Why Use Marketing Cloud?

“Companies are no longer competing against each other. They are competing against SPEED” – Marc Benioff


Today, to achieve the speed of a winner it is imperative to have a strong bond between business outcomes and the journey of your customer. Organisations with effective marketing channels are guaranteed to build and maintain successful relationships with their customers. This relationship is what adds on going value to the diverse service offerings, which a vast majority of businesses offer. These relationships enable and drive the sales team to cross-sell and up-sell multiple offerings. In this blog, let’s look at how Salesforce’s Marketing Cloud can add value to your business. The Marketing Cloud is a leader in the 2016 digital marketing hub quadrant, let us see if this could be the game changer, which can give your marketing and sales team the boost it needs.

Why do you need marketing cloud?

Would you like to send your customer the right advert at the right moment? Or, would you like to check what people want to say about your product on social networks? Assume that you want to reach out to all your customers via an email or an SMS, and want to evaluate the impact of such campaigns, all of this is possible with Salesforce Marketing Cloud.

Figure 1: What does marketing cloud offer?
(© Slideshare - Marketing & Service cloud - breakout session. Stockholm Essentials)

Salesforce marketing cloud is a platform for your marketers which enables them to create a 1:1 bond with each individual customer, thereby increasing your organisations brand value. It helps define and create a journey for your marketer with your customers, nurturing them in each stage, across multiple channels using one platform.

Who should use marketing cloud?

Salesforce Marketing Cloud is suitable for B2B, B2C or not-for-profit organisations. It may be big brands, who are looking to evaluate and streamline their customer campaigns; or SME’s who are looking to build and grow their brand value; the marketing cloud is suitable for anyone who wants to create a 1:1 (i.e: personal & effective) relationship with their customers. It enables organisations to have resourceful engagements with customers at every step of a customer success journey through Ads, Web, Email, Mobile, Social, Group Messaging, Apps, Sales, Service, and Communities.

Figure 2: Typical marketing cycle without marketing cloud

Figure 3: Typical marketing cycle with marketing cloud

The marketing cloud allows organisations to create user journeys and use multichannel campaigns to reach out and build relationships. This platform will streamline and give you a comprehensive view of all your interactions with your customers across multiple channels. It therefore enables you to measure the effectiveness & ROI of your marketing initiatives. Organisations can benefit from the era of digital marketing by earning customers interest instead of buying it, and thus, smoothly transition from an inbound marketer to an outbound marketer.

Which parameters should one consider when they are on-boarding the marketing cloud?

Based on the maturity level of your organisations marketing endeavors, and marketing approach (i.e. outbound vs inbound marketing), a combination of the following parameters should be considered:

1. Features: Tools such as Journey Builder, Contact Builder, Predictive Intelligence, etc. which are license based. One should select from these features and licences based on the type, channel and frequency of interactions they would be having with their customers.
2. Cross Channel Capability:  Email, Mobile and Social networks are the channels SFMC leverages to engage with their customers. Perform analytics on data from existing channels. Identify which channels your customers prefer, to reach out to you. Also, identify which channels your customers prefer, to hear from you. Use this data to help build (and track) customer journeys within and across multiple channels.
3. Easy Integration: Salesforce has capabilities to connect with multiple CRM’s or an array of third party tool. Marketing cloud can be connected to Sales and Service cloud instances to bring in your customer’s data into the marketing cloud.

H: High, M: Medium, L: Low

What can a successful marketing cloud implementation do for you?

A successful marketing cloud implementation helps you:

1. Unify Data: Obtain a singular view of all your customer data / interactions you have had with your customers, and use this to make informed and targeted decisions.
2. Personalise Journeys: Send out timely, unique, and relevant messages based on real-time customer behavior
3. Engage Cross – Channel: Deliver relevant and meaningful content to your customers across multiple channels such as e-mail, mobile, social networks, ads and the web
4. Analyse Impact: Analyse the impact of your business on your customers behavior and use that to optimize every interaction you have with them

Figure 4: Typical use case of social marketing with marketing cloud

References:

1. https://www.salesforce.com/connections/
2. https://www.marketingcloud.com/ 

Written by Kalpesh Gandhi, Salesforce Champion at Eternus Solutions