To improve the end customer experience and reduce bans, WhatsApp has introduced template pausing.
Template Pausing is an early sign that you're not doing WhatsApp marketing as per guideline and spamming customers. If this continues, your number quality will reduce, and you'll eventually get banned.
If a message template reaches the lowest quality rating (a status of Active - Low quality), it will automatically be paused for a period of time to protect the quality rating of phone numbers that have used the template. Pausing durations are as follows:
1st Instance: Paused for 3 hours
2nd Instance: Paused for 6 hours
3rd Instance: Disabled
Once a template is paused or disabled, you can't send it in a broadcast or workflow.
When a message template is paused (status of Paused) it can't be sent to customers, so you should halt any automated messaging campaigns that rely on that template. Although you won't be charged for attempting to send a paused message template to a customer, and the attempt won't count against your messaging limit, the API will reject these attempts anyway. You should only resume these campaigns when the template's status has been set to Active again.
Identifying and Analyzing Paused Templates
Go to Marketing Tools → Message Templates
Add Paused templates will have a Paused status next to them as shown in the screenshot below
To view it in detail, click on "view templates in WhatsApp Manager" to see its analytics
In the WhatsApp manager, you'll notice that the template is paused. If you hover over it, you'll get additional information.
This template is temporarily unavailable because it had issues. For example, your customers were blocking or reporting your phone number after receiving this message or your message had a low read rate. You can try to unpause this template sooner by editing and submitting it for auto-approval.
Fixing template pausing
Before we solve the problem, make sure
You are ONLY sending messages to folks who have opted in for WhatsApp updates/promotional updates. This problem will occur back ASAP if you're sending unsolicited messages.
You're not spamming and follow the WhatsApp Business Messaging Policy.
To solve the template pause, fix the two issues mentioned above, introduce changes to your template and submit it again for approval.
Conclusion
That's about it, template pausing actually helps you as a brand as it straight out does not decrease your number quality drastically and signals you in the right direction for WhatsApp marketing.