Salesforce Unveils ‘Next Generation’ Marketing Cloud

Salesforce has taken the wraps off a new version of its Marketing Cloud platform, adding enhancements to Journey Builder and ad platform Active Audiences.

Speaking at its ‘Connections’ event in New York City, the company said it is looking to entice more CRM customers with tools to simplify the sales, service, marketing and apps process in the cloud.

“Right content at the right time”

“Marketers now have an unprecedented opportunity to engage customers at every step of their journey,” said Scott McCorkle, CEO of Salesforce Marketing Cloud. “The next generation of the Salesforce Marketing Cloud uniquely helps companies take action on data from any customer interaction to deliver the right content at the right time across every channel.”

The company reckons that with the amount of smartphones, apps, and wearable devices now used in the enterprise, it can provide a one-stop shop for CRM needs in the cloud era. It hopes to do this by moving marketers and sales from manually carrying out jobs to ‘event-triggered’ automation and real-time personalisation.

A new feature for Journey Builder includes a tool called Native Journeys, a feature that touts pre-built Sales Cloud and Service Cloud events and activities in Journey Builder that manage customer journeys that span marketing, sales, service and other kinds of interactions.

Active Audiences, Salesforce’s Marketing Cloud ad platform, also got a boost today. Active Audiences syncs ad targeting with CRM, enabling higher relevancy when running ads and campaigns. New partnerships with LiveRamp, LiveIntent, Neustar and Viant will let Salesforce users activate CRM data and run ads across more digital advertising networks and technologies.

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