By Joel Lapidus, Melissa Murphy, and Dani Reeve
Did you know that Data Cloud has garnered faster uptake than any homegrown Salesforce product? Building on this momentum, Salesforce recently announced two product updates that demonstrate just how central Data Cloud is to their roadmap.
The quick version: Data Cloud will be offered free to all Marketing Cloud Engagement (MCE) and Marketing Cloud Account Engagement (MCAE, formerly known as Pardot) customers; and a new B2B marketing automation tool built natively on Data Cloud is coming soon.
Read on for our take on the “convergence” that seems afoot at Salesforce and details on these products, in case you missed them.
Our take: Convergence on Data Cloud
Businesses today are converging around a smaller number of core capabilities and technologies. For example: Mercedes manufactures a whopping 31 different engines. (Okay, 30, ignoring their Formula One engine.) The plans to go all-electric by 2030 have Mercedes converging around a mere three electric architectures. In the professional services vertical, we have Ernst & Young in its (abortive) effort to split off its tax business to focus on its consulting business.
And Salesforce? We think these announcements demonstrate that Data Cloud is the center of gravity around which its products will revolve moving forward. Freshly announced Marketing Cloud Growth Edition (MCGE) isn’t replacing products anytime soon, but the writing we read on the wall says this: in a few years’ time, we’ll be logging in to Lightning and building experiences on the Einstein 1 platform … not the dispersed applications of today.
1. Data Cloud for free
Are you an MCE or MCAE customer? Been eyeing Data Cloud as your data engine? Good news: you’re getting Data Cloud for free.
This offering builds on the free Data Cloud news (for core Salesforce customers) we wrote about after Dreamforce 2023. And to us, it says that Salesforce is serious about centering its customers on Data Cloud as their home-base application. This is convergence in action.
The $0 SKU will include 10,000 profiles (additional available for an added cost) and credits enabling segmentation and activation. That’s a good thing, because given the pace at which Salesforce has added features, integrations, and infrastructure to Data Cloud, the use cases have ballooned since its 2020 launch. With Data Cloud, you can ingest feeds across diverse sources, coalesce data into a single, harmonized view of the prospect/customer, then build highly targeted segments and push them to marketing platforms. Those platforms span not only the Salesforce-owned portfolio but also external ad platforms, like Google, Meta, Amazon, LinkedIn, and more. Beyond marketing, Data Cloud offers transformative use cases that provide real-time visibility on prospect/customer signals to Sales and Service staffers. And to the delight of your technical staff who make all this possible, there are two-way integrations with a growing roster of data stores — some of which now offer modern, zero-copy processing.
Ready for your free Data Cloud? Our advice to MCE and MCAE customers: head to Trailhead and consider engaging a Salesforce partner who specializes in Data Cloud.
2. Marketing Cloud Growth Edition (MCGE)
MCGE is an all-new product that puts huge AI muscle into small-business hands. Built on Data Cloud, its use case today is email and SMS marketing:
- Orchestrate campaigns across email and SMS, powered by enterprise-grade AI (Salesforce Einstein 1)
- Easy, intuitive workflows that are marketer-friendly from within core Salesforce (Lightning)
- Very fast setup/provisioning
- Inexpensive; starts at $18,000 per year
In the live demo shown to partners, we were impressed at just how fast a campaign comes to life — ideal for the target buyer, which is small to midsize businesses, particularly B2B operators. You literally tell the (AI-powered) system, “Create an email campaign to promote a webinar about a product launch,” and out pops your objective, segment, KPIs, and even email content — all of which you can tweak as needed.
AI makes these foundational elements possible, but also there’s Einstein Metrics Guard to filter out bot clicks, and the familiar Send Time Optimization feature for max engagement. In keeping with Salesforce’s positioning as a safety-first AI platform, the “risky” attributes (those that might inject bias) for building an audience segment are unchecked by default. This is good stuff.
MCGE building blocks
The big news is MCGE has marketers working out of the core/Lightning interface because the back end is Data Cloud. Home base is the old-school Salesforce Campaigns object that’s been made marketer-friendly. Flows are another core and familiar tool, similar to Engagement Studio in MCAE. And like MCAE, there’s engagement scoring built in — though not high-octane lead scoring (yet). Here, it’s a stripped-down version of Flow Builder from core Salesforce:
- Enables preview/test; lets you elect tracking for both opens and clicks, short code & subscription selection for SMS.
- Similar to using legacy Web-to-Lead, you can execute a Form-triggered flow — mapping inputs from a web form to a Salesforce object; then you can manage routing/follow-up and enable data validation all from within a user-friendly marketing interface.
- Notably, these are non-Salesforce Administrator Flows, meaning less flexibility and power for marketers (and less risk to the overall architecture of the Salesforce org).
- MCGE will offer multiple “templates” out of the box, including Single Send, Single Email, Message Series, Multiple Sends (email + SMS), and Multi-Flow Messaging (send multiple series of messages related to a singular Salesforce campaign record).
Who needs MCGE?
Given what it does, Salesforce states plainly that the target MCGE user today is small to midsize businesses, specifically B2B, not B2C. And the $18,000 annual cost would seem to make it accessible for them. Notably, current MCE customers are not eligible, though Sales/Service customers on Unlimited or Enterprise editions are.
Salesforce seems poised to add features fast. Expect B2C use cases (WhatsApp and mobile app notification), Data Cloud-driven flows for admins, customization to the engagement-scoring model, and — of course — certifications for users.
If you’re reading closely, you’ll see that MCGE capabilities seem to overlap somewhat with MCAE. Salesforce says that they intend to offer or roll out certain MCGE features to MCAE customers. We expect features to operate similarly between the two products, as they share the core Salesforce platform and operate on the same objects: Leads, Contacts, Accounts, Opportunities, and Campaigns. Pricing between MCGE and MCAE is similar, though MCAE remains laser-focused on B2B, lead scoring and generation, and sophisticated email-marketing automation. The business unit structure that powers so many MCAE instances is likely to remain unique to MCAE, at least for now. As it relates to nonprofit customers specifically, discounts on MCAE, plus the vast ecosystem of partners and QuickStart options, are likely to keep MCAE relevant through the medium term for that sector.
So if you’re on MCAE today, it remains your duty to stay abreast of all the CRM and MarTech options, to ensure your chosen platform suits your needs best. (Partners like Slalom can help you map out your needs, compare options, and migrate platforms.)
Conclusion
Data Cloud — which started as a limited “Customer 360” platform — has rapidly evolved into a data dynamo few could have foreseen. Given how we see Salesforce converging its tech around Data Cloud, our advice is simple: the earlier you learn Data Cloud and dip a toe into implementing it and using it regularly, the better poised you’ll be.
Slalom is a next-generation professional services company creating value at the intersection of business, technology, and humanity. Contact us today to schedule a demo and check out our Data Cloud Readiness workshop here.
This Pardot article written by:
Slalom
Slalom is a global consulting firm that helps people and organizations dream bigger, move faster, and build better tomorrows for all. Slalom has 8 Salesforce Marketing Champions and 50+ Pardot Certified Consultants.
Original Pardot Article: https://medium.com/slalom-technology/convergence-salesforce-data-cloud-and-you-ec31db8355b5?source=rss----5bb89415d4fd---4
Find more great Pardot articles at https://medium.com/slalom-technology
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This Pardot article written by:
Slalom
Slalom is a global consulting firm that helps people and organizations dream bigger, move faster, and build better tomorrows for all. Slalom has 8 Salesforce Marketing Champions and 50+ Pardot Certified Consultants.
Original Pardot Article: https://medium.com/slalom-technology/convergence-salesforce-data-cloud-and-you-ec31db8355b5?source=rss----5bb89415d4fd---4
Find more great Pardot articles at https://medium.com/slalom-technology