What is a Telegram Mini App? A short guide for marketers

A web page that opens inside Telegram

A Mini App is a website you build and host yourself, with ordinary web code. Telegram opens it in a window inside the app, so the person never leaves the chat and never has to install anything.

Every Mini App belongs to a bot. You create it with @BotFather, attach it to your bot, and give it the address of your page.

How people open it

• From the menu button next to the message field in your bot's chat.
• From a button under a message your bot sends.
• From a direct link, such as t.me/yourbot/app, which you can put in an ad, a channel post or a bio.

A direct link can carry a start parameter (startapp=). The app reads it when it opens, which is how you know which ad or post the person came from.

What it can do in a funnel

• Show a real page: an offer, a catalog, a video, without sending people to a browser.
• Collect a form, with your own fields and checks.
• Ask for a phone number in one tap. Telegram shows the person a confirmation, and the number is shared only if they accept.
• Ask permission to message them. Once they allow it, your bot can write to them, as it can after a bot start.
• Take payments, through the payment options Telegram supports in bots and Mini Apps.

What you can measure

Because the page is yours, your own analytics run inside it. The start parameter ties each open to a campaign, and every step after that (form sent, number shared, permission given) can be counted and sent to your ad platform as a conversion.

Channel, bot or Mini App?

• A channel to broadcast to many people at once.
• A bot to talk to each person, ask questions and follow up.
• A Mini App when you need a real page inside Telegram: a form, a catalog, a checkout.

Most funnels mix them: an ad opens a channel or a bot, and the bot opens a Mini App when it is time to show something richer than a message.

With TrackJoin

TrackJoin follows each ad click into your channel, group or bot, and tells Meta, Google Ads or your postback what happened next. Whatever you put after the bot, you start with the number that matters: who actually arrived.