Salesforce and LINE have formed a new partnership

Salesforce’s marketing cloud and the 450-million member mobile messaging platform LINE have announced a partnership at the Salesforce conference today in Tokyo, Japan. But LINE is just the beginning. WhatsApp, Snapchat, and Facebook Messenger could be next. “We think it’s huge for 1-1 marketing,” Salesforce VP R.J. Talyor told me today. “We talk about customer journeys, and how they’ve replaced campaigns … they’re event driven and customer-based.” This move, he says, is just another step in enabling Salesforce’s vision for enabling brands and consumers to have global conversations at human scale. Talyor (no, it’s not Taylor) is VP for mobile products for the ExactTarget Marketing Cloud, which is owned by and part of Salesforce. “We want to be everywhere a consumer has a relationship with a brand,” he said. The partnership marks the first time marketers can connect personally with consumers via one of the world’s premier messaging services. Brands will be able to send short multimedia messages to LINE users who have opted in and given permission.