Unfortunately, HubSpot doesn't let you auto-subscribe contacts to WhatsApp communications. You have no direct access to the subscription type in workflows and you don't even see the subscription in the settings.
The option you have is to go into contact's profile and inspect all their subscriptions there. You will see WhatsApp and you'll be able to subscribe the contact manually.
(don't mind the German language)
Why don't we have an option to auto-subscribe the contact to WhatsApp Notifications if they submitted a form with their phone (WhatsApp) number and agreed to receive notifications via WhatsApp? When we collect consent from our contacts by ticking a checkbox or by clicking a button, we expect the contacts to be auto subscribed to WA-notifications.
P.S. I am talking about a situation when a contact doesn't know your WA number and cannot contact you first (as described here), so it is way better for both sides when a contact submits a form and gives their phone number and asks to be contacted per WhatsApp. The rest should be handled by HubSpot.
Added: There's currently an option to mass opt-in contacts for WhatsApp communications in your Contacts view. This is currently in Beta so make sure you add this function to your HS portal in Product Updates. STILL this is a manual process that is not convenient when you actively use WhatsApp for communications with your contacts.
I'm Markie, a Product Manager in HubSpot's Messaging Experience group. Thank you for taking a moment to participate in the voting on this topic. I wanted to share a quick update and close the loop here on this thread — customers can conveniently manage their WhatsApp consent status using various methods includingworkflows, bulk actions, keywords (in a conversation thread), or on a one-to-one basis through the contact's record timeline. Furthermore, we have plans to introduce support for explicit opt-in through a web form submission. The product development process is always filled with unexpected bumps and hurdles, so I can't give a timeline just on that, but I want to assure you that we are committed to delivering this feature as soon as possible. Your input is invaluable to us and we appreciate your collaboration.
We need this desperately because even if we assign someone to manually mass opt-in all our contacts to WhatsApp regularly, it floods the contact's activity timeline with the opt-in record every time this happens, making it harder and harder over time to find past communication records and information about the contact.
At the very least we need this option to be supported in the subscription preferences API so that we can at least automate it ourselves using third party tools.
If we are able to mass subscribe manually and input anything we wish, then it becomes valid without other validations, then we might as well have the ability to automation the process.
I'm Markie, a Product Manager in HubSpot's Messaging Experience group. Thank you for taking a moment to participate in the voting on this topic. I wanted to share a quick update and close the loop here on this thread — customers can conveniently manage their WhatsApp consent status using various methods includingworkflows, bulk actions, keywords (in a conversation thread), or on a one-to-one basis through the contact's record timeline. Furthermore, we have plans to introduce support for explicit opt-in through a web form submission. The product development process is always filled with unexpected bumps and hurdles, so I can't give a timeline just on that, but I want to assure you that we are committed to delivering this feature as soon as possible. Your input is invaluable to us and we appreciate your collaboration.
Thanks for the update Markie, we did not realize that workflows had been updated to support editing contact's WhatsApp consent statuses now, this will be extremely helpful for us.