Meta Restricts WhatsApp Marketing to U.S. numbers; Zoho Desk Limits Bulk & Mass Actions for Marketing Templates

Meta has always limited WhatsApp marketing messages based on user engagement with previously sent templates. Businesses may have repeatedly seen the error message “USER_MARKETING_TEMPLATE_LIMIT” when messages failed to deliver.  Learn more about the restriction from meta

Zoho Desk does not allow marketing templates to be sent in bulk or through mass actions, as this could lead to compliance violations and legal risks for both customers and BSPs.

Hello, everyone!

Starting April 1, 2025, Meta will pause all WhatsApp marketing messages sent to U.S. phone numbers (+1 country code). If you try to send a marketing message to a U.S. number, it will fail and show an error.

This change affects businesses that use WhatsApp to send promotional messages, discounts, or sales offers to customers in the U.S.

However, you can still send important messages like:

• Order confirmations
• Payment receipts
  
• Shipping updates
  
• One-time passwords (OTPs)
  
• Customer service replies within 24 hours
  

What's changing on April 1, 2025?

• No WhatsApp marketing messages can be sent to U.S. numbers. This affects any message classified as marketing under WhatsApp’s template system, including promotional offers, discounts, and outbound sales messages.
• Non-marketing messages (such as receipts, OTPs, and support replies) are still allowed.
  
• Businesses outside the U.S. can continue sending marketing messages to non-U.S. customers.
  
• U.S.-based businesses can still send marketing messages to non-U.S. numbers.
  

How this affects your business

If You Use a U.S.-registered WhatsApp Business Number  

• You can send marketing, utility, and authentication template messages to international (non-U.S.) customers.
  
• You cannot send marketing messages to U.S. numbers.
  
• Customer-initiated conversations are still allowed worldwide.
  

Billing and payment impact

• Prepaid credits: If you prepaid for WhatsApp marketing messages, those credits cannot be used for U.S. numbers.
  
• Refund credits: If you have purchased credits for sending marketing templates, refunds for those credits can be issued.
  
• No charges for failed messages: If your marketing message fails due to this restriction, you will not be billed.
  
• Queued messages: If a message was scheduled before April 1 but fails after that date, refund policies may vary.
  
• Marketing conversations in the U.S.: No longer billable under WhatsApp’s conversation-based pricing.
  

How this affects Zoho Desk users

If you use Zoho Desk to manage WhatsApp conversations, this change will impact:

Inbox  

• Marketing messages sent to U.S. numbers will not be delivered.
  
• Agents will see failed message notifications if they try sending marketing templates to U.S. customers.
  

 

Automation and workflows  

• Any ticket-based automation that sends WhatsApp marketing messages should be updated to exclude U.S. recipients.
  

What Zoho Desk users need to do next

To comply with this new rule and avoid message failures, Zoho Desk users should:

• Update inbox workflows to remove WhatsApp marketing for U.S. numbers.
  
• Revise automation rules to prevent failed message attempts.
  
• Train agents on these changes so they do not send marketing messages to U.S. customers. 
  

For help, contact support@zohodesk.com 

Adjusting your business workflows

• U.S. numbers will automatically be excluded from WhatsApp marketing messages.
  
• WhatsApp delivery rates will drop for U.S. numbers.
  

Can I still create WhatsApp marketing templates?

Yes, but you cannot use them for U.S. recipients.

What you need to know about creating templates  

• Templates will remain approved in Meta’s system.
  
• Exclude U.S. numbers when sending marketing messages.
  
• Templates can still be used for non-U.S. customers.
  

Restrictions on Bulk and Mass Actions for Marketing Templates in Zoho Desk

• Users are not permitted to send marketing templates in bulk or through mass actions in Zoho Desk, as this may lead to compliance and legal risks for both the customers and the Business Service Provider (BSP). These restrictions are applicable across all Zoho data centers (DCs).
  

Frequently asked questions (FAQ)

What happens to existing WhatsApp marketing templates?  

Pre-approved templates remain in Meta’s system. They can still be used for non-U.S. recipients but will not be deliverable to U.S. numbers.

Will businesses be charged for failed messages?  

No, businesses will not be billed for failed WhatsApp marketing messages. If a message was queued before April 1, 2025, refund policies may vary.

Can businesses still send WhatsApp messages to U.S. customers?  

Yes, non-marketing messages such as order confirmations, receipts, and OTPs are still allowed.

How can businesses continue engaging U.S. customers?  

Encourage customer-initiated chats using Click-to-WhatsApp Ads. Use WhatsApp for transactional updates rather than promotions.

Will Meta lift this restriction in the future?  

Meta has not provided a timeline for when WhatsApp marketing may resume in the U.S. Businesses should continue monitoring Meta’s announcements for any policy changes.

Unexpected billing charges for WhatsApp marketing messages to U.S. numbers  

The message may have queued before April 1, 2025, and processed later.

Can I use Zoho Desk to send bulk or mass marketing or promotional messages via WhatsApp?

Zoho Desk supports both utility and marketing templates for WhatsApp in real-time conversations through the IM inbox. However, bulk and mass actions for marketing templates are not supported in Zoho Desk. For running campaigns or promotional activities at scale, we strongly recommend using Zoho Marketing Automation to ensure compliance with WhatsApp's policies.

Best,

Prabin

• Topic Participants

• Raj R

  

• Sticky Posts

• Zoho Desk Partners with Microsoft's M365 Copilot for seamless customer service experiences

  Hello Zoho Desk users, We are happy to announce that Zoho Desk has partnered with Microsoft's M365 to empower customer service teams with enhanced capabilities and seamless experiences for agents. Microsoft announced their partnership during their keynote

• WhatsApp pricing changes: Pay per message starting July 1, 2025

  Starting July 1, 2025, WhatsApp is shifting from conversation-based pricing to per-message billing. That means every business-initiated message you send will count. Not just the first one in a 24-hour window. Pricing updates on the WhatsApp Business Platform

• Live Webinar - Work smarter with Zoho Desk and Zoho Workplace integration

  Hello customers! Zoho Desk and Zoho Workplace are coming together for a webinar on 14th May, 2024. Zoho Workplace is a suite of productivity apps for email, chat, docs, calls, and more at one single place. Zoho Desk is closely integrated with a few tools

• Apple iOS 17 and iPadOS 17 updates for Zoho Desk users

  Hello Zoho Desk users! Apple recently announced the release of iOS 17 and iPad OS 17. These latest OS updates will help you stay productive and efficient, through interactive and seamless user experiences. Zoho Desk has incorporated the updates to help

• Zoho Desk Cheat Sheet For The Year-End

  Check out these Zoho Desk best practices to end this year on a high and have a great one ahead! #1 Set Business (Holiday) Hours - If you have limited working hours, please make sure you restrict your business hours or set them as holidays for the coming days. Let your customers know when you will, and won't, be available. #2 Update the Annual Holiday List - Check the holidays for the new year and update the holiday schedule. Usually, holidays from the current year will be carried over for the next

• Recent Topics

• Currency selector (based on variable) usage in comparsion

  Hi, I've developed a currency selector based on the following topic, and it's working well in pivot tables and charts: https://help.zoho.com/portal/en/community/topic/how-can-i-allow-my-users-to-choose-a-currency-for-the-dashboard I also have a comparison

• Suitability of Zoho One (Single User License) for Multi-State GST Compliance & Cost Analysis

  Hello Zoho Team, I am an e-commerce business owner selling on platforms like Amazon, Flipkart, and Meesho, and I'm currently using their fulfillment warehouses. I have two GSTIN registrations and am planning to register for an additional 2-3 to expand

• add employees and customiz

  I want a Zoho software to track employees record. I logged in a demo so now I tried adding employee, first thing when I click on add employee it takes me to a page where it says add user maximum 10 users, my first doubt why users I don't want employees

• Inactive User Auto Response

  We use Zoho One, and we have a couple employees that are no longer with us, but people are still attempting to email them. I'd like an autoresponder to let them no the person is no longer here, and how they can reach us going forward. I saw a similar

• Zoho People Attendance Module - Split Shifts

  Hello, Our business employs a number of college students who often split their workdays between work hours and class schedules, resulting in split shifts. For example: Employee 1 works 9am to 11:30am and then leaves for class, returning to work at 3pm

• Zoho One subscription

  we have got Zoho CRM for 3 users and we paid for the app , and we have still 9 months to go , but if we join Zoho one , does it mean the payment for that subscription would be a waste? Please help. Thanks.

• How Zoho CRM Can Enhance Your Faucets Accessories Business Operations?

  In today's competitive market, having a reliable CRM system is crucial for managing customer relationships and streamlining business operations. For businesses in the faucets accessories niche, Zoho CRM offers powerful tools to help manage everything

• Dashboard

  I’m currently working on a project using the Zoho IoT Cloud with an ESP32 and MQTT. I’ve successfully connected the ESP32 to Wi-Fi and MQTT, and the data from the ESP32 is displayed in the telemetry section of the cloud. However, when I try to create

• Can i connect 2 instagram accounts to 1 brand?

  Can i connect 2 instagram accounts to 1 brand? Or Do i need to create 2 brands for that? also under what subscription package will this apply?

• Zoho Forms - Improved Sub-Forms

  Hi Forms team, I'm helping a client move from JotForms to Zoho Forms and I've found another opportunity for improvement. In the below screenshot, JotForm left and Zoho Forms right. The Zoho Forms Sub-Form is quite a poor visually. There is no way to make

• What's New in Zoho Billing | Q3 2025

  Hello everyone, We are excited to share the latest set of updates and enhancements made to Zoho Billing in Q3 2025. From the latest GST updates to multi-level discounting, Zia-powered report summaries, and customizable web forms, these updates are designed

• How to Delete Personal Account Linked with My Mobile Number in past or by someone else

  How to Delete Account Created with My Mobile Number in past or by someone else This is creating issues in making or sync with my credentials mobile and email address..

• WhatsApp Business Calling API

  Dear Zoho SalesIQ Team, I would like to request a feature that allows users to call WhatsApp numbers directly via Zoho SalesIQ. This integration would enable sending and receiving calls to and from WhatsApp numbers over the internet, without the need

• Does Zoho Learn integrate with Zoho Connect,People,Workdrive,Project,Desk?

  Can we propose Zoho LEarn as a centralised Knowledge Portal tool that can get synched with the other Zoho products and serve as a central Knowledge repository?

• Marketer's Space - Going beyond basics: Smarter ecommerce marketing with Zoho Campaigns

  Hello Marketers, Welcome back to this week's Marketer's Space. In the last post, we discussed the basics of email marketing and how to get started with email marketing in ecommerce. In this part, we'll dive much deeper into some other advanced features

• Connecting two modules - phone number

  Hi, I’d like some guidance on setting up an automation in Zoho CRM that links records between the Leads module and a custom module called Customer_Records whenever the phone numbers match. Here’s what I’m trying to achieve: When a new Lead is created

• Zoho Marketing Automation 2.0 - Landing Page function not working

  Dear Zoho Team, I am working on implementing Zoho Marketing Automation 2.0, and am now looking into the section "Lead Generation". If I open the "Landing Pages" section, I immediately get an Error code: Error: internal error occurred. Can you help me

• Unable to use Sign "You have entereed some invalid characters"

  Unable to use Sign "You have entered some invalid characters" I do not see any invalid characters. The text in "Leave a Note" is plain text which I entered directly into the field. See attached screenshot

• Elevate your CX delivery using CommandCenter 2.0: Simplified builder; seamless orchestration

  Most businesses want to create memorable customer experiences—but they often find it hard to keep them smooth, especially as they grow. To achieve a state of flow across their processes, teams often stitch together a series of automations using Workflow

• Messages not displayed from personal LinkedIn profile

  Hello. I connected both our company profile and my personal profile to Zoho social. I do see all messages from our company page but none from my private page. not even the profile is being added on top to to switch between company or private profile,

• "Performed changes in the query is not allowed due to following reason" when adding columns or reordering data

  I'm trying to make changes to a query but every time i try to save it i get this error message. I'm not touching the data it's flagging. All I've tried to do is reorder a couple of fields and add a new one. Why won't it let me do this? It's a core query

• Onboard new users easily with native screen recording in Zoho Projects Plus

  Communication involving both visual and audio elements tends to capture more interest among the audience. Whenever we onboard new employees to the organization, the task of engaging them in the induction sessions, and keeping the spark going in their

• Request to Add Support for PDF Templates and More Flexibility in Email Editor

  Hi Zoho Campaigns Team, I hope you're doing well. I wanted to share some feedback and request a few improvements in the Email Template feature of Zoho Campaigns. Right now, we can create email templates using the HTML editor, which is helpful. But we’re

• Can you stop Custom View Cadences from un-enrolling leads?

  I'm testing Cadences for lead nurture. I have set un-enroll properties to trigger on email bounce/unsubscribe, and do NOT have a view criteria un-enroll trigger. However, help documents say that emails are automatically un-enrolled from a Cadence when

• Zoho Desk Android and iOS app update: Agent detail overview

  Hello everyone! We’ve introduced agent detail overview on the Zoho Desk Android and iOS app update. With this feature, you can get a complete view of agent’s tickets, response times, logged hours (for both tickets and activities), customer happiness ratings

• Blog Widget: Show recent blog posts on my homepage

  Hey there I am using the Zoho Sites Blog feature. On my homepage, on the bottom I'd like to have a featured content section where I show some of my blog posts (selected, most recent, filtered by category and so on...). It would be nice to have a blog

• YouTube Live #2: Agreement Intelligence with Zoho Sign's eSign AI assistant

  Hi there, We're back again with our YouTube live series and this time, we'll take you through our holistic agreement intelligence powered signature workflows. Struggling to draft an agreement? Need help double-checking clauses and going through complicated

• How to iterate through excel data using zoho rpa

  I wanted to iterate or loop through excel data ( datatable). How can i do that

• Zoho Commerce

  Hi, I have zoho one and use Zoho Books. I am very interested in Zoho Commerce , especially with how all is integrated but have a question. I do not want my store to show prices for customers that are not log in. Is there a way to hide the prices if not

• Mass (Pull back) (Close WOs) (Close APs)

  Hi develop team. Just idea because Zoho FSM is great but its too manual. we have a lot of task to do every day and the system needs to have more features to automatic our tasks. I need to close several WOs, APs and Pull Back per day. Please we need mass

• Customising Zohidesk portal default widgets

  Hello, I'm wondering how could I customise the default widgets such as "popular topics", "popular articles" using CSS or to make the tiles at the bottom match the ones that I made in the picture attached. I have made some custom widgets and edited them

• If there’s a batch at the end, the ‘mark as inactive’ function doesn’t work.

  when my batch has a date to batch end and I "mark as inactive" he batch does not obey the status and reactivates the batch.

• Seamless multilingual messaging and tone control in Zia IM Composer

  Hello everyone! Managing customer conversations across multiple languages can be time-consuming. Using Zia in the Instant Messaging (IM) Composer helps you overcome this by providing tools to translate content, adjust your tone, and refine your messages

• Advanced Deluge help needed with custom function and COQL limits

  I have a scheduled function that takes a snapshot of specific metrics and saves them to a custom module. However I'm struggling with the limits of COQL. I attach my full code, but an example of the issues I'm having is that it's erroring with a 'Limit

• Tip of the Week - Conditional Formatting Chart

  Conditional formatting allows you to highlight your data series based on a pattern or a trend in your data. This makes it easy for you to identify when your data reaches certain values or when it deviates from the trend.  Zoho Analytics allows you to

• Zoho Learn - AI Translate

  Hi Learn team, I had a situation today where I was providing training to a client team and I had written articles into their Zoho Learn to support their learning. I realised that one of the team members was a non-native English speaker and they were struggling

• Payroll In Canada

  Hi, When can we expect to have payroll in Canada with books 

• Power of Automation :: Auto-Sync Custom Date Field Between Related Tasks via Blueprint Transition

  Hello Everyone, A custom function is a software code that can be used to automate a process and this allows you to automate a notification, call a webhook, or perform logic immediately after a workflow rule is triggered. This feature helps to automate

• Introducing auto-upgrade in Zoho LandingPage

  Hi everyone, We’re excited to share an upcoming update to help you get the most out of your landing pages — the auto-upgrade option, launching on October 22, 2025. Your landing pages are designed to bring in leads, and we want to make sure you never miss

• Workdrive comment links stopped working.

  I have marked a PDF file with 95 comments, they have worked for a while. When i clicked on them they brought me to the correct page and showed me the outline that i had drew on the plans. The comments included the page number of the outline, but now it

• Next Page