What Our Dreamforce Marketing Cloud and Commerce Cloud Innovations Mean for You
This year’s Dreamforce was nothing short of amazing. It was exciting to reconnect with fellow Trailblazers, exchange brilliant ideas, and showcase the innovations we’ve been crafting at Salesforce. A recurring theme throughout the event was how businesses can leverage data and AI to forge deeper customer-driven relationships by bringing internal teams closer together. These innovations are designed to transform not only how companies engage with customers but also how their teams work together. Marketing Cloud and Commerce Cloud Innovations.
Seamless integration between Marketing, Commerce, Sales, and Service teams is crucial for creating unified customer experiences. Often, customers feel as though they are interacting with separate departments rather than one cohesive company—this is largely due to disconnected technology and processes. But thanks to Salesforce’s advancements in unified data, AI, and automation, those days are numbered. Now, departments can collaborate more effectively, delivering hyper-personalized, frictionless experiences across the entire customer lifecycle.
Let’s explore the latest Marketing Cloud and Commerce Cloud innovations announced at Dreamforce 2024 and how they can benefit your business.
What You’ll Learn
- What Salesforce Marketing Cloud innovations mean for you
- What Salesforce Commerce Cloud innovations mean for you
Salesforce Marketing Cloud Innovations
These four innovations in Marketing Cloud are built on the Salesforce Platform and powered by Data Cloud, offering marketers a seamless view of customer data across the business. This foundation makes it easier to deliver unified customer experiences, improve handoffs between teams, and measure success more effectively.
1. Agentforce Embedded in Marketing Workflows
Agentforce for Marketing combines generative and predictive AI to create an end-to-end campaign experience that marketers can launch and optimize with ease. Here’s how it helps:
- Campaign planning and optimization: Agentforce Campaigns take predefined goals and guidelines to create comprehensive campaigns. It generates audience segments, drafts emails, builds customer journeys, and optimizes them based on KPIs.
- 1:1 engagement at scale: Using real-time customer data, Agentforce Personalization predicts and delivers personalized content at the right time and on the right channel.
Example: A marketer looking to prevent customer churn can launch a re-engagement campaign. Agentforce will identify the right audience, craft personalized messages, and optimize delivery based on customer behavior.
2. Empowering Small and Medium Businesses
The new Marketing Cloud Advanced Edition brings enhanced AI and automation capabilities to SMBs, enabling them to scale personalization and improve productivity:
- Conversational SMS: Brands can unify SMS messaging across Marketing and Service, creating two-way customer conversations with a single phone number.
- Path Experiment: Marketers can test customer journeys in real-time and optimize them for maximum impact.
- Einstein Engagement Frequency and Scoring: These tools help marketers avoid overwhelming customers with too many messages while also identifying and nurturing high-intent customers.
3. Automating Data Preparation and Analytics with Einstein Marketing Intelligence (EMI)
EMI uses AI and Data Cloud to automate the ingestion, transformation, and analysis of marketing data:
- Unified campaign performance insights: Marketers can track ROI, optimize spending, and evaluate cross-channel campaigns in real time.
- Data-driven decision-making: With prebuilt data models and AI-generated insights, marketers can quickly adjust campaigns to meet business goals.
4. Einstein Personalization for 1:1 Experiences
Einstein Personalization uses AI to recommend products, content, or services based on individual customer preferences:
- Personalized recommendations: AI-powered suggestions optimize for customer intent, driving better engagement and conversions.
- Cross-department insights: Service agents and sales reps can use real-time customer engagement data to provide personalized interactions.
Example: A service agent could offer a discount on a product a customer was recently viewing, creating a seamless, personalized experience.
Salesforce Commerce Cloud Innovations
As businesses scale and handle increasing amounts of data, managing complex commerce systems can be a challenge. The new Commerce Cloud updates simplify these complexities by extending unified commerce capabilities across the organization.
1. Simplifying Cross-Functional Commerce Tasks
By unifying data from across the business, Commerce Cloud enables better cross-functional collaboration:
- Marketing and Commerce Cloud: Use engagement and purchase data to build personalized marketing campaigns that re-engage abandoned carts.
- Service and Commerce Cloud: Service agents can now check orders, process returns, and manage transactions all within the service console.
- Revenue Cloud and Commerce Cloud: Manage product bundles, digital subscriptions, and recurring billing with ease.
2. AI-Powered Commerce Agents with Agentforce
Commerce Cloud introduces three AI-powered agents to streamline business processes:
- Merchant Agent: Provides business leaders with data-driven insights to boost revenue and optimize product offerings.
- Buyer Agent: Enables business buyers to use natural language processing to search, purchase, and reorder products via chat or photo.
- Personal Shopper Agent: Acts as a digital concierge, offering personalized recommendations and conversational search options.
3. Streamlining Checkout for a Faster, Easier Experience
With new express payment options like Link by Stripe and Amazon Pay, Commerce Cloud Checkout speeds up transactions and improves conversion rates by 14%. Plus, Buy with Prime integration allows shoppers to use their Amazon Prime accounts for a faster checkout experience, complete with trusted delivery and hassle-free returns.
The Future of Unified Commerce
Salesforce Commerce Cloud offers a unified platform that brings together sales, service, and marketing, providing a 360-degree view of the entire customer journey. This unified commerce approach enables businesses to deliver seamless B2B and B2C experiences, all powered by a single platform.
By integrating enterprise-wide data, trusted AI, and automated workflows, Salesforce helps businesses scale personalized, intelligent experiences across every touchpoint. Every interaction becomes an opportunity for growth, setting the standard for success in today’s customer-driven world.