What’s wrong with traditional marketing automation?

It focuses on sending messages, not holding conversations. Customers can’t easily respond within the same channel, making engagement feel one-sided.

Why are two-way conversations important?

They allow customers to act immediately — asking questions, confirming purchases, or resolving issues — without leaving their chat app. This improves conversion and satisfaction.

How does Bird make this possible?

By integrating channels like WhatsApp or Messenger into Bird’s Conversations API , Flows , and Inbox , businesses can manage both outbound campaigns and inbound replies in one place.

What’s an example of this in action?

A company can send a WhatsApp notification via Salesforce Marketing Cloud, let Flows handle automated replies, and seamlessly transfer complex inquiries to agents in Inbox — all within one thread.

Do agents see the full conversation?

Yes. Inbox shows every message from every channel, ensuring context isn’t lost as the conversation transitions between automation and human support.

How does this benefit customers?

They never have to switch platforms, reintroduce themselves, or repeat information — every interaction feels connected, fast, and personal.

What’s the bigger takeaway for marketers?

The future of automation isn’t about volume — it’s about connection . Turning campaigns into conversations builds stronger customer relationships and boosts long-term engagement.

The good, the bad, and the better of marketing automation: from one-way messages to 2-way conversations

Bird

Aug 31, 2020

Marketing

1 min read

Key Takeaways

- Traditional marketing automation has limits. Tools like Salesforce Marketing Cloud or Marketo excel at one-way, scheduled messages but struggle to convert them into live, conversational interactions.
- Customers expect to reply. Modern audiences want to engage directly within the same messaging channel — not click external links or switch platforms.
- Two-way messaging drives better outcomes. By integrating Bird’s Conversations API, Flows, and Inbox, businesses can seamlessly shift from marketing to sales to support — all inside a single chat thread.
- Real-world proof. Similar conversational automation has improved experiences across industries — such as healthcare platforms that reduced costs and wait times with appointment-based messaging flows.
- Unified engagement, not fragmented tools. Bird’s omnichannel stack lets teams collaborate across multiple apps (WhatsApp, SMS, Line, etc.) without losing message context or continuity.
- From automation to conversation. Businesses can use Flows to respond to replies automatically, qualify inquiries, or route high-value conversations to live agents in Inbox.
- Customer-first continuity. End-users experience an uninterrupted thread of communication, while agents see full conversation histories across all channels for better personalization.
- Outcome: A consistent, human-feeling experience that transforms static campaigns into interactive, trust-building dialogues.

Q&A Highlights

What’s wrong with traditional marketing automation?
It focuses on sending messages, not holding conversations. Customers can’t easily respond within the same channel, making engagement feel one-sided.
Why are two-way conversations important?
They allow customers to act immediately — asking questions, confirming purchases, or resolving issues — without leaving their chat app. This improves conversion and satisfaction.
How does Bird make this possible?
By integrating channels like WhatsApp or Messenger into Bird’s Conversations API, Flows, and Inbox, businesses can manage both outbound campaigns and inbound replies in one place.
What’s an example of this in action?
A company can send a WhatsApp notification via Salesforce Marketing Cloud, let Flows handle automated replies, and seamlessly transfer complex inquiries to agents in Inbox — all within one thread.
Do agents see the full conversation?
Yes. Inbox shows every message from every channel, ensuring context isn’t lost as the conversation transitions between automation and human support.
How does this benefit customers?
They never have to switch platforms, reintroduce themselves, or repeat information — every interaction feels connected, fast, and personal.
What’s the bigger takeaway for marketers?
The future of automation isn’t about volume — it’s about connection. Turning campaigns into conversations builds stronger customer relationships and boosts long-term engagement.

Marketing automation platforms (e.g. Salesforce Marketing Cloud, Marketo, etc.) are great at sending 1 time emails or messages to individuals, at scale. But, how can you drive more conversational engagements with your customers?

The good

Marketing automation platforms (e.g. Salesforce Marketing Cloud, Marketo, etc.) are great at sending 1 time emails or messages to individuals, at scale.

You can build really complex journeys that react to user behavior and send messages at different times in the day, with thousands, even millions, of users going through the same automated journey at once.

Marketing automation platforms (e.g. Salesforce Marketing Cloud, Marketo, etc.) are great at sending 1 time emails or messages to individuals, at scale.

The bad

One thing marketing automation platforms, however, are not great at is converting these transactional messages into 2 way conversations between businesses and customers.

What if the user wants to act on a message and talk to a representative?

Historically this issue was solved by sending 1 off messages where the call to action was a link to another system: “Your order for an Acme Toolbox is on its way. To monitor its status click or change the delivery info click here” or “New product details are available. Click on this link to learn more”, where 2 way interaction was possible.

But, that puts the burden on the customer to take action. Once a business starts communicating with users on messaging apps (like WhatsApp, Line, Viber, WeChat, etc.) the user doesn’t want to use a different tool to continue the conversation. The preference is to smoothly transition from a marketing experience to a purchasing/support experience, within the same chat window, even in the same conversation (see the rise of sales and service oriented chatbots as a testament to this).

One thing marketing automation platforms, however, are not great at is converting these transactional messages into 2 way conversations between businesses and customers.

What if the user wants to act on a message and talk to a representative?

One thing marketing automation platforms, however, are not great at is converting these transactional messages into 2 way conversations between businesses and customers.

What if the user wants to act on a message and talk to a representative?

The better

At Bird, we’ve spent years understanding customer communication and developing powerful tools for businesses to create amazing customer experiences: namely with conversations API, Inbox, and Flows.

When you enable a social channel, say WhatsApp, with Bird, the entire conversation will happen using our conversations API. Healthcare organizations are pioneering these conversational approaches, with DrDoctor's NHS patient experience transformation demonstrating how automated appointment flows can save millions while improving patient satisfaction. Any application listening to that conversation can contribute by receiving and sending messages.

This means that you can start the conversation from one (internal) platform and continue it on another one without the end user ever noticing the transition — providing that seamless marketing - to sales - to support experience, all on the customer’s preferred channel of communication.

At Bird, we’ve spent years understanding customer communication and developing powerful tools for businesses to create amazing customer experiences: namely with conversations API, Inbox, and Flows.

What’s possible?

We’ve seen our users (and worked on some solutions of our own) that show off how easily businesses can create these new types of 2 way communication experiences.

For example, you can construct a journey with Birds’s Salesforce Marketing Cloud plugin that sends a WhatsApp notification to a customer that matches a particular audience.

A business could send a message to users immediately after signing up offering an easy channel for support, education, and even upsells/more purchases.

Flows would be listening to this conversation and be ready to handle the user’s reply:

And, where needed, it could smoothly pass this conversation to an agent waiting in Inbox, converting the conversation to a support case (or lead):