This guide serves as an essential toolkit for any marketing professional looking to diagnose bulk marketing campaign issues, resolve them effectively, and implement best practices to turn failures into a roadmap for future success and improved performance.
1 Locating Failure Data: The First Step in Diagnosis
Before you can solve a problem, you must first identify and locate it. Failure data can be found at the campaign level.
For bulk marketing campaigns sent to a specific customer list, the platform provides a detailed performance report. Follow these steps to access it:
Navigate to the Bulk Marketing Campaigns section from the main dashboard.
Click on the specific campaign you wish to analyze.
The campaign's dashboard will display key performance metrics, including the total number of messages that Failed, were Delivered, and were Read.
To understand the specific reasons for each failure, click on Export Campaign Data and select the Contacts Report.
You will receive an email with a suammry of failure reasons and link to download the report. This detailed file provides a contact-by-contact breakdown, including a specific reason for any message that failed to deliver. You can filter the file after downloading to see the failure reasons and the failure percentage for each.
Note: if you couldn’t download the report file after opening the email, copy the link and paste it in an incognito tab, and a save request should pop up to save the file.
With the failure data and error codes in hand, the next step is to understand what they mean and how to act on them.
2.0 Decoding Failure Reasons: A Categorized Analysis
Bulk marketing campaign failures are rarely random; they typically fall into distinct categories. By understanding these categories, and understand how to handle each case. From the downloaded campaign report you will be able to see the failure reasons, which are referred to using error codes.
2.1 Technical Delivery Failures: Meta and WhatsApp Error Codes
When a message fails to send, WhatsApp often provides a specific error code. This code is the key to understanding the technical reason for the failure and its corresponding solution.
From the failure reasons summary you recieved in the email with the campaign report, you will be able to see a reasons why your campaign failed. Those include the following:
Error Code | Reason for Failure (Why?) | Recommended Solution |
131026 | The recipient cannot receive the message. This may be because their number is not a valid WhatsApp number, they have not accepted the latest Terms of Service, or they are using an outdated version of the app. | You cannot control this issue and those contacts will not receive marketing messages even if you try again. |
131000 | An unknown error occurred during the sending process. | The issue is likely temporary. Attempt to send the message again. |
131042 | There is an issue with the payment method on the WhatsApp Business account. | Check your billing and payment settings in your Facebook Business Manager and settle any outstanding invoices. |
132015 | The template has been paused by WhatsApp due to low-quality signals, such as being reported or blocked by users. | Cretae a new template and try sending the campaign again to failed contacts. |
132016 | The template has been permanently disabled after being repeatedly paused for low quality. | The template cannot be used again. You must create a new template with improved content. |
130472 | The user's number is part of an experiment and cannot receive the message. | Contact the customer through another channel. This user can only receive Utility message. |
131048 | The spam rate limit has been reached. This is because you've exceeded the daily sending limit. | Check your WhatsApp number's daily sending limit in your WhatsApp Manager or BusinessChat dashboard. |
131049 | Meta has chosen not to deliver the message. This can happen if a user has already received multiple marketing messages from any business on the same day. | Try sending the campaign message to those contacts after 24 hours. |
2.2 Account and Configuration Issues
Payment Problems:
If there are outstanding invoices on your WhatsApp Business account or your BusinessChat subscription, you will be blocked from launching new campaigns. Ensure all accounts are in good financial standing before sending.
Exceeding Daily Sending Limits:
WhatsApp imposes tiered daily limits on the number of unique customers a business can message within a 24-hour period (e.g., 1,000, 10,000, 100,000). If a campaign targets a list of customers larger than your current daily limit, all messages sent after the limit is reached will fail.
Poor WhatsApp Number Quality:
WhatsApp rates your number's quality as Green (High), Yellow (Medium), or Red (Low) based on customer feedback like blocks and reports. A 'Low' quality rating can lead to a 'Suspended' or 'Restricted' status, which prevents you from sending messages and causes campaign failures.
2.3 Content and Template Violations
The content of your messages and the structure of your templates are critical. Violating WhatsApp's policies in this area is a common source of failure.
Low-Quality Template:
If a template consistently receives negative feedback from customers (reports or blocks), WhatsApp may first pause it (Error 132015). If the negative feedback continues, the template can be permanently disabled (Error 132016), causing any campaign that relies on it to fail. In this case, some of the contacts will receive the campaign message, but once the template gets paused, the rest of the contacts won’t receive the message.
Understanding complete bulk marketing campaign failure
Bulk marketing campaigns run a pre-send health check before being sent (immediate or scheduled). If this check fails, the campaign is marked as Failed and no messages are sent.
Fully failed campaigns will show a clear failure reason in the campaign details, which might be one of the following reasons:
Outstanding usage balance.
Channel not found / not active.
Facebook payment issue.
Template does not exist.
Template quality is low.
Unknown issue (unhandled exception).
IMPORTANT NOTE: The Export Report option has been removed from fully failed campaigns since no messages will be sent. You can understand the failure reason immediately when clicking the specific bulk campaign page. Fix the issue and then create a new bulk campaign, as the fully failed campaign will not be sent automatically after you've fixed the issue.
Solutions for failed bulk campaigns based on the data you get from the reports
All failed messages due to an issue with the recipient’s phone number are not solvable, as you have no control over the contacts’ phone numbers or devices. So there’s no need to resend the campaign to them.
All failed messages due to the contact’s phone number being part of an experiment have no solution, as Meta has blocked these numbers from receiving marketing messages for an undetermined time. So there’s no need to resend the campaign to them.
All messages that failed due to a WhatsApp payment or Tier limit threshold have a solution. You need to filter those contacts, upload them again to the BusinessChat account, and send the campaign to them after you’ve confirmed you've paid the WhatsApp payment and that you have enough funds on the card for the new campaign. However, if the issue is the tier limit, you need to wait 24 hours for it to reopen, then you can resend the campaign.
All failed messages due to the Meta error "maintain a healthy ecosystem" are solvable. Filter those contacts and send them the campaign after at least 24 hours. However, note that there will always be a failure rate, as this specific error counts all marketing messages from other stores, not just yours.
IMPORTANT NOTE: Whether a campaign fails completely or partially, it will not restart automatically once the issue is fixed. You must identify the failed contacts and launch a new manual campaign to reach them.