How to use messaging apps for marketing: The complete guide

Your customers spend more time in messaging apps than anywhere else on their phones – and unlike your emails, the messages there actually get read. Marketing on messaging apps means using chat channels like WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook Messenger, Telegram, and RCS to reach customers where the conversation already lives.

But if you’ve tried it, you know the tension: these are personal spaces. The same intimacy that makes messaging marketing outperform every legacy channel also makes it unforgiving – message badly, and the block button is one tap away.

In this guide, we’ll break down how marketing on messaging apps works, the push-and-pull framework for building campaigns, how to pick your channels, real examples and industry use cases, and the practices that keep customers opted in.

Messaging app marketing is the use of chat-based apps for promotional and relationship-building communication with customers – campaigns, product news, personalized offers, and brand conversations, delivered as messages in the apps people use with friends and family.

What makes it different from advertising on social platforms is the channel’s nature: messaging is one-to-one, opt-in, and conversational. Customers can answer, and the best campaigns are built expecting them to. That’s the underlying trend – conversational marketing – and customers have voted for it: Sinch research among 2,800 global consumers found 17% prefer promotional content on messaging apps, rising to around 30% in messaging-first markets like India, Mexico, and Brazil.

Every messaging campaign is one of two moves – and the strongest programs combine both.

Push campaigns are business-initiated: newsletters, product announcements, offers, and reminders sent to customers who opted in. On WhatsApp, these run as template-based campaigns through the Business Platform; on Telegram, as channel or bot broadcasts; on RCS, as rich branded messages to the native inbox.

Two rules keep push marketing working:

• Opt-in is non-negotiable. Every platform requires prior consent for proactive marketing, and so do laws like the GDPR. Collect permission the way you would for email – explicitly, with a record.
• Respect the region’s rules. The big one right now: Meta has paused marketing templates to U.S. WhatsApp numbers since April 2025 – for U.S. audiences, proactive campaigns currently belong on RCS or SMS, while WhatsApp handles service and transactional messaging.

Pull campaigns invite customers into a conversation: a QR code on packaging, a click-to-chat entry point on your website, or click-to-WhatsApp ads on Facebook and Instagram. The customer sends the first message; your chatbot or team takes it from there.

Pull requires an external spark – an ad, a sign, a package insert – but it earns something push can’t: a customer who chose to talk to you. The result? Engagement rates push campaigns only dream about, from an audience that’s pre-qualified itself by starting the chat.

Bangalore’s Orion Mall built its marketing on exactly this model: social ads and QR codes feeding a 24/7 WhatsApp concierge bot that answers questions about stores, events, and offers – thousands of conversations a month that lifted both footfall and sales.

Follow your audience, not the app store charts:

• WhatsApp – the global default: 3.3 billion+ users and the #1 app in most countries, on track for 3.5 billion by the end of 2026. Business messages there see open rates around 98%, and the WhatsApp Business Platform has the richest business tooling of any chat app. Mind the U.S. marketing pause above.
• RCS – branded, interactive campaigns in the native text inbox, no app install needed. The fast-rising option for U.S. audiences especially – and it pairs naturally with SMS fallback.
• Facebook Messenger – strong for click-to-message ads and customer care in Meta-centric markets.
• Instagram Direct – where discovery already happens for lifestyle, fashion, and beauty brands; DMs convert the interest the feed creates.
• Telegram – broadcast channels with unlimited reach and a power-user audience; strong in Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and crypto/tech niches.

The practical answer is usually two or three channels behind one strategy: your audience’s dominant chat app, plus RCS or SMS for reach, coordinated through an omnichannel platform so each message takes the best available route.

• Adidas ran sneaker drops through WhatsApp – its 2020 “100% unfair predator” campaign gave London amateur footballers a WhatsApp hotline to “rent” a pro player for their Sunday-league match. A simple chat thread, massive earned media – and a template for exclusivity-driven messaging campaigns ever since.
• Nivea sent Mother’s Day content on WhatsApp – seasonal, emotional storytelling delivered person-to-person rather than broadcast. It worked because the content matched the channel: something you’d genuinely forward to your mom.
• Orion Mall’s Genie – the pull-marketing case above: ads and QR codes feeding a WhatsApp bot handling thousands of conversations a month.

The pattern across all three: the campaign gives the customer a reason to be in the chat – exclusivity, usefulness, or fun – and the selling rides along.

• Retail and e-commerce: the deepest fit – product-drop alerts, abandoned-cart reminders, back-in-stock notices, and in-chat catalogs that carry customers from browse to buy without leaving the thread. Chatbots handle sizing and shipping questions; the conversation itself becomes the storefront.
• Travel and hospitality: booking confirmations that grow into upsell conversations – seat upgrades, late checkout, local tips.
• Financial services: trust-first marketing – educational content and product explainers on the same secure channel that already delivers OTPs and fraud alerts.
• Real estate: listing alerts matched to saved criteria, with photos, videos, and viewing bookings handled in one chat.
• Media and education: content digests and event reminders on Telegram channels and WhatsApp – audiences that read what they subscribe to.

• Earn the opt-in, then honor it: be explicit about what subscribers get and how often; make leaving effortless.
• Watch your frequency: 41% of consumers say excessive messages are their top frustration with brand communication. A few valuable messages a month beats a weekly blast.
• Design for replies: every campaign should anticipate answers – route them to a bot or inbox, never a dead end.
• Use the media: images, video, carousels, and buttons are why these channels out-engage SMS and email – use them to inform, not decorate.
• Measure conversationally: track opens and clicks, but also replies, conversation length, and block rates – the health metrics of a channel built on consent.

The channel mix will keep shifting, but the direction is one-way: marketing is moving into conversations. The brands winning there treat messaging apps not as another blast channel but as the place where marketing, commerce, and care become one thread.

Sinch powers messaging marketing across WhatsApp, RCS, SMS, Instagram, Messenger, Telegram, and more – with Sinch Engage for no-code campaign management and APIs for everything custom.

Ready to put your marketing where your customers actually look? Check out Sinch Engage. Or, talk to our team about the right channel mix for your audience – we’re excited to help.

This article was originally written by Marinela Potor and was updated by Drew Wilkinson on September 1, 2026.

Author: Marinela Potor Marinela Potor is a Senior Content Marketing Manager at Sinch. With a background in tech journalism, she specializes in messaging and AI.

Co-author: Drew Wilkinson Drew Wilkinson is a Marketing Operations Manager at Sinch. Prior to Sinch, Drew also led marketing at SimpleTexting, a texting platform for small businesses.