In which ways can I build and/or grow my WhatsApp audience? How can I grow my list and gain more subscribers? In this article, we will share 10 ways for you to build and grow your WhatsApp audience and WhatsApp subscriber base.

Import your existing phone numbers from your CRM and create an activation campaign. You can import your CSV in the "audience" feature and tag them with a tag, e.g. "Imported". Then create a "Template" that tells your clients you are now on WhatsApp and optionally tease them with an incentive such as a discount code. Include two buttons in the activation campaign, e.g. "I want to join" and "No, thanks".
​

Then, include "I want to join" as an additional buzzword into your existing Welcome Flow or create a new Opt-In flow with a success message and update opt-in Status, include "No, thanks" as an additional buzzword into your Opt-out Flow.

You may have to create a Segment with "didn´t receive the template "Opt-In" if your number of imported contacts is larger than your current messaging limit.

This way, you can activate your previously gathered clients and re-activate ressources from within your organization, that are already there.

Example of a WhatsApp-activation-campaign. Source: WhatsApp, 2024

See our article "How to set up your account from scratch" for a step-by-step guide or watch the following video:
​

Activation Campaign Loom: Activate your existing client base with a WhatsApp-activation-campaign. Source: Chatarmin, 2024

Attention! Depending on

the success of your activation campaign will vary. Be aware this has direct impact on your WhatsApp Account Quality Rating, which you need to manage and balance to maintain a high quality rating.

BONUS-VIDEO: 🎬 Here is how you can directly embed your variable email, in order to communicate it directly via CTA, and add it to your Chatarmin account:

Source: Chatarmin, Q1, 2024

1) Create your template with the respective messaging, and assets:

2) Include optin (and optout) buttons (CTAs):

3) Create your Optin-Buzzword-Flow
​

Tip! Test both your campaign as well as flow, before targeting your audience. When all is fine, start including a small segment of a fresh cohort of your existing clients, so you don't mess up your WABA abruptly.

Don't forget including the "custom buttons" (which are technically message-sends) for optin and optout, as well as pushing your buzzword-flow live.

Those activation-campaign-KPI's are what you should strive your, when using the strategy of an "activation campaign" to activate your existing-clients-base via a one-time-WhatsApp-campaign:

Contact our Chatbot for more questions!

Send out a one-time E-Mail Newsletter to your E-Mail Subscribers, communicating that you are now on WhatsApp and they can join for exclusive updates. Add a CTA: Chatstart Link and/or QR-Code in your email, to channel your email-subscribers directly into the WhatsApp-chat with your organization:

Everyone, who clicks on the chatstart-link in your email-campaign, will be funneled into a welcome-flow which is a buzzword-flow! Make sure to embed a "manage consent" and "double optin" action, so you keep track of your activated users!

Follow all the action-steps above, but add a sauce of CRM-magic! Make sure you embed the klaviyo-email-adress of your users within the buzzword-flow, so they send it to your WABA with one click! The email address of your klaviyo-lead is automatically embedded in the chatstart-link, so you don't have to ask for the email adresses of your fresh optins! This is how you do it:

Source: Chatarmin, Q3 2024

Copy the Chatstart-Link into the Welcome Flow and embed it into a button inside of the E-Mail such as "Join now!".

Teasering the incentive you give in the "Welcome flow" is recommended here. You can also include it in any future E-Mail Newsletters you are sending.

Acquiring new customers through promotion, PR, and offline lead generation.

Your promotional marketing strategy most likely has the following problem: You're standing around at trade fairs, events, and the like, handing out your products, talking to people, and perhaps keeping a list. One or two people follow you on Instagram. When your team asks you "How was it?" you say "Great". But what was your quantifiable success? How do you measure the value of your offline marketing?

Find your POS Leadgen Template Flow in your Chatarmin Flow Create Dashboard:

🚨 BONUS: Watch this video to enjoy a full POS retail leadgen setup for fares, points-of-sales, retail, popup-stores, and all other offline promotion use cases! 🎬

Source: Chatarmin, Q3 2024
​
​Create a QR code that leads into a flow and connects it with receiving a goodie or joining a giveaway. Send your customers through a "Flow" where they give you data and information about themselves that you can later use to convert them. This way you get quantifiable customer feedback leads/appointments, and measurable traction without wasting promotion and sponsoring budgets, this works so well and is extremely underutilized, we started doing this ourselves at fares and it is working extremely well.

Big companies such as H&M and Spar are already doing it to get people to download their app for loyalty programs. What they are missing is custom apps are extremely expensive, the users delete them very fast and most people have their notifications off for most of their apps. Think about which App-Notifications you won't mute. That's right, WhatsApp. Getting your users to scan in your QR-Code and subscribe to your WhatsApp channel is a hugely underestimated lever that brands will pick up soon enough and we project that this will spread like wildfire sooner or later.

Create a WhatsApp landing page on your shop where customers have all the information about WhatsApp at their disposal, and funnel them into your channel at the same time. This is a great way to create trust and convert users who are already browsing your shop into WhatsApp leads which on average have way higher CLTV than E-Mail leads. Check out the landing page our Client Kloster Kitchen has created for their customers.

If you have a solid-sized following on your socials you can funnel all your leads into WhatsApp and subsequently into your CRM within a Chatarmin Flow. This is a huge lever, one of our clients, Naturbummler collected 3000 WhatsApp leads in one day this way. Go here to check out how they did this. This works especially well if you have a high AOV case and a solid following. Alternatively, you can collaborate with influencers, our client Kloster Kitchen gave away 3 advent calendars for Christmas and promoted it with 3 fairly small-sized influencers and collected over 1000 leads this way.

BONUS: Watch this video to enjoy a full giveaway funnel from scratch! Hidden nugget: You can find this flow as a template in your account under "flows" -> "create flow"!

Source: Chatarmin, Q3 2024

Most of our clients started switching their mobile pop-ups from E-Mail to WhatsApp. This is way faster and more convenient for users wanting to receive their discount code since you don't have to type in your E-Mail address manually and can enter the WhatsApp Chat with one click. There is an increase of 40%-60% conversion rate on mobile devices not even taking into account that WhatsApp leads have a significantly higher CLTV on average than non-WhatsApp leads. Let your Pop-Up lead into your Welcome Flow, collect consent and the E-Mail address, Chatarmin will sync this information with your CRM and send the customer back to the shop with a CTA link and the customer journey is seamless and complete.

You can solve your customer inquiries while converting your customers into lucrative WhatsApp Leads. Do this by giving your customers the option to start a chat with you, for example, via the Chat-in Bubble we provide on our dashboard. After solving their inquiry send your customers a "Template" that asks them whether they want to consent to marketing content too. Again use the "Yes" button as a Buzzword to trigger a "Flow" automation following this process which sets customers opt-in to Double Opt-In if they agree to it.
​
I explain how this can be done in the following Loom:
​

​
​You can also automate this with your Freshdesk integration which uses a closed Ticket as a trigger to create an automated workflow to opt-in your customer.

You can funnel your META ads into WhatsApp, this way you have 72 hours instead of your usual 24-hour window. The advantage of this is again that a WhatsApp lead has a CLTV of up to 200% of an E-Mail lead and in the same step you can collect the E-Mail at the same time. To find an extensive deep dive into WhatsApp ads and how to set them up read our CEOs Johannes Mansbart's article and guide "WhatsApp Ads: How WhatsApp Chatstart Ads work for new customer acquisition".

Also, feel free to check out Meta's official guide on Click-to-WhatsApp-ads.

Here's a quick video explaining the Click-To-WhatsApp-Ads setup 🎬

Source: Chatarmin, Q3 2024

You can create an Order Page Widget with our Integrations. On one hand, you give your customers additional quality of life improvements, on the other hand, you are simultaneously constantly generating leads passively and increasing the size of your WhatsApp list. Some of our clients are funneling high 4-figure amounts of customers per day this way into their WhatsApp list.
​
​You can find out how to set this up in your "Dashboard" under "Order Page Widget" "Setup", just read the step-by-step guide on the right-hand side and follow the instructions!
​

​