← Back to Klaviyo + WhatsApp Documentation

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To import WhatsApp consent, you must be an Owner or Admin.

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See how to upload a CSV of your WhatsApp subscribers into Klaviyo. Importing WhatsApp consent is an essential part of migrating providers and consolidating your marketing tech stack. Once this consent is in Klaviyo, you can start messaging your WhatsApp audience from around the globe.

Before you begin

To import a list of WhatsApp contacts with consent, you should:

• Set up WhatsApp in Klaviyo.
• Turn off any welcome flows (those triggered by the Subscribed to WhatsApp marketing or Subscribed to WhatsApp transactional metric or the list you’re importing to).
  • Wait at least 2 hours after importing before you turn your flow live again.
• Why do I need to set up WhatsApp first?
• Why should I turn off welcome flows?

Prepare your CSV for importing

Include a phone number as the first or second column

Klaviyo uses either email or phone number as a profile’s unique identifier.

When importing:

• Use email as the first column if you have an email address for each person.
• Otherwise, use phone number as the first column.

Unlike with SMS, you don’t need to include the subscriber’s country when importing WhatsApp consent. (The only exception is if you want to import both SMS and WhatsApp consent.)

Indicate if consent is for marketing or utility WhatsApp messages

Currently, you can import consent for either marketing or utility (also called “transactional” in Klaviyo) WhatsApp messages.

If your CSV contains a mix of both, you can indicate the type of consent by adding 2 columns and labeling them:

• WhatsApp Marketing Consent

  Marketing consent allows you to send any type of WhatsApp: both promotional (product announcement, abandonment reminder, etc.) and transactional messages. This is required if you want to import profiles with only marketing consent.