Marketers are starting to realize the power of mobile messaging but currently, full integration for such a channel may not be that simple. Salesforce recently announced that it has teamed up with Line, the chat app with 450 million registered users, a move that aims to make it easier for marketers to reach customers through the service. The partnership will see new mobile marketing ways created on Salesforce’s ExactTarget Marketing Cloud that are catered to Line. Line already has a service known as Line Business Connect, which provides a business-oriented API that includes features of Line’s official accounts, that companies can customize accordingly. Line says that it can be used to “enable targeted messaging or two-way communication with regular Line users.”
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.
