Click-to-WhatsApp ads: turn ad clicks into sales conversations
Endelir answers every chat that starts from a click-to-WhatsApp ad in a shared inbox, records which ad and headline brought each person, and lets you count what each ad produced; replies sent while Meta's free entry point window is open cost nothing. An ad whose button opens a chat skips the landing page and the form, and hands you a person talking in their own words. Endelir takes it from there: the conversation lands in your shared inbox, the ad that produced it is recorded against the contact, and someone on your team owns the reply.
The click is the easy part
Money buys the tap. What happens after it decides whether the money was worth spending. On one handset running the WhatsApp Business app, the ad enquiries pile up next to the supplier chats and the family group, and the person who answers them is whoever picks the phone up.
Then the accounting fails. Two ads are running, sometimes four, and nobody can say which one produced the conversation that turned into a sale — so the ad that works and the ad that wastes money look identical in the inbox. And an ad that runs in the evening produces enquiries in the evening, which one handset does not answer until somebody picks it up the next morning.
What Endelir does after the tap
You build the ad in Meta's own tools and choose the button that opens a chat with your business number. Endelir is not part of that step and does not sell, place or price advertising. It is what receives the conversation the ad starts. The message arrives in a shared inbox your whole team can see, a contact is created if the person is new and matched if they have written to you before, and a keyword reply can acknowledge them in seconds rather than hours.
Meta sends the ad's details along with that first message, and Endelir stores them against both the message and the contact: the click reference, the source type, the source id, the link and the headline of the ad they tapped. From there a chat flow can ask the two or three questions your business actually needs answered, write each answer onto the contact record, and hand the conversation to the right team — so the person who opens it can read what the enquiry is about before typing anything.
How it works
- 1 You run the ad Built, targeted and paid for in Meta's tools, with the button set to open a chat with your business number. Endelir does not touch this part.
- 2 Someone taps it The chat opens on your business, usually with a first message already written in, so the person only has to press send.
- 3 The message reaches your inbox It arrives in the shared inbox alongside every other conversation on that number, not on one salesperson's phone.
- 4 The contact is created or matched A new person becomes a contact. Someone who has written before opens with their history and saved details intact.
- 5 The ad is recorded Endelir stores the click reference, source type, source id, link and ad headline against that message and that contact.
- 6 A first reply goes out A keyword reply can acknowledge the enquiry immediately, and a chat flow can start asking what the person needs.
- 7 It gets an owner The flow assigns the conversation to a team, or someone takes it by hand — and the assignment is visible to everybody else.
What this looks like in practice
A car dealership runs two ads at once: one for a service offer and one for test drives on a new model. Both open a chat. Before, both landed on the showroom phone, and the service enquiries and the sales enquiries were sorted by whoever read them first.
Now both land in the same shared inbox. A flow asks which model or which service, writes the answer onto the contact, and sends sales enquiries to sales and service enquiries to the workshop desk — so what the enquiry is about is on the contact record before anyone types. The manager opening the inbox can see which conversations are still sitting without a name against them. Underneath, Endelir has recorded which ad produced each conversation, though that record is stored rather than shown.
What can happen next
Who this suits
What to know before you set it up
Endelir is not affiliated with Meta and has no part in your advertising. The ad is created, targeted and paid for in Meta's tools, and the reporting on spend, reach and cost lives there. What Endelir keeps is the referral Meta sends with the first message — the click reference, source type, source id, link and headline — stored against that message and that contact. Be plain about what that is worth today: it is recorded, not displayed. There is no ad column in the inbox and no campaign report inside Endelir, so nobody on your team reads the referral while they work. If they need to know which campaign an enquiry answers, have the flow ask and save it to a field on the contact, which they can see. Facebook lead forms and Instagram direct messages do not connect to Endelir today.
Because the customer wrote to you first, your team can reply freely for a while without a template. Once that service window closes, starting the conversation again uses a message template approved in advance, and Endelir keeps track of which of the two situations you are in. A later promotional message needs the person's consent recorded, and a marketing campaign to a contact without it is refused rather than sent. One practical point about the number itself: once it is connected to the WhatsApp Business Platform it can no longer be used in the ordinary app on a handset, so many businesses point their ads at a fresh number and keep the old one for staff.
What to watch
- How many ad clicks become a first message you can actually read
- How long that first message waits for a reply
- How many finish the qualifying questions instead of dropping out
- How many ad conversations end up with a named owner
- Which product or service the qualifying answers name most often
- How many reach the next real step — a visit, a quote, a booking
- How many ask to stop hearing from you
Related
Questions people ask
What is a Click-to-WhatsApp ad?
It is an advertisement on Facebook or Instagram whose button opens a chat with your business number instead of loading a landing page. The person taps, the chat opens with a first message usually written in for them, and they press send. You skip the landing page and the form entirely, and what you get back is someone describing what they want in their own words, which is normally more useful than the three fields a form would have collected. You create these ads in Meta's own advertising tools. Endelir is what handles the conversation once it starts.
Does Endelir create or manage my Facebook and Instagram ads?
No. Endelir has no part in building, targeting, budgeting or reporting on advertising, and it is not affiliated with Meta. You run the ads where you run them now. What Endelir does is everything after the tap: receiving the conversation into a shared inbox, creating or matching the contact, recording which ad it came from, answering quickly, asking the qualifying questions and making sure a named person owns the follow-up. If you want to know what an ad cost or how many people saw it, that is a question for Meta's tools, not this one.
Can Endelir tell me which ad a conversation came from?
It records it. Meta sends a referral with the first message and Endelir stores it against that message and that contact: the click reference, the source type, the source id, the link and the headline of the ad they tapped. Two honest limits, and the second one matters. The data only exists for ads, so a QR code or a plain website link carries none of it — for those, give each placement its own pre-filled first message and read the source from the wording. And the referral is recorded, not displayed: there is no ad column in the inbox and no campaign report, so nobody reads it while they work. What they can read is the answer a flow asked for and saved to a field on the contact. Treat the stored referral as data you hold, not a dashboard you have.
Do I need Endelir to run Click-to-WhatsApp ads?
No. You can point the ads at a number running the ordinary WhatsApp Business app and it will work. What that setup cannot do is share the enquiries across a team, record which of your ads produced which conversation, answer within seconds when everyone is busy, or keep the answers to your qualifying questions anywhere but in the chat text itself. Endelir is worth adding when more than one person needs to answer, or when the enquiries an ad produces need to reach a named owner rather than a handset.
Do I need an approved template to reply to someone who clicked my ad?
Not for the reply itself. The person wrote to you first, which opens a service window in which your team can answer freely, and a chat flow can ask its questions inside that window as well. Templates matter when you want to start the conversation again after the window has closed — a follow-up the next day, a reminder a week later. Those go out as a message template that Meta has approved in advance. Endelir keeps track of which of the two situations a given conversation is in, so this is not something your team has to hold in their heads.
What happens if nobody is free when the click arrives?
That is the case worth planning for, because ads run in the evening and at the weekend. A keyword reply can acknowledge the person in seconds and tell them when someone will answer properly. A chat flow can carry on and ask what they are looking for, saving each answer onto the contact, so the enquiry is already qualified by the time a person opens it in the morning. When someone does take over, the automation on that conversation pauses, so the customer is not answered twice by two different things.
Can I send a promotional message later to everyone who clicked my ad?
Only to the people whose consent you have recorded. Tapping an ad is interest, not permission for marketing, and Endelir refuses a marketing campaign to a contact with no consent on record rather than sending it and hoping. In practice you collect that permission in the conversation itself, which is a natural thing to ask once you are already talking. Anyone who opts out is suppressed and stays suppressed. Bought or scraped lists are not a lead source, and this is not the software for one.
Make the conversation after the click as important as the ad itself.
Point your Click-to-WhatsApp ads at a number your whole team can answer, with a flow that qualifies the enquiry before anyone opens it. We set the number up with you on a call.
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