The Meta Shift: Why Estate Agents Are Missing the Bigger Picture on WhatsApp

So today I'm joined by my guest Paul Gandar from Stitch AI. Paul, how are you doing? Yeah, good morning. Thanks, David. Very well. Nice to have you with us. Now, today, we've promised we're not going to talk about how wonderful Stitch AI are. Not at all. And how they are helping agents to communicate really effectively and convert leads and all the other wonderful things that they do. not talking about it strangely, but I do want to talk about something that is the big digital elephant in our lives. We don't realise how pervasive it is, but when we talk about big technology companies globally, you may go and talk about Google, you might talk about what's going on in the world of AI, but meta is a behemoth when it comes to... how it spans both social media but also the tools that we're using daily to communicate and i feel as i know that you do as well agents um are only just scratching the surface with what it can do we don't have a full understanding of where it's headed but there are some very exciting changes afoot absolutely david i mean so meta launched their whatsapp business platform which is an api a good seven or eight years ago that's when we first first started dabbling in it and began to understand it and i think um there's so much that they're doing and they're not really telling the world about it yet and there are various reasons why they're not and the main reason is that i think they're still trying to kind of work out their strategy and they're slowly rolling out these features um in their platform to enable developers and clearly in the space of whatsapp there's a lot more people in the market involved in whatsapp than when we first joined it, what, 2020, 2019, I suppose we started getting involved in it. So there's definitely more people getting involved and they're solving or they're delivering customer, particular specific customer journeys in the world of WhatsApp using that WhatsApp business platform. But I think there's so much more that meta, I mean, I'll give you one example. Later this year, Groups is coming and Groups is going to be huge. It's one of the big things that is sort of. anyone transitioning to the WhatsApp API sees a bit of a barrier. So Meta are addressing that there. But I suppose it's this centralization and with Meta at the core. And of course, there's all these customer journeys, be they inbound or outbound. And when you sort of get involved in what they're trying to achieve, it's this centralization of bringing a business or a brand or a team at the core and then having all these different customer journeys in and out. So, yeah, there's a lot more things on the horizon, which clearly we can sort of go into. But I just don't think there's any understanding from an agent's perspective as to what Meta are doing. I don't think they kind of, hey, the negs are using WhatsApp on the phone, tip the box. Why have I got to pay for it? And I don't think there's this understanding of the bigger picture. And do you think that's because, I mean, just on an awareness piece, we're not clear on, you know, Meta aren't. they do obviously release their updates but maybe we as agents aren't paying attention in the right spaces or they're not very good at getting that message out there well the message they're putting out there is not really aimed at specific end users i mean this so the whatsapp api is basically is a tool for developers okay so uh companies such as ourselves we see what the whatsapp api is and we try and mold it into a particular vertical market and then a solution sold to that vertical market And as you know, we don't work with just agents, we work with recruiters, automotive brands, clearly all consumer facing. But I don't, Meta aren't, they're not addressing and they're not shouting out to agents. And I suppose the difficulty is for companies in our space providing services to the agents, and I'm sure obviously other people who are involved in a similar space to us selling to agencies, you know, you kind of put an email subject, you know, WhatsApp, and a lot of people, we already use it and they kind of dismiss it. and then why would I why would I want to talk to you about whatsapp because we're already using it but of course the education piece is not really what what we're putting behind it we're trying to sort of say that matter of doing these amazing things you need to understand this we'll tell you what they are and if that applies in your world great talk to us but you need to understand what they're doing first well let's let's talk about just some of the things that are coming up because we talk about obviously using whatsapp for communication but i you know we're only scraping the surface if you're just using it to very basic communication as you say if we were to look at communication as a pie chart most of us are only using one slice of the pie chart we are not integrating it for sales progression we're not using it to the best of its ability when it comes to marketing as well, because there is a sense that WhatsApp done correctly and certainly where it's heading could even replace your email marketing newsletter that you send out because the customer focus and the engagement rate and the open rate on WhatsApp is compared to where email is. I'll give you some interesting numbers that we see. So we also respond to portal leads for our customers. of the out of all the leads that come in from it to an agent of the ones that have a mobile number circa 90 get delivered so we can see 90 of the population out there buying and renting houses have got whatsapp the response rate to that tends to be 80 within two or three minutes so of course there are other applications out in the marketplace focusing on that particular journey but of course the life cycle or the engagement with a with a vendor or a tenant or a landlord goes way beyond just the applicant phase So of course, we then think about a great scenario is I call my wife, she doesn't answer the phone. Well, I don't leave her a voicemail. I don't email her. I WhatsApp her. So of course, at branch level, if staff are using, I suppose, if they're lucky enough to have a work mobile phone, they're able to then do that. But let's just think about some other things that are coming on stream later this year. We got an email from Meta only a couple of days ago. So what they're doing in beta this year, it's expected to go live 2027. But you'll be able to bid. um to send whatsapp messages out cold to people even if you haven't got their mobile number so when you're going to start but yeah absolutely um so uh obviously there's a lot of marketers in the space obviously paul long and there's many others out there who are managing those social accounts for those agents and what they're going to be able to do is send a whatsapp message but if we think about it right this is where you've got to try and look beyond just sending a message we say okay I can go into Meta Business Suite, I can create my template, put my media on it, and I can send out a WhatsApp message to someone who has shown interest in looking to sell their house in Solihull or wherever it is, right? Now, a marketeer can send that WhatsApp message, but what happens when the customer replies? Because if you don't have a centralized inbox to be able to manage that chat coming back, the lead, you know, all right, you might better point them to your website, but you're then putting barriers to the customer. So yeah, there you go. I've received a WhatsApp message that's very timely, that's going to get read, right? It's going to come up at the point of inquiry where it's interesting. Now, we know that works well because we've already been doing it with Rightmove. You're looking to buy a house. Brilliant. I've got a WhatsApp message. I'm going to engage there. What I'm not going to do is be sent a WhatsApp message to then click a link to go and fill in a form on a website. So we've already proven this concept to the same evaluation inquiries, right? Someone's done an online vow, instantly responds to the WhatsApp. And then, of course, if they're into that point, you engage them far faster. So if we're going to have that concept of bidding on keywords to reach out to people in particular areas. And by the way, the stats, I was at a seminar a couple of months ago with Meta talking about this exact program. And the testing they're doing, the ROI is off the scale. The cost to actually acquire a customer is way cheaper in WhatsApp than running impressions of ads out on social media. we're already seeing from early results in different regions around the world how it's working. So of course, message goes out, response comes back into the team inbox, which is connected with chats from existing portal lead inquiries, website inquiries, staff reaching out chasing viewing, it's going to come back to the same place. And if you don't have that cohesive branch environment where the WhatsApp chats are going to be able to be responded to in a team, because if you've got individual versions of WhatsApp, You can't manage that. You just can't do it. So I suppose going on experience of what we've seen over the last five or six years, a lot of customers don't want to go using our inbox or my competitors, right? Staff want to keep using what's familiar and the hate change. So a member of staff is using WhatsApp. They don't want to make the transition to the full-blown use another application. But there's nothing meta of recent other product just gone, what, four or five weeks ago they've launched it in the UK. called coexistence and i think it's a bit of a game changer because what it means is staff can continue to use their whatsapp as they do right now they don't have to go using our platform or my competitors platform they just use them on whatsapp and it sinks into the crm wow and emetta have launched it because there's a lot of hacks out there there are products in the market in various vertical markets including this one where your your your you're using a QR code to connect a phone to a browser and then it's scraping chats to put it into the CRM. Now, read Meta's terms and conditions. They make it that of what you will. But if Meta don't make money out of it, I don't think they're going to be too... You can read the T's and C's on WhatsApp business. So Meta have released coexistence to address... I'll use the term hack very loosely, but a way of bypassing Meta to be able to automate a chat coming from a phone and put it into the CRM. it's a matter of launch coexistence it's a nailed on way where the phone still gets used by the customer of what will body neck the value they don't want to go and use some other software they just want to carry on using whatsapp business but it's hard connected back into our world into the whatsapp api and we can then move it into the crm and that's doing it compliantly and and of course you haven't got to rely on the member of staff pressing a sync button or disconnecting an error So for me, I think this whole added ecosystem coming next year, coexistence has just come out. And of course, this year, groups, I mean, it's already been released, we're developing it now. It's huge in the sense that this is almost as, you know, when we all did, we dabbled in Facebook marketing at first, then we realized, hang on, we need experts. People like Paul Long out there to sort of hold our hand and show us how to. I remember spending hours with Paul building lookalike audiences and audiences and Paul would tell me why, no, don't just go and shove 100 quid on this, spend a fiver and get, you know, all those little tricks. There's a sense that this is as big, isn't it, the opportunity here for agents in particular. Yeah, I think it's when I first heard of this, as I said, a couple of months ago. it was like this is the not so the golden ticket to try and get more interest from agents because but if you can automate and get the the skill sets of people like paul i'm sure there are others out there who just comes to mind because i was with him a couple of months ago um but you're right i think the facebook ads ecosystem is complicated i mean my son's 17 right it just just because i'm buying a car doesn't mean you can drive it he needs lessons you know you can't and and this whole again in the world of meta and meta owns so many products there's the ads ecosystem there's the whatsapp ecosystem there's the instagram yeah most agents aren't going to understand all of this so we have our speciality in understanding the whatsapp component how that will then link into the ads component but then it's the full picture of message gets sent out to prospect who's highly engaged because all the metrics and the pixels are picking up when they're showing interest in a particular thing and of course yes you can deliver that message but of course how's the agent going to deal with that one coming back So there's a lot of complexities here, which is why when people say, oh, my team are already using WhatsApp on their phone, they're dismissing it before they even begin to understand the potential of what's behind it. And more importantly, it's not about what we're doing in Stitch. It's what Meta are doing globally. So, yeah, I suppose I'm very passionate about it, David. I can see you're very passionate about it. And we are just scratching the surface today. And like we say, this wasn't meant to be a very long webinar in any... in any event it was meant to be a sort of an introduction almost to these changes it wasn't necessary to crow about stitch ai although they are rather good um they get some great feedback um however i feel like that this is something that agents cannot afford to ignore and and it warrants perhaps a more thorough uh look look at this but again it's it's fast evolving isn't it so you're still learning about it we're still learning about it. There's a sense that Meta haven't decided quite what the final version of it's going to be. So what's your advice to us in the interim, Paul? What should we be doing as agents that are leaning into this conversation? I think it's, I mean, anyone can sort of book in and talk to us and we can kind of understand what they're wanting to achieve. Because we on our own can't do everything. We can do a small component of it. And what does the agent want? Are they wanting to keep staff just using WhatsApp? as they do, but throw those messages in the CRM? Do they want to automate journeys? Do they want to connect it to their phones? There's so many touch points, and it's all about when is the business ready for a change? Because you can't do these things thinking it's not going to take time and pain. There is a transition. And I think the question in answer to what you just said there, David, is what experience do you want to give to your consumer? Because there is going to be pain to change internally to adopt to that. And there's a starting scale. The good thing with coexistence is you haven't got to go the full hog now. And then with these ads, again, working with your marketeers, do you want to start trying to reach new people in new ways? So I think it speaks to the professionals in the sector. And we're always on hand to have a discussion, strategizing and planning for the future. Because as I said, these things don't happen overnight. it's fascinating i mean i don't know if this is true but i feel like whatsapp is the world's favorite messaging platform in terms of also the the age of of the users it's tremendous and and that's always what we used to love about facebook as well say what you like about tick tock and this one and that one linkedin but facebook had traditionally a very broad range of audience you had very young people um using perhaps instagram as its kind of first cousin there but also linked into facebook and then you had older users so people sort of in the middle ground i'm gonna i'm gonna shove myself in that category and then you had even more mature users so people like my mom and dad's age are there um checking out photos of the grandchildren or whatever it may be and and there's a certain rudimentary understanding of all of this for all of those age groups whatsapp is is the same we know it's very good for swapping messages photos memes silly little videos voice notes that annoy everybody all of those fun things that it does we we have family groups we have business groups we have all there's all sorts of stuff going on going on on that phone and it's a hive of activity and we'd be naive to think that meta were interested in acquiring that platform just to let me message. $19 billion they paid for it. 19 billion. What, 19 years ago? It's a lot of billions and a lot of dollars and a lot of money invested since that initial purchase. When you think about it, there has to be an end game. And the end game is we've got attention. We know you guys are loving it and using it. How can we monetize this? And effectively, that might annoy you personally, but actually, as a business, it has massive utility, doesn't it? Yeah, I mean, I mean, if we could take some different verticals, we've got a recruitment client of ours who's sending nearly 100,000 templates a month that cost them a fortune. But to them, it's self fulfilling, because there's no point in going in paying your team to go sending out communications, it never gets read. And if you can be sure that 98% of the time that you send that message, it's going to get read. It's it's it doesn't matter what that we should always say we're very, yes, we work with agents, we work with other, but it's the same thing. the business is reaching a consumer and there is a need and there's different types of journeys as we both know even if we just took sales sales applicant a lettings applicant a lettings applicant we're trying to streamline it to spend less human time on it and a sales applicant we want to create a better customer journey to win that chance of an opportunity of potential valuation so they're all very very different but the end result is meta want to monetize it because they know that audience for all the reasons you said they're across the age ranges and that's where they live and that's the hub of their their comms. Well, Paul, you're going to be relieved to know that I'm going to let you get on with your day today. But I can smell coming down the line, perhaps a more interactive perhaps even live webinar where there's an opportunity for agents to ask questions that they may have because I feel like this is something that we're definitely going to want to learn more about. You guys are obviously at the cutting edge of it there and learning as quickly as you possibly can. But thank you very much for sort of putting this on our radar. I think it's immensely important. Don't live under a rock and don't claim you didn't know about it because you heard it here first. So thank you very much, Paul. Thanks for your time. Love it. Thanks, David.

Most estate agents think they understand WhatsApp.
They don’t.
In this conversation with Paul Gandar from Stitch AI, we dig into the real shift happening behind the scenes — driven by Meta Platforms — and why agents are only scratching the surface of what WhatsApp can actually do.
This isn’t about sending messages faster.
It’s about understanding how WhatsApp is evolving into a full customer communication ecosystem — from lead generation and marketing, to follow-up, sales progression and client experience.
We cover:


Why “we already use WhatsApp” is missing the point


What Meta are quietly building (and why it matters)


The move from individual chats to centralised communication


What “coexistence” means for agents and their teams


How WhatsApp could reshape lead generation and marketing


If you’re serious about improving response times, conversions and customer experience — this is one you can’t afford to ignore.
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