Last updated on September 22nd, 2015 at 03:13 pm
Salesforce has built a stellar reputation by utilizing Marketing Cloud to create one-to-one journeys for customers, prospects and even its own employees. Ever wonder how they do it?
Speaking to a packed house at Dreamforce 2015 in San Francisco, Bobby Jania, Salesforce’s senior director of product marketing, and Dawn Devirgilio, the company’s top digital communications manager, offered an insightful look at how Marketing Cloud is used to drive Salesforce’s business on the Customer Success Platform.
Marketing Cloud powers journeys across Salesforce’s business, with four main journey types: events, sales enablement, product release and human resources:
Event Journeys
Targeted event communications create great results, with cross-channel communications enabling one-to-one journeys. Take a recent registration campaign for a Salesforce event in New York City.
A promotional email is sent out. From there, two tracks follow: Respondents who register to attend the event get a confirmation email, while those who reply that they will not attend receive an abandoned cart email. “Make the move from interested to registered,” reads one email targeting those still on the fence.
With compelling calls to action like this, Salesforce achieved an open rate of 46 percent, with 31 percent engagement and a 15 percent click rate. Not too shabby!
Through mobile app adoption and usage, Salesforce is able to better achieve the one-to-one journeys that get results, and on-site experience and engagement through push notifications promote improved customer satisfaction scores.
Sales Enablement Journeys
How does Salesforce use Marketing Cloud to enable its sales reps? Through proactive deal support, materials targeted for specific sales cycle stages and insights that give a competitive advantage. Identifying not only prospective customers but also competitors helps give reps the weapons in their arsenal to achieve that competitive edge and better spot and act upon opportunities.
Salesforce has adopted a proactive approach which includes supporting every deal. This has won high praise from many of the company’s reps. With a 71 percent email open rate, and 12 percent CTR, it’s no wonder why the company’s sales enablement strategies have been hailed as competition-crushing.
Product Release Journeys
Salesforce has used Marketing Cloud for new product release communications with immense success, according to the panel. The company drives engagement with product release information across channels, with a cross-team effort to promote each release.
Furthermore, Salesforce has identified three separate audiences based on engagement for product release subscriber base. These are the highly engaged, partially engaged and non-engaged. Each is subjected to a different email communication strategy meant to keep connections alive and ultimately increase sales.
Social engagement, with robust calls to action, increase success. Keeping the focus intently upon the customer is key. “Good customer service is good marketing,” says Devirgilio.
Human Resources Journeys
Salesforce also uses Marketing Cloud to recruit and acclimatize its own employees through automated talent acquisition and onboarding. Insight is gained from career website clicks and visits. Targeted ads are sent to recruits’ Facebook feeds.
Predictive intelligence—data-driven forecasts based on behavior—powers recruiting at Salesforce, allowing the company to work smarter.
A simplified employee onboarding experience makes becoming part of the Salesforce team significantly easier. Onboarding emails are automated to send the right material at the right time during a new employee’s training, while each email in a series introduces the employee to different topics.
Links to online resources add another layer of assistance for new team members, who may overwhelmed when entering a new job. New hires rave about how these onboarding emails help them succeed more and faster than they would have.
The result? A nearly 90 percent email open rate, with more than 3,500 new employees taken on personalized journeys. Help desk traffic from new hires has also plummeted by nearly one third.
Marketing Cloud powers journeys across Salesforce’s business, from event and sales to product releases and new hiring. Through it all, one-to-one journeys increase engagement, cross-channel communication is constant, and teams collaborate across the business. Salesforce thrives as a result.
For more Dreamforce 2015 coverage, go to this page.
Photo via Philips Communications
