How leading marketing automation platforms use Twilio

How leading marketing automation platforms use Twilio

Successful marketing platforms are able to deliver the right message, at the right time, on the right channel for their customers. To execute these customer journeys, a crucial, often unseen, platform powers these communication capabilities: Twilio.

Twilio, a customer engagement platform used by over 300,000 global enterprises and digital disruptors, provides the robust APIs and infrastructure that enable marketing automation platforms to execute customer experiences with precision, scale, and personalization. It's the backbone that transforms data-driven insights into tangible customer engagement.

Discover how marketing automation platforms leverage Twilio across a spectrum of use cases with real-world examples from Twilio customers.

Bulk promotions sent with confidence

When you’re launching large-scale promotional texts, product announcements, or seasonal campaigns like Black Friday deals, you want to be confident in the delivery of your communications. Twilio's high-throughput capabilities ensure that millions of subscribers receive messages promptly. Marketing automation platforms integrate with Twilio to help users orchestrate their campaigns, guaranteeing timely delivery and sending at scale.

Through Twilio, marketing platforms can schedule messages by time zone, segment, and personalize content to drive higher conversion rates. The use of short codes, toll-free numbers, and branded sender names further improves trust and recognition in the communications, increasing campaign effectiveness.

THG delivers 1B emails per month

THG is a leading global ecommerce technology group that built a proprietary end-to-end solution using Twilio. The solution allows its customers in the UK, Europe, US, and Asia to send SMS and email, while providing flexibility for growth to new markets and channels such as WhatsApp.

With Twilio behind the scenes, THG has scaled to send 1B emails per month, experiencing peaks on days like Black Friday that triple the volume of normal days. 

“For Black Friday, we will often have a check in with Twilio and talk about our infrastructure and set up because we've grown to need new IP addresses and new IP pools to manage the volume… Twilio has been super helpful over the years to work out the best way to set this up and continue to evolve it.” -Paul Bonner, Group CRM Director at THG

Two-way conversations with customers

Due to the instant nature of the channels we regularly use (email, SMS, Facebook Messenger, etc.), consumers expect two-way communications. They want to respond directly to business communications without going through the business website or phone tree. 

For example, imagine you receive a text message about an order delivery. You check your front porch, but don’t see a package. Instead of going through the business website or calling to submit a claim, it’s a much more seamless experience to report an issue by responding directly to the order delivery text message. 

Through Twilio, marketing automation platforms can offer support for two-way messaging that enables marketing automation platforms to design rich, interactive customer journeys. 

In the example above, the customer’s response to the business message could be handed to a live agent or chatbot via Twilio Conversations to resolve the issue of the missing package. 

Podium powers interactive communications 

Podium helps more than 40,000 local businesses, such as retail, automotive, and home services, improve their business reputation and enhance customer communications. 

Leveraging Twilio, Podium built a communication ecosystem so local businesses can easily message their customers through Google Business Messaging, Facebook Messenger, and SMS text messages, directly from the Podium platform. 

Through Twilio, Podium businesses can set up SMS on their existing phone numbers, so if they have a landline they’ve been using for years, they don’t have to switch to a new phone number to enable two-way communication. Podium only uses long code numbers to make the interaction feel more authentic, and equips businesses with local area code numbers so customers don’t flag their messages as spam.

With Twilio behind the scenes, the Podium platform sends 250,000 text messages each day and enables 1.6M interactions monthly.

Real-time feedback with customer surveys

Another way that marketing automation companies can help businesses engage with their customers is through automated surveys. For example, an SMS or WhatsApp message asking for feedback (“How would you rate our service? Reply 1–5”) or an SMS survey after purchase can give businesses valuable, real-time insights. 

Twilio facilitates these customer surveys with robust tools for receiving incoming messages and even provides templates for quick and efficient survey flows.

Salesforce collects 19,000 survey responses

For their conference, Dreamforce, Salesforce wanted to add an audience choice category to its awards ceremony.

"We got in touch with Twilio SMS, and within a matter of hours we had a voting system, tightly integrated with the Salesforce.com app we were using to manage the awards. We never had to worry about obtaining short codes, dealing with carriers, or long-term contracts. It just worked." -Tom Wong, VP and Dreamforce Chairman

Powered by Twilio SMS and Salesforce.com, the app received and tallied votes from the 19,000 Dreamforce participants, responding in real time with SMS confirmation messages.

Reliable transactional communications 

Your customers, particularly those in ecommerce or retail, need to automate essential customer communications, such as order confirmations, shipping updates, or payment alerts. Marketing automation platforms can integrate with Twilio to send SMS and email, ensuring these updates consistently reach customers.

Twilio’s global carrier reach and fallback channels (such as sending via SMS if WhatsApp is unavailable) ensure these critical messages get through anywhere in the world. With insights into reliability and delivery, businesses can track each message and any issues associated with its delivery. Message delivery failures can trigger an email send as a backup solution or send a notification to customer support. 

Klaviyo helps retailers build relationships with their customers

Klaviyo, a marketing platform for B2C businesses, enables brands to curate experiences for their customers. Using Twilio, Klaviyo built multi-channel campaign capabilities for its customers. Whether creating abandoned cart notifications, welcome series, order confirmations, or tracking updates, Klaviyo customers can choose between multiple channels to send their communications. 

Using Twilio SendGrid’s Email API, Klaviyo sends around 10 billion emails per month on behalf of its customers. For retail businesses, this reliable message delivery through Twilio SendGrid builds and maintains trust. 

“Our customers don’t have to worry about what’s going on under the hood. Through our partnership with Twilio and [Twilio] SendGrid, we’ve been able to provide a very high caliber, high quality product that our customers are rating very well on a regular basis through NPS and CSAT.” -Andrea Wan, Head of SMS at Klaviyo

Embedded verification and compliance management

Many marketing workflows require user identity verification and consent management, and for good reason. Verifying user identities and managing consent protects not only the marketing automation platform but also the business using the platform and the end user receiving the communication. 

On the marketing platform side of things, verification and consent management provide legal protection against regulatory fines and ensure good standing with telecommunication carriers. From the perspective of the business, they maintain trust and a reputable brand image. And lastly, from the end user’s standpoint, these features protect users’ privacy, shield them from spam and fraud, and improve their overall experience. 

Marketing automation platforms use Twilio to handle:

Secure user verification: by embedding Twilio Verify, platforms can send one-time password (OTP) codes for user sign-up verification. This not only enhances security but also ensures that users are genuine, combating fraud and maintaining data integrity.

Compliant messaging: marketing platforms also rely on Twilio to handle compliance messaging, such as sending legal opt-in confirmations (“Text YES to confirm subscription”) and the automatic processing of opt-outs. Twilio’s Messaging Service can catch keywords like “STOP” or “UNSUBSCRIBE” and flag that number as opted out, so the platform no longer sends to the number. 

In these instances, Twilio acts as the compliance backbone. Marketing platforms can confidently scale, knowing consent tracking, user verification, and opt-out enforcement are in place.

CallTrackingMetrics deftly handles robocalls with Twilio

CallTrackingMetrics is a marketing attribution organization that helps marketing and sales teams gather more leads, revenue, and information. 

Due to the rise in robocalls, Alliance for Telecommunications Industry Solutions (ATIS) created a specification called SHAKEN/STIR, which gives companies digital signatures to verify their identity and protect against fraudulent calls. 

Using Twilio’s TrustHub, CallTrackingMetrics provides its customers with a streamlined way to register their calls. Trust Hub enables CallTrackingMetrics’ customers to create a verified identity with Twilio, which can be used to access multiple trust-based communication services, such as A2P 10DLC, SHAKEN/STIR, and CNAM. This partnership ensures higher call answer rates and improved brand reputation for CallTrackingMetrics’ clients.

Leading marketing automation platforms leverage Twilio

Twilio equips marketing automation software with a comprehensive suite of communication and engagement tools that go far beyond basic outreach. With large-scale marketing campaigns, two-way conversations, and transactional messages, you can deliver highly personalized, timely, and scalable customer experiences. These positive experiences ultimately translate to higher satisfaction, loyalty, and revenue for your clients and your platform. 

Power your platform’s success and effectively engage your customers—talk to an expert today.