# Your first message

> Sending an approved template to a real contact and reading what the delivery statuses mean.
> Source: https://onpad.in/docs/your-first-message

You have a connected number and an approved template. This is the last step of setup: getting a message onto a real phone.

Send to **yourself or a colleague first.** Never point the first campaign at your customer list — a mistake there costs money and quality rating, and neither comes back.

## Add a test contact

Open **Contacts** and choose **Add contact**. You need a phone number; name, email, company and tags are optional.

Write the number in full international form without the `+` — `919876543210` for an Indian mobile. If you write a number without a country code, ONPAD applies the workspace default, which is +91 for India.

Use a phone you can physically pick up. You want to see what arrives, not assume it.

## Send it

Open **Campaigns** and choose **Create campaign**.

1. **Choose the template** you had approved.
2. **Choose the audience** — for this test, just the one contact you added.
3. **Fill in the variables.** If the template has `{{1}}` for a name, map it to the contact's name so each person gets their own. ONPAD pre-fills from the template's sample values; replace them with real mappings.
4. **Send now**, or schedule it for later. Scheduled campaigns run in your workspace's timezone.

Then watch the campaign page.

## What the statuses mean

| Status | What happened |
|---|---|
| **Queued** | Accepted by ONPAD, waiting its turn to go to Meta |
| **Sent** | Meta accepted it and is delivering |
| **Delivered** | It reached the customer's phone |
| **Read** | The customer opened it — only if they have read receipts on |
| **Failed** | It did not go. The reason is shown on the row |

**Read is not reliable as a measure.** Customers who turn read receipts off never report read, no matter how carefully they read the message.

A message can sit at **Sent** for a while if the phone is switched off. Meta retries, then gives up after 30 days.

## If it failed

The failure reason is on the recipient row. The common ones:

**Invalid phone number.** Wrong country code, a missing digit, or a landline. Check the full international form.

**Number is not on WhatsApp.** Exactly what it says. The number exists but has no WhatsApp account.

**Template not approved.** The template's status changed between creating and sending the campaign. Check Templates.

**Outside the 24-hour window with a non-template message.** Cannot happen from a campaign, since campaigns only use templates — but it can from the inbox. See the 24-hour window in [WhatsApp Business API](https://onpad.in/docs/whatsapp-business-api).

**Messaging limit reached.** Meta caps how many new conversations your number may start in 24 hours. New numbers start low and the limit rises as you send well-received messages.

**Payment issue at Meta.** Meta has no valid payment method on your WhatsApp Business Account and stopped delivering. This is on Meta's side — fix it in Meta Business Manager. An active ONPAD plan does not help here. See [What it costs](https://onpad.in/docs/what-it-costs).

## When it arrives

Reply to it from the phone you sent it to. The reply appears in your **Inbox**, and a 24-hour window opens in which you can answer in free text with no template.

That round trip — template out, reply in, free-text answer — is the whole product working. If it did, you are set up.

## Then, carefully

Before pointing anything at a real list:

1. **Import your contacts properly.** A CSV with bad numbers wastes money and quality rating on every send.
2. **Start small.** A few hundred, not everyone, on the first real campaign.
3. **Check your messaging limit.** New numbers can only start a limited number of conversations a day.
4. **Send to people who expect you.** Bought lists are the fastest route to a red quality rating and a paused number.

## Next

You have finished setup. From here:

- **Inbox** — answering customers as a team
- **Contacts** — importing your real list
- **Campaigns** — audiences, scheduling and results
- **[API](https://onpad.in/docs/api)** — sending from your own software