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A broadcast sends one message to many contacts on a single channel. You build it in a four-step wizard — Audience, Message, Schedule, Review — at Messaging → Broadcasts → New broadcast. Three things to know before you start, because they shape everything else:
  • The channel is the one you’re currently on. There is no channel picker in the wizard. The broadcast uses your active channel, shown read-only on the Message step, and it’s fixed once the broadcast is created. Switch channel first if you’re on the wrong one.
  • WhatsApp broadcasts must use an approved template. There is no message box for WhatsApp — you pick from your approved templates and fill in their variables. Facebook, Instagram, SMS and Telegram broadcasts use a plain message instead, with no template.
  • Broadcasts aren’t available on Live Chat or TikTok. Only WhatsApp, Facebook, Instagram, SMS and Telegram can send them.
1

Choose your audience

Set Type to Contact to message a segment, or Retarget to re-message the recipients of an earlier broadcast.For Contact, pick exactly one option:
  • All contacts
  • Active contacts
  • Any segment you’ve saved under Contacts → Segments
  • On Facebook and Instagram only: Opted in — notifications and Messaging window open (24h)
There are no tag or attribute filters here — one segment is the whole targeting model. To send to a tag, a pipeline stage or contacts inactive for N days, build a segment in Contacts first, then come back and pick it.Tick Reachable contacts only to drop contacts who have opted out of the audience. See the note below on what this does and doesn’t do.
2

Write or pick your message

Give the broadcast a Campaign name — it’s for you, and contacts never see it. The Channel next to it is read-only.On WhatsApp, choose a Message template. Only approved templates appear; if the list is empty or missing the one you want, use Create new template and see Message templates. If the template has variables, a Body parameters section appears with one input per variable (Enter parameter 1, Enter parameter 2, and so on). Each one accepts a personalisation token, so a parameter can be {{first_name}} or {{custom.order_id}} and resolves per contact when the broadcast sends.On SMS and Telegram, type the message directly. Both support tokens like {{first_name}} in the body. SMS has no messaging window — long messages split into multiple segments and cost more.On Facebook and Instagram, type the message directly. Meta only delivers to people who messaged you in the last 24 hours, or who hold a notification opt-in — everyone else is skipped. Leave Reach on Standard message; Marketing Messages (paid) is labelled Coming soon and selecting it disables Continue.
3

Schedule it

Choose Send immediately after approval or Schedule for later and set Send at.Times use your account timezone from Settings, not your browser’s. An immediate broadcast goes out within about a minute. A time less than a minute away is treated as immediate.Require team approval before sending holds the broadcast until someone approves it. If you don’t have approval rights the checkbox is replaced by a note telling you the broadcast will be submitted for approval before it sends — approval is applied server-side either way.
4

Review and send

Review & send summarises the audience, message, schedule and approval state. Select Create broadcast — or Submit for approval if you don’t have approval rights. You land back on the broadcasts list, where the new broadcast appears with its status.A broadcast that needs approval sits at Pending approval and never sends until someone with rights uses Approve & schedule on it.
The wizard’s steps are all clickable, so nothing stops you from jumping ahead to Review. A broadcast saved with a Campaign name but no template and no message text saves, runs, and fails for every contact. Check the Message step before you save.A missing Campaign name blocks the save instead — but the wizard shows no error, so the button simply appears to do nothing. Campaign name also lives on the Message step.

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What “Reachable contacts only” actually does

Opted-out contacts never receive a message — every channel blocks them at the point of sending, whether or not you tick the box. What the box changes is the audience list. Leave it unticked (the default) and opted-out contacts are still pulled into the broadcast: they count towards the recipient total and then land in Failed. Tick it and they’re excluded up front, so your numbers reflect reality. The hint says it also skips contacts who “can’t be messaged on this channel” — it doesn’t. Closed messaging windows are not filtered out here; those contacts fail at send time instead.
Audience breakdown, shown in the right rail on the Schedule and Review steps, is an estimate, not a count. The deliverable and opted-out figures are a fixed 95/5 split of the audience size — they are not calculated from who has actually opted out. Don’t plan against them.
Send test message doesn’t send anything yet. It reports success without contacting the channel. To sanity-check a message, send a real broadcast to a segment containing only your own contact record.

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Retargeting an earlier broadcast

Set Type to Retarget, pick a Retarget broadcast and a Retarget engagement type: All Sent, All Delivered, All Read, All Replied, All Sent But Not Replied or All Failed. Only broadcasts already sending or sent on the current channel can be a source, and a broadcast can’t retarget itself. The audience is resolved when the broadcast sends, so no count is shown while you build it. Recipients are also narrowed to contacts reachable on this broadcast’s channel — retargeting a WhatsApp broadcast from an SMS broadcast only reaches the overlap.

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After you save

  • The broadcast is queued as Scheduled, whether immediate or for later. The sender picks it up on the next sweep, at most a minute after it’s due.
  • An empty audience isn’t an error. The broadcast completes immediately with zero recipients.
  • Every message sent is written into the contact’s conversation in the Inbox, so you can follow up on replies there.
  • There is no pause, cancel or delete. Editing the broadcast is the only way to change it, and editing one that requires approval clears the existing approval — it has to be approved again.
The most common cause is the template. It’s re-checked at send time, so a template that Meta rejects or revokes between scheduling and sending will fail the whole broadcast. Confirm the template still shows as approved, then create a fresh broadcast with it. A broadcast saved with no template and no text fails the same way. See WhatsApp rules and limits.
Those counters only move for WhatsApp (delivered and read) and SMS (delivered). Facebook, Instagram and Telegram broadcasts never report them, so they stay at zero however well the broadcast performed. Analytics covers what each channel reports.

Message templates

Create and submit the approved WhatsApp templates a broadcast needs.

Audiences

Segments, retargeting, and who ends up in a broadcast.

Scheduling

Timing, timezones and approval holds.

Analytics

Read the results, and what each channel actually reports.