WhatsApp is one of the most-used messaging apps, with over 2 billion users globally. WhatsApp notices are a great replacement for SMS notices in areas where SMS is less common.
The WhatsApp notice includes either an access link, which will take the voter to a page to enter their access key and password (if required), or a ballot link, which has the voter's credentials embedded and takes them directly to the ballot. Either of these can be used to vote instantly from an electronic device.
How to Set Up WhatsApp Notices
You will be required to know your voters' WhatsApp numbers to use WhatsApp notices. To set up WhatsApp notices:
- On the Notice Page stage, select "WhatsApp" and any other notice type you want to use for your vote.
- You can choose to either send notices as soon as the vote opens, at a future date and time, or only when voters request individually on a voter-per-voter basis.
- Select the default country code for your voters' WhatsApp numbers. If you have voters living in different countries, select the country where the majority of the voters live.
- Select a Notice Template.
- Select Advanced Notice Customization to add additional information. Additional information will be appended to the end of the notice in place of the {{additional_information}} variable. There is a limit of 1,000 characters.
- Select Preview to view the WhatsApp notice.
- Select Advanced Notice Customization to add additional information. Additional information will be appended to the end of the notice in place of the {{additional_information}} variable. There is a limit of 1,000 characters.
- On the Voters Page, enter the voters' WhatsApp numbers with the country code. For example, 1-123-456-7890 for a North American-based voter. If you do not know the country code for a voter, try looking for it here or ask Google.
- Be sure to add in your voter's complete number with country and area code in case they have a number outside of your selected default country.
Notes About WhatsApp Notices
- WhatsApp notices are treated the same as email notices in ElectionBuddy. If there is an error in a voter's cell phone number, then ElectionBuddy will notify you about the error on the "Voter List and Status" page when the election is running.
- WhatsApp reminders can be sent to voters who are using WhatsApp notices.
- WhatsApp notices are constrained by size. Please only use ASCII (A-Z, 1-9, etc.) characters, and not other Unicode characters, as these characters are larger than your standard ASCII characters. They may cause your message to be too large and impact deliverability.
If you only have WhatsApp phone numbers for some of your voters, you can still utilize WhatsApp notices for those voters! You can use more than one notice type for any election - this is called a "multi-channel" election. For example, if you had email addresses for all your voters, but only WhatsApp phone numbers for some of them, you would select both Email and WhatsApp notices, and then, when inputting your voter list, include the WhatsApp phone numbers that you have, as well as all the email addresses. Voters who have both WhatsApp phone number information and email address information will receive notices in both ways, making them more likely to vote.
For other Notice options, please see: Email Notice Setup and SMS (Text Message) Notice Setup.
For any questions, please send us a chat using our Buddy Messenger in the bottom right of the screen