How does Campaign Auto Retry work?

How does Campaign Auto Retry work?

⚡Quick Answer

Campaign Auto Retry automatically resends a WhatsApp campaign up to three times to contacts that failed to receive the first send, following user-defined intervals, while skipping permanently undeliverable numbers and charging only for retries that actually run.

1. Overview

• Purpose: Eliminate manual follow-up on failed WhatsApp sends and raise overall delivery rates.
• Result: A 70 % one-shot send can rise to 95 % delivered without human effort.

2. Setup and Configuration

Location: Final scheduling step in both standard Campaign flow and Contact Retargeting.
Default: Toggle is OFF.

  • Enabling the toggle instantly adds Retry 1 (mandatory).
  • Retry 2 and Retry 3 are added via a “+ Add retry” CTA and are optional.

Timing Windows and Defaults:

  • Retry 1 – Mandatory once enabled; window 12–24 h; default 12 h after campaign completion.
  • Retry 2 – Optional; window 6–24 h; default 24 h after Retry 1 completion.
  • Retry 3 – Optional; window 6–24 h; default 24 h after Retry 2 completion.

Dependency rules:

  1. Retry 1 cannot be removed individually (turning the toggle OFF clears all).
  2. Retry 3 must be removed before Retry 2 can be removed, preserving sequence integrity.
  3. Schedule changes: If the parent campaign’s send time is edited, every retry timestamp recalculates automatically.

3. Retry Logic and Rules

  1. Audience per attempt: Only contacts that failed the immediately previous attempt and are still eligible.
    It never re-targets the entire original audience.
  2. Maximum attempts: 3 (initial send + up to 3 retries).
  3. Eligibility recalculates before each retry; non-retryable failures (see below) are stripped out first.

4. Non-retryable Exclusions

Meta error codes that mark a number permanently undeliverable (e.g., invalid number, number not on WhatsApp) flag that contact as non-retryable.
Such contacts are:

  • Removed from the failed eligible list before the next retry queues.
  • Tracked separately as an excluded count shown in the Retry History modal on the attempt where they were identified (e.g., “5 contacts excluded from retries”).
  • Never targeted again during Auto Retry.

The excluded count is informational; underlying Meta error codes are not exposed to end users.

5. Status, Skipped Retries and Resolution

Parent campaign status after initial send:

  • Completed – at least one contact delivered.
  • Failed – zero contacts delivered.

A Failed campaign upgrades to Completed the moment any later retry delivers ≥1 contact and never reverts.

Retry-level states (shown in Retry History modal):

  • ✓ Completed – ran; shows delivered/failed counts and cumulative delivery rate.
  • 🕐 Scheduled – will run; shows remaining eligible contacts.
  • ⊘ Cancelled – user stopped it; no stats; cannot be undone.
  • (distinct icon) Skipped – eligible audience = 0 so it never ran; no stats and no cost.

“Skipped” never applies to the parent campaign, only to the specific retry. All subsequent retries also skip if eligibility remains 0.

A retry is marked Skipped when it's due to run and finds zero eligible contacts, which happens when either:
  • Everyone already got delivered — no failures remain, or
  • Everyone remaining is non-retryable — some contacts are still Failed, but all are excluded (see "Non-retryable exclusions"), so none are eligible.

6. Viewing Retry Activity

• Campaign Listing: Retry icon next to Status; hover displays progress (e.g., “2/3 retries completed”, “…, 1 skipped”).
• Campaign Details: Failed tile shows same badge plus a “View Auto Retry History” button.
• Retry History Modal: Full timeline of every attempt including states above and excluded counts.


7. Cancelling Retries

  • Before initial send – “Cancel Campaign” (unchanged): aborts campaign and all retries.
  • After initial send, while retries remain – “Cancel all Auto Retries”: stops every pending retry in one click.

Safeguard: Cancellation is blocked within 5 minutes of the next scheduled retry to protect the send pipeline. A retry already in progress is unaffected.




8. Billing and Costs

• When Auto Retry is enabled, the estimated cost for every configured retry is reserved upfront; an info box shows the amount before scheduling.
• Funds for retries that never run (Skipped or Cancelled) are released 24 h after Auto Retry ends.
• A retry that does not run is never charged.

9. Contact-Level and Report-Level Detail

Contact status badge examples:

  • Delivered 🔁2 – delivered in Retry 2.
  • No badge – delivered in initial send.

Exported reports include a “Delivered In” column with values “First Retry”, “Second Retry”, etc., making recovery auditable per contact.


10. Worked Example

A business sends to 100 customers.

  1. Initial send: 70 Delivered, 30 Failed.
  2. System sees 5 numbers are invalid → marks them non-retryable.
  3. Retry 1 (12 h later) targets 25 eligibles → 20 Delivered, 5 Failed.
  4. Retry 2 (24 h later) targets the remaining 5 → all 5 Delivered.
  5. No contacts left to retry → Retry 3 is skipped, no charge.

Outcome: 95 Delivered, 5 permanently invalid. Delivery rate rises from 70% to 95% automatically.

Pitch in one line: “Auto Retry turns a 70 % one-shot send into a 95 % self-healing delivery process — recovering 25 more customers per 100 sent, without anyone lifting a finger or paying for retries that weren’t needed.”

Keywords

Auto Retry, WhatsApp campaign, failed sends, retries, skipped, cancelled, delivery rate, excluded count, billing, MyOperator