Syngenta

With roots stretching back over 250 years, Syngenta is a global agriculture technology company headquartered in Basel, Switzerland, working to sustainably feed the world by developing seeds and hybrids and crop-protection solutions. One of its main focal areas is promoting sustainable agriculture to farmers across the world.

Syngenta originally relied on local SMS providers for mass marketing, which meant zero visibility into how effective those messages were. As its audience grew, the company needed a more targeted strategy that integrated SMS and WhatsApp — and could track both — to reach the farms of over 7 million growers while cutting the manual, time-consuming work for its commercial marketing teams.

“Our job as a company is to empower farmers. We see digital as an enabler that allows us to provide personalized information and tools to help our farmers grow more effectively.”

Chris Chen, Head of Digital and IT, Syngenta, AMEA

Syngenta's existing means of reaching growers — through an internal CRM — was holding it back. It could reach only a few million farmers directly, a fraction of its target audience of 450M farmers in the region. After evaluating several companies, Bird was the only one able to meet its stringent requirements for reliable system integrations, WhatsApp and SMS support, and extensive service reach.

“We were looking for a partner that could integrate with our core platforms and had a service level we could trust to consistently reach our farmers.”

Chris Chen, Head of Digital and IT, Syngenta, AMEA

Syngenta built more strategic, personalized communications so that each message was relevant and timely to each individual grower. The approach took shape across three reinforcing efforts.

“Continuous engagement is necessary for the success of our farmers. We need to understand their pain points and challenges, and react quickly. It's about providing the right message, at the right time, to the right grower.”

Chris Chen, Head of Digital and IT, Syngenta, AMEA

As Syngenta progressed with Bird, its focus expanded from managing mass communications to improving marketing efficiency — driven by the insight that response rates were significantly higher when growers were engaged within six months of sharing their contact details. With Bird, Syngenta could now run both mass outreach and targeted, insightful interactions, paving the way for more effective marketing journeys.

Syngenta is committed to deepening its connections with the farming community through Bird — shifting from a manual, simple process into one dynamic, integrated messaging system capable of reaching vast numbers of farmers with the push of a button. Central to that vision is seamlessly integrating its messaging functions across its Cropwise Grower platform and channels like WhatsApp, consolidating communications into a single system for real-time tracking and management of conversations.