Email to WhatsApp interface
With the Email to WhatsApp interface, you can perfectly utilise the multimedia capabilities of email with your WhatsApp customers.
As almost every communication software can send emails, there are numerous use cases available.
Please note, however, that WhatsApp does not allow free text for initial contact. Therefore, the email-to-WhatsApp interface can primarily be used to reply to enquiries via WhatsApp.
Requirements
To use the email-to-WhatsApp interface, you need an account with either linkmobility(https://account.linkmobility.eu) or websms(https://account.websms.com) and an active WhatsApp channel.
Use your existing linkmobility or websms account. Alternatively, you can create a new account if you don't have one already. Here is the link to get started: LINK Mobility
Create your WhatsApp channel in channel management.
Channel management for a linkmobility account.
Channel management for a websms account.
After activating your WhatsApp channel, you will receive its unique email address.
Using the interface
Using the email-to-WhatsApp interface is very easy by sending an email to the desired recipient number (MSISDN) combined with the unique email address, depending on the platform your account is on.
For a linkmobility account, the unique email address is SMTP_ID@email2whatsapp.linkmobility.eu. You can find the SMTP_ID for your channel in the channel management section of the messaging portal.
Example:
MSISDN+SMTP_ID@email2whatsapp.linkmobility.eu 43676123456+jh4zw@email2whatsapp.linkmobility.eu
For a websms account, the unique email address is SMTP_ID@email2whatsapp.websms.com.
Example:
MSISDN+SMTP_ID@email2whatsapp.websms.com 43676123456+jh4zw@email2whatsapp.websms.com
Replies to the email to WhatsApp messages can be delivered to any email address to map a conversation.
Authentication
The user account is identified and authenticated through the linked email address. To enable account login authentication, the designated email addresses must be configured in the account settings. Our customer service is responsible for configuring the gateway to ensure that only authorised senders can access the interface.
For added security, users have the option to activate one or more IP addresses within the gateway, and our customer service will handle the necessary configuration for this as well.
Content and restrictions
Free text
WhatsApp does not allow, as would normally be the case in an email, the use of free text for initial contact but only for replying to incoming messages. This reply must be sent within 24 hours.
If you attempt to send a message to a mobile phone number via WhatsApp without having received a message from that number in the past 24 hours, the message will not be delivered. In this case, you will receive an error email notifying you of the failed delivery.
Currently, our SMTP API doesn't support sending templates. You can use this to send replies to incoming messages with in 24 hour window.
Character sets
The email-to-WhatsApp interface supports the following character sets of common email programs:
Latin I (ISO/IEC 8859-1)
UTF-8 (8Bit UCS transformation format)
Attachments
You can use these attachments with corresponding size restrictions on the email-to-WhatsApp interface:
Audio (AAC, MP3) up to 10MB
Images (JPG, PNG) up to 2MB
Documents (PDF) up to 10MB
Video (MP4) up to 10MB
All non-supported attachments will be rejected by WhatsApp and responded to with an error email.