people often overlook emails or simply do not pay attention. 

Why Choose WhatsApp Instead?

The moment we realized that email was not the best channel to reach these users, we started looking for alternatives and found the solution in our own product, sending those campaigns by WA instead of by email.‍

The open rate in all the experiments that we had run on WhatsApp before was always around 90% and that was what we needed—a good open rate combined with an easy response mechanism.

This way, apart from trying to increase the volume of PQLs for the sales team, it was an opportunity to validate the Landbot WhastApp solution for use cases more related to sales.

WhatsApp Automation for No-Coders

Since we were already planning to use this as a use case if things panned out, we wanted to make it as actionable and shareable as possible. Hence, we decided to build the automation flow with no-code tools throughout: Landbot, Make, and Airtable. 

What did we need to get this experiment done?

• Users’ consent to receiving messages through WhatsApp and their phone number. This was very easy since we had both the consent and the number as a courtesy of the Landbot onboarding process.
• A platform from which to send the messages. Landbot.
• A tool from where the SDRs can work through the leads and send the messages to users they deem qualified. We used Airtable since it gave us the possibility of using trigger buttons.
• A tool to connect the Airtable with Landbot to send the message. We opted for Make since it is free and everyone could use it.

How to Build the No-Code WhatsApp Automation Process

To save you some reading time, here we have a great step-by-step video on how to send WhatsApp messages combining Landbot, Make, and Airtable:

Video Content Outline

1. Gather all the needed information from Landbot → 1:48

• Message Template ID
• Landbot Token
• WhatsApp Subscribers File
• Import Subscribers File to Spreadsheets for better transfer to Airtable

2. Build Airtable base from Subscribers list with the Airtable Buttons→ 4:00

• Create Airtable Buttons
• Webhook link from Make

3. Glue everything together in Make→ 6:13

• Add Airtable module to get all the information  from the user
• Add HTTP module
• Understanding Message Template structure
• Final Airtable module to update the record in Airtable after WhatsApp Message being sent
• Leave Make scenario ON

Experiment Results 

At the Sales level

At the Sales level, the results have been very positive. We have gone from a 5% engagement rate to more than 25%. Moreover, the old response time of more than a day was reduced to less than 4 hours.

‍Apart from gaining more and happier clients, we are really recruiting and demoing the product at the same time as they got to see in action what they were buying. And of course, it has been a motivation for the SDRs, since this new process is significantly less frustrating.

At Product Level

Through this experiment, we confirmed WhatsApp to be one of the best communication channels out there right now as well as validated the hypothesis that people do not leave unread messages in the WhatsApp inbox.

Next, we also validated that templates using the buttons feature work much better than with raw text.

It’s clear that the integration of these three tools gives you infinite possibilities so that the marketing and sales teams face very few limits and friction points. 

Who knows, our next experiment might be to use WhatsApp as a support tool...