At Soda Spoon Marketing, we spend a lot of time helping clients figure out where to actually show up for their customers, not just where it's trendy to show up. So when Shopify announced that WhatsApp marketing is now built into Shopify Messaging, we wanted to break down what it does, who it's for, and whether it's worth adding to your current strategy.
What Changed
Shopify Messaging already covered email and SMS. Now WhatsApp joins the lineup, meaning merchants can build, send, and manage WhatsApp marketing campaigns from the same dashboard they use for everything else. No separate WhatsApp Business setup, no third party app subscription, no extra login to remember.
How the Feature Works
A few pieces make up the new offering:
List building through Shopify Forms. Customers can opt into WhatsApp messaging right from your existing forms, so you're not starting your subscriber list from zero.
Templates or custom campaigns. Shopify provides pre built templates for common campaign types, but you can also build fully custom messages if your brand voice needs more room to breathe.
Automated responses. You can set up instant replies triggered by keywords or button taps, which helps you stay responsive without needing someone glued to a chat window all day.
Usage based pricing. You only pay for messages sent, which makes it easier to test the channel without committing to a big fixed cost upfront.
Why We Think This Matters
A lot of our clients have customers outside the US, and for those audiences, WhatsApp often is the primary communication channel, not a secondary one. Email fatigue is real, and SMS has real limitations around length and cost. WhatsApp fills the gap with a format people already check constantly and actually enjoy using.
There's also a practical upside to having everything under one roof. When email, SMS, and WhatsApp all live in Shopify Messaging, your segmentation and messaging strategy stay unified instead of scattered across separate tools that don't share data with each other.
Our Take
This is a good one to test, especially if:
- Your customer base includes international or WhatsApp heavy markets
- You've noticed email engagement leveling off or declining
- You want a more conversational, direct line to your customers without adding new software to your stack
As always, we'd recommend starting small. Pick one campaign type, set up your opt in flow, and measure engagement before rolling it out across your entire marketing calendar. If you want help building out a WhatsApp strategy that fits your brand, that's exactly the kind of thing we do at Soda Spoon.
