Guide · Marketing · For the owner whose campaign report shows failures

When a customer stops your WhatsApp promotions: Meta's Offers and announcements setting, for the owner

Every customer's chat with a business on WhatsApp carries a setting the business never sees: Offers and announcements. With it, a customer can say how interested they are in the business's promotions, or stop them altogether, without blocking the business or saying a word. Most owners find out it exists when a campaign report shows messages that failed. Here is what Meta's pages say the setting does, what reaches your system when a customer uses it, and what to do with that.

Published 4 October 2026

What the customer can do

Offers and announcements: WhatsApp's own setting for each business a customer talks to. Meta describes it as the place where a customer says how interested they are in that business's marketing messages, and where they can stop or resume them entirely.
Not interested: Tells Meta the customer is less keen on your promotions. Meta says this can lower the per-person limit on how many marketing messages reach that customer from you, and it opens a second prompt offering to stop your marketing messages completely. Your system is not told about this choice.
Stop, and resume: Stops delivery of your marketing messages to that customer, or starts it again. These two choices, and only these, reach your system as a notice Meta calls user preferences.

A stop is about promotions

Meta's page describes the stop as applying to marketing messages from your business. It says nothing about order updates, appointment reminders or replies, which sit in other categories; how Meta draws those lines is in the template categories guide, and the per-person limit is in the per-person cap guide.

What happens if you send anyway

Meta accepts the send but does not deliver it. The message comes back as failed, with error 131050 and Meta's explanation that the recipient has chosen to stop receiving marketing messages on WhatsApp from your business. Sending it again changes nothing: the stop holds until the customer resumes. The other reasons a message fails are in the failed message guide.

The notice Meta sends when a customer stops or resumes identifies the customer the same way an incoming message does. When the customer uses a WhatsApp username and their number cannot be shared, Meta's page says the phone number is left out, so a system that keys its records on phone numbers alone will miss some stops. The usernames guide explains the other identifier to keep.

What a proper system does with a stop

Record it the moment it arrives. Mark the customer as stopped and leave them out of the next campaign, instead of letting Meta fail the sends one by one.
Record a resume just as carefully. A customer who turns promotions back on has asked to hear from you. A stale stop in your records silently loses them.
Treat a stop typed in the chat the same way. Meta's opt-in page asks businesses to give clear instructions for opting out of each kind of message, and to honour those requests. A customer who writes "no more offers" has asked, even if they never touched the setting. The permission side is in the opt-in guide.
Count stops after every campaign. The same page notes that people can stop one business's marketing, block it or report it, and that Meta limits businesses whose quality stays low. A jump in stops after a send is the early warning, before the number's quality rating moves.

Questions

Can a customer stop our WhatsApp promotions without blocking us?

Yes. WhatsApp's Offers and announcements setting lets them stop your marketing messages, and start them again later, while the chat stays open for everything else.

Will we be told when a customer stops our promotions?

Your system receives a notice when a customer stops or resumes. It is not told when a customer only marks your promotions as not interesting.

Why did our campaign message fail with error 131050?

The customer has stopped marketing messages from your business. Meta accepted the send but did not deliver it, and resending will not change that until the customer resumes.

Does Not interested stop our messages?

Not by itself. Meta says it can lower how many of your promotions reach that customer, and it offers them a second step to stop your marketing messages altogether.

Sources

Meta's developer documentation: Marketing templates (User preferences for marketing messages), read 4 October 2026.
Meta's developer documentation: user_preferences webhook reference, read 4 October 2026.
Meta's developer documentation: Get opt-in for WhatsApp, read 4 October 2026.

More plain-language notes like this one are on the guides page.

Want every stop respected without anyone checking a list?

We set up a business's WhatsApp on a proper system that records every stop and resume the moment it happens, so the next campaign skips the right people and reaches the rest. A short call is the easiest way to see whether it fits your business.

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