How to run a 1,000-recipient WhatsApp campaign without getting your number banned

The single biggest fear of every marketer running their first WhatsApp campaign is losing the number. It's a reasonable fear — WhatsApp does ban numbers, and once a number is banned, the contacts on it are gone too. But the bans almost never happen because of volume alone. They happen because of signals: how the messages get sent, how recipients react, how clean the list was to start with.

Here's the operator playbook we hand new EnoSend customers when they're about to send their first big campaign.

1. Clean the list before you send

The single largest predictor of a ban is reports — recipients hitting "Report" or "Block" inside WhatsApp. Two or three reports in a small window is enough for Meta to throttle or restrict the number.

The fix is upstream: only message people who opted in, and only message them about what they opted in for. Specifically:

Scrub numbers that haven't engaged with you in 90+ days — they don't remember signing up.

Verify number format. Phone numbers without country codes will fail; mix-up will tank deliverability.

Remove duplicates and obvious bot-generated entries (consecutive digits, repeated prefixes).

If you bought the list, throw it away. Buying lists is the fastest path to a ban.

2. Pace the send

Sending 1,000 messages in 60 seconds looks nothing like a human and Meta knows. EnoSend's Human-mode add-on paces sends at randomised intervals (a few seconds between messages, with mid-send pauses) so the pattern looks organic on Meta's side.

For a 1,000 campaign, plan for 4–8 hours of send time at human pace. That sounds slow until you realise the alternative is a banned number and zero reach.

3. Use the right message category

Meta categorises every message as Marketing, Utility, Authentication, or Service. Sending a Marketing message under a Utility template is a violation. Use the right category from the template approval stage — and accept that Marketing has the highest risk profile.

4. Honour opt-outs immediately

Every campaign must include an opt-out path. EnoSend exposes a STOP keyword handler out of the box; you can also wire opt-outs through your webhook. Critical rule: once someone opts out, never message them again. Meta's enforcement engine specifically watches for this.

5. Stagger across multiple numbers

If you're sending more than ~5,000 marketing messages per day from a single number, split the volume across two or three connected WhatsApp sessions. EnoSend supports this natively — multiple instances per account, one API key, same dashboard.

6. Watch the first 200 sends

Open the dashboard, watch reports + delivery rate as the first wave goes out. If reports tick above ~0.5% in the first 200 messages, pause the campaign immediately, look at what's wrong (wrong audience, wrong copy, wrong category), and only resume after you've fixed it.

Bans are recoverable in theory but slow in practice. A paused campaign costs you a day; a banned number costs you weeks.

7. The opt-in is the moat

You can do everything else right and still struggle if your opt-in is weak. The teams that send 10k+ messages a week without issues all share one trait: their opt-in flow is explicit, transparent, and gives recipients a clear expectation of what they're signing up for.

If you're building a campaign tool on EnoSend, build the opt-in funnel before you build the send. It's the part that actually keeps the number alive.