If you are a business owner, it is now essential for you to allow your customers to contact you through WhatsApp. The service has close to 2 billion users worldwide, and it is a market leader in most of Europe, Latin America, Africa and India.
WhatsApp offers a great alternative to emailing, which is often too formal, and phone calls, which are time-consuming.
It is perfect for customers who just need a quick answer to a question, or those who want to make a booking or reservation.
For business owners, it is a much appreciated direct channel that you can use to communicate about a product or a service.
Let's see how eazyWA can help you collect more WhatsApp numbers:
Using WA Link Generator to collect WhatsApp Numbers
WhatsApp numbers are generally harder to collect than emails because they are considered more personal and private. This is actually what makes them so valuable to you.
For this reason, I think it would be a bad idea to send a message to an individual on WhatsApp if they haven't contacted you first.
Therefore, the best approach is to encourage your potential or existing clients to text you by making your number available to them on all your communications and platforms.
For instance, if you have a website, you should definitely create a WhatsApp icon which, when clicked, redirect the user to a pre-filled message on the WhatsApp application on their mobile or laptop. Something that would look like this:
But don't stop there: You can also include your WhatsApp number to your email signature and to your social media accounts, such as Facebook, LinkedIn or Instagram.
In that case, instead of writing the digits of your phone number, it is recommended to use a dedicated link that will make it effortless for your customers to send you a text.
How to use WhatsApp Link Generator
That's where eazyWA comes handy. This free tool, straight-forwad and easy to use let you create you own personalized WhatsApp link in just a few seconds.
All you have to do is enter your WhatsApp phone number with the country code, add an optional pre-filled message, then click "Get WhatsApp Link". This will automatically generate a link that you can copy and paste to your website, your social media accounts, or your email signature.
Should I make a pre-filled message?
Adding a pre-filled message means that when your customers click on your WhatsApp link, there will already be some text for them ready to be sent.
This is an optional feature that I recommend if you want to make sure the texts you receive are relevant. For instance, if you have a hotel, you could pre-write a message like this one:
"Hi, do you have availability on [date] for [number] people?"
In this case, it will save you some time when you answer as you won't need to ask again for their dates and the number of people in the group.
Of course, if this is useful or not really depends on the type of business you have. Maybe you can check what your competitors are doing as well to get some inspiration on how to fill this message.