What is the Salesforce Marketing Cloud and what are the benefits for companies?

In previous articles of this Izertis blog we have already talked about the benefits of Salesforce through the Sales and Service clouds. In this post we are going to make a first approach to the Salesforce Marketing Cloud, discovering the endless possibilities and complexities that this Salesforce solution offers, and how they can positively impact businesses. 

In short, the Salesforce Marketing Cloud offers marketers a comprehensive set of tools specifically designed and selected to effectively interact and manage their brands' interactions with customers and prospects. It is designed for B2C marketing, i.e., business-to-customer marketing. For B2B marketing, Salesforce has Pardot, now known as Marketing Cloud Account Engagement, which we'll look at in another post.  

A tool that makes it possible to have in one place the information from social networks, the conversations between companies and their customers

What is the Salesforce Marketing Cloud? 

With Salesforce Marketing Cloud we have a tool that makes it possible to have in one place the information from social networks, the conversations between companies and their customers whatever the format used, in addition to being able to generate data for metrics and reports, among other benefits. As a result, it will be possible to build relationships of loyalty and trust with customers. That's Marketing Cloud. 

Marketing Cloud capabilities and functionalities 

The Marketing Cloud is made up of various channels or sub-clouds that offer a personalised experience for customers. Whether it's email, mobile, social media or website, Marketing Cloud offers solutions to do just that. 

• Messaging and Automation: here you will find the Email Studio, Journey Builder, Marketing Cloud Personalization and Mobile Studio products. With them you can create, build and manage communication between the different channels. Customers will receive messages in an intelligent and personalised way at any time and in any place. In addition, Marketing Cloud also has a powerful tool here, Automation Studio, with which you can fine-tune automation processes (segmentation, import, data loading and extraction, communication automation, among other functionalities). 
• Data and advertising: this include what Salesforce calls Marketing Cloud Advertising, Audience Studio and Data Studio. With these products you can create personalised audiences, as well as combine information and data from any source in order to have a more accurate marketing strategy according to the target audience. 
• Social Networks in Marketing Cloud: the management of social networks in Marketing Cloud is addressed from the Social Studio module. This product not only facilitates the management of profiles, accounts and content on social networks, but also allows other areas such as sales and service to be involved, thanks to the integration that Salesforce makes of marketing with the rest of the CRM. Salesforce allows you to connect through Social Studio with these social networks: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn Google+, YouTube, Instagram and Pinterest. 
• Measurement and analytics module: here the products that support this solution are Marketing Cloud Intelligence and Google Analytics 360. These tools help to measure, optimise and report on the market performance of products and services across channels. In addition, in this section Marketing Cloud is supported by Salesforce Einstein Analytics, which represents the integration of Artificial Intelligence in CRM, but in a simple and achievable way for any business. In short, as Salesforce's own website states, in this tool "machine learning uses past data to predict what will happen in the future with minimal programming".

Salesforce allows you to contract specific channels, so you don't need to use all the tools described above at once, only the ones that fit your company's needs. 

Advantages of implementing Marketing Cloud 

With a breakdown of the main capabilities of Marketing Cloud let's see what benefits these can bring to companies that decide to implement it. Some of those benefits would be:  

1. It allows you to listen to customers and have a better and more complete understanding of them. How can you do this with Marketing Cloud? By connecting customer information and data from different sources and channels, all in one easy-to-use space. 
2. It supports more interaction with customers. And here Marketing Cloud provides the tools for companies to interact effectively and efficiently with customers through various channels. Thanks to this connection, the brand image of companies and their messages are unified and coherent. This will help to generate more trust in the customer and, therefore, greater engagement. 
3. Ability to personalise. Marketing Cloud makes it easier to listen to customers and interact more, which provides greater knowledge of them. This can be translated into a more personalised message to the customer, and Marketing Cloud also provides the tools to personalise the message with which companies address their customers. 
4. Delivers comprehensive and predictive analytics: Marketing Cloud performs all measurements of the customer journey across different channels and devices, using machine learning (Einstein) and other tools such as Google Analytics 360 integration.  Through the cloud, you can calculate and increase marketing ROI across all channels used, make decisions based on real-time data and anticipate results at every point in the marketing experience, no matter where a particular interaction occurred. 
5. Data security: Salesforce offers trust and protection against data misuse, and also facilitates data encryption between your company and customers. 
6. Of course, time savings. Marketing Cloud is a powerful commitment to automation in the world of marketing applied to different channels, which will translate into time and, therefore, cost savings for businesses that implement it. 

Conclusion 

Salesforce Marketing Cloud makes it more convenient and easier than ever to plan, monitor, analyse and make decisions in real time. It's a powerful, integrated customer engagement platform at scale across all channels, from email to web, mobile, social and digital advertising. 

At Izertis we are specialists in accompanying our clients in their digital transformation processes and, specifically, in the design of their marketing and sales strategies. If you are interested in learning more about the Salesforce Marketing Cloud or any other solution of this platform, request a demo with us.