Dreamforce 2019: Capturing the Moments That Matter

Another Dreamforce has ended. Although the days were long, the week was short. The Simantel team attended almost 100 sessions, represented Women of Email on a panel and left with the following in mind: In order to capture the moments that matter, you need a kick-ass marketing strategy and the technology to back it up. These moments that matter are crucial parts of the buyer’s journey.

Let’s look at three of those moments and the technology that can help enable them.

Awareness

• The awareness phase isn’t just about a pretty picture anymore. In fact, sometimes it’s not about pictures at all. Designing content in a way that allows accessibility to email and websites for all users is something that Salesforce has a strong commitment to. Even when used for convenience and not accessibility, email readers should be a consideration when creating content.
• There are a lot of voices out there! Trying to capture the attention of a buyer in the awareness phase isn’t easy. But, the more natural marketers can sound, the better their chances. We witnessed a demonstration of a natural language processor that can be used with emails and SMS text campaigns to deliver AI-driven results in everyday language.
• 69 percent of B2B buyers expect an Amazon-like experience when interacting with a brand. For marketers, this means that content has to remain consistently engaging across channels. Enter the Salesforce CMS. It’s a hybrid content management system that helps you create and manage content, then syndicate it across channels.

Consideration

• At the “Future of Marketing” session, the speaker shared that in order to create a cohesive customer experience, marketing is often the bridge between departments. Why? Because marketing needs the data from various departments to create amazing experiences. This could mean connecting data that the sales team may have with a payment system owned by accounting. Connecting data means having a good API strategy that provides efficiency and agility. Some of our clients are ahead of the curve in creating their own internal “API Marketplace.”
• There are people that hate your brand. It may hurt, but it’s true. One speaker encouraged us to go after them to find out what they know. Doing that good old-fashioned research will seem like marketing magic when you use those insights to create an experience worthy of converting leads to customers.

Advocate

• Advocates are just people who feel awesome every time they engage with your brand. Brand is the sum of all the experiences you create. With interactive email, you can encourage recipients to take action right within the email instead of linking off to another site. You could gather customer feedback, ask for reviews or provide shopping options. Through their acquisition of Rebel, Salesforce hopes to have this offering live in spring of 2020.
• Marketers continue to take on more and more of the customer’s experience. 45 percent of marketing leaders own the customer experience at their company today. Salesforce’s Einstein is changing the way customers are handled in many companies, from “call coaching” to virtual listening and AI-powered recommendations, live on any customer call. Learn more about Einstein.

Another note: The Forrester-led session reminded Trailblazers that their vendors should be providing more than just technology; they should also be providing a cohesive strategy and any necessary training needed for success in your Salesforce platform of choice.

If you are still looking for the right partner, check out our article on how to find the perfect fit.

Want to Dig Deeper?

Check out these great resources that provided some of these insights:

• https://www.salesforce.com/form/conf/trust-research/
• https://www.salesforce.com/form/conf/service-cloud/state-of-connected-customer/
• https://www.salesforce.com/form/conf/5th-state-of-marketing
• https://www.salesforce.com/form/marketingcloud/conf/digital-ads-2020-research