Salesforce continues to shift rhetoric towards Marketing Cloud

Salesforce.com’s annual Dreamforce event is nearly upon us, and with it the prospect of a glut of new announcements about the Cloud Computing behemoth, its platform updates and its vast network of partners.

There have already been a couple of advance releases worth noting, however – namely in terms of the Salesforce ExactTarget Marketing Cloud and in particular, the solutions it now offers around customer journeys.

Salesforce’s partnership with Omnicom is perhaps the most significant. In what they’ve called a ‘CRM Alliance’, the two organisations are joining forces to deliver a new customer journey platform for the advertising group’s network of agencies, with its clients now able to plug their data into the Marketing Cloud and in return, use tools from both sides which they hope will help deliver more personalised content at the right time, through the right touch points.     

Although in its early stages, the alliance does offer an example of how important Salesforce sees ‘connecting the dots’ to be to the success of its holistic Marketing Cloud attempts, as well as further proof of how last year’s ExactTarget acquisition is being put to use. 

“By utilising Salesforce as its customer journey platform for clients, Omnicom will strengthen its role as a trusted advisor to the world’s largest brands, creating amazing customer journeys that extend far beyond traditional digital marketing,” said Marc Benioff, Salesforce’s CEO. 

“We will be able to span every consumer-touch point, both online and offline, which is a real first-mover advantage for our clients,” Jonathan Nelson, CEO of Omnicom Digital added.

Journey Building

The concept of connecting customer journeys appears to be the catalyst behind Salesforce’s attempts to woo marketers onto the Marketing Cloud, judging by the other notable pre-Dreamforce announcement it has made so far.       

Having already announced a relaunch of its Journey Builder tool last month, Salesforce is now relaunching it again, this time for mobile apps. 

Available through the ExactTarget Marketing Cloud, Journey Builder for Apps will now be able to help businesses improve the journeys their customers go through in using their mobile apps, allowing more personalised content to be driven through an individual’s’ apps, as well as connecting to other channels to try and provide a more seamless experience. 

“Apps are how we run our lives, they converge the physical and digital worlds and they open up an entirely new world of opportunities for marketers to connect with customers,” said Scott McCorkle, CEO, Salesforce ExactTarget Marketing Cloud. “With Journey Builder for Apps, now every app can take customers on a journey, not just take up space on a phone or tablet.”

With Dreamforce just under two weeks away, Salesforce will no doubt continue to ramp up the literature around the Marketing Cloud. How its rivals respond in the event's aftermath will be just as intriguing, especially given that one of its biggest, Oracle, is in a process of a pretty major transformation.