Using Data To Build Customer Experiences: Customer.io Rolls Out Twilio SMS For Customer Segments

Using Data To Build Customer Experiences: Customer.io Rolls Out Twilio SMS For Customer Segments

Data is a powerful tool. It makes carefully engineered moments come across as delightfully simple, like a customer getting a text when their package arrives. In that moment, they’re not thinking of the data passed between HTTP Requests, webhooks and status callbacks — but that might be on your mind.
 
Customer.io is a behavior email platform focused on segmentation and automation.They give you tools to help you make the most of data, so you can create experiences that are tailored to each user. Their bread and butter is segmentation and automation, now they’re expanding into smarter messaging. Their newest feature lets you set Twilio SMS triggers for specific customer segments, and create API requests straight from your dashboard.
 
Here’s how it works. Let’s say I take a jaunt to the Portland Zoo after a visit to the Portland triumvirate of awesomeness — Revival Drum Shop, Meat Cheese Bread and Heart Coffee. While I’m happily caffeinated, I register for a membership to the Portland Zoo. The Portland Zoo can drop me into a customer segment, and schedule an SMS to be sent via Twilio so I return to check out their adorable wildlife.
 

Making People’s Lives Easier — with Code

 
“We think marketers and teams should be able to build their ideal stack and easily flow data through them so that they can do their jobs better to serve their customers,” says Janet Choi, Marketing Manager at Customer.io.
 
“Twilio is one of those best-of-breed tools for delivering SMS. There’s been very strong demand from our customers who have mobile products.”
 
Customer.io users can connect their Twilio accounts to their Customer.io account and then sync specific phone numbers with specific customer segments, and specific triggers for outbound SMS. You can preview what the text will look like from your Customer.io dashboard, and track everything from open rate, to conversion rate and more.
 
Twilio is one tool in Customer.io’s Actions suite. They’re also shipping Urban Airship’s push Action and a Slack Action, making it even simpler to use the customer engagement tools you love at scale.
 

Data Informed Customer Outreach

This easily accessible data empowers companies to monitor how their customers are responding to their messages, and adjust accordingly. In taking care of the medium that carries the message, Customer.io gives their users the ability to focus on crafting the best message. You can thank the engineers for that.
 
To get a message from point A  (the Customer.io dashboard) to point B (the customer’s phone) it follows some well architected code. Specifically, Go and .NET code. “Our stack is mostly Go-based, and we’re using a custom client that wraps some of our business logic within the calls out that we make to Twilio, as we’re using just a small subset of available endpoints for our SMS integration,” says Stephen Young, a backend engineer at Customer.io.
 
We have the data. We know different customers prefer different avenues of communication. Customer.io also rolled out push notifications for Slack and Urban Airship. Read more about their new release here.