Since being bought by Facebook in 2014, Whatsapp hasn’t done much to monetise on their instant messaging service. But that’s about to change.
An announcement on the Whatsapp blog has confirmed that they’ll be testing new features this year to incorporate business into their service, with a free Whatsapp Business app for small businesses, and a paid service for large corporations to come.
The main goal in these early stages of development is to provide an easier means of communication for consumers with the businesses they want to engage with. This will of course include the “verified” tick symbol which has become so familiar to us from Twitter.
Whatsapp have also expressed a desire to incorporate a notifications system into their business tools, allowing large corporations like airlines and e-commerce companies to be able to send important notifications to their clients, such as delayed flight details or package arrival times.
Why should you care?
A more difficult question to answer would probably be why wouldn’t you care? With over 1 billion daily users, Whatsapp is one of the largest instant messaging platforms worldwide, and you have to wonder what’s taken them so long to incorporate business tools within their service.
The potential for this development is huge, with so much room to incorporate features such as promotional content in the Whatsapp Status feature, retargeting to consumers who have contacted a business through Whatsapp, and overall ease of communication.
If this is getting you super excited, Whatsapp are calling for businesses to apply to test out their new business features by filling out this survey.
Tags: business, digital marketing
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About Steph Von der Heyde
Our resident wordsmith’s love of digital lured her over from advertising to the online space, where she fell in love with content marketing. Since coming to the online world Steph has made her mark on all outgoing CleverClicks copy and is passionate about using words to build brands. Her obsession with the writing is rivaled only by her love of trail running, yoga and green juice. When she’s not submerged in content strategy you’ll find Steph in Downward Dog.