Marketing, utility or authentication? Choosing the right template category
Meta prices and reviews templates by category. Picking the right one avoids rejections and surprise costs.
When you create a WhatsApp template you must choose a category. The category decides how Meta reviews the template and how much each message costs, so it is worth getting right.
Marketing
Anything that promotes your business: offers, new arrivals, festive sales, event invites, re-engagement messages and newsletters. If a message tries to get the customer to buy or visit, it is marketing.
Utility
Updates about something the customer already did or asked for: order confirmations, shipping and delivery updates, payment receipts, appointment confirmations and account alerts. Utility messages must not contain promotional content.
Authentication
One-time passwords for login, sign-up or verification. These templates have a fixed format with a copy-code button, and you cannot add your own marketing text to them.
Common mistakes
- Adding “Shop our sale!” to an order update. Meta will re-categorise it as marketing.
- Choosing utility for a reminder that the customer never asked for.
- Writing your own OTP message as utility instead of using an authentication template.