WhatsApp marketing template formats: carousel, coupon, limited-time offer, headers and buttons

Harinder Gill runs Gill Sports Wear, two shops in Ludhiana and twelve staff, with about 4,000 customers who ticked the WhatsApp box at the counter (an invented example). For Diwali he wants to show five new jackets, give a code worth 15% off, and make the code expire on Sunday night. Each of those is a different template format on Meta’s side, with its own card counts, character limits and blind spots. This guide lists the formats Meta documents for marketing templates and what each one needs.

Two facts belong on the first screen. Every format below is a marketing template, and a marketing template delivered to an Indian number costs ₹0.8631 before GST on Meta’s rate card effective 1 October 2026, whether it is three lines of text or a ten-card carousel. And every one counts toward WhatsApp’s per-user marketing cap, so a message held back for that reason fails with error 131049, whatever the format.

What are the parts of a marketing template?

A header, a body, a footer and buttons, of which only the body is required. Meta’s custom marketing template page allows “1 header (optional; all types supported), 1 body (required), 1 footer (optional), up to 10 buttons (optional; all types supported)”.

The header has five forms. A text header takes up to 60 characters and one variable, with no Markdown. A media header is an image, a video or a document such as a PDF, uploaded to Meta first so a sample can be reviewed with the template; when you send, Meta recommends using the uploaded media ID rather than a public link. GIF headers exist, but “only for Marketing Messages API for WhatsApp”, as mp4 files of up to 3.5 MB. A location header shows a map; it has its own section below.

The body takes up to 1,024 characters and any number of variables, written either as named parameters such as {{customer_name}} or positional ones such as {{1}}, with a sample value for each. The footer is 60 characters of plain text. The variable rules that get templates turned down (a template that starts or ends with a variable, non-sequential numbers, missing samples) are in our rejection fixes guide, and the wording that gets a template filed as marketing rather than utility is in the categories guide.

Which buttons can a template carry?

Up to 10 buttons in total, with limits per type and a grouping rule.

Button	Per template	Label	What Meta says
Quick reply	Up to 10	25 characters	Sends the label text back to you as a message. Meta’s example use is an opt-out button
URL	Up to 2	25 characters	Opens the URL in the phone’s browser. URL up to 2,000 characters with one variable, at the end only
Phone number	1	25 characters	Calls the number, up to 20 characters
Copy code	1	Fixed	Copies a code of up to 20 characters to the clipboard
Voice call			Starts a WhatsApp call to the business
Catalog, single-product, multi-product	Special	Fixed	Open your catalog or products; see the catalog guide

The grouping rule trips people up. Quick replies must sit together: “Quick Reply, Quick Reply, URL, Phone” is valid, “Quick Reply, URL, Quick Reply” is rejected as an invalid combination. Two display rules follow. If a template has more than three buttons, the delivered message shows two and a See all options button that reveals the rest. And templates “composed of 4 or more buttons, or a quick reply button and one or more buttons of another type, cannot be viewed on WhatsApp desktop clients”; the reader is told to open the message on a phone.

When a customer taps a quick reply, you receive a messages webhook of type button carrying the label text as its payload, which is what lets a campaign tool count taps per recipient. URL and phone taps send nothing back.

Media card carousel: two to ten cards

A media card carousel template is “a single marketing template message accompanied by a set of up to 10 product media cards in a horizontally scrollable view”. Each card has an image or video header, optional card text, and up to two buttons. It is the format for Harinder’s five jackets.

The rules from Meta’s page:

• Between 2 and 10 cards, and the count is fixed: “an approved template can only be used to send the same number of cards as defined during its creation”. A five-card template can’t be sent with four.
• Every card has the same components. If one card has body text, all must, “to ensure consistent card heights”.
• Buttons per card: up to two, from quick reply (25 characters), URL (25 characters, 2,000-character URL with one variable) and phone number (25 characters).
• The message body above the cards takes 1,024 characters with variables.
• Media is “automatically cropped to a wide ratio”, so a portrait product shot loses its top and bottom.
• Carousel cards “are only available for marketing template messages”. A purchase from a URL button happens outside WhatsApp, so no order webhook follows.

Harinder’s version: five cards, each a wide photo of one jacket with “Shop this” as a URL button to that product page and “Ask about size” as a quick reply that opens a chat with the shop. If the cards should open the product inside WhatsApp with a cart, that is the product card carousel, which needs a Meta catalog.

Coupon code template: one button that copies

A coupon code template is a marketing template “that display[s] a single copy code button. When the app user taps the button, WhatsApp copies the coupon code to the clipboard.”

The parts are a text header (60 characters), a body (1,024 characters, with variables for the code and the discount if you want them in the text), an optional quick reply (25 characters, alphanumeric only) and the copy code button. The code itself, up to 20 characters, is supplied when the message is sent, so one approved template serves every campaign. Three limitations from the page: the button text can’t be customised, a template can hold only one copy code button, and coupon code templates “are currently not supported by the WhatsApp web client”.

For Harinder: header “Diwali at Gill Sports Wear”, body “Hi {{name}}, use {{code}} for 15% off jackets till Sunday”, the copy code button with GILL15, and a quick reply reading “Stop offers”. Meta names the opt-out as the common use of that button, and a customer who can stop offers in one tap is less likely to block the number.

Limited-time offer template: a countdown in the message

Limited-time offer templates “allow you to display expiration dates and running countdown timers for offer codes in template messages”. The expiry details section shows a heading, an optional timer and the code; “the expiration timer will change to red text” when the message is viewed within an hour of expiry.

This format has the tightest rules of the set:

• Marketing only, and no footer component.
• Optional header, image or video only.
• Offer text of at most 16 characters, such as “Expiring offer!”.
• Body of at most 600 characters, with variables.
• A copy code button, with an example code of up to 15 characters at creation, and a URL button of 25 characters with a 2,000-character URL.
• The actual code and its expiry timestamp are supplied at send time; the timer itself is not customisable.
• People reading on the WhatsApp web app or desktop app “will not see the offer”. They see a note that the offer isn’t supported.

That last line decides whether to use it. For a Sunday-night deadline aimed at phone users it is the right format. For a B2B list that reads WhatsApp on a laptop, a plain coupon code template with “ends Sunday 11 pm” in the body is safer.

Location header: a map for the new shop

A marketing location template “include[s] a map header that displays a specific location”, and Meta’s own examples are store openings, event invitations and pop-up shops. The template is created with a location header, a body (named parameters supported), an optional footer and buttons; the latitude, longitude, name and address go in at send time, so one template can announce any branch. Real-time location is not supported, and the header is allowed only on marketing and utility templates.

Smaller settings that change how a template behaves

Four pages cover settings that aren’t formats but affect every format.

Time-to-live is how long WhatsApp keeps trying to deliver. Marketing templates default to 30 days, and Meta’s table lists a customisable range of 12 hours to 30 days only through the Marketing Messages API for WhatsApp; on Cloud API the custom range applies to utility and authentication templates. A message not delivered within its TTL is dropped. Our Marketing Messages API guide covers what else that API changes.

Tap target title override lets an image, text or header-less template behave as one large call-to-action button with a custom title, opening the template’s first URL. Meta restricts it: the account “must be fully verified and must consistently maintain high-quality standards”.

Languages: Meta’s list includes English (India) as en_IN, plus Hindi, Gujarati, Marathi, Punjabi, Bengali (India), Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam and Urdu. “Template strings and variables are not translated by Meta”, and the same template in a second language counts as a second template. An account can create at most 100 templates an hour.

Template groups let you put a set of templates (say, every Diwali variant) into one named group so their metrics can be read together. A template belongs to one group at a time.

Every format on one table

Format	Counts and lengths	Buttons	Not shown on	Example for a Ludhiana retailer
Text header	60 characters, 1 variable	Any, up to 10		”Your size is back in stock”
Image, video or document header	One file, sample reviewed; document can be a PDF	Any, up to 10		The season price list as a PDF
Location header	Coordinates at send time	Any		Opening of the second shop, with the map
Media card carousel	2 to 10 cards, same components, card text optional	Up to 2 per card		Five jackets, one per card
Coupon code	Body 1,024, code up to 20 characters at send	1 copy code, optional quick reply	WhatsApp web client	GILL15 for the opted-in list
Limited-time offer	Offer text 16, body 600, no footer	Copy code and URL	Web and desktop apps	”Ends Sunday” with a live countdown
Product card carousel	Up to 10 catalog products	View or URL per card		Five jackets with an in-chat cart; needs a Meta catalog

Thirty worked examples across these formats, with their categories, are in our template examples collection.

What do they cost, and what holds them back?

One rate for every format, charged only on delivery, and a cap you can’t see.

On Meta’s rate card effective 1 October 2026, a marketing template delivered to an Indian number costs ₹0.8631 before GST. The carousel doesn’t cost more than the text template, and the coupon doesn’t cost less. Messages that aren’t delivered aren’t charged, which is where time-to-live matters.

Harinder’s Diwali plan, priced: the five-card carousel to all 4,000 opted-in customers is at most ₹3,452 before GST. The coupon code to the 900 who bought in the last 90 days is ₹777. Sending the coupon to everyone instead would be ₹3,452 for a code most of them won’t use, and would spend the per-user cap of people who haven’t read a marketing message from him in months. Meta’s per-user limit page says delivery depends on “a dynamic view of an individual’s marketing message read rate”, so a smaller, warmer list is cheaper twice over. A customer who stops your marketing in WhatsApp’s own settings becomes undeliverable with error 131050, which Meta reports through a user_preferences webhook.

Choose the format by what the customer has to do next. Copy a code: coupon. Act before a deadline on their phone: limited-time offer. Look at several things: carousel. Find a place: location header. Read a price list: document header. If the answer is “reply”, a plain body with two quick replies still does the most work for the least typing, and it shows on every device Meta supports. (Terms used here, such as “marketing template” and “messaging limit”, are defined in our glossary.)