How to write a WhatsApp message people don't mute.

Email taught brands to send a lot and expect little. WhatsApp does not forgive that habit. Mute is one tap, and nobody sets a reminder to unmute a business. A brand that gets muted has not lost one message. It has lost the channel.

The preview is the message

Most people decide from the notification, not the chat. On a locked phone that is your name and the first line or so, and nothing else. So the first line has to carry the reason to open it.

Not “Dear Valued Customer,”. Not “Greetings from Team XYZ”. The actual news: “Your order ships tomorrow.” “Clinic closed Monday, open as usual Tuesday.” “The new batch of mango pickle is in.” If the reader learns the whole thing from the preview and never opens the chat, the message still worked.

Write it like a person who has their number

The best test for a business WhatsApp: would it be strange if a friend sent it? Not the content, the shape. Friends do not send three paragraphs, six emojis, a banner and a link with a tracking code on the end. They send a line or two, and maybe a photo. Write like that.

Sign it with a real name if you can. “Mehul, from the store” gets read. “Management” gets muted.

One message, one reason

Every broadcast should exist because something happened: new stock, a change in timings, a reminder somebody asked for, an offer with a real end date. If you cannot finish the sentence “I'm sending this because…” without saying “we haven't sent anything in a while”, don't send it. Silence costs nothing on WhatsApp. Noise costs the channel.

How often is too often

Every broadcast spends a little of the permission a customer gave you when they saved your number. Spend it on news.

There is no correct number, but there is a correct question: would this person be annoyed to have missed it? An appointment reminder from a clinic, always. A shop announcing its fourth sale this month, never. For most small businesses, a message a week is the ceiling, and two good ones a month will do more than eight forgettable ones.

Festivals, and the good morning problem

Festival greetings are where brands go to be ignored together. On Diwali morning your customer receives a stack of near-identical diyas, and yours is one of them. If you send one, make it a line only you could have written, about something only your customers would recognise. Or skip the greeting and send something useful the week before, when nobody else is talking.

The daily good morning graphic can simply stop. Nobody has ever bought anything because of a sunrise with a logo on it.

The small things that decide it

• Use their name only if you are sure of it. A wrong name is worse than none.
• One link, at the end. A message that opens with a link looks like a forward, and people have learnt to distrust those.
• Write in the language they write to you in. If customers message you in Gujarati, a broadcast in formal English reads like a notice from the bank. More on that in Gujarati or English.
• Make leaving easy. “Reply STOP and we won't message again” loses you a few people who were about to mute you anyway, and tells everyone else you respect the inbox.
• Send it to yourself first. Lock the phone and look at the notification, not the chat. If the preview doesn't make you curious, rewrite the first line.

Short is not the same as quick

A two-line WhatsApp takes longer to write than a two-paragraph one, because every word has to earn its place on a small screen, next to a family group. That is the whole job. It is also why the businesses that do this well usually have one person who writes every message and remembers which ones got replies.

The same discipline runs through the rest of your writing, and your brand voice should sound the same in a broadcast as it does on your website. Just shorter.