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Salesforce Adds Predictive Analytics to Marketing Cloud

By Michelle Amodio
TMCnet Contributor

Salesforce has given its marketing solution a makeover, and for fans of analytics, this is going to be a good one. The company released Predictive Journeys, which is part and parcel to its Marketing Cloud. This new tool, as the name suggests, widens the platform’s ability to judge where a customer is in the Journey and to forecast what is needed next. Under the Journeys umbrella are Predictive Scores and Predictive Audiences, which aim to help marketers segment and target prospects and known consumers with greater speed and efficiency.

"Marketers want to put the customer at the center of their thinking and allow them to define each moment that matters. Now marketers can create smarter journeys that deliver the right content exactly when the customer needs it," said Scott McCorkle, CEO of Salesforce Marketing Cloud, Salesforce. "With Salesforce Marketing Cloud Predictive Journeys, marketers can now go beyond simply meeting customer needs, to anticipating and greeting them at the next step of their journey as they arrive."

Analytics offer pieces to the larger customer service puzzle, although it’s not always obvious which pieces fit. When you have data that can actually show you where your marketing is strongest and where it needs work, it is much easier to reevaluate and come up with a better campaign. Analytics helps one to get “inside the heads” of the customers, and to have a much better grasp on the marketing efforts overall.

Collecting all of this data, and then sorting and parsing it with antiquated methods are the death knell of marketing efforts.

“A lot of people are approaching machine learning like a black box, and we really believe in exposing the underlying factors contributing to that,” said Leslie Fine, the VP of data and analytics for Salesforce Marketing Cloud. “At a glance, you can see what’s driving likelihood to purchase, what’s taking away from it and pull in first-party, third-party data and understand some of the causal aspects of an action.”

Shopping site Rue La La, reported that its members buy once or twice and then go dormant. Using Predictive Journeys and Audiences, Rue La La created different segmentation scenarios.

"With Salesforce Marketing Cloud, we will be able to create and execute smarter customer journeys based on understanding member browsing and shopping behaviors. This will allow us to forge a stronger bond with our loyal customer base,” said Murali Narayanaswamy, VP, Marketing and Strategy, Rue La La.

The data to make smarter decisions are available, as are the analytical tools, and Salesforce is out to change that for the better.