• by Ray Schultz , June 8, 2022

Salesforce has unveiled several enhancements to its Marketing and Commerce Clouds that it says will connect marketing, commerce and service data on one platform.

The goal is to create a single source of “relevant and human” truth, said Lidiane Jones, executive vice president and general manager, Salesforce Digital Experiences, during a pre-announcement press conference on the Customer 360 changes on Monday. 

In addition, the firm has expanded its Customer Data Platform (CDP) ecosystem with several new AppExchange partnerships.

According to Salesforce, the new Marketing Cloud features include:

• Triggered Campaign Messages — brings together Marketing Cloud Personalization and Engagement for personalized engagement based on new product catalog and behavioral triggers. 
• Digital Command Center for Slack — Will enable brands to monitor activity and performance across the Marketing and Commerce Cloud from one digital command center. Marketers can avoid opt-outs by identifying and resolving issues 
• Intelligence ecommerce Marketing Insights — This app unifies a firm’s KPIs and commerce and marketing data on a single platform. 
• Intelligence Connector for B2C Commerce Cloud —  The connector combines orders and product data, documenting sales performance over time.

The new Commerce Cloud enhancements include:

• Social Integration for Commerce Cloud — allows firms to create TikTok ads that redirect to their commerce sites. 
• Commerce Marketplace — users can create and scale a marketplace on Commerce Cloud, expanding their catalog range with products from other firms.
• NFT Cloud — Now in pilot, this no-code tool will enable firms to sell non-fungible tokens (NFTs) on the Customer 360 platform.

One client, Shoe Carnival, utilizes the Salesforce CDP to “leverage our first-party data and gain a full view of every customer to create personalized, human moments across channels for the ideal shopping experience,” says Deb Hannah, senior vice president, marketing at Shoe Carnival.

Another client, health-care provider Merz Aesthetics, uses Salesforce for “insight into what matters most to our customers, so we can fuel confidence with personalized recommendations and experiences that build long-term relationships,” says Christina Wall, executive director, digital customer engagement at Merz Aesthetics.

Meanwhile, Crocs has “streamlined the online shopping experience with Commerce Cloud to support our next phase of digital growth while Marketing Cloud continues to give us a 360-degree view of our consumers and the AI-driven insights we need to deliver hyper personalized, cross-channel experiences,” says Adam Michaels, executive vice president and chief digital officer at Crocs. 

Social Integration for Commerce Cloud, Commerce Marketplace and Digital Commerce Center for Slack will be generally available in September. 

New AppExchange partners

Salesforce also announced new partnerships with several firms in an expansion of its CDP ecosystem. These include Annalect, Acxiom, Criteo, LiveRamp, MediaMath, Metarouter,  Neustar, Nine Digital, Streamlytics, The Trade Desk, Yahoo and WPP Resolve.

Moreover, Salesforce will broaden its Commerce ecosystem through partnerships with Amplience, Avalara, Bringg, AppFrontier, Forter, and Poq.

Integrated directly into the Marketing Cloud CDP, the new App Exchange partnerships will enable brands to deliver targeted marketing at scale, Salesforce claims. In addition, the apps are integrated with Commerce Cloud.

The new partner applications will help Salesforce clients “optimize marketing and advertising strategies in a post-cookie world, better manage the complexity of data privacy and ethics concerns, and make steps toward achieving the ideal Customer 360," says Rebecca Wettemann, CEO and principal analyst at Valoir.