WhatsApp and Email Follow up Templates for Gulfood Exhibitors

Good follow up after a show is mostly preparation. Writing to buyers within a day or two of Gulfood closing is far easier if the messages were written before you flew to Dubai, so that afterwards you only fill in names and details.

This is a library of fourteen templates for the weeks after Gulfood 2027 (15 to 19 March 2027), covering the moments that come up with almost every food buyer: the first message, sending product information, samples, price, asking for a meeting, a nudge when things go quiet, and a polite close. Each comes with a note on when to use it. For the strategy behind them (which segment gets which message, and how often), read the Gulfood buyer follow up strategy.

Three rules make templates work instead of sounding like templates:

1. Add one line only you could write. Something from the stand conversation: the pack size they asked about, their market, the colleague who joined them. The rest of the message can be standard.
2. Keep the first messages short. Detail belongs on a product page or in an attached quotation, not in the message body.
3. End with something easy to answer. A yes or no question, or a choice between two options, is easier for a busy buyer to answer than “let me know if you have any questions”.

Placeholders are in square brackets: [First name], [Company], [Product], [Your name], [Your company]. Replace all of them before sending, and read each message once as the buyer would.

Before you write: how WhatsApp templates work

If you send WhatsApp messages from a normal phone, you can write whatever you like. If you send them through the WhatsApp Business Platform (the official API, which is what lets you schedule and send sequences), a few rules from Meta’s documentation apply:

• Opt-in first. Meta’s guidance says businesses must get opt-in before sending proactive messages, and the opt-in must clearly state that the person is opting in to WhatsApp messages from your business, named. Asking at the stand (“May I send you our offer on WhatsApp?”) and noting the answer is the simplest way.
• Templates outside the 24-hour window. When a buyer messages you, a 24-hour customer service window opens. Outside that window, only template messages can be sent. So every follow up to a buyer who has not written recently must be an approved template.
• Templates are reviewed. Meta reviews each new or edited template; it is pending until approved or rejected. Allow time for this before the show, not on the flight home.
• Categories matter. Templates are categorised (marketing, utility, authentication), the category affects pricing, and a template whose category does not match its content can be rejected. Sales follow ups like the ones below are promotional in nature, so submit them in the promotional or marketing category.

Practically, this means the WhatsApp templates below are written to be submitted once and reused. When a template goes out as a campaign, the only part that changes per buyer is the name: first name, full name or business name. [Your name] and [Your company] are fixed text you write in once, and [Product] means a version of the template per product line, sent to the buyers interested in that line. Details that are truly different for each buyer, such as a courier tracking number, a date or a price, cannot be filled in per buyer in a campaign; send those as one-to-one messages from your WhatsApp Business app, or in your normal reply once the buyer has answered and the 24-hour window is open. For more on running sales conversations on WhatsApp, see our WhatsApp for export sales guide.

First touch, days 1 to 2

The goal is to be remembered and to put your product information in their hands. Send one or the other, on the channel the buyer chose.

Quick-reply buttons work well on the first WhatsApp message: one tap is the easiest possible reply, and a reply opens the 24-hour window for a normal conversation.

Product sheet sent, days 3 to 6

Use this when the buyer asked for product information, or as the second step for buyers who received only a short first message.

The question about the port is deliberate: it is easy to answer and it gives you what you need to quote.

Samples, days 3 to 21

Samples are where many food deals are won or quietly lost. These three cover the offer, the dispatch and the check after arrival.

This one carries a tracking number that is different for every buyer, so it is not a campaign message: send it one to one from your WhatsApp Business app or phone, ideally inside a 24-hour window the buyer opened by confirming their address. If you prefer to send it as an approved template, remove the tracking number (“Tracking details are in your email”) and put the number in the email instead. Sample dispatch messages relate to something the buyer requested, so they may fit a utility or order-update category better than a marketing one; check the category guidelines before submitting.

Price and quotation, days 4 to 21

Send the quotation by email, with all terms stated, and use WhatsApp to confirm it arrived and to answer questions.

If the buyer comes back asking for a lower price, reply in writing with what would change in return (quantity, packing, payment terms, Incoterm), rather than simply sending a lower number.

Meeting request, days 8 to 21

For distributors and larger importers, a call often moves things faster than more messages.

Gentle nudge, days 9 to 18

When a buyer has gone quiet, add something new each time. A message with nothing new in it gives them nothing to reply to.

Send this without a subject line so it lands as a reply in the same thread as your first email, which keeps the context visible to the buyer.

Closing message, around day 30

End the sequence politely. A clear last message asks for nothing, which makes it easy for a buyer who meant to reply to do so now.

After this, stop. Move the buyer to occasional updates (a new crop price list, a new product) only if they agreed to receive them.

Quick reference: which template, when

Do not send all of them to everyone. A typical buyer receives four to six of these over a month, on one main channel. If you are designing a sequence from scratch for leads that did not come from a show, see how to build a 30-day export buyer follow up sequence, and for the show-specific month, the 30-day trade show follow up plan. The most common reasons sequences fail, from slow first replies to messages with nothing new in them, are covered in why exporters lose buyers after international trade shows.

How to set these templates up in Double Export

Write the WhatsApp templates in the app with a header (text, image, video or a file such as your price list), personalised with the buyer’s first name, full name or business name, and add quick-reply, link or phone buttons. Preview each one and submit it to WhatsApp for approval in the promotion or order-update category. Because the only personal fields are names, write product-specific lines into a version of the template per product line, and send each version to the matching product tag. Then build a WhatsApp sequence of up to 10 steps, each between 1 hour and 90 days after the previous one; it stops automatically for any buyer who replies on WhatsApp (a reply by email does not stop it), and the results show sent, delivered, read, failed and replied for each step. Meta bills message fees to your own WhatsApp Business account.

For email, set up an email sequence sent from your own Gmail or Google Workspace account. Personalise with first name, last name, company and email, with fallback text, and send a test to yourself. Leave the subject empty on follow ups so they go as replies in the same thread, as templates 12 and 14 need. Email sequences do not stop on reply, because Double Export sends email but does not read your inbox. When a buyer answers by email, stop the email sequence and any WhatsApp sequence they are in from the campaign results; when they answer on WhatsApp, the WhatsApp sequence stops by itself but you still stop the email sequence by hand.

Link the Product Sheet for the range you showed in templates 1 to 4 and 14. Its view count and last viewed time belong to the sheet as a whole, so a sheet shared with a whole tag tells you the range is being looked at, not which buyer opened it; if you want that signal for one important buyer, make a sheet for that buyer and link it to their record. For template 8, generate the quotation PDF from an export order in the Quoted stage, so it carries the Incoterm, named place and payment terms, then attach it to your email. Audiences come from your “Gulfood 2027” tag, as described on the trade show lead management page.

Double Export does not write or translate messages for you, so the templates you write are the ones that go out. You can see the plans on the pricing page.