Skip to main content

How to send outbound WhatsApp campaigns and collect replies with AI agents in Formaloo

Learn how to connect a WhatsApp Business number to Formaloo, create an approved message template, and send outbound WhatsApp campaigns where an AI agent handles every reply and fills your form.

[Screenshot needed: Outbound conversations list showing sent WhatsApp campaigns with recipient counts and a Completed status]

What you'll build

By the end of this guide, you'll have a WhatsApp Business number connected to Formaloo, an approved message template, and a live outbound campaign reaching your recipients on WhatsApp. When someone replies, your Formaloo AI agent reads the conversation, fills in the connected form automatically, and follows up if anything required is still missing, the same way CC Formaloo already works over email, just on WhatsApp instead.

When to use this

  • You need to reach customers, patients, or leads somewhere they'll actually read and reply, not send another email that gets ignored.

  • You're collecting feedback, confirmations, or check-ins right after an appointment, purchase, or event, and want replies captured automatically instead of copied in by hand.

  • You're sending the same outreach to a list of people, like a survey, a reminder, or a renewal notice, and don't want to message each person one by one.

  • You want a form to keep collecting missing information conversationally, instead of sending someone back to a link they may never open.

  • Your team currently manages this over a personal WhatsApp number or a separate messaging tool, and wants the replies and the data living in the same place.

Part 1: Connect your WhatsApp Business number

Send WhatsApp lives in Formaloo's App Store, alongside Send Email. Before you can send anything, you need to connect the WhatsApp Business Account (WABA), your customer's own Meta business account holding the sender number, that Formaloo will send from. Formaloo doesn't provide a shared WhatsApp number: every workspace connects its own.

1. Open Apps & integrations: Click your profile icon in the top-right corner of your Formaloo homepage, then select Apps & integrations from the dropdown menu.

📖 See how to add integrations on Formaloo for the full App Store walkthrough.

2. Find Send WhatsApp: Search for Send WhatsApp in the integrations list and open it. If it isn't installed yet, install it first.

3. Check the prerequisites: Open the Connection tab. You'll need a Facebook Business account and a phone number that isn't already registered on the consumer WhatsApp app, since a number can't run on both at once.

4. Click Connect WhatsApp: Formaloo shows a short confirmation page for your workspace. Click Continue with Facebook to open the Meta login popup.

5. Review what the connection allows: The Facebook Login for Business window opens first with an overview of what you're granting, sending and receiving messages, managing conversations, and handling volume. Click Continue.

6. Share your business assets with Formaloo: Next, select or create a Business portfolio and a WhatsApp Business account (WABA), the account Meta uses to hold your sender number and templates. Click Next.

7. Finish Meta's setup: Continue through the remaining steps Meta walks you through to register your sender number and verify your business. Business verification is run entirely by Meta and isn't always instant, your connection may show as pending until it clears.

Note: Meta only lets one active connection run per Facebook Business account at a time. If your account is already linked to a different WhatsApp number under another workspace, use a separate Facebook Business account or business portfolio to connect this one.

8. Confirm the connection: Once setup completes, the Connection tab shows your connected number as Active, along with its WABA ID, quality rating, and messaging limit. This is also where you can disconnect the number later if you need to.

Part 2: Create a message template

WhatsApp only lets a business open a new conversation with an approved message template, it won't let Formaloo send a free-form message first. Once a recipient replies, your agent can respond freely for the next 24 hours, so the template only needs to cover that opening message.

1. Open the Templates tab: From the Send WhatsApp app, go to Templates and click + Create template.

2. Name your template: Use lowercase letters, numbers, and underscores only, no spaces, for example order_update.

3. Choose a category: Pick Utility, Marketing, or Authentication, depending on what the message is for.

4. Choose a language: Select the language your template will be sent in.

5. Write your message body: This is the opening message recipients see first. Use + Insert variable to add placeholders like {{1}} and {{2}} anywhere you want personalized text, for example "Hi {{1}}! Thanks for visiting {{2}}."

Note: You'll fill these placeholders in with custom text or recipient data when you build a campaign in Part 4, so keep them for whatever changes per recipient (a name, an order number, a location).

6. Submit for approval: Click Submit for approval. Meta reviews every template before it can open a conversation, this can take up to a day, though approval is often much faster in practice.

Your template shows up in the Templates list once it's created, and you'll need at least one approved template before you can start a chat. Only approved templates can actually open a new WhatsApp conversation.

Part 3: Turn on the WhatsApp channel for your agent

Sending a message is only half of Send WhatsApp. The other half is the Formaloo AI agent that reads replies and fills your form, the same agent behind CC Formaloo. An agent is connected to one form, and each channel it can reach people on (email, now WhatsApp) is switched on independently for that agent.

💡 Want to capture structured data from an ongoing conversation without asking someone to fill out a separate form? This is exactly what CC Formaloo does over email today, and Send WhatsApp extends the same agent to WhatsApp. See how to use CC Formaloo to collect data from email threads for how the agent itself is configured.

1. Enable CC Formaloo on your form: Open the form you want this campaign connected to, click the AI button in the tool island at the top of the form editor, then select CC Formaloo in the Integrations tab if you haven't already turned it on for this form.

2. Turn on the WhatsApp channel: In the same agent panel, scroll to Other channels and switch on Turn on WhatsApp. This saves the setting and makes WhatsApp conversations available from the Send WhatsApp integration.

3. Save your changes: Click Save Changes. Your agent now appears as an option when you build a WhatsApp campaign in Part 4.

Note: This step only needs to happen once per form. After it's on, you can send as many WhatsApp campaigns to that agent as you need.

Part 4: Send your first WhatsApp campaign

Everything comes together in the outbound conversation composer: pick a template, add recipients, fill in the variables, and choose the agent that should handle the replies.

1. Start a new conversation: From the Send WhatsApp app, open the Outbound conversations tab and click New conversation.

2. Name your conversation: Give it an internal title, for example "Feedback after purchase." Recipients never see this.

3. Pick your opening template: Under Opening message, choose a template from the dropdown. The list shows every template you've created, but only an approved one can actually be sent.

4. Add your recipients: Under Add Recipients, choose an existing user directory, import a CSV or Excel file with phone numbers, or paste the numbers directly.

💡 Want to send to people already stored as portal users instead of a fresh list every time? How to create a portal and manage users' access covers building the user directory you can pick from here.

5. Populate your template variables: For each {{1}}, {{2}} placeholder in your template, choose how to fill it in, pick a field connected to the recipient (like their email or a saved answer), or type your own custom text.

6. Choose your Formaloo agent: Under AI agent, select the agent you turned the WhatsApp channel on for in Part 3. This is the agent that will read every reply and fill the connected form.

7. Review and send: Check the template preview on the left, then click Send conversation. Prefer to come back to it later? Save draft keeps everything without sending.

How replies get turned into form data

Once a recipient replies, the agent takes over automatically. There's nothing left to trigger manually.

  • One record per recipient Formaloo creates one conversation and one form record per recipient at send time, before anyone has replied. Replies from different people are never mixed together, even if several reply within the same minute.

  • Reading and filling in answers The agent reads each reply, matches it to the right recipient's record, and extracts whatever it can confidently understand, one field, several fields from a single message, or an answer that spans a few back-and-forth messages. If a reply doesn't clearly map to a field, the agent keeps the raw message and asks a clarifying question instead of guessing.

  • Following up on what's missing If a required field is still missing after a reply, the agent follows up automatically, and keeps asking until the record is complete.

  • Staying inside WhatsApp's reply window Each new reply from a recipient reopens a fresh 24-hour window for the agent to respond freely, so an active conversation never runs into WhatsApp's messaging restrictions.

  • Opting out with STOP If a recipient replies with something like "STOP," the conversation ends immediately and Formaloo remembers not to message that person again in a future campaign. Anything they'd already shared stays on their record rather than being deleted.

What you now have

You now have a WhatsApp Business number connected directly to Formaloo, an approved message template ready to open new conversations, and an agent that can run the entire collection loop on its own: send the opening message, read whatever comes back, fill the connected form, and ask again if something required is still missing. Every reply lands as its own row on the same form your team already works from, so there's no separate WhatsApp inbox to check and no copying answers over by hand. When someone genuinely doesn't want to hear from you, replying STOP ends that conversation for good, so you don't have to track opt-outs by hand either.

What's next

  • Send the same kind of campaign over email too If some of your recipients are easier to reach by email than WhatsApp, the same agent-driven collection loop already exists there. → How to send an email campaign and collect data with AI agents in Formaloo

  • Route the data your WhatsApp agent collects Once replies start filling your form, use logic to notify the right teammate, update a status, or trigger a follow-up automatically based on what came back. → What is logic in Formaloo

  • Build the audience you're messaging Send WhatsApp campaigns work best against a real list of contacts. Set up a portal so recipients build their own profile over time instead of starting from a fresh import every campaign. → How to create a portal and manage users' access

Ready-to-use templates

Don't build this from scratch, we've already put it together for you.

Learn more how-tos

Ready to build this?

🚀 Use this template Start in minutes with a pre-built version of this workflow.

💬 Get help from our concierge team Our team will help you set this up for your specific use case.

📅 Book a demo for Team/Enterprise setup See how teams use Formaloo at scale with advanced permissions and integrations.

Related Articles
Did this answer your question?