Salesforce has tacked 360 onto its Commerce Cloud and Marketing Cloud brands and added a bevy of new integrations to go with the name change, some available today, and other improvements due in the coming months.
Marketing Cloud 360 users get an integration with the newly rebranded Salesforce CDP (customer data platform) this month, along with new connections to WhatsApp for messaging as well as to the SnapChat Audience Match ad platform. The Marketing Cloud 360 CDP integration enables marketers to take data from the other Salesforce clouds -- as well as the Salesforce loyalty programs or third-party competitors -- to deliver more personalized experiences, said Michael Kostow, executive vice president and general manager of Salesforce Marketing Cloud 360.
To be able to bring first-party [CDP] data to the party is an important move for brands prepping for the cookie apocalypse.
Liz MillerAnalyst, Constellation Research
"To be able to bring first-party [CDP] data to the party is an important move for brands prepping for the cookie apocalypse," said Liz Miller, an analyst at Constellation Research.
"Snapchat Audience Match is a nice addition -- Snapchat is doing some interesting things in the world of augmented reality and brand engagement with content," she said. "The WhatsApp integration is a bit of a catch-up in my opinion; leading platforms that lean into connecting engagement with service solutions have [already have] mastered this."
Salesforce also integrated Interaction Studio, its personalization engine, and Loyalty Management to the Salesforce CDP. With this connection, Salesforce Loyalty Management users can serve more relevant, up-to-date offers to their frequent-flier customers via Interaction Studio as fresh data passes through the CDP.
Making Interaction Studio and Loyalty Management work together effectively requires more than a simple CRM connection can provide, Miller said.
"It takes data and intelligence from sources that really should not be part of a sales-performance customer relationship management tool," Miller said. "Tight integration between a CDP and the execution layers is a good move."
Datorama, Commerce Cloud 360 updates
Also new this month for Marketing Cloud 360 users is AI-powered Datorama advanced reporting for email, mobile and customer journey analysis -- a crucial feature not to be overlooked, said Nicole France, also an analyst at Constellation Research.
"Datorama has been a specialized analytics tool within the Salesforce portfolio," France said. "Half of what is going on in the CDP market is data amalgamation and analytics, and the other half is making it actionable. Datorama is really the analytics part of that. As opposed to Tableau, this is really about specialized analytics."
Commerce Cloud 360 users also get their integration with the Salesforce CDP this month, which monitors and updates customer activity across sales, marketing and customer service within Salesforce, and also can ingest data from outside applications. Salesforce also will release a headless progressive web app kit in October, which switches on headless commerce for users who want to decouple their Commerce Cloud 360 front end from the content management back end.
Also new is B2B2C Commerce, which enables Salesforce users who sell their goods through distributors to set up sites to market and sell to their customers in partnership with those distributors.
"Companies are trying to extend their business model," said Lidiane Jones, executive vice president and general manager of Salesforce Commerce Cloud 360. "So many of [these] customers want to have a direct relationship with consumers."
