Why Marketing Cloud Advanced is a Game-Changer for Marketers

This new release empowers marketers to streamline their workflows, deliver hyper-personalised experiences, and leverage cutting-edge AI tools to optimise engagement in real time. But what exactly is Marketing Cloud Advanced, how does it fit into the broader Salesforce ecosystem, and why is operating ‘on-core’ a game-changer for businesses?

In this post, we’ll explore Marketing Cloud Advanced's key features, how it enhances the existing Salesforce Marketing Cloud suite and exciting innovations like two-way SMS conversations and advanced Einstein AI capabilities.

Marketing Cloud Advanced is the latest addition to Salesforce’s Marketing Cloud suite of products, built on the core Salesforce platform, like Marketing Cloud Growth. It is a more premium edition designed to address the increasing demands of modern marketing teams. Whether you’re managing multiple brands, orchestrating cross-channel campaigns, or needing more sophisticated automation, this advanced edition is built to handle the complexity.

MC Advanced is tailored for businesses seeking increased data control, deeper personalisation, and more responsive, real-time customer interactions. If you’ve been using Marketing Cloud Growth or Marketing Cloud Plus, this new edition represents a natural progression to handle larger audiences, more intricate data workflows, and the need for real-time communication.

What’s even more exciting, is that Account Engagement Plus, Advanced, and Premium users will get access to Marketing Cloud Advanced, for free!

1. Enterprise-level scalability: Built for businesses with large customer bases and complex data flows.

2. Advanced AI features: Enhanced with Einstein AI to drive deeper insights and personalisation.

3. Cross-channel orchestration: Unifies customer journeys across email, SMS, push notifications, social media, and more.

4. On-core integration: Full compatibility with Salesforce’s core infrastructure, enabling seamless data syncing across the Salesforce ecosystem.

Marketing Cloud Advanced offers an unparalleled level of control and customisation, making it an essential tool for marketing teams managing complex operations and aiming for more personalised customer engagement.

Salesforce has long been at the forefront of marketing automation with its suite of products within Marketing Cloud. From Email Studio and Journey Builder to Social Studio and Advertising Studio, Marketing Cloud already allows businesses to manage multi-channel campaigns and customer interactions from one platform.

Marketing Cloud Advanced is the natural evolution of these tools, designed to meet the growing complexity of customer journeys and data requirements. For businesses managing high volumes of data or needing sophisticated segmentation and real-time engagement, Marketing Cloud Advanced integrates seamlessly with existing Salesforce products like Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, and Commerce Cloud. This means businesses can manage the entire customer lifecycle - from marketing to sales to customer support - through one unified system.

But the real power of Marketing Cloud Advanced comes from its tight integration with Salesforce’s core infrastructure, which brings us to an important point: Why being ‘on-core’ is always best.

With Marketing Cloud Advanced, one of the key selling points is that it operates ‘on-core’, meaning it’s fully integrated within the broader Salesforce ecosystem. This is important for marketers for a few reasons:

1. Unified customer data: When your marketing platform is on-core, all customer interactions are stored in one place, giving you a single source of truth. Tapping into Data Cloud as a central source of truth allows for better personalisation, as you can track every customer touchpoint - from website visits to email opens to purchase history - in real time.

2. Real-time data syncing: Being on-core ensures real-time data synchronisation across Salesforce products. If a customer updates their preferences in Service Cloud, for example, that change is immediately reflected in your Marketing Cloud Advanced campaigns. This means you can deliver personalised content in real time without delays.

3. Scalability: As your business grows, so too do your marketing needs. By staying on-core, you can scale your marketing operations seamlessly without worrying about integration issues or data silos.

4. Security and compliance: Salesforce is known for its commitment to data security and compliance, and by staying on-core, your customer data is protected under Salesforce’s robust security framework. This is especially important for businesses that need to comply with regulations like GDPR or CCPA.

By operating on Salesforce’s core infrastructure, Marketing Cloud Advanced ensures that businesses can scale, operate efficiently, and maintain a 360-degree view of their customers.

One of the standout features of Marketing Cloud Advanced is the introduction of two-way SMS conversations. 

SMS marketing has long been a powerful tool for reaching customers directly, but until now, most platforms have offered one-way messaging, where businesses send messages but can’t easily respond to customer replies.

Marketing Cloud Advanced changes that by enabling real-time, two-way conversations over SMS. This opens up a world of possibilities for businesses to engage with their customers more dynamically:

1. Real-time engagement: Customers can now reply to your SMS campaigns, whether they’re confirming an appointment, asking for more information, or making a purchase. This creates a more interactive and personal experience.

2. Automated responses: While these conversations can be managed manually, Marketing Cloud Advanced also allows you to set up automated responses based on customer replies. For example, if a customer texts “Help,” they can automatically receive a link to a help article or be routed to a live support agent.

3. Personalisation at scale: Using Einstein AI, you can ensure that your SMS conversations are personalised for each customer based on their past interactions and preferences, improving engagement and conversion rates.

This feature is particularly useful for industries where quick, responsive communication is key, such as retail, travel, or healthcare.

No Salesforce product would be complete without the integration of Einstein AI, and Marketing Cloud Advanced is no exception. Einstein AI is designed to help marketers deliver the right message to the right customer at the right time, optimising engagement and maximising results.

Here are some of the key Einstein AI features in Marketing Cloud Advanced:

1. Einstein Engagement Scoring: This feature analyses past customer behavior to predict how likely each individual is to engage with future campaigns. You can use these scores to segment your audience and focus your efforts on the customers most likely to convert.

2. Einstein Send Time Optimization: Using machine learning, Einstein determines the best time to send messages to each customer based on their historical engagement patterns. This ensures that your emails or SMS messages land in customers’ inboxes at the perfect moment, increasing open rates and conversions.

3. Einstein Content Selection: By analysing customer data, Einstein AI can recommend personalised content - whether that’s images, products, or offers - based on what is most likely to resonate with each customer.

4. Einstein Journey Insights: This tool provides real-time insights into how customers are moving through your marketing funnels and suggests ways to improve performance.

In short, with Einstein AI, marketers can move beyond guesswork and make data-driven decisions that lead to better engagement and more tailored customer experiences.

• Cross-channel campaign orchestration: Unifies customer journeys across all channels—email, SMS, push notifications, social, and advertising—in one seamless workflow.

• Advanced segmentation and audience management: Enhanced segmentation tools that allow marketers to create highly targeted audience groups based on complex data points, such as behaviour, preferences, demographics, and real-time interactions.

• Real-time personalisation: Dynamic content delivery that adjusts in real-time based on user behaviour, preferences, or context, ensuring personalised interactions across all touchpoints.

• Data lake for marketers: Access to a scalable data lake that enables marketers to unify, organise, and leverage vast amounts of data from multiple sources, helping to create more data-driven campaigns.

• Dynamic content blocks: This feature allows marketers to create reusable, data-driven content blocks that can dynamically update based on customer information or interactions.

• Data management tools:  Tools for handling and cleaning customer data, ensuring that marketing campaigns are based on high-quality, compliant data. Companies can streamline GDPR or CCPA compliance by managing consent and preferences effectively, as well as ensuring the accuracy of customer information.

• Journey Builder enhancements: New enhancements to Journey Builder, including more intuitive interfaces and advanced automation features for creating complex, multi-step customer journeys.

• Multi-brand management: Enhanced capabilities for managing multiple brands under a single umbrella, allowing for streamlined campaign management and segmentation across different brand audiences.

• Multi-channel analytics: Advanced analytics that track customer interactions across multiple channels in a unified view, helping marketers understand which touchpoints are driving the most engagement and conversions.

Unlike Marketing Cloud Growth, which saw a regional rollout, Marketing Cloud Advanced is set to be generally available globally in the fall of 2024. Having said this, Salesforce typically rolls out new product editions and features in phases, meaning some regions may receive access slightly earlier than others. 

Account Engagement (formerly Pardot) customers, have free access to Marketing Cloud Growth Edition features, meaning they can more easily trial and transform their marketing automation strategy by tapping into new and enhanced functionality.

Side note: to see our Founder-CEO’s predictions for Marketing Cloud in the coming years, have a read of this blog post.

Whether you’re an existing Marketing Cloud customer or exploring Salesforce for the first time, Marketing Cloud Advanced represents a significant leap forward in marketing automation technology, helping you stay ahead in an increasingly competitive digital landscape.

For specialist support with planning for and implementing MC Advanced, request a call. With our experts working as an extension of your team, you’ll be up and running quickly - and in line with best practices for a future-proofed account.