Get the most out of your data with the Salesforce Marketing Cloud

1. Provide your customers a good experience
2. The data strategy is at the beginning
3. Optimize processes with Salesforce AI and automation
4. Tools need the right framework

Marketing and CRM without a data foundation? You can do that, but in times of multi and omnichannel and with a demanding target group, it's not the best way to go. Instead, it makes sense to align your marketing measures with reliable data. This ensures that you reach the right customers at the right time with convincing messages. Collecting data is easy with today's myriad of channels and touchpoints - but how you deal with them is crucial. Tools like the Salesforce Marketing and Data Cloud help you derive useful insights from your customers from meaningless numbers. We'll show you how this works and what the technology - artificial intelligence is also involved here - can do in this article.

At the Salesforce Dreamforce 2023, Katie Marti, Marketing Automation Manager at Kwik Trip, Inc., and Nick Moro, Marketing Director at Medtronic, shared how the Salesforce Marketing Cloud is used in their companies. We've summarized the main takeaways for you.

Provide your customers a good experience

Suppose you sell products through an online store, regularly send newsletters, are present on Instagram and Facebook, and operate retail stores including a loyalty program: All these touchpoints generate plenty of data that you can use smartly. It's not about extracting as many details as possible from your customers, but about creating a basis for targeted marketing strategies. Because: those who buy products nowadays usually expect a successful customer experience. This also includes being addressed with the right advertising measures and not being presented for the umpteenth time with a product that one has long since bought.

To make your customers come back to you, you have to offer more than just good products. It's no longer about what you sell, but what your customers need. Customer centricity is your most important companion and should definitely not be underestimated. Always view your marketing and CRM measures through your customers' eyes, because people out there are not interested in what you want as a brand. They want to be picked up where they are - with the right answers to their questions and the right product suggestions for their acute needs.

Sounds logical at first, but in practice it's not always that easy. This is where the data you initially collected comes into play: They can tell you, for example, who bought what last or who hasn't visited you in a while. Provided, of course, you have the right set of tools at hand to evaluate the data and apply it correctly.

The data strategy is at the beginning

Preparation is everything if you want to advance your marketing and CRM game with the help of data. Ask yourself in advance what you want to achieve and thus find out what data you need. If you offer your customers a loyalty program in-store, you collect valuable first-party data. These insights then help you remind people without online store accounts of your stores and suggest products that they might like.

This is possible by overseeing and purposefully linking your data streams. That's why you should ask yourself questions like:

• What is my goal?
• What data do I need to reach this goal?
• What data is already available for this purpose?
• On which channels or at which touchpoints do I collect the data?
• How can I collect missing data?
• What tools do I already use?
• What tools do I still need?
• What tools help me to sensibly consolidate my data?

Position yourself strategically and don't just blindly start. Because usually companies are not lacking in data itself, but in the right way to deal with it. If you know what you actually want, you have already taken an important step. This is especially relevant the larger your company is and the more teams and infrastructure are involved in such a shift.

Optimize processes with Salesforce AI and automation

You probably notice it too: The ultimate discipline is not the collection of data - even if you should definitely keep Google's imminent Abolition of third-party cookies on your radar. The decisive factor is how you handle them. Tools like the Salesforce Data Cloud: On this customer data platform (CDP), you can bring all data from your touchpoints together and gain helpful real-time insights. Once you know who your customers actually are, you can provide them with the experiences they expect in the next step using practical automations in the Salesforce Marketing Cloud and save a lot of time to boot.

Segment your customers based on their buying behavior and quickly see who you need to remind yourself of. This is even more efficient with the Artificial intelligence Salesforce Einstein: The Salesforce Marketing Cloud can, for example, recognize who threatens to drop off and automatically send these people emails with personalized offers. By registering who opens their emails when, it can also send messages at the right time using Send Time Optimization. And this applies - depending on the communication strategy - to channels such as SMS, WhatsApp or push notifications as well. By setting up and automating such repetitive processes once with the Salesforce Journey Builder, your team can keep important capacities for strategic considerations. Because: The AI helps you form segments or send messages, but the overarching strategy is still in your hands.

Tools need the right framework

Where facilitation through tools is written, there is not always facilitation in the first step: If you want to get everything out of your data, you have to be prepared for some hurdles. Especially if your company, its teams and its processes have been in place for some time. In the end, however, not only your marketing benefits from consolidated data and a central view of your customers, but sales and customer service also gain many advantages.

To play the data game optimally, you need not only the right tool set but above all one thing: A lot of patience. Because new technologies don't introduce themselves. Existing structures have to be questioned and broken up. Change management is the term of the hour here. The greatest tool set is of no use to you if your employees can't or don't want to handle it. Therefore:

• Start small and engage with potential use cases for your data strategy
• Understand your data structure and what you can and want to do with it
• Prepare your team for changes and involve them in all processes in a timely manner
• Have people on board who can handle data and the corresponding tools
• Test, optimize, try something new and don't be afraid of failure, because you learn from mistakes

At the Salesforce Dreamforce 2023, Katie Marti, Marketing Automation Manager at Kwik Trip, Inc., and Nick Moro, Marketing Director at Medtronic, shared how the Salesforce Marketing Cloud is used in their companies. You can also watch the entire session free of charge at Salesforce.