6 Benefits of Salesforce Data Cloud for Marketing

As we’ve discussed in our free Salesforce Data Cloud 101 eBook, Data Cloud is a customer data platform (CDP) that provides a single source of truth about your customers. The profiles stored in Data Cloud are meant to be used by the entire business, from sales to customer service, ecommerce functions, and more. 

For marketers, Salesforce Data Cloud is an opportunity to finally pull data from a myriad of sources into one place and use this data to supercharge marketing tactics. The beauty is that Data Cloud integrates seamlessly with other Salesforce platforms such as Marketing Cloud Engagement and Account Engagement, as well as Sales Cloud.

While there are a bunch of benefits I could list today, here are the top six.

Data Cloud benefits for marketers

A clear view of your customer

No more switching between platforms to see various information about prospects and customers. Even if you’re using a dozen third-party platforms for marketing, such as event registration, webinar hosting, and social media networking tools, alongside your Salesforce instance, you can finally view all of the data points in a single place, in one unified customer profile.

A deeper understanding of the audience

Better visibility over your customers means a deeper understanding of their interactions and behaviours. In an instant, you can see how a customer has engaged with your business across any of your marketing channels plus any interactions with other departments or business functions.

If a customer has recently called the technical support line, you’ll know about it. If a potential university student has made contact with the admissions team, you’ll be able to see and action marketing based on this information, immediately.

More effective marketing communications

Of course, greater visibility and understanding of your audience means nothing if you can’t then use this information to improve marketing efforts. Salesforce Data Cloud connects with Salesforce marketing platforms to not only ingest data but also allow you to easily use this data in your marketing. 

Whether it’s an Engagement Studio program in Account Engagement or a journey in Marketing Cloud’s Journey Builder, you can trigger, pause, or update marketing campaigns based on the data stored in Data Cloud.

The ultimate standard of personalisation

One of the many ways Data Cloud supercharges marketing efforts is by providing 

nearly real-time data points that can be used to personalise your marketing communications. Great personalisation in email marketing or social media advertising means your messages resonate with your audience more effectively. A study by McKinsey found that personalisation:

• reduces customer acquisition costs by as much as 50%.

• lifts revenues by 5 to 15%.

• increases marketing ROI by 10 to 30%.

They also summarised that companies that grow faster drive 40% more of their revenue from personalisation than their slower-growing counterparts. 

In short, marketers should be laser-focused on improving personalisation and this is impossible without accurate, well-modelled, and real-time data.

Instantly react with automated journeys

When prospects, leads, and customers take action on our website or by engaging with marketing communications, we don’t just want to know about it and use the information in future marketing, we want to react quickly, where it makes sense.

This could mean triggering an automated journey based on a web page view or email engagement, allowing you to quickly prompt further engagement or sales outreach. Or, it could mean removing prospects or customers from automated activities based on their behaviours, for example, submitting a complaint to the customer service team. 

Either way, marketers using Data Cloud can react to customers instantaneously because the data coming into Data Cloud is in nearly real-time.

Alignment with other teams in the business

There’s nothing more frustrating for marketers and audiences alike than businesses working in siloed teams, resulting in a bombardment of emails or poorly informed messages that alienate customers. 

Yet, aligning teams to ensure everyone has the same, up-to-date information about a contact is a massive challenge facing most businesses, especially global enterprises. When configured correctly, Salesforce Data Cloud can be the prime solution for breaking down silos and aligning business teams.

Sounds like the holy grail right?

With all Enterprise and Ultimate Sales Cloud customers gaining access to a free account in 2023, it’s also completely accessible and possible!

For support with implementation and ongoing management, MarCloud is here to help. Take a look at our Salesforce Data Cloud for marketing services and get in touch.