Meta and Salesforce Join Forces

The recent announcement by Meta and Salesforce is groundbreaking - not just for Conversational AI. Enterprises can not afford to lose the increased expectations for customer experience, especially in our more competitive and shifting economic landscape.

Technology has changed the way we go about our daily lives. It impacts how we work, how we shop, and - importantly - how we communicate. In a technological landscape ruled by mobile, text conversations have overtaken telephone calls. One of the marketing industry's mantras is that you need to reach customers where they are. In that regard, providing an application programming interface (API) that businesses can use to hook into WhatsApp users provides those businesses that get on board with new and untapped marketing opportunities.

That’s exactly what Mark Zuckerberg, founder, and CEO of Meta (formerly Facebook), did in May of this year when he announced the release of the WhatsApp Cloud API. It effectively enables businesses of all sizes to communicate with users directly over the platform.

Commenting on the launch of WhatsApp's Cloud API, Meta's VP of Business Messaging, Matthew Idema, stated, "Messaging is quickly becoming the go-to way for businesses to communicate with their customers. More than one billion users already connect with a business account across Meta's messaging services every week, and this pace is only accelerating. Earlier this year, we opened up the WhatsApp Business Platform to any business across the world to help them get started on WhatsApp in a matter of minutes – deepening customer relationships, driving sales, and providing support in an efficient and delightful way."

But Meta is now taking things one step further.

They Mean Business

The social media giant announced a partnership with Salesforce, the world's largest customer relationship management (CRM) platform. The collaboration will allow many more businesses to easily and seamlessly connect with their customers using WhatsApp.

In a recent Facebook post, Zuckerberg stated: "We're partnering with Salesforce so all businesses that use their platform can use WhatsApp business messages to answer customer questions, run marketing campaigns, and sell directly in chat. More and more people prefer to communicate with businesses over text. That's why we launched our Cloud API earlier this year and are now partnering with Salesforce."

We cannot overstate the fact that over one billion users connect with a business account over Meta's messaging services every week. That's already huge, and this new partnership with Salesforce should grow that number even further. It will allow businesses to create engaging chat experiences with customers using WhatsApp while managing all of their communications directly from within the Salesforce platform.

Big Brands Are On Board

As part of a pilot project, the L'Oréal group brands will use WhatsApp to reconnect with consumers who had previously left items in their shopping cart to send them coupons and offers that are threaded directly in the chat.

Asmita Dubey, Chief Digital & Marketing Officer at L'Oréal, said: "As more customers use their mobile devices as their primary way to engage our brand, we need a single messaging solution that pulls in information across sales, service, marketing, commerce, and IT, to help us deliver personalized customer service, deliver product recommendations, and increase sales. Being able to do all of the above on WhatsApp as a single messaging platform could have a tremendous opportunity to drive conversational commerce and build greater engagement."

It will be interesting to see how the partnership pans out. But if I were a betting man, I'd put my money on seeing many similar initiatives crop up on other messaging platforms too. After all, as Michael Affronti, General Manager of Messaging at Salesforce, says, "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."

That’s likely to be the future of marketing.

Modev

Modev was founded in 2008 on the simple belief that human connection is vital in the era of digital transformation. Modev believes markets are made. From mobile to voice, Modev has helped develop ecosystems for new waves of technology. Today, Modev produces market-leading events such as VOICE Global, presented by Google Assistant, VOICE Summit the most important voice-tech conference globally, and the Webby award-winning VOICE Talks internet talk show. Modev staff, better known as "Modevators," include community building and transformation experts worldwide. To learn more about Modev, and the breadth of events and ecosystem services offered live, virtually, local and nationally - visit modev.com.