Salesforce.com Increases Integrations Between Products

Salesforce.com today introduced integrations between Salesforce Marketing Cloud and Google Analytics 360 to help marketers build more effective campaigns around every consumer. The company also announced a number of other innovations across several solutions for marketing, commerce, and customer service.

The Google integration, which will be available in beta later this year, will allow consumer insights from both Marketing Cloud and Analytics 360 to be combined into a single customer journey analytics dashboard in Marketing Cloud. Marketers will be able to analyze cross-channel insights; create audiences, like category buyers, loyalty members, and abandoned browsers, in Analytics 360 and then activate those audiences for engagement within Marketing Cloud; and blend Marketing Cloud campaign data within Analytics 360 to deliver tailored web content to individuals based on their interactions with Marketing Cloud campaigns. This also enables marketers to better understand marketing attribution by seeing how their content has influenced transactions.

Among the products to receive upgrades was Marketing Cloud Einstein, with improvements for building new audiences and creating personalized customer journeys. With Marketing Cloud Einstein, marketers can predict the optimal timing, channel, content, and audience for any marketing message. The latest Marketing Cloud Einstein innovations include the following:

• Einstein Segmentation: Leveraging machine learning and pattern analysis, Einstein Segmentation, part of the Salesforce data management platform (DMP), analyzes billions of consumer signals, uncovers patterns in consumer behavior, and discovers new audiences to reach with personalized messages.
• Einstein Splits, which enables marketers to create unique, personalized journey paths for each customer with pre-configured decision splits based on Einstein engagement likelihood scores. Marketers can also drag and drop Einstein Split decision flows into Marketing Cloud Journey Builder to test journey paths and message tactics based on their likelihood to open, click, or unsubscribe from an email; convert on a website; or their engagement persona, such as loyalist or dormant customer.

New marketing, commerce, and service innovations across the Salesforce Customer Success Platform include the following:

• Commerce Cloud B2B Commerce, which delivers consumer-like shopping experiences to business buyers, but with B2B-specific functionality, such as custom catalogs, authenticated logins, one-click reordering for large orders, multiple shipping locations and payment types, and the ability to place orders with hundreds or thousands of SKUs;
• Marketing Cloud Interaction Studio, which enables companies to visualize, analyze, and deliver contextually relevant experiences, including offers, promotions, discounts, and more, to consumers across owned online and offline channels, including email, social, mobile, and in-store. With real-time interaction management, Interaction Studio suggests the next-best offer for consumers based on how they are interacting with the company.
• Service Cloud LiveMessage, with expanded SMS support for 17 additional countries, including Singapore, France, and Brazil. LiveMessage enables companies to communicate with customers through two-way mobile messaging. Customers can message companies to ask questions, initiate returns, or schedule delivery times.

Salesforce also introduced new ways to integrate Salesforce Clouds, including an integration between Service Cloud and Commerce Cloud that will allow service agents to access real-time commerce data within a single Service Cloud console, including up-to-date shopper data and order-on-behalf-of capabilities that unlock selling opportunities. And, by bringing together Marketing Cloud and Commerce Cloud, marketers and merchandisers will be able to trigger transactional and behavioral journeys based on customer actions, such as abandoning shopping carts, confirming accounts, or making purchases.

"The easiest, smartest, and most connected digital experience sets the bar for everything else, and every company's success depends upon its ability to keep up with rising customer expectations," said Bret Taylor, president and chief product officer at Salesforce, in a statement. "Salesforce empowers brands worldwide with a trusted and proven platform to put the customer at the center of every digital engagement."

"Today's customers expect personalized engagements across all touchpoints and in the moments that matter to them, from email communications to digital advertising, e-commerce and customer service," said Cindy Zhou, vice president and principal analyst at Constellation Research, in a statement. "Innovations such as the ones from Salesforce that bring together marketing, commerce, and service, help facilitate a consistent customer experience on a single platform for companies to create connected journeys unlike ever before."

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