We’d like to share with you the history of our custom integration solution between SAP Marketing Cloud and WhatsApp.

Our SAP Marketing Cloud - WhatsApp integration solution started in 2019 when one of our most important Latin-American clients asked us to make use of WhatsApp as an additional channel in their SAP Marketing Cloud campaigns, to target some of their most digital customers. The motivation to add this additional channel (firstly) was:

• The fact that WhatsApp is utilized by 64% of people in Latin America, being that rate even much higher in digital customers.
• The Covid pandemic (in 2020).

The end goal was to increase sales by increasing the reach and open rates through that popular channel. With the great effort of our consultants and developers team, we reached the first version of the solution in June 2020, using the WhatsApp messaging service provided by Botmaker. Business cases implemented (in a 3 weeks journey using automated and trigger-based campaigns):

• Welcome messages
• Remarketing messages to finish digital registration
• Congratulations messages
• Additional remarketing messages (training, promotions, offers, etc.)
• Win back messages

The business goals were accomplished! In 2021 we started to implement new versions using the WhatsApp messaging services provided by Infobip and Sinch. Also, we started to design and implement a new integration platform in the AWS cloud, using lambda functions and several AWS components, with node-js ETLs integration programs and cloud databases. At the beginning of 2022, the SAP Marketing Cloud implementation team was interested in our solution and asked us to participate in Challenge #4:

SAP Marketing Cloud customers are requesting: WhatsApp integration – so that they can execute campaigns using this channel and send an instant message to specific target groups. They want to use the latest functionalities provided by WhatsApp Business API.

We noticed that in 2018 several SAP clients had started to ask about this integration and so far 42 SAP clients have requested this solution. After being evaluated by the SAP Marketing Cloud implementation team, our solution became the winner of the SAP Open Space Partner Opportunities challenge! This accomplishment enables us to expand and concentrate on providing quality to customers; as a result, we see enormous new potential in Latin-America, Europe, and Asia. Seven large SAP Marketing Cloud clients in Latin-America and Europe—three from the food industry, two from the beauty and cosmetics industry, one from the construction industry, and the last one from the electronics industry—have requested our WhatsApp integration solution in order to add this effective channel to SAP Marketing Cloud, which does not currently offer it as an out-of-the-box channel and will not offer it in the near future. Additionally, in order to make our solution truly all-inclusive, we have created a product that enables mobile number validation integrated into the solution, ensuring the high quality of mobile numbers submitted into SAP Marketing Cloud and used in WhatsApp campaigns. For this validation, we make use of the Twilio service. The solution is comprehensive and reliable, allowing SAP Marketing Cloud marketing professionals to carry out the WhatsApp campaigns planned by the business with ease. https://youtu.be/pryrKrlymGU [embed]https://youtu.be/cw6gzFoRtic[/embed]