Salesforce Marketing Cloud<\/a> is Salesforce\u2019s \u201cumbrella\u201d brand name for a family of related products capable of supporting many marketing processes, including multi-channel campaign execution, dynamic customer journeys, marketing performance analysis, personalization, digital advertising, and data management.<\/strong><\/p>\n Here are the products under the Marketing Cloud brand and their core functionalities:<\/p>\n Salesforce has its own artificial intelligence (AI), called Einstein, woven into the Marketing Cloud products<\/a>. The functionality varies by product, but it is impressive across the whole suite. For example, Salesforce Marketing Cloud Engagement<\/a> can provide personalized email content recommendations, individually optimized email send times for increased engagement, and messaging performance monitoring with insights.<\/p>\n (At this time of this writing, Salesforce is releasing the initial capabilities of its generative AI product, Einstein GPT<\/a> \u2013 which includes Marketing GPT to support marketing. Marketing GPT\u2019s planned initial features will be Segment Creation and Email Content Creation.)<\/em><\/p>\n As mentioned, Salesforce Marketing Cloud is a set of feature-rich products with capabilities across the marketing domain, including:<\/p>\n To provide an example of how one of the Marketing Cloud products works, let\u2019s look deeper into Salesforce Marketing Cloud Engagement to illustrate some of these key capabilities.<\/p>\n Marketing Cloud Engagement has two fundamental types of components, called Studios and Builders:<\/strong><\/p>\n You can use Journey Builder, specifically, to create automated multi-channel journeys \u2013 using many of the capabilities mentioned above \u2013 and provide personalized experiences for contacts.<\/p>\n Marketing Cloud Engagement can deliver messages to any contact (lead, prospect, customer, employer, partner, vendor) based on their specific data and trigger new messages based on the contact\u2019s real-time data changes and message interactions. Journey Builder<\/a> engagement paths can have multiple branches (like a tree). The following types of data can define the paths that these branches take:<\/strong><\/p>\n If a customer doesn\u2019t initially open email no. 2, the platform could automatically send a customer down a \u201cbranch\u201d to resend email no. 2 if they don\u2019t open or click it initially after a designated time. Alternatively, if desired, it could also send them a different version of email no. 2. (e.g., possibly with a different subject line).<\/p>\n You could also build the journey to wait until the customer interacts with email no. 2 before sending them email no. 3 or send email no. 3 after a pre-set time period has passed after receiving email no. 2 (regardless of their actions).<\/p>\n Marketing Cloud Engagement Journey Builder allows you to construct journeys consisting of email and SMS messaging and direct mail (the latter using AppExchange partners<\/a>). Multi-channel messaging enables better customer experiences for marketing campaigns as well as the following non-marketing use cases:<\/p>\n Marketing Cloud Engagement has dynamic components<\/a> that enable personalization for email recipients to further increase engagement. These include:<\/p>\n Note that the dynamic components mentioned above are in Marketing Cloud Engagement and don\u2019t even include all the additional enhanced personalization capabilities possible with Marketing Cloud Personalization.<\/p>\n You can use all the above Marketing Cloud Engagement capabilities to drive engagement with your brand and, ideally, create strong and lasting customer relationships by delivering relevant and timely content. These journeys are the foundation for creating automated and personalized experiences<\/a> with your brand through more intelligent communications.<\/strong><\/p>\n As you may have come to understand from reading so far, data is the foundation<\/a> of Marketing Cloud Engagement, which can accept and use data from many sources within your organization (or from outside of it), and there are multiple ways you can import data.<\/p>\n Salesforce Marketing Cloud Engagement uses a relational database for data management. It allows you to design your specific data model based on your needs and planned usage. This capability distinguishes it from many other competitive products. Even with this ability, it\u2019s important to remember that \u201cjust because you can put it into Marketing Cloud Engagement doesn\u2019t mean you should!\u201d<\/p>\n Primary considerations regarding what data to put into Marketing Cloud Engagement include data you may use for segmentation or personalization or data, that when changed, should trigger a communication or other automated activity.<\/strong><\/p>\n Marketing Cloud Engagement is also a data source and provides a wealth of data related to the communications it orchestrates and executes and the resulting engagements. You can provide this data to other systems through various integrations or data exports, depending on your requirements. A primary use of this data is to assist in developing a 360-degree view of the customer you can use throughout your organization.<\/p>\n While I wouldn\u2019t say Salesforce Marketing Cloud is right for any and every organization, its users span many industries and company sizes.<\/p>\n For example, at Coca-Cola Germany, the SFMC platform spurred a 30 percent increase<\/a> in email open rates by delivering personalized content and offers to customers. And, when Adidas used Marketing Cloud\u2019s automation email campaign features, their solution resulted in an average cost reduction of 40 percent and an 8 percent year-over-year increase<\/a> in channel contribution for dynamic newsletters in 2020.<\/p>\n It\u2019s important to emphasize two of the primary products under the Salesforce Marketing Cloud umbrella that have some overlap in engagement capabilities:<\/p>\n Both products can support common use cases that exist in both the B2B and B2C domains, such as:<\/p>\n With the \u00e0 la carte selection of add-on features and AppExchange applications available to both products, you can tailor them to your (and your customers\u2019) evolving needs.<\/p>\n As with any software or platform selection, there are factors beyond the financial investment you should consider before choosing any Marketing Cloud product. In addition to the product licensing costs, think about additional impacts, including:<\/strong><\/p>\n Some of the above factors may weigh in favor of Salesforce Marketing Cloud versus competitive products, as well as influence you towards a specific Marketing Cloud product (e.g., Engagement vs. Account Engagement) \u2013 especially if you have other Salesforce products in your existing technology stack or are planning to in the future.<\/p>\n The Salesforce Marketing Cloud product suite can provide any organization with the ability to deliver improved customer experiences<\/a> while driving your desired business outcomes.<\/p>\n\n ![\"Centric](\"https:\/\/centricconsulting.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/01\/Blog_Salesforce_Marketing_Cloud_Table_09012023.png\")
<\/a><\/p>\nWhat Beneficial Features Does Salesforce Marketing Cloud Offer?<\/h2>\n
\n
\n
Data-Driven Messaging<\/h3>\n
\n
![\"Centric](\"https:\/\/centricconsulting.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/01\/Blog_Salesforce_Marketing_Cloud_Flow-Chart_09062023.png\")
<\/a><\/p>\nMulti-Channel Messaging<\/h3>\n
\n
Personalization with Dynamic Components<\/h3>\n
\n
Data Management<\/h3>\n
![\"Centric](\"https:\/\/centricconsulting.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/01\/Blog_Salesforce_Marketing_Cloud_02_Data.png\")
<\/a><\/p>\nIs Salesforce Marketing Cloud Right for Your Organization?<\/h2>\n
\n
\n
\n