Meta occasionally runs experiments to help them assess the impact of messaging on WhatsApp user experience and engagement. Ongoing experiments (as the one described below) have no fixed end date. To protect the validity of the experiment and ensure the best possible business and consumer experience, they do not provide any exceptions or opt-outs for these experiments.

Marketing Message Experiment

As of June 14, 2023, roughly 1% of WhatsApp users will not receive marketing template messages from any business unless one of the following conditions is met:

• A customer service window exists between the customer and the business.

• An open marketing conversation exists between the customer and the business.

• An open free-entry point conversation exists between the customer and the business.

If you send a marketing template message to a customer who is part of the experiment group, your message will not be sent and you will not be billed for it since no conversation was created. Instead, you will receive a message status error webhook containing error code 472, notifying you of the failure.

Attempting to resend the message will result in the same error. If you must deliver the marketing template message to the customer, we recommend that you contact the customer by some other, non-WhatsApp means, and ask them to message you so you can resend the message within the customer service window.

Also see:

• Why was my Marketing template not delivered without returning an error for failed delivery?