Outbound campaigns
Reach customers proactively over WhatsApp. Build an audience from your contacts, personalize a template, send, and watch a live delivery-and-reply funnel — with replies handled by AI or a human.
View as MarkdownOutbound campaigns let you start the conversation. Instead of waiting for customers to reach you, you send a personalized WhatsApp message to a chosen audience — an order update, a back-in-stock alert, a win-back offer — and Bookbag tracks every step from send to reply.
Crucially, a campaign isn't a dead-end blast: when recipients reply, your agent can answer automatically, or the conversation can be routed to a human. Outbound and your support agent are the same brain.
Open an agent and go to the Outbound tab. Campaigns live there alongside the WhatsApp templates manager.
Before you start
- A connected WhatsApp channel for real delivery. Without one, campaigns run in a built-in simulation so you can design and preview the full funnel before going live. See WhatsApp deploy.
- An approved template. Campaigns send a WhatsApp template — only
approvedtemplates can be sent. - Contacts with phone numbers. Your audience is drawn from Contacts; recipients without a phone number are marked failed.
Create a campaign
- 1Name and deliveryIn Outbound, click New campaign. Give it a name and confirm the channel (WhatsApp).
- 2Choose how replies are handledPick a reply mode: AI (your agent answers replies automatically) or Human (replies open a ticket for your team).
- 3Pick a template and map variablesSelect an approved template, then map each {{variable}} to a contact field, a custom attribute, or a static value. A live WhatsApp-style preview shows the rendered message.
- 4Build the audienceOn the Audience tab, search and filter your contacts (including by custom attributes) and select who receives the message.
- 5SendReview the summary and send. Recipients are frozen into the campaign at send time so later contact edits don't change who got what.
Saving without sending keeps the campaign as a draft. You can come back and send it once your audience and template are ready.
Reply modes
Every campaign declares what happens when a recipient writes back. Bookbag attributes an inbound reply to the most recent campaign that messaged that phone number within a 72-hour window.
| Reply mode | What happens on a reply | Best for |
|---|---|---|
| AI | The agent answers the reply automatically from your knowledge, just like any other channel. | Scale: order updates, FAQs, promotions where most replies are routine questions. |
| Human | The reply opens a ticket in the Help Desk with campaign context attached, for your team to handle. | High-touch outreach: sales follow-ups, retention saves, sensitive conversations. |
In Human mode, the attributed reply marks the recipient as replied and creates a handoff so the conversation surfaces in your Help Desk.
Personalization with variables
Template variables like {{1}} or {{name}} are filled per recipient. For each variable you choose a source:
- Contact field — name, email, phone, or external ID.
- Custom attribute — any custom attribute on the contact, e.g.
order_numberorloyalty_tier. - Static value — the same text for every recipient.
Bookbag resolves these into each recipient's message at build time. If a value is missing for a contact, the placeholder is left visible so you can spot the gap before sending.
Hi {{1}}, your order {{2}} has shipped! Track it any time by replying here.The delivery funnel
After you send, the campaign detail view shows a live funnel that updates as the campaign progresses. Each recipient moves through these stages:
| Stage | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Queued | Built and waiting to send. |
| Sent | Handed off to WhatsApp for delivery. |
| Delivered | Reached the recipient's device. |
| Read | Opened by the recipient. |
| Replied | The recipient wrote back (within the 72h window). |
| Failed | Could not be delivered — e.g. no phone number or an undeliverable address. |
The campaigns list and detail views poll for updates, so the funnel and per-recipient statuses animate in real time as messages are delivered and read.
Messaging limits
WhatsApp enforces a daily limit on how many unique customers you can message, based on your account's messaging tier. The Outbound view shows your current tier and how much of today's allowance you've used so you can size audiences accordingly.
Outside the 24-hour customer-service window, WhatsApp requires an approved template to open a conversation — which is exactly what campaigns send. Free-form messages are only allowed within 24 hours of the customer's last message.
Simulation vs. real send
| No WhatsApp channel connected | WhatsApp channel connected | |
|---|---|---|
| Delivery | Simulated — a deterministic funnel progresses over time so you can preview behavior. | Real — messages are sent through the Meta Cloud API. |
| Funnel stages | Advance automatically (delivered → read → replied) on a realistic timeline. | Driven by actual delivery; the sent state is recorded on launch. |
| Use it for | Designing, previewing, and demoing campaigns safely. | Production sends to real customers. |
Connecting WhatsApp later switches campaigns from simulated to real delivery automatically — no campaign changes needed. See WhatsApp deploy.