Flickr/Twilio Twilio CEO Jeff Lawson.
- On Monday, Twilio launched an app that allows users to send SMS texts through Salesforce's customer relationship management software.
- This app was originally aimed at nonprofits, which wanted a feature to send texts to people who don't have Internet access. It can also be used to help organize volunteers.
- Twilio is launching this app for enterprises after realizing that companies wanted this feature as well.
When Twilio was working with nonprofits, they asked the $16 billion cloud company for a feature that could better help them communicate with their volunteers, donors and people participating in their programs.
So on Monday, Twilio announced Twilio for Salesforce, an app that allows people to send SMS texts from Salesforce's customer relationship management software.
Originally, this feature was specifically aimed at nonprofits, but then commercial companies started asking for the feature as well.
"We needed something that's super simple that a volunteer would be able to start using immediately," Meghan Nesbit, director of nonprofit market development at Twilio, told Business Insider. "We really focused on that with an app."
This feature can be especially helpful to nonprofits to reach people who may not have access to the Internet or email by allowing nonprofits to use Salesforce to text them instead. Or, if a nonprofit is organizing an event or coordinating volunteers to respond to a disaster, it can use Salesforce to schedule and send messages to a group of people.
"If I have a bunch of volunteers, and I want them to meet me at Golden Gate Park at 9 a.m., and I want to send a reminder, I can create a public campaign on Salesforce, schedule and send it later or send it right now," Nesbit said. "This is also really helpful for organizations that need people to do something really quickly."
At a company, if employees have a meeting and are running late, they can send a text from Salesforce.
"Technology innovation is not limited to the industry titans," Nesbit said. "A lot of innovation that's happening with technology, it's happening in the social impact sector."