In Manychat, you can create WhatsApp contacts using the Manychat API. This will help to import your existing WhatsApp contacts from other platforms in real time and start communicating with them using Manychat automation and Message Templates.
To get started, you need to generate and authorize an API key, aka a token. The Manychat API article provides detailed instructions on how to do this.
💡 Importing contacts is available only on a Pro subscription. If the feature is not enabled on your Pro accounts, please reach out to the Support Team to request it.
Create WhatsApp contacts via API
Once you've added your token to Swagger and authorized it, you can proceed with creating a new WhatsApp contact via the createSubscriber method:
When you pass a WhatsApp phone value, a new WhatsApp contact is created; other values are optional in this case. If you decide to also pass email and phone, a created contact will be associated with these channels as well if they are active in your automation. If a contact already exists, you will see an error message.
Create WhatsApp contacts via Zapier
You can also create a new WhatsApp contact in Manychat via Zapier and import contacts from other platforms. To do so, create a new Zap and choose Webhooks by Zapier in Zapier Action:
After that, use the POST action event:
Set up your action and add the createSubscriber method to the required URL field:
How to start communicating with created WhatsApp contacts
To start communicating with recently created contacts, you can always use WhatsApp Message Templates because they can be sent even outside the 24-hour window.
You can try using this simple combination in your WhatsApp automation: choose the New contact event as a trigger that contains Opted-in through API and Opted-in for WhatsApp conditions and WhatsApp Message Template as a following message. Here is what it should look like:
To learn more about creating WhatsApp Message Templates and using them in your automations, please refer to these articles: WhatsApp: Message Templates Quick Guide and How to Send Message Templates Outside the 24-Hour Window.