Salesforce-WhatsApp Expands Partnership. Get Set to Augment Customer Engagement and Interactions

Published: September 21, 2022

min read

Salesforce, the global CRM provider, and Whatsapp, the popular messaging service in the world, recently announced a new strategic partnership. It will enable Salesforce customers to connect with their customers and create new messaging experiences on WhatsApp.

According to Salesforce, with the new integration, brands will be able to easily customize their experience in order to connect with their customers in a quick, simple, and personal manner to respond to questions, provide support, and promote and sell products.

"WhatsApp-first business messaging enables every Salesforce customer to provide personal and conversational experiences that increase sales, improve customer service, and engage customers wherever they are," said Michael Affronti, General Manager of Messaging at Salesforce.

Salesforce added that, 90% of customers value a company's experience as much as its products or services, and 66% of online adults worldwide prefer messaging as a way to interact with a business.

Mark Zuckerberg announced in a Facebook post. It reads, "We're partnering with Salesforce so that all Salesforce-powered businesses can use WhatsApp business messages to answer customer questions, run marketing campaigns, and sell directly in chat." People are increasingly preferring to communicate with businesses via text. That is why we launched our Cloud API earlier this year and are now collaborating with Salesforce,".

Salesforce Integration with WhatsApp Business Platform for Marketing Cloud is planned to be generally available in December 2022, with further integrations to follow in the coming months.

Our Point of View

Meta has now announced this expanded partnership with Salesforce as a continuation of the partnership made between the two companies in recent years:

Spring 2020 launch of salesforce included the WhatsApp integration, which gave customer service agents the capability to talk to customers over WhatsApp but with multiple restrictions.

Salesforce digital 360 innovation in 2021 added the capability for companies to manage WhatsApp channels and messaging within Marketing Cloud to increase customer engagement.

Now, with the recent integration with WhatsApp, Salesforce is offering WhatsApp-first business messaging to its customers. As messaging is becoming the preferred customer channel nowadays, the new integration will help marketers in multiple dimensions.

While building a customer journey using the journey builder, marketers will be able to add promotional messages along with transactional messages in WhatsApp. This way, marketers get the capability to introduce related product offerings to customers along with a reminder for their upcoming product within WhatsApp itself. It will help marketers grab customers’ attention easily, as customers’ attention span on transactional messages is relatively higher.
Using the first-party customer data in Salesforce CDP, powered by Genie, marketers will get the opportunity to personalize customer engagement with intelligent promotions, and recommendations on WhatsApp.
Marketers were targeting customers via traditional channels like SMS, email, etc. Now, using the real time customer insights from the Salesforce marketing cloud, they get the additional possibility to target high-value segments with Click-to-WhatsApp ads on Facebook and Instagram.
WhatsApp business messaging is known to be less expensive than text messaging. So, marketers should not overlook the use of customizable WhatsApp message templates to show customers product photos or videos. It will assist brands in expediting and simplifying the process for customers to take the intended action.

Author

Pete Johnson

Pete is a MarTech expert guru with a knack for getting diverse MarTech solutions work for brands. He has a wealth of experience in working with a plethora of MarTech platforms that dive Personalized Omnichannel Experiences. When he's not at work, you can find him playing basketball or listening to jazz.