WhatsApp Journeys: How to Use Them to Streamline Sales Experiences in 2025

Suppose you want to reach out to your customers about launching a new product, letting them know their favorite product is back in stock, or for hundreds of other reasons for driving sales effectively. 

To achieve that in a manner that doesn’t cost you millions of dollars, you need a viable communication channel that allows for bulk message sending. In recent years, WhatsApp has emerged as a channel that enables businesses to manage all their conversations and interactions from a single location. 

Ever since the WhatsApp Business Platform was launched, local and international brands have been using it to connect with their leads, guiding them towards the next stage of the sales pipeline. By leveraging the real-time conversational aspect of WhatsApp, you can engage highly valuable leads throughout the sales funnel and drive sales more effortlessly. 

However, managing all that manually can be an impossible task, and will take a large number of resources. For this reason, WhatsApp enables you to set up automated workflows (or journeys) to ensure your prospects are thoroughly engaged and are ready to make the purchasing decision. 

What are WhatsApp journeys?

A journey is a process where customers move across different stages starting from initial interaction to post-sale engagement. In that sense, WhatsApp journeys are similar to traditional sales journeys, but all the interactions happen over WhatsApp. 

An example of a WhatsApp journey can be a prospect reaching out to a business through WhatsApp to inquire about a particular product. Following that, the brand nurtures this lead with consistent WhatsApp messages, and ultimately, the lead completed the purchase. 

Using WhatsApp as a channel for constant communication, companies can simplify their sales process by sending timely messages that increase the probability of getting a conversion. 

Why should you use WhatsApp for creating customer journeys?

WhatsApp is a modern communication channel that supports a wide variety of features on top of its conversation functionality. For instance, you can automate messages, set up chatbots, or schedule follow-ups to ensure potential customers are always moving across the stages of the sales pipeline. 

Having said that, here are some of the components of WhatsApp that you can leverage to make your WhatsApp journeys more effective and seamless:

Trigger points

With WhatsApp, you can trigger automated messages depending on the actions they are performing. A great example of this is abandoned carts. If a visitor goes to your site, but leaves after adding items to their cart. Then you can set up automated abandoned cart recovery to remind them about the items they left behind. You can also add a temporary offer to entice recipients to make the purchase decision quickly.

Message types

The aspect where WhatsApp shines above any other communication channel is its support for a variety of messages. WhatsApp lets you send all kinds of messages, whether it be marketing, utility, or authentication.

On top of that, if a customer initiates a conversation with you, you can use free-form messages to keep the conversation going within the 24-hour window. Other than that, if you wish to run WhatsApp outreach campaigns, then you have to utilize the WhatsApp Business messaging templates to engage your customers.

Logic-driven automation

WhatsApp automation allows you to interact with customers even after work hours. This way, you can ensure that customers are not left on read and are kept in the loop regarding their message. 

WhatsApp automation tools like Zixflow let you take advantage of IFTTT (If This Then That) conditional logic to design automation workflows that can respond to customers' queries by sending highly relevant and personalized messages.

Pre-scheduled campaigns

If you want to run a WhatsApp marketing campaign or send follow-ups to leads a day or two after the last interaction, then you can do so with scheduled WhatsApp messages. Meta offers this capability in both the WhatsApp Business App and the WhatsApp Business API, allowing businesses to send pre-determined messages at the right time. 

At scale personalization

As I said, Meta requires you to craft messaging templates before you can connect with customers. That means, you have the freedom to design your messages the way you want and include personalization elements to better relate to customers as long as you follow WhatsApp’s message template guidelines. 

In other words, you can use custom variables in your templates to tailor them according to customers and situations. For example, use variables like {{contact.name}}, {{contact.phone}}, and {{contact.id}} to personalize your messages. Or you can add variables like {{order_id}}, {{order_total}}, {{order_date}}, and {{shipping_address}} to notify customers about the status of their purchase. 

Numerous use cases across industries

WhatsApp has become a platform that can fit the needs of various market sectors ranging from e-commerce to healthcare. Due to its immense global presence and active user base of billions, brands, big and small, are utilizing it for driving customer engagement. 

E-commerce businesses can make the most of WhatsApp by running marketing campaigns, lead nurturing via automated messages, and providing post-purchase support with WhatsApp chatbots. 

How to design a WhatsApp journey for your business?

Before you can start building a WhatsApp journey, you need to plan out the kind of journey you want to build and what your ultimate goal is. A journey needs a starting point, branching logic, and finally, conversion.  

Here is a sample journey layout for a WhatsApp journey that you can build:

Acquiring leads 

WhatsApp journey for an online business. It starts from acquiring leads, and the goal is to get a conversion. 

Every journey starts with a trigger. This trigger can be anything that drives leads into your WhatsApp sales funnel. For example, a Click-to-WhatsApp ad or a WhatsApp chat button on your site can open a conversation between you and the prospect.

A WhatsApp marketing campaign is an excellent way to reach out to new prospects and let them know about your business, along with how your offerings can make their lives easier. To run these kinds of initiatives, you need a WhatsApp API provider that gives you unhindered access to the WhatsApp Business API to run marketing initiatives for getting new customers. 

Take a look at how Zixflow lets you set up and run WhatsApp marketing campaigns using a no-code, intuitive platform: 

Nurturing leads

After a prospect has initiated a conversation, the next step is to understand their needs and send personalized messages to encourage them to make a purchase. In this stage, you can ask them sales-qualifying questions that allow you to gauge interest and figure out what they are looking for. 

In addition to that, you can deploy a WhatsApp chatbot to automate this process. The bot will ask all the relevant questions and save the responses to your CRM. You can also train your chatbot to use branching logic to provide suggestions based on their queries. For instance, the bot can recommend a product if the prospect is showing particular interest in one of your offerings. 

In this stage, it is crucial to earn the trust of your prospects before you finally convert them into customers. To do this, you can have personalized demos or provide product trials to showcase the benefits of your products.

Converting prospects into customers

After nurturing leads and reaching the conversion stage, you can send payment links or sign-up forms via WhatsApp for streamlined effectiveness. In addition to that, you can use WhatsApp Payments to collect payments directly on WhatsApp, without redirecting customers to external webpages for a seamless shopping experience. 

Post-sale follow-ups

The sales cycle doesn’t end with just the conversion. You have to make sure your customers are satisfied with your products. To do this, you can send customer success messages using WhatsApp to ensure buyers are making the most of their purchase. 

In addition to that, you can send WhatsApp forms to gather customer feedback on what they thought about your WhatsApp sales funnel and what you can do to streamline it further. Customer feedback gives you valuable insights into areas where you are lacking. 

Some best practices to maximize the ROI for your WhatsApp journeys

Now that you know how to design a WhatsApp journey depending on your business and goal, you need to ensure you are using it correctly to make the most of your efforts. That being said, below I’m mentioning some of the best practices to make your WhatsApp journeys more effective: 

Craft your journeys to be on-brand

WhatsApp, is a renowned channel, and is being used by thousands of brands around the world. So much so that more than 100 billion messages are sent via the WhatsApp Business Platform every day. With this amount of information, your messages are bound to be lost in the ocean of messages. 

For this reason, you have to make your WhatsApp journeys stand out from the rest. To do this, incorporate branding elements within your journeys and maintain a consistent tone in your messages. For example, include branding colors that match your logo or stick to a professional/ informal tone in your content. Having consistency within your content enables customers to resonate with it better and look forward to your messages.

Take advantage of rich media 

Traditional channels like email or SMS lack dynamic multimedia capabilities to let you engage with potential customers. On the other hand, WhatsApp supports rich media functionality to make your messages not only engaging but interactive as well. 

WhatsApp supports rich media formats like images, videos, and carousels, which can dramatically enhance the user experience. You can include these components in your WhatsApp journeys to encourage your audience to come to a purchasing decision quickly. 

However, overloading your journeys with media can slow down the conversation or feel spammy. So, only use visuals when they add real value. For example, a WhatsApp carousel showcasing new arrivals, or a video demo to guide users through a process.

Comply with WhatsApp’s business policies

Meta is strict about how businesses engage with users. To stay compliant, always obtain clear WhatsApp opt-ins before sending proactive messages. Avoid blasting unsolicited promotions or using misleading content in hopes of getting quick sales. 

Your WhatsApp messaging should also comply with the channel’s messaging guidelines. Follow-up messages outside the 24-hour service window for customer-initiated chats must be sent using approved templates. Being transparent and privacy-conscious not only keeps you compliant but also builds trust with your audience.

Optimize your journeys continuously

What works today might not necessarily work tomorrow. Regularly monitor your WhatsApp journeys to see where users drop off, what kind of messages perform best, and how long it takes to move a prospect to the conversion stage.

You can A/B test different content, CTAs, or media types to uncover tweaks that can lead to big results. Use these insights to refine customer journeys on WhatsApp, improve engagement rates, and ensure your communication stays effective over time.

Key metrics to track in your WhatsApp journeys

In the last point above, I explained the importance of enhancing your WhatsApp journeys to make sure they remain relevant in the long run. However, for making data-driven decisions to optimize customer engagement, you need a good idea about the key metrics that affect your journeys the most. 

With that said, here are a few crucial metrics you have to monitor for prolonged success in your customer journeys:

Engagement metrics

WhatsApp, in general, has a very high open rate, going over 90% for most industries. However, that doesn’t mean the same applies to you. Keeping track of how many messages are being read by your audience provides you with the data on whether you have to update your headings to improve the CTR. 

Additionally, if your content requires users to respond back, then monitoring the response rate is just as important. This metric shows how many customers actually engage with your content. If a user is just opening the message and is not following through with it, then it is a waste of resources for you. 

Track both metrics to understand which messages spark interest and which fall flat. If open rates are high but response rates are low, your CTAs or message content might need a refresh. Monitoring this helps you fine-tune your tone, timing, and offer positioning for maximum engagement.

Drop-off points in the journey

Not every customer will make it to the end of your WhatsApp journey, and that’s okay. But identifying where users drop off is crucial. To do that, you need to ask yourself these questions: 

• Are they dropping during the product recommendation step? 
• Ignoring a payment prompt? 
• Going cold after initial interaction?

Use the analytics dashboard of your WhatsApp marketing tool to visualize drop-off points and fix friction. Sometimes, all it might take is a simple rewording of a message, reducing the number of steps, or adding an alternative option to connect with you.

Conversion rates per step

A WhatsApp journey comprises numerous stages, ranging from getting opt-ins to delivering timely customer support. So, tracking user behaviour across every step provides you insights into how users are interacting with your outreach. 

Not only does it give you a granular view of performance of your WhatsApp journey, it helps you pinpoint which parts are driving results and which are bottlenecks. For example, if many users engage with your product carousel but few click “Buy Now,” the issue may lie in your offer or next-step clarity.

Customer satisfaction

Even the most sophisticated WhatsApp journeys can leave something to be desired if they don’t leave customers feeling satisfied. That’s where metrics like Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) and Net Promoter Score (NPS) come in.

After key interactions in your journey, such as support resolution, purchase confirmation, or onboarding new customers, you can send a short survey asking them to rate their experience. A simple thumbs-up/down or a 1–5 scale for CSAT works well on WhatsApp. For NPS, you can ask, “On a scale of 0 to 10, how likely are you to recommend us to a friend?”

Tracking these scores gives you real insight into how users feel about receiving your WhatsApp messages and how effective they have been in satisfying their needs. If you’re getting low scores in these metrics, it means that there is something missing in your communication or the following steps are confusing the users. 

Pro tip: Use feedback loops to improve journeys continuously. If someone leaves a low score, consider following up with them to resolve their concern and ensure you don’t make the same mistake again.

Skyrock business success with well-designed WhatsApp journeys

Well-crafted WhatsApp journeys are equal, if not better, than any other sales customer journeys due to the versatility of the platform. It has become a go-to channel for businesses looking for a unified solution to manage their entire outreach flow.

With WhatsApp, you don’t have to ask leads to install an app or learn the UI of your platform before they can start communicating with you. WhatsApp’s familiar interface makes it easy for users to engage with your content, resulting in a seamless shopping experience and quicker conversions.

So, if you’re wondering whether WhatsApp is the right choice for your business, I say, try it out first. Start by creating a trial WhatsApp journey and deploy it for a segment of your audience. See how they interact with them and ask for insights regarding their experience. Once you have gathered sufficient data to get a good picture of the effectiveness of your journeys, you can implement them slowly across all the business operations. 

Zixflow is a tool that you can use to divide contacts into smaller segments and run hyper-personalized WhatsApp outreach initiatives at scale. Leveraging its novice-friendly interface and drag-and-drop feature set, it’s a solution built for brands seeking efficient business growth. 

Sign up for this all-in-one business suite without providing any payment details or schedule a demo with our experts to discuss your business-specific WhatsApp needs.