Twilio Engage: A Futuristic Communication Platform for Developers & Marketers

We all know Twilio as a leading cloud communication company but its vision was always more than that. Twilio has developed a bunch of platforms in the past decade and when you take a closer look at them, you’ll see an ecosystem of integrated applications. Twilio has taken end-to-end communication to a whole new level. And the recent addition of Twilio Engage has made customer engagement and communication even more hyper-personalized.

In this article, we are only focusing on Twilio Engage, a one of its kind growth automation platform. It is the newest addition to the Twilio Customer Engagement Platform (CEP). The inclusion of this in Twilio has created an entire ecosystem of customer engagement applications. The platforms of Twilio are covering the customer lifecycle thoroughly.

• Twilio Engage for Marketing
• Twilio Frontline for Sales
• Twilio Flex for Customer Service

Twilio Engage is going to work in tandem with Segment (World’s #1 Customer Data Platform), which Twilio has recently acquired. Engage lets the users fully leverage the power of Segment and deliver an extremely personalized customer experience. And the good news is, that hyper-personalization won’t come at the expense of efficiency and speed. 

If you want to know more about Twilio Segment and the reason why Twilio acquired it then please check out our research article on Twilio Segment.

Twilio Engage Explained!

From time to time, Twilio has said they are more than just a cloud communication provider and it seems true now. The introduction of Twilio Engage allowed them to enter the market of end-to-end customer engagement and it seems quite promising as well.

So what is Twilio Engage and what it does do? It is a growth automation platform empowered by the Segment. It is Twilio’s first (MarTech) Marketing Technology-based tool. The Segment provides the data of the customer, on the other hand, a plethora of Twilio’s APIs does the communication part of the Engage. With the joined forces of both, Twilio Engage managed to bridge the gap between customers and businesses and also build a hyper-personalized channel.

What Do Marketers Have to Say?

The CEO of Twilio Segment, Peter Reinhardt said “We believe Twilio Engage is going to disrupt marketing and customer engagement. Until today, no single platform has made it possible to power personalized interactions across the entire customer journey.”

He further added, “For years, marketers have been locked into one-size-fits-all marketing suites built for an entirely different era. Twilio Engage delivers true end-to-end customer engagement by giving businesses the best customer data, powerful messaging capabilities, and unlimited API extensibility. This is what it takes to deliver truly satisfying customer experiences and improve acquisition, conversion, and retention.”

On a larger scale, Twilio Engage is for businesses with a B2C model. Using this, brands can provide a more personalized experience to their customers because they’ll have touchpoints data because of Segment.

The thing that makes Engage better than other marketing automation platforms is its ability to integrate with 400+ applications. And this will going to be an out-of-the-box feature means no additional hassle.

How does Twilio Engage Work?

In order to understand this, you might first need to learn about the Segment, which is a CDP (Customer Data Platform) acquired by Twilio in 2020.

For this, you can either head out to our blog where we have discussed in detail the Segment and why Twilio acquired it?

However, if you are short on time then here is an overview.  Segment is a CDP and it allows brands and businesses to gather their customer information at various touchpoints. With the help of this information, companies can make sound and data-driven decisions.

Now the question is how Twilio Engage fits into this picture.

Let’s see what Twilio has to say about this.

According to them, Twilio Engage is a platform that is built for marketers as well as developers. Even though it is a pre-built application provided as a Software-as-a-service, Twilio Engage is going to be flexible for custom development.

Marketers can start the campaign using the out-of-the-box application without the need for a developer or data scientist. And if you are part of the data team then your repetitive workload will be reduced as well.

Top Features of Engage By Twilio

What Twilio Engage does is it unifies the analytical and communication experience for its users. Though Twilio hasn’t released the full-fledged version of the Engage, they have given us a sneak peek of its enormous potential.

• Run data-powered campaigns in under a minute: Using Engage, you will be able to create and run campaigns within a minute. Because of the integrated CDP capabilities, each customer profile will have the latest information.
• A locus of every interaction: A marketing team runs its campaigns via various channels. Twilio Engage allows you to manage and deploy strategy across all the channels and also manage the data in a centralized place.
• 400 Out-of-the-Box Integration: You don’t have to worry about integration of Engage with your business applications. There are 400 ready-to-use integrations straight off.
• Never miss a chance to interact with customers: Twilio offers a wide range of communication APIs. Leveraging these, you can contact customers by using any channel like SMS, Email, Whatsapp, voice, etc.
• See the performance metrics: Every campaign you run or your every interaction with customers is an investment. So you need to calculate how much return you receive from your efforts. And Twilio Engage will give you important insights from various platforms so you can figure out your strategies accordingly.

The Ending Note

Engage is still in its Beta stage, but honestly, this new platform seems promising with the concept of unifying data and communication. You can build, you can deploy, you can communicate, and all will lead to a personalized customer experience. Also from the perspective of teams, it will minimize the dependencies of marketers on developers. Also, it will make the work of developers a little easier so they can convert ideas into reality. Here, you can learn more about Twilio and its other cloud communication services.