• by Ray Schultz , Columnist, July 16, 2020

Salesforce has a suggestion for firms coping with the triple threat of a global pandemic, a recession in many countries and the social crisis involving systematic racism:  

Show some empathy.

That was the theme of a press conference held by the firm on Thursday morning. And it is the principle behind a suite of product introductions and upgrades being offered by the company. 

Empathy, huh? Sounds good, but what does it mean on the ground?

Empathy requires “timely and relevant content, and an understanding of who the customer is,” said Adam Blitzer, EVP & GM of digital at Salesforce.

That, in turn, takes technology like the enhanced customer data platform, Customer 360 Audience, now being tested by some firms in pilot that will be available later this year. 

“We’ve reimagined our Salesforce Customer 360 virtual world,” said Blitzer. “It’s about having the flexibility to do this from everywhere — every touchpoint.”

It’s also about having  a single and full view of the customer, Blitzer continued. 

“CDP is the beating heart of marketing,” added Bobby Jania, another Salesforce staffer.

Blitzer noted that firms are being forced by circumstances to accelerate their digital transformations.

Then there are the additions formally announced by Salesforce Thursday afternoon: 

For one, the firm’s Interaction Studio is now powered by Einstein, The tool applies AI and machine learning to determine what to show or say to a customer, based on their behavior on websites and mobile apps, opening emails or talking to call center agents.  

The new offerings here include

• Einstein Personalization Recipes — AI-powered recommendation strategies.  
• Einstein Personalization Decisions — A learning algorithm that factors in data about each web visitor to decide the best action, offer, or experience across channels. 
• A/B/n Testing — this helps brands run A/B tests of customer experiences in all channels while measuring results by revenue, click-throughs, conversions and average order value. 

Next, there is the new enterprise offering Pardot Premium, which incorporates these elements:  

• B2B Marketing Analytics Plus — This tool uses AI to sift through all data from first-party and third-party sources to determine which Pardot campaigns perform best. 
• Einstein Attribution — This facilitates attribution analysis in reports and dashboards for assigning revenue credit to marketing touchpoints.
• Pardot Business Units — These allow marketers to manage corporate and regional campaigns. 
• Developer Sandboxes for Pardot — For helping developers to test, audit and configure technology in an isolated training environment.

Finally, Salesforce announced a Datorama integration with Tableau. The resulting features include:

• Automated Marketing Data Integration — For connecting and unifying all marketing data in Datorama with clicks. 
• Real-Time Marketing Insights — Access to all spend, performance, and business outcome data.
• Integrated Enterprise Analytics — Unified data from every marketing channel and platform combined with Tableau enterprise data.
• Marketing Data Exploration — Self-service data exploration and visualization. 

Not interested in these tools? Well, you might still profit from the three strategies Blitzer recommend for these tricky times:

• Humanize digital interactions
• Engage customers
• Optimize budget and impacts