Salesforce 1 - Marketing Cloud Explained

Mark Benioff, the CEO, Co-Founder of Salesforce.com, a leader in On-Demand CRM platform unleashed its New Look platform Salesforce1 in its annual conference Dreamforce'13.  Being connected with Salesforce since last 3 years, I am closely tracking how Salesforce is evolving. Considering Current Buzz of Cloud and Mobile (Smartphones, more precisely), Salesforce has taken big jump with Salesforce1.

This year I didn't go to dreamforce, but Last year I experience this big Party. I attended live presentation by Mark Benioff. It was great. This year, I opted out but I watched  keynote on Youtube. It was great show putup by Mark. I was quite impressed by use cases they presented.

Have a look at this must watch video, You can take it as a Benchmark about how to create an intro video of new product. Also I was impressed by the intro video they have prepared for Salesfoce1.

The Salesforce1 Platform brings together Force.com, Heroku, and ExactTarget into one family of cloud services — all built API first — to help deliver apps that connect products, users, and next generation experiences. Designed for scale and speed, it provides a fast way to build apps with open APIs, back-end services, integration tools, starter templates as well as powerful developer environments; there’s no limit to what you can build.  - Salesforce Developer Website

Its Amazing!



I took some time to understand the new look Marketing Cloud which is now rebranded as ExactTarget Marketing Cloud or ExactTarget Fuel.  For a newbee or first look, Marketing cloud will overwhelm you and additionally all the content salesforce has put up on their website won't give much details. Additionally some links are broken yet.

Here I will try to explain Marketing cloud from layman perspective. Marketing cloud has been built up by several acquisitions SF did in last two years. They are building this cloud offering using acquired companies as Lego blocks.


ExactTarget - Email, Mobile, SMS
     Salesforce acquired ExactTarget for $2.5 billion just 4 months back and It has taken centerstage for SF marketing cloud. And It has to as it was already boasting of 6000 of Enterprise customers including big names like Coca cola, Gap, Nike.

The dramatic increase in consumer and business use of social networks, mobile devices and new digital technologies is causing a revolution in marketing, as budgets previously spent on traditional media are now moving to digital campaigns. Gartner estimates that by 2015 consumer technology companies will have switched one-third of their traditional marketing budgets to digital*, and CMOs will outspend CIOs on information technology by 2017**. - SF Press Release,SAN FRANCISCO—July 12, 2013

As this integration has happened just 4 months prior to big announcements, It doesn't come as a something which follows salesforce platform philosophy and have tools like Apex and Visualforce providing customisations to it. but As Salesforce is projecting its platform as more of Data API oriented more of moving on from SAAS to be a BAAS player.
ExactTarget basically provide you more richer Email, SMS/Mobile Marketing. Its going to plug a biggest hole in the Salesforce platform.

Buddy Media - Social media Marketing & Analytics
Mark has a knack of identifying or aligning opportunities, He seems to have clearly  able to relate growing Social clout with enterprise world. Instead of boasting about its own existing offering, he seems to have gone ahead bravely to adopt futuristic things. Buddy Media acquisition decision was one of them. Salesforce.com closed on its $745 million acquisition of Buddy Media in August 2012. It also occupied centre stage along with Radian 6 in Dreamforce 2012.
Buddy media basically provide business to manage social media marketing and Analytics.

Radian 6 - Listen, Monitor, Engage
Salesforce.com acquired Radian6 in 2010 for $326 million, it also added social connections on main platform. but It didn't make any impact as such in a broader way.  But with all the dots connecting, It will definitely a great value add to salesforce platform.
Businesses can use radian6 to listen, monitor and engage on social media. Its kind of beautiful software which enables Marketing team and Primarily Customer Support and service team to use social media effectively.

Social.com - Advertizing on FB and Twitter
Social channel is becoming quite popular for digital advertising as it gives you access to identities and profiles for better targeting. Same thing is not possible in google search or google adwords.
Facebook and Twitter are strengthening their Advertizing offerings, It was good time for Salesforce to jump into it. As Marketing team have to spend budgets on Social Advertizing and if they can do it under same umbrella it would be quite good. They have launched it in April 2013. Its not something which they have acquired.

IGoDigital - Personalized Product Suggestions, Data and Predictive Analytics
IGoDigital was acquisition was not Salesforce brainchild, ExactTarget with keeping in mind Marketing needs of Ecommerce players acquired I Go Digital. With Tremendous growth in Ecommerce, lots of small merchants coming on to internet to do business. ExactTarget acquired IGoDigital, Its personalization technology, the expanded predictive analytics capabilities will enable marketers to leverage predictive product recommendations and content to create personalized experiences throughout the customer lifecycle.

Pardot - Marketing Automation
Messaging is a major part of Marketing. Messaging need to be done on various actions and through various channels. It can't be done manually in efficient way. Again Pardot acquisition is not Salesforce action, ExactTarget acquired it in Oct 2012. Pardot is one of the fewer companies which are providing Marketing Automation for almost all the channels, reducing manual interventions and letting marketing teams to think more on Business alignments and Creations.

-- FROM SALESFORCE Website -- START >
ExactTarget Fuel powers multi-channel marketing programs for many of the world’s top brands. Fuel is an integrated collection of platform technologies that is open to third-party development, enabling you to build upon, extend, and integrate with ExactTarget’s digital marketing products.

Fuel includes:

APIs: Automate email campaigns, seamlessly integrate marketing, analytics, and other business software, and build Marketing Cloud applications.

SDKs: Use native platform and language constructs to integrate with ExactTarget including Java, .NET, PHP, Python and Ruby.

Fuel UX: Build apps the deeply integrate with the ExactTarget Marketing Cloud using familiar JavaScript technologies.

Fuel Cloud Editor: Easily embed world-class content creation in your Marketing Cloud or stand-alone app.

< END -- FROM SALESFORCE Website --

Now with all the lego blocks available, They have put together a marketing cloud but as of now customers can't buy all these in a single pack. As of Now, What I see from individual product websites, they have listed their pricing separately. With ExactTarget just 4 months into Salesforce Cloud, It will take Product Managers enough time to offer all these product under single umbrella with competitive pricing. Otherwise they will stay separated. I also guess as almost all the products are sharing social component, they would be having repetition of features. Salesforce PM team will need to put significant effort in packaging.


Read my Other Post about Salesforce1 Platform - http://sandipmore.blogspot.in/2013/11/dont-build-mobile-app-for-your-business.html

Twitter - Mega Network with Micro Updates.

I did analysis of Twitter usage by Common people and Enterprises. This is How twitter started and grown in to Mega Network with Micro Updates.
1) Tech people were early adopters
2) People used it as a replacement for blogger where they need to give a lots of time for posting anything. Twitter was easy,no-brainer, one can tweet whatever they have on their mind. They dont have to ruminate over it.
3) People loved it.
4) Additionally it enabled open conversation across the globe. Just simple stream of interesting thoughts, updates abt various people by themselves, you didnt need approval to follow him/her. 
5) It enabled way to hear thoughts of people who shares common interests with you.
6) It was not like other social networks where you start with connecting people you are already friends with.
7) Everybody actually liked the Idea, even Celebrities came directly on twitter. Interacting with their fans openly. People loved this more.  With Celebrities, more fans logged on Twitter. For Example, many of the people in India registered on Twitter to Follow Little Master Sachin Tendulkar. 

With Millions of real people having open conversation on Twitter and additional features built like Trends. For Marketers, It was gold-mine to catch the people. Specific targetting was possible just scanning through one's tweets. Lots of startups have emerged which are providing various services  including analytics of data and techniques to increase follower counts.
From My point of view, we can clearly seperate companies in 2 types
Type B2C = Business to consumers Model
Type B2B = Business to Business Model

For B2C Enterprises, value proposition is quite clear as many of their existing and target customers possibly would be on Twitter. They can use Twitter for Customer Service, Marketing and Advertizing. They can run Loyalty programs also.

But what would be value proposition for Enterprise who has B2B model, because they would be trying to sell their products to companies only. so How Twitter can be useful for B2B model companies. Because Twitter accounts of these companies would be handled probably by Marketing Team. If Twitter accounts of 2 businesses converse with each other, which means basically Marketing teams of 2 companies are talking with each other. Which will not help one of them who wants to sell his product to other.  As other's marketing team might not be decision makers in various purchase decisions or business decisions. 
Although Conversation may not help either of them to get business. but connecting with people who are following/followers of target company may help. 
What enterprises can use Twitter for?
1) Share/Evangelize knowledge abt their company, product.
2) Connect with people who are connected to your targets.
3) Spread the word abt your company in related open conversations.

Actually I am not a Marketing guy but had some thoughts abt using Twitter by Enterprises so just shared them here.  You can have many other great ideas abt Twitter usage, You can share it with me via comments on this blog.

A/B Testing

- Reposting from Wikipedia

A/B testing, split testing or bucket testing is a method of marketing testing by which a baseline control sample is compared to a variety of single-variable test samples in order to improve response rates. A classic direct mail tactic, this method has been recently adopted within the interactive space to test tactics such as banner ads, emails and landing pages.

Significant improvements can be seen through testing elements like copy text, layouts, images and colors. However, not all elements produce the same improvements, and by looking at the results from different tests, it is possible to identify those elements that consistently tend to produce the greatest improvements.

Employers of this A/B testing method will distribute multiple samples of a test, including the control, to see which single variable is most effective in increasing a response rate or other desired outcome. The test, in order to be effective, must reach an audience of a sufficient size that there is a reasonable chance of detecting a meaningful difference between the control and other tactics: see Statistical power.

As a simple example, a company with a customer database of 2000 people decides to create an email campaign with a discount code in order to generate sales through its website. It creates an email and then modifies the Call To Action (the part of the copy which encourages customers to do something - in the case of a sales campaign, make a purchase). To 1000 people it sends the email with the Call To Action stating "Offer ends this Saturday! Use code A1", and to another 1000 people it sends the email with the Call To Action stating "Limited time offer! Use code B1". All other elements of the email's copy and layout are identical. The company then monitors which campaign has the highest success rate by analysing the use of the promotional codes. The email using the code A1 has a 5% response rate (50 of the 1000 people emailed used the code to buy a product), and the email using the code B1 has a 3% response rate (30 of the recipients used the code to buy a product). The company therefore determines that in this instance, the first Call To Action is more effective and will use it in future sales campaigns.

In the example above, the purpose of the test is to determine which is the most effective way to impel customers into making a sale. If, however, the aim of the test was to see which would generate the highest click-rate - i.e., the number of people who actually click onto the website after receiving the email - then the results may have been different. More of the customers receiving the code B1 may have accessed the website after receiving the email, but because the Call To Action didn't state the end-date of the promotion, there was less incentive for them to make an immediate purchase. If the purpose of the test was simply to see which would bring more traffic to the website, then the email containing code B1 may have been more successful. An A/B Test should have a defined outcome that is measurable, e.g. number of sales made, click-rate conversion, number of people signing up/registering etc.