New updates enrich the software's tools for better cross-channel integration
Marketers have long struggled with the challenge of engaging customers across channels, but an updated version of Salesforce's Marketing Cloud could help.
Unveiled on Wednesday, the new software offers several enhancements designed to give companies a single place for planning customer "journeys," or managing their interactions with a brand across sales, service, marketing and more. It also aims to make it easier for marketers to orchestrate ad targeting across the digital advertising ecosystem.
First, Marketing Cloud's updated Journey Builder tool promises to give marketers the ability to guide customers on journeys across channels and devices and ensure that those customers always get the right message in the right place at the right time. Essentially, it does that by enabling companies to connect every interaction customers have with their brand across every department, making it easier to see and manage the overall picture.
New pre-built Sales Cloud and Service Cloud events and activities in Journey Builder are part of the new capabilities making those cross-channel integrations possible. So, too, are new pre-built Journey Triggers, which enable marketers to automate inbound event-driven triggers, such as a customer joining a loyalty program or downloading an app, so that the customer is automatically sent a message on any channel. Triggers can also automatically modify data in the customer contact record or set up wait times to adjust the journey in real-time based on customer interactions across sales, marketing and service.
"The most important issue in digital marketing is for the marketer to understand where the customer is in his or her journey," said Denis Pombriant, managing principal at Beagle Research Group. "We think we know these things, but what we know is based on assumptions, and while some assumptions are on target, many others are not."
The result is that vendors can miss critical opportunities, Pombriant added.
"Journey mapping via Journey Builder enables us to do away with pure assumptions by replacing them with testable hypotheses about reality," he said.
The updated tool also extends the journey-mapping process beyond marketing and into the front office, Pombriant noted, making it easier to maintain a consistent customer focus.
Related: Salesforce brings customer strategy mapping to mobile apps
The second newly updated piece of Marketing Cloud is its Active Audiences ad platform, which syncs ad targeting with CRM to help marketers run more relevant ads wherever they execute campaigns.
New partnerships with companies including LiveRamp, LiveIntent, Neustar and Viant aim to empower Salesforce users to activate CRM data and run ads across more than 100 digital advertising networks and technologies.
Full integration with Journey Builder, meanwhile, helps marketers coordinate their advertising efforts with customers' entire brand experience, including their purchase history, engagement with customer service teams, emails and mobile messages opened, and where they fall in the sales cycle.
Finally, through Salesforce's partnerships with Facebook and Twitter, Active Audiences now enables marketers to reach customers and prospects on those social sites.
Salesforce Marketing Cloud and Journey Builder are generally available today for customers. Journey Builder pricing starts at $3,750 per month. New Journey Builder activities, triggers and events with Sales Cloud and Service Cloud will be available in the fourth quarter of this year.
Active Audiences, meanwhile, is generally available today for customers. New Active Audiences display features are expected to be generally available in the third quarter. Active Audiences pricing starts at $4,200 per month.
In the third and final episode of our 3-part CMO50 video series exploring modern marketing and why it’s become a matter of trust, we’re delighted to be joined by Telstra’s former CMO and now digital services and sales executive, Jeremy Nicholas, and Adobe VP Marketing Asia-Pacific and Japan, Duncan Egan.
Flash back to the classic film, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. Television-obsessed Mike insists on becoming the first person to be ‘sent by Wonkavision’, dematerialising on one end, pixel by pixel, and materialising in another space. His cinematic dreams are realised thanks to rash decisions as he is shrunken down to fit the digital universe, followed by a trip to the taffy puller to return to normal size.
Why is it there is no shortage of leadership development materials, yet outstanding leadership is so rare? Despite having access to so many leadership principles, tools, systems and processes, why is it so hard to develop and improve as a leader?
As a nation united by sport, brands are beginning to learn money alone won’t talk without aligned values and action. If recent events with major leagues and their players have shown us anything, it’s the next generation of athletes are standing by what they believe in – and they won’t let their values be superseded by money.
