It’s time for the Salesforce 2027 winter release to start hitting orgs. These releases can be a lot to take in, especially if you have several Salesforce products in your tech stack. The theme is well known. More automation, more agents, more reporting. Which of these updates are the most important to sales and marketing? I’ve pulled out my favorites for you!
MCE aka Marketing Cloud Engagement aka Salesforce Marketing Cloud aka ExactTarget
New Tools for MCP Server
Model Context Protocol (MCP) is all the rage right now. If you’re not sure what that means, Anthropic has some great training. An MCP connects an AI Assistant (like Claude) with another application (like MCE). With the Salesforce’s MCP marketers can manage MCE with natural language prompts instead of going through various screens of the UI. There are about 40 tools now available to you with this release. Each tool has a distinct job. You can query data extensions, work with content builder folders, check job status, and more. Though, be careful with the delete jobs because they make data much easier to delete. With the new tool release, you can delete contacts, content folders and campaigns.
Security Dashboard
If you’re an admin, or have a friend who is an admin, this is a great addition to reporting. The new security dashboard summarizes things like number of admins, API connections, password strength, etc. and then it scores your org. It also outlines which security concerns carry the most weight. You can export the dashboard into a branded PDF, which is nice. This made my DPO heart very happy.
Related Content: Salesforce Is Tightening MCE Security
MCN aka Marketing Cloud Next aka Agentforce
Marketing Brand Center
A brand marketer’s dream! If you’ve used generative AI to create images or copy, you know that it takes some work to keep a AI content “on brand.” With Brand Center, you can create a brand kit that automatically trains every Salesforce agent in your org. That brand kit can contain voice, visual identity, guidelines for your logo and more. Any MCN agent your marketing team uses will keep the guidelines you’ve established, which means fewer brand revisions for you. AI can help you scale your content and keep it consistent with your brand.
Agentforce Marketing Goals Agent
Ok, hold onto your hats, now. This agent is said to automate your audience, channel, campaign, timing and content. Don’t worry, you can determine how much autonomy the agent has. I’m excited that the decisions it’s making will be exposed to the marketer so that you can see why the agent chose a certain campaign or channel. This agent will even optimize as campaigns continue. There are extras you can add as well. Agentic content will take a brief and your brand guide and create both images and copy for email, SMS and RCS messages. You can review and approve content before it’s published. For full optimization, you’ll need a beta product called “AI-driven Adaptive Campaign Audiences” if you want the agent to choose a campaign when a contact qualifies for multiple campaigns.
CRM aka Core aka Sales Cloud Microsoft Teams Integration
If you use Microsoft Teams and not Slack, you might have felt left out during announcements about Slackbot. But now, Teams users can also have the convenience of updating CRM from their Teams interface. A sales rep can get a Teams update about an opportunity that is set to close soon. The rep can close or edit that opportunity right from the Teams channel and all data goes back to the CRM. The Salesforce app in Teams can also use coworker to prep you for meetings using the notes and context available in CRM. To see a short demo from Dreamforce, click here.
Momentum
This fancy feature comes from an acquisition of the company Momentum. It allows sales reps to capture conversations through normal meeting channels like Zoom and Teams. That conversation is transcribed, then summarized and added to CRM. If given parameters, it can even grade a rep on how well they did on the call. If positive feedback is detected, you can send a “Smart Clip” of the interaction to instant messenger. Right now, that may be limited to Slack.
As you can see, we’ve moved beyond using ChatGPT to create funny images of our pets. With Salesforce, agents can cooperate and do work for you in the platform. Yes, it requires connecting your system to AI. As DPO let me say, that is not always a bad thing. There are safe ways to add automation into your marketing workflows. Maybe that will get us all back to things that matter like understanding the customer and deepening those relationships.
If you’d like a shiny new badge on all the features, go over to Trailhead. Or feel free to reach out if you’d like to chat through something.
