WhatsApp marketing consent and opt-in: a practical guide

Two sets of rules decide who you may send WhatsApp offers to. WhatsApp's own: Meta allows Marketing templates only to people who agreed to receive them, and expects an easy way to stop. And the data-protection laws of the countries your customers live in, for example the EU's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), Brazil's LGPD, India's Digital Personal Data Protection Act or Saudi Arabia's PDPL. Most of them expect a lawful basis for using someone's number for marketing, which for offers on WhatsApp in practice means their consent, and expect you to be able to show it.

What real opt-in looks like

• Specific: the customer knows it is your business, on WhatsApp, about offers.
• Active: they did something, such as ticking a box, sending a keyword or scanning a QR code. Silence is not consent.
• Recorded: when, on which channel, from where, and their own words or the form they signed.
• Reversible: STOP works at any time, and works immediately.

Not consent: a number printed on an invoice, a number bought or swapped with another business, or a line saying that visiting your shop means agreeing to messages.

Five ways to collect consent

1. An opt-in link or QR code. Put it on a poster at the counter, a receipt, a table card or your Instagram bio. It opens a WhatsApp chat with your number and a ready-typed message such as SUBSCRIBE SPRING-FAIR. When the customer presses send, they are marked Agreed with their message as the proof, and they get your confirmation message free of charge (WhatsApp opt-in link and QR code).
2. A keyword in the chat. A message that is exactly START, SUBSCRIBE, YES OFFERS, اشتراك or نعم للعروض (or one of your own words) subscribes the person. A plain "yes" is not enough, and a longer question is left for your team to answer.
3. Recorded by your team. A customer who ticks "Send me offers" on a paper form at the branch: open their contact and press Record consent. OmniBrand refuses an agreement without the box How did they agree? filled in, so the evidence is always there.
4. An import, only with a declaration. Bringing in an existing customer list, you declare the consent those people gave; each person gets their own line in the history with your declaration as the evidence (Importing contacts).
5. A bot's question. An inbox bot can ask "Would you like our offers?" and record Agreed when the customer taps Yes, send me offers.

Opting out must be easy

• STOP, unsubscribe, إيقاف or إلغاء الاشتراك as a short reply stops all messages to that person on WhatsApp, written in any case, with or without Arabic diacritics.
• A Stop promotions (إيقاف العروض) button on your template stops marketing only; order updates and reminders still go.
• A reply of just cancel or إلغاء stops offers only, because customers often mean their order or booking.
• A customer who taps Stop on your offers inside the WhatsApp app is marked as withdrawn too.
• Each change gets one short confirmation in Arabic or English, so the customer knows it worked.

What to keep, and for how long

For every person and channel OmniBrand keeps a Consent history: what was decided, when, the source and the evidence in quotes. Entries are never edited, which is what makes them evidence; a mistake is corrected by recording the right decision with a reason. When you erase a contact, the record that consent was given or withdrawn stays as your accountability record, but the evidence text is deleted and the entries no longer point at anyone (Consent and opt-out).

Marketing messages and service messages

Consent is about marketing. A booking reminder or an order update the customer expects is a Utility template, and it can still go to someone who withdrew from offers; only someone who said STOP gets nothing at all. Do not dress an offer up as a Utility template: Meta reviews the category and can change it, and customers report messages they did not expect.

A short checklist

• Every opt-in source names your business and the channel.
• Every agreement has a date, a source and evidence you could show someone.
• Every Marketing template has a Stop promotions button.
• Quiet hours and frequency caps are on (Messaging rules).
• Old lists without proof stay out of your broadcasts until those people opt in again.