WhatsUpCroatia – a communication tool that gives businesses an extra dimension

WhatsUpCroatia is a new communication and marketing service on the WhatsApp platform and a simple yet highly effective business tool. This innovation in the Croatian market, which has been used worldwide for a year, will be officially presented on September 24 at the Weekend Media Festival.

– The advantage of this service is that it enables direct two-way communication with clients and/or employees, and unlike purely text SMS messages, it is possible to send an unlimited number of multimedia messages. However, research has shown that the greatest advantage of WhatsApp marketing is that as much as 98% of messages are opened, while this is the case for only 40% of newsletters, said marketing expert Aleksandar Kovačević.

The WhatsUpCroatia service is tailored to the needs of various businesses. It is used for promotion in the tourism sector, in real estate sales, and insurance. In addition to promotional purposes, it can also be used for communication and logistics. For example, in optimizing the operations of institutes, banks, and retail chains. The service can be used for promoting events, festivals, sending information to citizens about local happenings, for customer support, but also for surveying customers.

– In the business world, it is not acceptable for all messages to be received by all group members. Therefore, we have enabled one-on-one communication. Retail chains find it most interesting to distribute catalogs with the latest offers, but at the same time, they can send information about contests to users who have subscribed to that category, and they can use the same database to contact their employees, explained Kovačević.

Clients create the information they will send to users themselves and administer it, while users can choose which information they want to receive based on their personal preferences. Messages are sent exclusively to those who have consented and subscribed to notifications from a specific category. If someone no longer wishes to receive messages, they can opt out at any time. The service is free for users, and the client pays depending on the number of users – the more users, the lower the price per message. If a client has 5,000 users on their list and wants to send them one message a day, that would mean sending 150,000 messages monthly, and they would pay 3,000 kuna for that service. WhatsApp marketing is a good choice for small entrepreneurs who are cutting costs at every step, and with this type of marketing, they achieve better results.

The marketing campaign consists of promoting WhatsApp number that users memorize in their mobile phones and send key words. They then receive various content from you – images, video, audio, text, links, and they can send you inquiries and similar.

In the world, similar WhatsApp services are used by general practitioners for scheduling or consulting about minor injuries (they send a picture and receive a doctor’s opinion). An interesting example is the Delhi police, which created an anti-corruption WhatsApp number and asked citizens to report any irregularities to it (sending pictures or videos of police officers not performing their duties, taking bribes, and/or not complying with regulations in any way). On the day the campaign was launched, over 23,000 WhatsApp messages were received.