Salesforce has announced their first major post-Spring-release update, which brings the advantages of Salesforce’s core platform (known as Einstein 1) to your marketing efforts.
Built on Data Cloud, Marketing Cloud Growth Edition (MCGE) is Salesforce’s maiden venture toward bringing multiple data sources under one roof. The Edition comes equipped with a data model that uses the same data objects (such as contacts, leads, and campaigns) that intra-organizational teams may already be using in their Salesforce CRM system.
The Edition also has new builders built on the foundation of Salesforce CMS, and, for the first time, gives marketing teams more streamlined access to Data Cloud and Einstein’s generative tools, which were previously available in other Marketing Cloud Editions.
What Is Meant by Marketing Cloud Growth “On Core?”
“On core” signifies the shift toward the integration of Marketing Cloud into Salesforce’s core platform. Marketing Cloud Growth is Salesforce’s first step in that direction. Using Data Cloud as its foundation, Marketing Cloud Growth offers:
- Shared Data Model: Because Marketing Cloud Growth uses the same Salesforce objects, multiple teams can now view customer data within a single data hub.
- Enhanced Collaboration: With multiple teams having access to a single source of truth, it paves the way for data sharing, leading to better collaboration and efficiency.
- Quicker Setup: Because Growth utilizes the same data objects, it eliminates the need for manual data migration. You can directly add marketing automation functionalities.
- Improved Data Management: Data Cloud being the foundation, you now have access to its tools. You can utilize Data Cloud to cleanse, unify, and enrich customer data.
- AI-powered Marketing: Save time and effort by leveraging Einstein’s generative tools for content creation (more on this later.)
Put simply, Marketing Cloud Growth Edition leverages the core Salesforce platform for the purpose of data unification, improved inter-departmental collaboration, and broader, if not plenary, access to AI generative tools, streamlining marketing automation for businesses.
N.B. As of now, Salesforce has not retired, and is not likely to retire any time soon, the Marketing Cloud or Account Engagement (formerly known as Pardot) in the Salesforce suite. Customers who use Marketing Cloud and Account Engagement don’t need to do anything. The Marketing Cloud Growth edition is a whole new world for small-to-medium businesses.
Being Salesforce Marketing Cloud experts, we are thrilled by the announcement. Bringing the latest Data Cloud and AI capabilities to the Marketing Cloud tech stack is a huge step toward enabling B2Bs and SMBs to maximize the potential of their marketing campaigns.
Note that as of now, Marketing Cloud Growth Edition is only available in the U.S. and Canada. A tentative EMEA release is scheduled for the second half of 2024.
Marketing Cloud Growth: Key Highlights
Integrated into the Core platform, Marketing Cloud Growth will allow marketers to leverage the power of Data Cloud, Salesforce CMS, and Einstein AI.
- Data Cloud: Integrated into the Salesforce Core platform, Data Cloud makes customer data “natively available” across the Salesforce suite. It connects disparate data sources and creates a complete profile of every customer.
- Salesforce CMS: The Salesforce hybrid Content Management System allows you to share emails and forms across Salesforce applications. It acts as a global content repository, enabling you to create, edit, organize, and manage content from a single source.
- Einstein AI: AI-powered campaigns, fast-tracked email creation, brand-optimized content, and Send Time Optimization – Einstein AI’s predictive and generative AI power is now made available for marketers.
Campaign in Marketing Cloud Growth Edition
In Salesforce, a campaign record is the launching pad for a marketing campaign. A campaign record acts as a pre-launch preview of your team’s intentions, goals, strategies, and expected results. Your team will return to the campaign record to get an aerial view of the marketing moodboard.
What Marketing Cloud Growth does is it gives you a head start on creating a campaign record by offering the following options:
- Single Email with Einstein: Einstein AI will generate a customized campaign brief.
- Single Email Template: Create an email template from scratch and customize it later.
- Message Template Series: Lets you build personalized emails in Flow Builder.
- Signup Form Template: Create a landing page signup form and generate leads.
- Blank Email Campaign: Provide your campaign details prior to creating and sending emails.
Email Builder in Marketing Cloud Growth Edition
Right away, it’s not a new Email Builder as such. Instead, like other functionalities within MCGE, the Builder is built on the foundation of Salesforce CMS. It has now been integrated into the Core platform so that it can leverage existing customer data and sync up with other marketing activities. So email creation within a data-driven ecosystem – in a nutshell.
While not entirely new, the focus of the builder in Marketing Cloud Growth Edition is in fact to simplify email creation and make it more user-friendly.
To that end, an important aspect of Marketing Cloud Growth is that it allows access to Einstein Send Time Optimization, which was available in Corporate and Enterprise editions.
Form Builder in Marketing Cloud Growth Edition
Like Email builder, Form builder is also built on the foundation of Salesforce CMS. Significantly, Growth introduces landing pages too, apart from emails and forms.
The form building experience in Growth is much more user-friendly. It allows for automatic field mapping. So you no longer need to manually search for fields to add to the form.
To illustrate: suppose you want to capture a lead’s name, email, and preferred method of contact. You can drag and drop the relevant fields (“First Name,” “Last Name,” “Email ID,” “Phone Number,” “City,” “Country,” etc.) onto the form. The Builder will automatically configure the fields and also ensure compatibility with your target object (which is “Leads” in this case.)
Flow Builder in Marketing Cloud Growth Edition
Flow is Salesforce’s automation motor. Because Marketing Cloud Growth is built on the Core platform, Flow will now enable users to build automated workflows in Growth.
Flow in Growth is a much more simplified interface. Stripped of the native complexity of Flow elements and configurations, the new interface is meant to enhance accessibility. This is a first-of-its-kind functionality within the Salesforce ecosystem. No other product in the Salesforce suite gives non-specialized marketers such streamlined access to Flow.
Another significant development in Marketing Cloud Growth Edition is improved wait functionality. The wait time between triggers has been cut down to minutes.
So, in the event of a user performing an action on your website, the relevant email can be triggered within minutes, before the user’s interest has plateaued considerably. This is close to interacting with a potential customer in real-time.
Einstein AI for Marketers through Growth Edition
In the section where we discussed campaign records, we touched on Einstein AI’s integration into the Core platform. Not just campaign briefs, but marketers can now leverage Einstein AI for all kinds of manual, automatable tasks.
Einstein AI brings the dual power of generative and predictive AI. Einstein Co-Create generates marketing content based on conversational prompts. We already talked about Einstein Send Time Optimization. The Growth Edition also features Einstein Metrics Guard, a predictive AI tool that extracts opens and clicks from email engagement reports.
Analytics And Reporting in Marketing Cloud Growth
Growth Edition users can view reports built on Data Cloud.
You can use the email engagement dashboards as-is or customize them to suit the unique needs of your business. Take a look at the reporting types available in Marketing Cloud Growth in relation to email.
Wrapping Up!
Marketing Cloud Growth Edition is expected to initiate a sea change in the way businesses can use Salesforce. Growth Edition demonstrates the inefficiency of working in silos in a landscape dominated by seamless cross-team collaboration and communication.
What we find particularly encouraging is Salesforce’s commitment to building and leveraging the relationship between AI and marketing. After all, data and AI stand at the forefront of next-gen marketing. With the launch of Marketing Cloud Growth, Salesforce has once again recorded “a giant leap” on behalf of businesses across the globe.