• by Ray Schultz , Columnist, November 16, 2023

Email teams seeking better integration with other channels have a new tool at their command, thanks to a partnership between Nylas and Twilio, the firms say.  

Nylas is a communications platform that offers access to email, calendar and contacts providers through one API integration. It will now leverage Twilio Flex, a digital engagement center, to provide additional communication channels, tools, and data.

The goal is to help brands deliver “customer engagement and data-driven insights across critical communication channels while simultaneously arming developers with the toolkit they need to build efficiently and securely,” says Gleb Polyakov, co-founder & CEO of Nylas.

Why is this urgent at this point? Because companies are “increasingly seeing how investing in great customer engagement can directly lead to growth,” Polyakov adds. “At the same time, businesses are under immense pressure to cut costs and operate as efficiently as possible.”

Twilio Flex provides a sales tool for pre-purchase conversations, a cloud-based contact center and an in-app digital concierge.  

According to Nylas and Twilio, the arrangement will allow users to:

- Increase user productivity by eliminating context switching. Users will have unified access to email, SMS, calendars, and relevant customer data within a single interface.

- Utilize contextual email capabilities designed for conversational email interactions. This will facilitate secure connections to users’ inboxes for email management tools and message analytics and bi-directional syncs.

- Build customizable and automated scheduling workflows for agents, allowing them to immediately schedule follow-ups with customers and non-contact center experts while connecting to all major calendar providers.

In August, Nylas debuted  a focused email plug-in. That offering, Email by Nylas, allows developers to build intelligent email integrations on top of the Nylas platform, so they can connect with all the major email service providers, using OpenAI’s large language model.