Every month, Salesforce announces important Martech updates and previews for users, developers, and partners. We tracked down the top 10 Salesforce marketing updates for the Martech audience. Here are the top ten Martech updates from our Martech newsdesk.
Update 1: Salesforce released 100+ new features across all applications for Martech users
Timeline: January 2024
Salesforce’s Spring ’24 release preview focused on generative AI capabilities applied to the Marketing Cloud software provider’s existing product offerings. The GenAI capabilities focused on adding conversational AI features to boost the productivity of Salesforce users across departments. Salesforce applications embedded with Einstein Copilot conversational assistant enable users to create custom actions integrated with Flow, Apex, and Mulesoft APIs.
The new features include no-code capabilities to create and test “Prompt Builder” with the existing CRM data. These workflows invoke prompts from the Einstein 1 Platform.
Additional announcements include Search Answers within the Salesforce Service Cloud platform. It benefits sales agents who have difficulty managing customer queries from tough domains. Search Answers is GenAI-powered solution that quickly surfaces accurate answers to agents in the Community Portal or the Agent Console. Sales professionals can use Search Answers with another tool called Sales Action to update their sales CRM.
Update 2: Salesforce boosts Martech-Retail tech integration with new Buy with Prime for online merchants
Timeline: January 2024
Ahead of this year’s 2024 National Retail Federation’s (NRF 2024) Retail’s Big Show in January, Amazon announced the Buy with Prime for Salesforce Commerce Cloud for US-based e-commerce merchants.
Powered by the PAYG model, Salesforce merchants can now deliver exceptional shopping experiences to consumers. It handles shopping engagements by integrating the existing retail technology stacks with Buy with Prime. This Amazon-Salesforce Commerce Cloud integration improves the product search experience for Prime and non-prime users across different categories. The integration targets the Amazon Prime users, in particular. By providing an optimum search experience across the shopping journey, Salesforce merchants can increase their conversion rate and customer satisfaction scores within their digital storefronts. With Buy with Prime for Salesforce Commerce Cloud, online merchants can scale their order fulfillment rates across multiple sales channels.
Salient features:
Online merchants can use Amazon Pay to use Buy with Prime for Salesforce. It also works with Amazon Pay-Adyen integration. Shoppers can stock Prime-eligible products and other items in the same cart and pay for all in the same transaction.
Other announcements in the retail technology space involving Salesforce include the new GenAI-powered Page Designer, Return Insights, and Einstein Copilot Inventory Insights.
Update 3: The Launch that Changed the CRM Market: Salesforce Einstein Copilot for CRM
Timeline: February 2024
February 2024 will be remembered when Salesforce announced its intent to buy Spiff, an Incentive Compensation Management (ICM) SaaS provider. However, bigger things happened during the month on Salesforce’s CRM side as it launched the public beta version of its conversational GenAI assistant for CRM – Einstein Copilot. In an era where GenAI is transforming a majority of technology stacks, CRM couldn’t have been left behind. Salesforce saw the chance, and they pounced to unlock the untapped opportunity to redefine the CRM marketplace for users and tech partners.
For most CRM users, Einstein Copilot is a powerful orchestrator of embedded experiences built on strong Salesforce data foundations.
Salesforce Einstein Copilot’s salient features for CRM users:
- Generating custom responses based on prompts engineered using Data Cloud
- Combine AI-powered customer experiences with sales processes to improve service outcomes across multi-step tasks
- Deliver precise predictive intelligence driven by LLM reasoning engine to interpret intent and follow-up with the best action for CRM users
- Guaranteed security and compliance as part of the Einstein Trust Layer
Update 4: Marketing Cloud Growth for Small Business Marketing Teams
Timeline: February 2024
Small business marketing teams are hard-pressed for resources and data insights when it comes to building out their Martech stacks. There’s always a feeling that their marketing campaigns would generate better results if they had access to top-tier MarTech software such as Salesforce or HubSpot. To help such marketers, Salesforce announced the Marketing Cloud Growth in February 2024, along with providing access to Data Cloud at no cost. These steps empowered small business marketing teams to quickly onboard with Salesforce CRM and utilize Data Cloud for free to run AI-powered campaigns. The marketing campaigns are focused at multi-channel segmentation, email content generation, and automated landing pages / forms creation – all of which directly boost performance marketing results for users.
Currently, Salesforce Marketing Cloud Growth is available to users in the US and Canada, with solid verified plans to expand into EMEA and other regions.
Update 5: Low-code Customization App Builder Tool — Einstein 1 Studio
Timeline: March 2024
Salesforce Einstein 1 Studio answered all the queries that developers and administrators usually have about utilizing the Data Cloud to build customized apps and workflows. The new low-code AI tool is custom-designed for Einstein Copilot admins to help them embed conversational AI features for superior employee and customer experience.
How Does The Einstein 1 Studio Help a Marketing Team?
Let’s define the tool first before we discuss its marketing applications.
Einstein 1 Studio is a low-code Custom Copilot Builder, with layered AI models to expand into advanced applications for Prompt Builder and Model Builder.
Marketers can ask Salesforce developers to build custom AI models for specific customers where intuitive experiences can deliver better conversational results. Unlike other copilots marketers use to accomplish their tasks, the Einstein 1 Studio model builder is not limited to a single LLM. It can latch onto nuanced AI models trained on the predictive Data Cloud data from AWS, Anthropic, Google AI, Vertex, Databricks, OpenAI, and other Salesforce partners.
Advanced use cases of Einstein 1 Studio include the use of CRM buttons to enable a contact agent to extract information about all the previous customer-led escalations from a certain time range and department.
Update 6: Salesforce Data Cloud received new upgrades to unlock unstructured data
Timeline: March 2024
As part of the Salesforce Data Cloud Spring ’24 release, the company announced new features – Data Cloud Triggered Flows and Data Cloud Related Lists. Its objective is to empower business leaders and Marketing data ops teams to solve the traditional problems of data fragmentation and data silos. The new features include a range of pre-built connectors, data models, and automation workflows for different industries, including Financial Services. Data Cloud enhancements also eliminated the need for SQL queries. Its latest Data Graphs Enhancements in Data Cloud uses AI to empower brands with new types of access and updates to manage customer data in real-time.
The new enhancements help salespeople and service agents as much as they empower the marketers build deeper customer relationships with a personalized CX plan. Currently, leading brands such as Cognizant, Daikin, and Xerox are harnessing the power of Data Cloud to drive growth and productivity for their marketing, sales, and customer service departments.
Update 7: Unified Conversations for WhatsApp
Timeline: April 2024
Salesforce and WhatsApp announced a strategic partnership in September 2022 to bring business messaging experiences to Salesforce users. It quickly scaled to deliver users a detailed overview of what customers want from a brand’s messaging teams.
Today, WhatsApp has over 2 billion monthly users. Marketers have now scaled their efforts to tap into WhatsApp as a CX and services management tool with instant messaging features, powered by AI and data cloud.
Most marketers see this messaging platform as a reliable platform to interact and engage with customers, providing them with timely insights and offers through messaging services every week.
Salesforce chose to provide Unified Conversations for WhatsApp to address the traditional challenges of one-way messaging. With Salesforce, brands can use the same number to manage multiple threads and conversations with customers for promotions, support, and chats. Powered by the Data Cloud, WhatsApp integration fosters better customer relationships and services through enriched segmentation and sentiment analysis. Major banks and insurance companies, educational institutions, healthcare services providers, and government institutions use the Salesforce Unified Conversations for WhatsApp to engage and service customers better and faster.
Update 8: New Commerce Cloud features to deliver enriching retail shopping experiences
Timeline: May 2024
Salesforce Commerce Cloud added three new enhancements to its offerings to empower B2B and B2C marketers to keep pace with the changing times in retail and commerce. The new enhancements are:
- Salesforce Checkout
- Headless Commerce for B2B, and
- Composable commerce for B2C
These enhancements will empower Salesforce users to identify the best tools within the Commerce Cloud suite for their retail websites. Business owners can add cutting-edge features to their websites using headless commerce and composable commerce enhancements to meet the ever-changing customer needs and wants, including seamless payment experiences, discounts, and on-demand product listings during the peak season.
Update 9: Einstein Copilot for Marketing and Merchants
Timeline: May 2024
Only 31% of Marketers are satisfied with their ability to unify data from disparate online sources. Einstein Copilot for Marketing teams and Merchants are two distinct innovations announced in May 2024. Both copilots are Conversational AI assistants, built on Salesforce’s Einstein 1 Platform.
The Marketing team copilot by Salesforce solves the problems for the e-commerce content development team. This AI-powered content generation can create marketing briefs, product information, and email campaigns specifically matching a brand’s voice.
Einstein Copilot for merchants, on the other hand, simplifies the merchandiser’s tasks with automation. It also improves product search and discoverability experiences by generating useful SEO recommendations based on buyers’ locations and preferences.
In the same set of announcements last month, Salesforce also brought Einstein Personalization to simplify the CDP results. It automatically triggers a wide range of marketing events and personalized content irrespective of where the customer engages with the brand or organization.
Update 10: Salesforce-Typeface Partnership for AI-first Content Creation
Timeline: May 2024
Typeface announced AI-first innovations for Salesforce Marketing Cloud. The latest innovations advance the use of Typeface Arc for AI-powered content creation campaigns. The current integrations take multichannel content creation to new levels. The content would suit formats supported by Salesforce Marketing Cloud, unlocking access to branded content creation with automated workflows.
Other important Salesforce marketing announcements from the year include:
Service Cloud Digital Cloud enhancements
Einstein Conversation Insights with Sales Signals
Einstein Copilot for Sales Insights
New AI and Data Solutions for Consumer Goods Cloud
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