Product messages

Product messages empower you to send interactive WhatsApp messages that showcase products directly from your Meta catalog.

When you send a WhatsApp product message to a user, the user goes on the following customer journey:

1. The user receives your product or catalog message in WhatsApp.
2. The user adds products to their cart directly from WhatsApp.
3. The user taps Place order in WhatsApp.
4. Your website or app recieves the cart data from Braze and generates a checkout link.
5. The user is directed to your website or app to complete their checkout.

When users add items to their cart through catalog messages, Braze receives webhook data for follow-up actions.

Requirements

Product message templates

• catalog messages
• multi-product messages

Setting up product messages

1. In the Meta Commerce Manager, follow Meta’s instructions to create your Meta catalog. Make sure you’re in the same Meta Business Portfolio where your Braze-connected WhatsApp Business Accont resides.
2. Follow Meta’s instructions to connect your Meta catalog to your Braze-connected WhatsApp Business Account by assigning the “Manage Catalog” permission in Meta Business Manager.

Make sure to use the Braze Business Manager ID, 332231937299182, as the partner business ID.

3. Select your Meta catalog settings. You must select Show catalog icon in chat header to send catalog messages.

4. In Braze, go through the embedded signup process to provide permissions. This will unlock the Braze integrated product selector.

Building a product message

1. In your Meta Business manager, go to Message Templates.
2. Select Catalog as a format, and then choose between Catalog message (displays full catalog) and Multi-product catalog message (highlights specific items).
3. In Braze, create a WhatsApp campaign or Canvas Message step.
4. Select the subscription group that matches where you submitted the template.
5. Select WhatsApp Template Message. (Product and catalog messages aren’t available yet in response messages.)
6. Select the template you’d like to use.
   • If you select a multi-product template, provide the section title and content IDs for the products to highlight.

7. Continue building your message.

Managing products

Accessing Commerce Manager

In your Meta Business Manager, go to Commerce Manager and select your organization. Here, you can manage your catalog assets, such as:

• Create new catalogs
• Add products to existing catalogs
• Update product information
• Remove discontinued items

Checkout: Cart processing and webhooks

When users interact with your WhatsApp product messages, they can browse products and add items to their cart. However, currently there is no built-in checkout functionality for shipping information or payment processing. Instead, we encourage you to create a cart within your own app or website and direct users to that cart using a custom link.

Considerations

• No in-app checkout: Users can’t complete purchases directly within WhatsApp. All transactions must be redirected to your website or app.
• Custom link required: You need to create a custom link that directs users to their cart on your platform.
• Manual setup: The setup process requires manual configuration of your cart and messaging workflows.

Setting up cart event triggers

When a customer places an order in WhatsApp, Braze automatically:

1. Receives the cart contents from WhatsApp (product IDs, quantities, and other order data).
2. Creates an ecommerce.cart_update eCommerce event with all relevant data, including source = whats_app.
3. Triggers a response, allowing you to set up automated campaigns to respond to the order.

The ecommerce.cart_update eCommerce event only appears listed in Braze after an event has been sent, which can be done by generating a test product message from Braze and submitting a cart event. The cart event includes:

• Cart ID: Unique identifier for the cart
• Products: List of items with product IDs, quantities, and prices
• Total Value: Sum of all items
• Currency: The cart’s currency
• Source: Marked as “whats_app”
• Metadata: Additional data like catalog ID and message text

You can find additional Braze cart event information in Types of eCommerce recommended events.

Setting up a triggered response

1. Create a custom event trigger for ecommerce.cart_updated.
2. Add a property filter for source = "whats_app".

3. Configure follow-up actions based on cart data.

Recommended checkout implementations

• simple liquid-based cart links
• connected content
• webhook and custom events

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{% assign cart_link = "http://alejandro-test-new.myshopify.com/cart/" %}
{% for product in event_properties.products %}
 {% assign variant_id = product.product_id %}
 {% assign quantity = product.quantity %}
 {% if forloop.first %}
   {% assign cart_link = cart_link | append: variant_id | append: ":" | append: quantity %}
 {% else %}
   {% assign cart_link = cart_link | append: "," | append: variant_id | append: ":" | append: quantity %}
 {% endif %}
{% endfor %}
{{ cart_link }}

Testing and validation

Test message requirements

Cart functionality carries over between test messages, but processing of the inbound result doesn’t carry over.

Message preview

• Product images and details are pulled from your Meta catalog.
• Interactive preview shows placeholders until integration is complete.

Error codes

• If a product ID doesn’t exist in the catalog, you’ll receive the error product not found for product_retailer_id, fake-product-id, in catalog_id, 1903196950214359.
• If a catalog is disconnected from the WABA, you’ll receive the error Check if catalog is linked to the WhatsApp Business Account and the catalog is enabled in the WhatsApp Commerce Settings.