A message saying ‘action required’ arrives on WhatsApp. It does not look like the usual promotional message asking a consumer to shop, save or discover something new. It looks like something that needs to be dealt with immediately. The approach comes into focus from a simple interaction. A consumer received a message carrying the ‘Action Required’ intention. On clicking it, however, the consumer was taken to Policybazaar’s website, where insurance products were being offered. What appeared to be an alert, then, led to a commercial proposition. Policybazaar, when approached about the strategy, offered a different context for the message. Shubham Choudhary, BU Head-Growth at Policybazaar, says it was targeted at a specific customer state and was intended to help customers complete an unfinished insurance transaction.
“Someone who had initiated a renewal or purchase, reached the payment stage, and dropped off. Their policy is technically inactive. The ‘action required’ framing wasn't designed to be a marketing hook but help them complete the final step specially in cases like Car and two-wheeler insurance where it's a legal requirement to have the insurance policy,” explains Choudhary. Most of these communications, Choudhary adds, are also hyper-customised to the exact plan or quote that fits the user's needs, with registration number confirmation so that consumers can make changes if needed
It is a useful example of why urgency has found a place in WhatsApp marketing. A consumer who has already shown intent is very different from someone encountering a brand for the first time. The message arrives at a moment when there is already a transaction to complete, giving the brand a reason to ask for an immediate response. But the same mechanics are now being used across categories, with brands experimenting with language designed to create curiosity, surprise or a sense that something needs attention. WhatsApp is a personal, high-engagement environment, and a strong opening line can generate a response before a consumer has even considered whether they want the product being offered. This gives a clear path to performance marketing to play its game. And the game is quite in their favour. For Policybazar, the message’s recency and hyper-personalised nature helped drive strong engagement, with CTRs typically outperforming those of regular campaigns by up to 80%. The figure, however, is an engagement metric rather than a purchase metric, and Policybazaar did not share a conversion rate from the communication to an eventual insurance purchase.
Mihir Mehta, the Managing Partner of 0101.Today explains, “Urgency and curiosity can improve engagement, but a higher open or click rate should not automatically be interpreted as a stronger business outcome.”
The business case for WhatsApp cannot end with the number of people who opened a message. At the end, all marketing investments must prove its value to the business. Mehta points to benchmarks from CleverTap and Interakt that show the platform can deliver very high read and click rates, with engagement rates that can reach 70-98%, and click-through rates often in the 40-70% range depending on campaign type and targeting. Interakt’s 2025 SMB benchmark reports an average 96% open rate, 26% CTR and 12% conversion rate, with top-performing businesses reaching 18% conversion. A strong example by a Gupshup case study on Tata CLiQ reported a 57% CTR, $500,000 in monthly sales attributed to WhatsApp and a 10X ROI against email, SMS and in-app push notifications.
The attraction, hence, is valid. They do not, but, tell a marketer whether it was the urgency in a particular message that drove the sale. That evidence is difficult to establish without looking further down the funnel. Mehta argues that brands need controlled A/B tests that compare ordinary communication with urgency- or curiosity-led variants, measuring incremental conversions, revenue per recipient and opt-outs alongside clicks. A campaign that generates more activity but no additional purchases has not necessarily delivered a better commercial result.
There is another complication: the numbers themselves may not be as direct as they appear. “There is no single, independent industry standard benchmark for WhatsApp open, click, and purchase rates,” states Prashant Puri, Co-founder and CEO, AdLift. He points out that much of the data used by marketers comes from messaging vendors, BSPs and platform reports, making it difficult to compare campaigns on a common industry benchmark. More importantly, the tools already exist to track what happens after a consumer responds. Meta can track a campaign through stages such as Add to Cart, Checkout Initiated and Purchase when the relevant tracking is enabled. “Most simply don't, because the click number looks much better on a deck than the purchase number,” Puri adds.
For a brand buying into performance marketing, the temptation is understandable. A message that gets people to act immediately is easier to celebrate than one whose value only becomes clear after several stages of the customer journey. But what makes the hook work in the first place is also what makes the format potentially risky. WhatsApp does not separate advertising from the rest of a person's inbox. A marketing message can sit alongside a bank alert, an order update or a conversation with a family member.
Puri believes that context changes how consumers respond to the language brands use. “They work because WhatsApp sits in the same inbox as family group chats and bank alerts, so anything sounding urgent gets an instant, reflexive tap. But a click only shows real intent when the reason someone taps matches the reason they'd buy, and curiosity hooks are designed to break that match,” he elaborates.
This is where the commercial logic starts running into a consumer problem as well. If an urgent-looking message repeatedly turns out to be a sales communication, when it borrows the urgency associated with service alerts, account notifications or other messages that consumers are expected to take seriously, what happens the next time the same person receives an actual alert that requires attention?
Puri argues that consumers may begin ignoring urgent-looking messages altogether, including genuine service updates, while those who do respond may get accustomed to tapping messages that resemble phishing attempts.
The platform itself has had to address the volume of marketing messages reaching users. Puri points to Meta's per-user marketing limits, first introduced in India in early 2024, and its decision to pause business-initiated marketing templates in the US in April 2025. The limits underline a basic constraint for brands: consumer attention on a messaging platform can be exhausted.
That does not make urgency or curiosity inherently problematic. There are plenty of situations where the consumer genuinely has a reason to act now. Like maybe, a sale ending at midnight, an expiring offer or maybe inventory running out. The line gets harder to judge when the urgency exists primarily in the wording rather than in the proposition itself.
Vibhor Gulati, Founder, Defodio Digital, describes the effectiveness of the approach as ultimately depending on whether the interest generated by the message survives the journey that follows. He cautions that aggressive hooks can bring in people who were never serious buyers, leaving brands with a strong CTR but little improvement in actual business outcomes.
That puts the emphasis back on the entire customer journey and on what the consumer finds after opening the message. A curiosity-led communication may win the first interaction, but the proposition, landing page and eventual purchase still have to justify that initial response. “The hook should get you the click, but the proposition should get you the purchase,” adds Gulati.
WhatsApp is not merely another media placement that disappears once the campaign ends. It is a channel through which the same customer may later receive an order update, a service notification, a renewal reminder or any other commercial message. It is a platform that ultimately builds your relationship with the customer.
Gulati argues that repeatedly using exaggerated or alarming language can affect how consumers regard communication from a brand altogether. If the message creates a sense of urgency that is not borne out by what follows, the immediate performance gain can come at the cost of credibility.
That may be the larger test for WhatsApp marketing. The appeal of such communication is clear: a message that gets noticed has a better chance of getting acted upon. If the language gets the consumer to click, but only because they believed they were responding to something else, does the resulting conversion still count as effective marketing? And if it works, how long can brands keep using such tactics before consumers start ignoring messages simply because they assume they are another marketing communication? The bigger question may be whether a tactic that wins attention in the short term can continue to work without costing brands the trust that makes the channel valuable in the first place.
