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The key to marketing success is knowledge
In marketing, guesswork is expensive. Which audience should you target? What assets should you run? And how much of the budget should you spend on it? Every decision you make, should be grounded in data. Why? Because knowledge is the difference between a good campaign and a great one.
When you understand how your assets are performing and what happens when people click on your promotional materials or ads, whether they engage, drop off or convert, you can target your optimisation efforts. Without that data, you're just guessing, relying on assumptions rather than hard evidence.
Data enables marketers to:
Refine targeting: Know who’s really responding to your message and who isn’t.
Improve messaging: Tailor creative and copy based on what resonates.
Maximise ROI: Shift budget toward what works—and away from what doesn’t.
Prove impact: Show the real value of your campaigns with measurable outcomes.
The more you know, the more you can grow. Tools giving you these insights are thus incredibly valuable - tools like Meta's Conversions API.
What is the conversions API?
The Conversions API is a Meta tool that allows businesses to directly connect customer interaction data from messaging platforms (like WhatsApp and Messenger) to Meta’s advertising platform. Instead of relying on traditional tracking methods like cookies or pixels, the API provides a direct server-to-server connection. This will enable you to accurately track conversions that happen within the conversation, and use that data to optimise your campaigns and ads. And optimisation means lower cost per conversion and a boost in ROI.
Why do you want it?
Not convinced yet? Let's dive into the benefits for you as a marketeer! With more knowledge and insights into your messaging campaigns, you'll be able to actually see what customers are doing - like what products are added to what carts, what's being purchased, when things are being purchased, etc. Based on this data, you can even create a look-a-like audience to improve your targeting and increase your ROI.
Create smart look-a-like audiences with Meta
Meta offers to help set up a look-a-like audience to better target your campaigns. These audiences are based on the usual data - age, location, interests- but also the new insights that the Conversions API offers: when orders are being placed, what pages are frequently visited, online behavior, purchases, and more. Basically, Meta will help you identify your customers, and find more of them in their database.
"Your customers are mainly young female adults with children, who live in this area and love cooking. I know 50.000 more people like that!"
Why would you want this? Well, it has some serious benefits:
Smarter targeting: Rather than advertising your products and services randomly, Meta can make sure you reach the people that would love to buy your cookbooks. Or pizza's. Or are in need of a professional painter. Or are looking to invest. The list goes on-and-on.
Customer behaviour insights: Understanding how customers respond to your messages is important if you want to improve and optimise your campaigns. Do more of what works.
Lower cost per conversion: Data-driven optimisation will make your campaigns more efficient - reducing the cost per result. And because Meta will do the work for you, you'll also save time!
Future-proof advertising: In a world where cookies are fading out of relevance, the Conversions API offers a sustainable solution for data-driven marketing.
Full visibility with ads that click to WhatsApp
And yes, now you're probably thinking: But why do I need the Meta Conversions API to do this? Can't it be done with a good BI implementation? Well, let's dive into it.
The Conversions API shines brightest in combination with ads that click to WhatsApp, because that's where you'll be able to gain full visibility of the messaging customer journey. The API eliminates the 'black box' between ad click and final conversion - giving you full visibility of business outcomes such as leads, add-to-cart conversions, and purchases. And unlike other solutions, this conversion data cannot be blocked by ad blockers or browser privacy settings. There's no data loss thanks to the server-to-server connection.
Optimised and data-driven messaging
WhatsApp Business Platform is continuously striving to improve the service they offer to marketers, and the latest optimisation is the Marketing Message Lite API (MM Lite API). This API builds on the strength of AI systems and data to help optimise your messaging strategy, enhance the customer experience, and to drive better results by offering automatic optimisations, additional measurement capabilities and dynamic message limits.
In short, the Marketing Messages lite API will allow you to send more targeted, efficient, timely and promotional messages on WhatsApp. The perfect next step after using the Conversions API, enabling you to leverage that data to send optimised, data-driven messages.
When used together, the Conversions API and Marketing Messages Lite API turn your WhatsApp channel into a high-performance, automated marketing engine. With real-time behavioural insights and optimised promotional capabilities, you can increase engagement, conversion rates, and customer satisfaction.
Who should use the conversions API?
As we've hinted throughout this article - the Meta Conversions API is a great fit for marketers. Especially if they are active and running advertisements on Meta platforms (or planning to adopt those channels). Wondering if it's a fit for you as well? Ask yourself this:
Are you already using messaging platforms to sell products or to provide customer support?
Do you collect leads through messaging?
Do you run ads on Meta platforms?
Are messaging channels an integral part of your customer communication?
Did you answer 'yes' to most of all above? Then the Conversions API is definitely something worth looking into. There is however a big caveat...
.. and who shouldn't use it?
Due to (GDPR) regulatory restrictions, the API is currently not available in Europe or Japan. This means that if your target audience is either in Europe or Japan, then you cannot use the Conversions API to get additional insights.
The conversions API in a nutshell
In short, the Conversions API for Business Messaging is a powerful tool that helps turn messaging interactions into measurable, actionable data. It'll enable you to run more efficient campaigns and reduce costs by leveraging customer insights - if you're operating outside of Europe or Japan.
Use it together with the Marketing Messages Lite API to turn WhatsApp Business into a powerful marketing platform with important data insights and targeted campaigns to increase ROI.
Interested? Contact one of our experts to discuss your specific use case and see if it is a perfect fit for your marketing endeavours.
+27 (21) 180 2560
