Marketing message limits (error 131049)
Why Meta sometimes withholds a marketing message for a recipient, and the extra safety rule Vatli applies to protect your number.
Applies to: Marketing-category templates
Meta’s per-user limit
Meta limits how many marketing templates one person receives from businesses. The allowance isn’t published, changes per person, and can include marketing from other businesses. When a person is over it, Meta withholds your message and returns error 131049.
What to do:
- Don’t retry right away. Wait at least 24 hours, or until the customer messages you.
- If the message is genuinely transactional (an order update, an appointment reminder), use an approved Utility template instead.
Vatli’s safety rule
Because Meta doesn’t tell businesses each person’s allowance, Vatli applies a conservative rule to marketing sends from broadcasts, automations and sequences:
- A contact who already received 2 marketing templates from you in the last 24 hours is held back from another one.
- Utility and authentication templates are not affected.
Held-back contacts are listed as skipped when the broadcast is created. They can receive the next campaign once the 24 hours pass.
See also: How broadcasts are delivered.