How to Deliver A Connected Marketing Experience Using Salesforce Marketing Cloud AI

Salesforce is pulling out all the stops to leverage the potential of generative/predictive AI in transforming the marketing experience, one leap at a time.

If the latest Winter and Spring updates are any indication, the world’s number one CRM has made its priorities abundantly clear: AI-powered marketing must be a business’s pièce de résistance. It is no longer just a savvy alternative but a prerequisite for success. 

There are three ways Salesforce enables marketers to realize the full potential of AI: 

1. By providing deeper actionable insights into customer data
   
2. By improving efficiency through AI-driven campaigns
   
3. Personalization at scale (analyzing large amounts of data to deliver optimally relevant experiences to individual users)

Looking to capitalize on these? Get in touch with our Salesforce Marketing Cloud experts. Meanwhile, let us explore each of these in detail, starting with customer data. 

Deeper Actionable Insights into Customer Data

Through Segment Intelligence, Waterfall Segmentation, and partnership integrations, Salesforce has broadened the scope of “measuring the effectiveness of customer data.”

Segment Intelligence

Segment Intelligence brings the dual power of Data Cloud and CRM Analytics to help you track, measure, and optimize existing segments for more impactful marketing activities.

Based on Unified Individual profiles created in Data Cloud, Segment Intelligence analyzes segments by importing customer data from four data sources- Marketing Cloud (compulsory), Google Ads, Commerce Cloud, and Meta Ads. 

The more data sources there are, the more comprehensive your analysis will be. So, apart from Marketing Cloud, Salesforce recommends using at least two data sources. 

Waterfall Segmentation

Waterfall segmentation is a new feature in Data Cloud that helps you to create a “prioritized list of audience segments.” This is part of Salesforce’s Winter ‘24 Release. 

The goal of waterfall segmentation is to achieve more relevant targeting within an audience to prevent email fatigue. Imagine you’re running a campaign with multiple offers. You create a waterfall segment. The waterfall begins with the high-priority audience group, followed by medium- and low-priority groups at the end. 

You can now tailor your offers to each segment in the waterfall according to their merit. So, if the high-priority group consists of VIP customers, they will receive the corresponding offer, and so on. This is the waterfall logic in action. 

Partnership Integrations

Marketing, IT, and data science teams in your organization can now use the zero-ETL data-sharing model with Amazon Redshift, Amazon Data Lakes, and Databricks Lakehouse. Instead of traditional aws ETL tools for efficient data management and integration.

You can now connect your data from its source repository and still create a unified customer view in the platform, eliminating the need for complex ETL data pipelines. In addition, with the help of BYOM integrations within Einstein Studio, you can build, train and deploy custom AI and ML models in Google, Databricks, and Amazon Bedrock.

Improved Efficiency through AI-Driven Campaigns

Salesforce’s new Einstein updates allow you to integrate generative AI directly into Data Cloud for “first-party data grounding” and data masking through the Einstein Trust Layer.  

Einstein AI for Data Cloud And Engagement 

Accelerate segment creation with natural language prompts and create emails by auto-generating subject lines and copy. 

Follow these Salesforce-recommended best practices while using Einstein Segment Creation. 

Einstein AI for Data Cloud And Account Engagement 

For the first time, B2B marketers using Account Engagement (formerly Pardot) can use Segment Creation in Data Cloud. 

This will enable them to target customers who are more likely to respond to offers, move leads across the funnel, and target relevant accounts. 

Einstein can take charge of the entire content production process, from email to signup forms to landing pages, allowing marketers to deliver more personalized experiences to customers in much less time. 

Typeface Generative AI Content

Salesforce’s partnership with Typeface helps marketers generate on-brand images and drag and drop them into your emails within Marketing Cloud Engagement. 

With the help of Typeface, marketers can take personalized visual content to the next level. Here is a snapshot of the Typeface Content Block in action with the Content Builder.

Personalization at Scale

Through Referral Marketing, new industries in Package Manager, and real-time customer behavioral insights, marketers can scale their personalization efforts like never before. Let’s briefly explore each of these in our concluding portion.

Marketing Personalization

One of the recurring patterns in Salesforce’s updates is their focus on enabling wider access to granularity in customer data. As far as personalization is concerned, data granularity is of utmost importance. It is directly proportional to the degree of personalization. 

In the present scenario, Sales and Service Cloud users can now access next-best actions and real-time behavioral insights. such as pages viewed, product affinities, etc. 

This will enable marketers to use customer data from sales and service interactions to personalize recommendations to customers across the buying journey. 

Referral Marketing

Referral marketing is the process of identifying and engaging with customers who are your brand advocates and incentivizing them to recommend your brand to their network. 

Salesforce launched Referral Marketing in their Winter ‘24 update. You can now manage Referral campaigns in sync with Data Cloud, Marketing Cloud, and Salesforce CRM. 

The update includes a “Likely to Refer” model to predict which customers are likely to join a referral program. In addition, widgets, journey templates, and vouchers will enable marketers to “create immersive experiences” for their customers. 

You can learn more about Salesforce’s Referral Marketing here. Below is a screenshot of a Referral program in action in Salesforce. 

More Industries in Package Manager

Following the trend among marketers of investing more in journeys, Salesforce is consistently adding new industries to Package Manager in Marketing Cloud Engagement. 

“…we’re packaging industry best practice journeys, content, automations, and templates directly in Marketing Cloud Engagement,” says Stephen Hammond, the EVP and GM of Marketing Cloud at Salesforce. The stated goal is to facilitate faster, more agile turnarounds.

In early 2023, Salesforce added Retail and Automotive into Package Manager. Now, in light of the Winter ‘24 update, Financial Services and Health & Life Sciences are the latest inclusions. Feel free to consult Salesforce’s updated Package Manager Industry Solutions. 

Wrapping Up!

Breaking down silos and promoting maximum collaboration – that’s the direction in which Salesforce is moving, keeping in step with emerging AI technologies. 

Your next step? Connect with our Salesforce Marketing Cloud experts, tell us your business needs, and we will help you leverage the world’s leading CRM platform to the hilt.