Salesforce is used by a wide range of businesses and organisations across industries, from mid-sized businesses to large enterprises. 

‍It helps businesses improve their customer relationships, increase sales efficiency, and streamline various business processes through its cloud-based, scalable, and customisable CRM solutions. And today we’ll learn about WhatsApp Salesforce Integration in dept.

Step-by-Step Guide: How to Integrate Salesforce with WhatsApp

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What is Salesforce?

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Salesforce is a cloud-based customer relationship management (CRM) platform that helps organisations manage their interactions and relationships with customers, clients, prospects, and partners. 

It offers a wide range of tools and services designed to streamline and enhance various aspects of sales, marketing, and service delivery.

The best part about Salesforce is that any non-technical person from your team can also use Salesforce with the most ease as it’s quite easy to set up.

It even helps businesses provide insights about their users that can be used to build better strategies to convert them better.

‍Salesforce Announces New WhatsApp Integrations

Recently, Salesforce unveiled its plans for upcoming WhatsApp integration with Salesforce

tailored for marketing and service teams.

WhatsApp stands as one of the most widely used mobile messaging applications worldwide, boasting over 2.2 billion monthly active users and handling a daily message volume exceeding 100 billion. This marks a substantial increase from its 2018 figures, nearly doubling its recorded user count as of 2021.

Key features and components of Salesforce

Salesforce might be the best CRM for some and might not be for some brands. 

Hence, understanding the key features after WhatsApp integration with Salesforce becomes an important aspect before you buy a CRM. So, let’s look at its features and see if those are relevant to your brand’s use case or not. 

‍So, let us help you understand the features of Salesforce as a CRM for your brand in detail.

1. Helps in Contact and Lead Management

Salesforce allows businesses to track and manage customer and prospect information, including contact details, interactions, and lead-generation activities all from a single dashboard.

2. Provides Tools for Marketing Automation

It offers a wide range of marketing automation tools for creating and managing campaigns that target lead generation cycles and even optimise channels like email marketing, paid engagements, etc.

3. Easing Customer Support and Service

The platform includes features for customer service, and support ticket tracking to ensure timely and effective customer issue resolution. 

‍This feature is widely used by Customer success teams that act as a bridge between the company and live customers.

4. Helps in Building Strategies on Analytics

Salesforce provides powerful reporting and analytics tools that help brands gain insights into data collated via various channels and make strategies that are backed by data.

It even incorporates AI capabilities through its platform, which provides predictive analytics and AI-driven insights to improve decision-making and personalisation.

5. Provides Businesses with Customised and Automated Workflows

Users can customise Salesforce to meet their specific business needs. This includes options like creating custom fields for user inputs, marketing or sales workflows, processes and much more.

6. Seamless Integration with Other Business Tools

Salesforce can be integrated with other business applications. These include basic tools like email, calendars, etc to sophisticated tools like accounting software, WhatsApp Business account, and more to streamline operations and data sharing.

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What is WhatsApp?

WhatsApp is one of the most popular messaging platforms globally, allowing users to send messages, make voice and video calls, and share media files like images, documents, and videos. As of 2023, WhatsApp boasts over 2.2 billion monthly active users worldwide, with over 487 million users in India alone, making it one of the largest markets for the platform.

In India, WhatsApp plays a vital role not just in personal communication but also in the business ecosystem. It enables businesses to connect with customers more personally, offering an easy and efficient way to share product updates, deliver customer support, and gather feedback.

WhatsApp Business, in particular, has been a game changer for Indian businesses, from local shopkeepers to large enterprises, by offering tools like automated messages, quick replies, and interactive messaging options.

Key Features of WhatsApp

WhatsApp provides a range of features that make it an ideal platform for both personal and professional use. Some of its key features include:

1. Messaging and Calling: Users can send text messages, voice messages, photos, and videos, and even share locations. WhatsApp also allows users to make free voice and video calls over the internet.
2. WhatsApp Business App: This app, designed specifically for businesses, allows companies to create official profiles, automate messages, and provide real-time support. It is widely used by small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in India.
3. End-to-End Encryption: WhatsApp uses strong encryption for all messages and calls, ensuring privacy and security for users, a feature highly valued by both individuals and businesses.
4. Interactive Messaging: WhatsApp Business allows businesses to use interactive elements like buttons and quick replies to provide a seamless customer experience.
5. Global Reach with Local Adaptability: WhatsApp is available in more than 60 languages, and in India, it supports languages such as Hindi, Bengali, Tamil, and Telugu, making it accessible to a broad audience across the country.

Status Feature: Users can share text, photos, videos, and GIFs with their contacts for 24 hours, similar to Instagram Stories, making it a popular way to engage audiences with time-sensitive content.

How to implement Salesforce WhatsApp integration?

‍WhatsApp integration with Salesforce involves several steps to set up and configure the integration. Here's a general outline of the steps you might follow:

Step 1: Setting up your WhatsApp Business Account

First, you must ensure your brand has a WhatsApp account on Facebook Business Manager. As the basic steps, you can send an email to WhatsAppEnablement@salesforce.com with the subject “WhatsApp Number Setup” with the following steps:

• Your brand’s Salesforce ID
• Facebook Business Manager ID
• Official name associated with Facebook Business Manager ID
• Brand’s WhatsApp number, name, email, and phone number 

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Make sure to send the company name you want to see on WhatsApp along with the company description, logo, and website URL.

Step 2: Select Integration Method and Setting up Salesforce Environment

Now, you would have to decide on how to integrate WhatsApp with Salesforce. 

This means you can choose between various third-party connectors available in the market, and do some in-house development to establish the connection.

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For this, you must ensure that your Salesforce environment is ready for integration. This may involve custom development, setting up necessary objects and fields, and configuring user access.

Step 3: Defining Message Templates for the audience and sending them for approval

What do you want to convey?

Is it a new product that your company has launched, a clearance or festive sale or something else? 

This needs to go into a template. This template is what your recipients will see. 

As a D2C brand, you should definitely add interactive features like media files, emojis, etc.

When you have decided what goes out to your audience, you have to submit the template for approval to WhatsApp as a mandatory step.

This is a long process. But for your festive announcements, a brand like yours can’t afford delay, right? This is where Pragma can help you launch instant campaigns.

With over 10,000 pre-approved templates, Pragma helps you get started with your campaign in minutes, instead of weeks. 

From offering the best ROAS to offering flexibility and customisation options to meet your business needs, Pragma collects and analyses data from over 450+ brands helping your D2C brands target campaigns to the best audience with personalised offers.

Step 4: Managing user consent and setting Data Mapping tools

You’re almost done with the integration. 

The final steps include implementing mechanisms in Salesforce to manage user consent and preferences for WhatsApp communication. 

What this means is that as per the rules and regulations of WhatsApp, the users should be able to opt in or opt out of your marketing campaigns.

Finally, you need to map data fields between Salesforce and WhatsApp to ensure that information is properly synchronised and all the necessary information is available in the Salesforce dashboard.

Step 5: Some final checklist

With the integration now being set, all you need to do is the following to ensure a fruitful way forward

• Test the integration in a sandbox environment.
• Provide training to team members.
• Set up monitoring and analytics tools.
• Ensure security and compliance.
• Go live in the production environment.
• Establish support and maintenance procedures.

How to use Salesforce Marketing Cloud WhatsApp integration?

Salesforce Marketing Cloud with WhatsApp Messaging is generally used to extend your brand’s Omnichannel experience. This integration typically provides businesses with:

Undoubtedly, Salesforce Marketing Cloud is the most efficient Salesforce platform for marketing.

This marketing cloud tool has made the lives of marketers simpler by providing a holistic view of the customers’ journey including:

1. What product interests them
2. Their buying history, etc.

This data can be used for planning more targeted marketing campaigns and providing a personalised journey across different channels and devices to your customers or prospects.

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Let’s understand Salesforce Marketing Cloud WhatsApp integration helps marketers

A CRM is one of the most useful things for D2C brands, especially for the marketing team. 

With Pragma leading the Omnichannel CRM space, as a  thought leader, we have collated some major points as to why WhatsApp with a CRM is the next thing your marketing team should invest in. 

Let’s see them below:

Engaging New Leads and Contacts on Salesforce with WhatsApp:

• Enhances real-time communication: With WhatsApp integration, your brand’s marketers can engage with new leads in real time, which is often preferred by customers. 

This helps in providing timely responses to inquiries and nurturing leads effectively.

• Send automated welcome messages: You can set up automated welcome messages going out from your brand’s handle to new leads or even contacts, providing them with essential information like offers, a warm introduction, or even informing them about product catalogues or store operating hours.

• Collect leads from multi-channel: Your brand can seamlessly connect with leads from other marketing channels like email, social media, etc to WhatsApp for more interactive and personalised conversations

Retargeting Customers with Abandoned Cart Recovery:

• Send out abandoned cart alerts to users: Use Marketing automation to send timely WhatsApp messages to customers who abandon their shopping carts. 

These reminders can include details of the items left in the cart and encourage customers to complete their purchases by offering some discounts or something similar.

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• Providing your customers with personalised offers: Create personalised messages with special offers or incentives to entice customers to return and complete their purchases.

• Provides an interface for two-way communication: WhatsApp allows customers to ask questions or provide feedback, and your support team or the marketing team can respond in real-time to address concerns and encourage conversions.

These real-time messages can be highly persuasive in pushing a user to immediately buy.

Customer Retention Strategy with Personalised WhatsApp Messages:

• Communicate in a personalised manner: Utilise customer data from your CRM to send highly personalised WhatsApp messages to existing customers like - loyalty rewards especially made for you, and information relevant to their past interactions like -

We saw you checked this [Product Name]. We think you might be interested in [Product Name] also.

• Order Updates and Reminders: Your customers can receive order updates, shipping notifications, and appointment reminders through WhatsApp. This helps in keeping the customers informed and engaged.

• Feedback and Surveys: The best part is you can use WhatsApp for post-purchase feedback requests and customer satisfaction surveys. Collecting feedback through this channel can be more convenient for customers.

Why Integrate Salesforce with WhatsApp?

With those being the nitty-gritty of Salesforce WhatsApp integration, let’s head on to the final and most important section of this blog - How will this integration help you hit better sales targets this quarter - Benefits

1. Helps your business send personalised messages

Businesses can use the Salesforce Marketing Cloud to send personalised messages to customers via WhatsApp. These messages can include text, images, videos, and other multimedia content.

2. Automation marketing efforts at scale

You can set up marketing automation workflows to send targeted messages to customers based on their interactions, preferences, and behaviour. For example, you can trigger messages after a customer completes a specific action on your website or makes a purchase.

3. Manage user consent policies

The integration typically includes consent management features, ensuring that customers have explicitly opted in to receive messages through WhatsApp.

4. Build and send Message Templates for approval

The integration typically supports WhatsApp's message templates, which are pre-approved message formats used for outbound messages. These templates are designed to ensure that messages are consistent and compliant with WhatsApp's policies.

5. Map and Analyse data with reporting insights

Salesforce Marketing Cloud provides tools for tracking the performance of your WhatsApp campaigns. You can measure delivery rates, engagement, and customer responses to optimise your messaging strategy.

6. Multi-Channel Engagement

In addition to WhatsApp, Salesforce Marketing Cloud allows you to integrate messaging across multiple channels, such as email, SMS, social media, and more, to create a seamless and integrated customer engagement experience.

7. Helps marketing team automate campaigns

Automate routine tasks such as appointment reminders, order updates, and feedback requests, saving time and reducing manual efforts.

Some more benefits of using Salesforce WhatsApp integration are:

• Customer Support and Service
• Cost-Effective Communication
• Enhanced User Experience
• Increased Customer Loyalty
• Sales and Marketing Efficiency

How to Integrate Salesforce With WhatsApp Using Bepragma

Integrating Salesforce with WhatsApp via Bepragma (a third-party connector) offers businesses a powerful way to manage customer relationships, automate communications, and boost sales. Here’s a step-by-step guide on how to implement this integration using Bepragma.

Step 1: Set Up WhatsApp Business Account

To begin the integration, you must have a verified WhatsApp Business account, which can be managed through Facebook Business Manager. As per current data, there are over 15 million small and medium businesses in India using WhatsApp Business to engage with customers, making it an essential tool for growth.

You'll need the following information to initiate the integration:

• Your Salesforce ID
• Facebook Business Manager ID
• WhatsApp number, email, and other contact details

Step 2: Choose Integration Method

Bepragma offers a flexible and straightforward way to integrate WhatsApp with Salesforce. This can be done by either using pre-built connectors or through custom development.

In India, where speed and efficiency are key for business success, Bepragma provides over 10,000 pre-approved templates for marketing and customer service communications. This allows Indian businesses to save time and effort, ensuring compliance with WhatsApp's strict message approval policies.

Step 3: Create and Approve Message Templates

Once your integration method is chosen, the next step involves creating templates for customer communication. These templates need to be pre-approved by WhatsApp, a process that can be cumbersome without the right tools. Bepragma accelerates this approval process by offering ready-to-use templates tailored for the Indian market, ensuring your messages are relevant and compliant with WhatsApp’s regulations.

Step 4: Manage User Consent and Data Mapping

WhatsApp requires businesses to get explicit consent from users before sending messages. This is especially crucial in India, where data privacy laws are becoming stricter with the advent of regulations like the Personal Data Protection Bill. Bepragma provides a streamlined way to manage user opt-ins and ensures all communication is mapped correctly within Salesforce. This ensures that businesses are able to track customer preferences and send personalised messages while remaining compliant with local regulations.

Step 5: Go Live and Optimise

After setting up your integration and ensuring all systems are functioning correctly, your business can go live with real-time messaging on WhatsApp. Bepragma offers analytics tools that help track message performance, engagement, and response rates. With WhatsApp being such a dominant platform in India, businesses can see significant improvements in engagement metrics. According to recent reports, 68% of Indian consumers prefer messaging businesses through WhatsApp for customer service queries, showing its importance in the local market.

Final Thoughts

You’ve now discovered a new, yet simple way to interact with your users through WhatsApp Business CRM Integration. The best part about a CRM integration to WhatsApp is that you can monitor user behaviour and target them with personalised campaigns. Learn how to Integrate WhatsApp API to enhance your communication and marketing strategies.

Meaning?

Personalising your campaigns plays an important role in getting a better conversion.

‍By personalising your approach through Pragma's omnichannel CRM solutions, you can streamline communication and provide a customer experience that users might love at first sight on WhatsApp. Brands with Omnichannel Engagement, retain 89% of their customers.

With a range of available integrations, the Pragma team allows you to choose features that align with your specific business objectives, as each integration offers unique value, which can be customised to suit your WhatsApp CRM system. Explore the potential of Data Analytics and Omnichannel CRM to improve your customer engagement and operational efficiency.

Let’s start unlocking the true potential of WhatsApp CRM integration.

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