What is Salesforce marketing cloud and how can it change marketing?

All thanks to the Salesforce marketing cloud, businesses are constantly upgrading the way they reach their customers. Be it advertising, loyalty programmes, discounts, engaging content, email marketing, or audience building, the engagement of customers will decide how well your business will perform.

Your team might utilise multiple tools or software to ensure every interaction channel is well-powered. But why incur the expenditure of several resources when you can have it all in one place?

Heard of the Salesforce Marketing Cloud? The tool manages everything with automation.

So, let us discuss why the marketing cloud platform is essential and how much worth it carries standalone.

What is Salesforce Marketing Cloud?

Salesforce marketing cloud, or SFMC, is an all-rounder digital marketing platform that offers many features and functionalities to cover every marketing effort and enhance it. Email marketing, social media marketing, mobile advertising, online marketing, engagement tools, everything in one place.

Sounds too good to be true? Isn’t it? But this is not even half of the story.

Research shows that the companies using the salesforce marketing cloud experienced an average of 43% return on investment (undoubtedly increased) from the campaigns, plus a 44% uptick in lead volumes compared to those working with several tools.

Marketers get a single view of the audience, resulting in increased personalized engagement in relevant journeys throughout all marketing channels.

Salesforce Marketing Cloud Features

Have a look at Salesforce marketing cloud features and what they do:

1. Email Studio

A tool that allows you to create, design, send and track all your email campaigns. Marketing cloud gives access to pre-built templates, automation of campaigns with workflows and triggers, and segmentation of audiences, making managing audiences easier.

2. Social Studio

It is the best tool for handling all social media interactions from one place. With social media, you can schedule and publish content on social media, track how it performs with analytics, and monitor brand mentions.

3. Advertising Studio

Creating engaging and memorable content for advertisement is now simplified with an advertising studio in the marketing cloud. You can create and manage advertising campaigns on social media or search engines. Targeting specific audiences, optimising campaigns with AI, and evaluating the results are also included in this feature.

4. Journey Builder

Curate personalised customer journeys for each client through mobile, email, or social media channels. You get triggers and decision points like functionalities to create personalised content for guiding customers across the sales funnel.

5. Analytics Builder

Marketing cloud offers you to monitor and analyse campaign performance as well as the data of your customers. Reports and dashboards, along with data visualisations, track key performance indicators (KPI) and optimize them as and when required.

6. Mobile Studio

Mobile Studio takes care of sending SMS, push notifications, and in-app messages. It allows you to personalize and automate content and engage your mobile audience.

7. Content Builder

Develop and manage creative content from one single location. The content builder has drag-and-drop content blocks to create professional emails without HTML knowledge.

8. Contact Builder

This feature streamlines data utilization and contact management, providing easy access to contact data and relationships. It also permits users to manage, organise, link, and merge data from various sources, such as ERP, CRM, and Point-of-Sales (POS) systems, including external ones. Moreover, it exhibits all customer interactions with the brand, helping marketers tailor customer conversations.

How does SFMC change marketing?

The Salesforce marketing cloud is a game-changer because it's the first in the marketing suite to leverage cloud technology, providing a seamless, real-time connection with your customers.

The platform enables you to gauge the effectiveness of your campaigns and provides instant feedback on your customers' preferences, allowing you to personalise your content. Here are some ways to change the game of your marketing.

1. Add Personalisation

If you're a marketer, you already know that personalisation is essential for strong campaign performance. Leading marketers say it significantly contributes to business profitability, and gaining an improved understanding of the right customers is crucial for achieving your goals.

With the marketing cloud, you can set up triggers that prompt specific actions and tailored messaging to guide prospects on their path to purchase. No more random mass emails—you can now listen out for key behaviours that justify a specific response.

For example, if a prospect abandons their cart during checkout, opens an email, or downloads an eBook, the marketing cloud can automatically follow up with targeted content and messaging. With this level of personalization, you can guide prospects seamlessly toward conversion, ensuring they receive the right message at the right time.

2. Customer data is Key

This platform helps you to gain valuable insights into the minds of your customers and prospects, enabling you to create targeted content that speaks directly to their needs and goals.

With the power of predictive analytics, the marketing cloud even allows you to anticipate their future actions, ensuring that you're always one step ahead in the game.

3. Defining a single source

You can create a complete, all-encompassing view of your customers using the marketing cloud. By combining user data, customer profiles, privacy management, and marketing journeys, you can build a single customer view for every potential touchpoint.

Unified profiles are based on a common ID that runs through your CRM and other data sources. This means that critical information can be matched up to a single customer or prospect, creating a cohesive and personalised experience.

With this information consolidated on one platform, you'll have a single source of truth for your customers. This eliminates confusion over messaging and ensures that all stakeholders are on the same page. Your customers will appreciate the seamless experience, and you'll enjoy the benefits of streamlined, efficient marketing.

4. Empower your customers

Timing is everything when it comes to personalisation. Understanding a prospect's goals is important, but delivering your message at the right moment is equally crucial. This is especially true for upselling and cross-selling to existing customers.

Imagine a customer embroiled in negotiations with your accounts team or experiencing ongoing issues with your service. No matter how well-crafted, they're unlikely to be receptive to an email promoting contract renewal.

Fortunately, the Salesforce marketing cloud makes it easy to factor in a customer's satisfaction levels when planning your marketing activities. The platform can automatically adjust based on signals displayed by key accounts, such as pausing communications to a specific customer until their issue is resolved.

This information lets you adjust your messaging to keep your customers engaged and happy. By considering timing and satisfaction, you'll create a more meaningful, effective marketing journey for your customers.

5. Manage customer experience

As marketers, elevating the customer experience and reaching your business objectives are important. But the true magic happens when you tap into real-world customer preferences, informed by their past behaviour and actions.

Imagine offering a customer who only purchases sale items exclusive access to your latest promotions. The salesforce marketing cloud can turn this vision into reality with predictive analytics. Let your data do the heavy lifting, and watch as personalization takes your customer experience to new heights.