As we close out the year, the team at Forcery wants to extend our sincere thanks for your trust and collaboration. Whether we’ve worked together directly or you’ve been considering our AI-powered solutions for Salesforce Marketing Cloud, we appreciate the opportunity to be part of your journey. Looking ahead to 2025, we’re excited for the possibilities that lie ahead and wish you continued success. If you’re looking to learn how to leverage enterprise value from enterprise technology, optimize your CRM or marketing automation org or just explore how the new Marketing Cloud Growth and Advanced products can support your goals, we’re here to help. Wishing you a peaceful holiday season and a prosperous New Year!
Forcery’s 2024 in MarTech
As we look back at 2024, we are incredibly thankful for the incredible opportunity to work with Salesforce presenting Marketing Cloud around the world.
The first CairoDreamin’ 2024
In February, we traveled to Egypt helping launch the very first first CairoDreamin’ in our session Mastering Marketing Cloud Account Engagement. Helping train and upskill Trailblazers across the world is an incredible honor, as Salesforce continues to drive revenue for businesses globally. Tigh Loughhead was asked again to speak in 2025 to speak about “Marketing Cloud Growth” and “Marketing Cloud Advanced in his session, From Acquisitions to Innovation: Exploring Salesforce’s New Marketing Cloud.
Trailhead Academy and helping launch “Agentforce”
We continued our work with Trailhead Academy throughout the year as a Certified Instructor for Trailhead Academy, teaching the Drive Sales with Account Engagement – PDX101class for Salesforce. In August, Tigh was asked to preview Marc Benioff’s Dreamforce keynote, providing feedback on marketing and brand positioning for the launch of “Agentforce” at Salesforce Tower in New York City.
Marketing Cloud Growth and Advanced
The New York City Marketer’s Trailblazer Community was also active throughout the year, with our most recent presentation on Marketing Cloud Growth and Advanced just this October at our last user group in Midtown before the World Tour. If you’re interested in learning more about Salesforce’s “New Marketing Cloud” check out our presentation below or don’t hesitate to reach out.
Inaugural DubaiDreamin’ 2024
In November, we were incredibly lucky to be asked for our thought leadership again, this time in the United Arab Emirates at the inaugural DubaiDreamin’ conference, in a session “Mastering Marketing Automation: A Beginners’ Guide to Marketing Cloud Account Engagement.”The conference took place at the foot of the Burj Khalifa (the tallest building in the world), and brought Salesforce practitioners and learners from all throughout the Middle East.
The world of marketing technology is changing rapidly, and while there is uncertainty around the economy and automation in particular, one thing is clear: companies that leverage AI and marketing technology most effectively are poised to inherit the business success of the future. …and we could not be more excited to be part of that future.
Thank you for being part of Forcery’s MarTech magic and we look forward to collaborating and “making MarTech magic” in 2025!
In the past, businesses had limited channels of direct communication with customers, resulting in fragmented data and inconsistent customer experiences handled by different departments. However, the advent of information and communications technology brought about a multitude of channels, devices, and touchpoints, leading to an explosion of data. Marketers realized the need to harness this vital information to gain in-depth knowledge about their customers, sparking a paradigm shift in marketing strategies.
While data collection and management technologies had been in place since the 1990s, the evolving business landscape demanded a solution that could collect data from multiple sources, organize it, and centralize it into a single customer profile. This marked the emergence of Customer Data Platforms (CDPs) in the early 2010’s, revolutionizing marketing practices by offering a comprehensive 360-degree view of the customer. By 2016, CDPs had solidified their position in the industry, transcending mere software to embody a new marketing mindset. Unified customer profiles enabled the transition from multichannel to omni-channel contact, allowing for hyper-personalized messaging tailored to individual customer behavior and preferences, resulting in a consistent and personalized customer experience.
Source: Raconteur
Looking ahead, data will continue to play an increasingly critical role. The World Economic Forum estimates that by 2025, a staggering 463 exabytes of data will be generated daily worldwide, dwarfing the cumulative information shared by humanity throughout its existence. Companies striving for survival must embrace data culture and enhance their competitive edge. CDPs have become an indispensable tool, and gaining a deeper understanding of their implementation is a crucial step forward.
What is Data Cloud (a CDP)?
CDP, short for Customer Data Platforms, has ushered in a new marketing paradigm centered around data and customer-centricity. Essentially, CDPs are packaged software solutions designed to gather and consolidate customer data from various sources, ultimately creating comprehensive and unified customer profiles.
But how exactly does a CDP operate? It’s relatively straightforward. Nowadays, CDPs often employ Artificial Intelligence techniques, particularly machine learning, predictive models, statistics, sentiment analysis, frequent patterns, graphs, and more. These advanced methodologies enable marketers to execute highly effective marketing actions by leveraging insights derived from customer behavior trends.
Data Cloud represents a suite of comprehensive software solutions specifically designed to aggregate and merge customer data from diverse sources, thereby generating unified and in-depth customer profiles. With Salesforce CDP, businesses can fully leverage the capabilities of the software alongside the potential of the customer relationship management platform, resulting in enhanced connectivity and intelligent data processing. This powerful tool not only empowers marketing efforts but also benefits sales, support, and even executive decision-making, culminating in a seamless single source of information that facilitates the creation and implementation of hyper-personalized marketing campaigns and strategies, ultimately driving customer loyalty.
Why Salesforce CDP is better than the competition?
Salesforce CDP stands out from its numerous competitors, offering significant advantages and differentiating itself in the market.
With its dual capability as both an Insight and Engagement CDP, it eliminates unnecessary expenses by targeting customers who have already made the intended purchase, while enabling immediate delivery of personalized and flexible offers within the customer’s preferred price range. By adopting this approach, the probability of customer interaction with the offers increases by approximately fivefold. Additionally, Salesforce CDP enables efficient customer categorization, such as identifying “loyal high-spending customers” and “inactive customers,” allowing businesses to tailor their strategies accordingly.
Salesforce CDP seamlessly integrates and harmonizes the intricate online and offline behaviors of your customers, enabling the compilation of their activities and preferences into comprehensive profiles. This valuable data can be effortlessly analyzed and segmented based on real-time customer behavior, empowering targeted audience activation to enhance engagement among existing and prospective customers. Leveraging a set of customizable rules and the power of Einstein AI, Salesforce CDP unlocks the potential for personalized and impactful marketing initiatives.
By harnessing its robust capabilities, Salesforce CDP empowers your marketing team to isolate and analyze multidimensional KPIs derived from your data, providing invaluable insights of extraordinary value.
Salesforce CDP offers a robust segmentation capability that spans across four key areas:
Geographical: Recognizing the influence of climate on consumption patterns, including clothing and food preferences. Factors like location (rural or urban) drive significant variations in consumption habits, product preferences, and purchase frequency.
Demographic: Understanding the importance of personalizing offers based on age, gender, race, occupation, and other demographic attributes. This knowledge is essential for crafting targeted promotions, such as tailored offers for specific sports equipment based on the customer’s preferences and characteristics.
Psychographic: Considering the beliefs, values, and cultural sensitivities of potential customers. Taking into account these factors prevents the delivery of inappropriate offers that may clash with customers’ religious or cultural practices, ensuring respectful and relevant interactions.
Behavioral: Identifying the optimal timing and preferences for customer spending. Factors like holidays, tax benefits, and individual purchasing behaviors play a critical role in determining when and on which products customers are most likely to invest their money. This understanding enables businesses to tailor promotions and optimize marketing strategies accordingly.
Salesforce CDP ensures seamless compatibility with major systems and applications, including Salesforce Marketing Cloud, Service Cloud, Interaction Studio, Commerce Cloud, Datorama, and Loyalty Management. These integrations are fully accessible from within Salesforce CDP, enabling effortless data flow and functionality. For existing users of Salesforce products, native connectors facilitate seamless integration with Salesforce CDP without the need for extensive pre-coding. Furthermore, Salesforce CDP offers integration with the AWS cloud (Amazon Web Services) and grants access to AppExchange with a range of available applications. It guarantees a robust connection with external applications, including ERP systems. Moreover, Salesforce CDP continually expands its API, empowering developers to integrate more freely and in real-time with the CDP platform.
With Salesforce CDP, updating your information becomes effortless, saving you valuable time. The platform enables easy editing of its data model objects (DMO), allowing you to swiftly make changes to your data structure. Additionally, Salesforce CDP offers the convenience of copying and transferring complete segments, including their descriptions, information, and filters, to new segments. This eliminates the need to meticulously review and re-enter the acquired information, streamlining the process and reducing effort.
Salesforce CDP simplifies data collection and communication in the cloud, leveraging the cloud information model (CIM). It allows you to seamlessly integrate data from various sources, even if they have different structures and formats. By standardizing data interoperability between cloud applications, the CIM ensures smooth data integration. The model organizes content into domains or subject areas, representing essential business concepts.
In summary, Salesforce CDP has emerged as a powerful tool for marketers and organizations at large. Customer Data Platform offers a comprehensive 360-degree view of all customers within a single, easily manageable, and intelligently segmented space.
Innovative Automation Rules in Marketing Cloud Account Engagement (Pardot)
Automation Rules are one of the most powerful tools in the Marketing Cloud Account Engagement (Pardot) marketing automation platform. They allow you to automate repetitive tasks and trigger specific actions based on pre-defined conditions. Here are five creative ways you can use Pardot Automation Rules to streamline your marketing processes and enhance the customer experience.
Lead Nurturing: Automatically send targeted and personalized email campaigns to leads based on their behavior and interests. For example, you can send an email to leads who have visited a specific page on your website or opened a previous email.
Lead Scoring: Assign scores to leads based on their engagement with your brand. You can use Automation Rules to adjust lead scores based on various criteria such as email opens, form submissions, and page visits. This information can then be used to prioritize leads and determine which ones are ready for sales outreach.
Data Management: Use Automation Rules to keep your Pardot data clean and organized. For example, you can use a rule to automatically update lead information or move leads to a different list based on certain criteria.
Segmentation: Segment your database based on specific criteria such as location, job title, and engagement level. You can then use Automation Rules to trigger targeted campaigns to these segments.
Sales Alerts: Integrate Pardot with your CRM and use Automation Rules to trigger sales alerts when leads are ready for follow-up. For example, you can use a rule to notify the sales team when a lead’s score reaches a certain threshold or when a lead submits a form.
By using Marketing Cloud Account Engagement (Pardot) Automation Rules in these creative ways, you can streamline your marketing processes, personalize the customer experience, and ultimately drive more conversions. If you’re not using Automation Rules yet, now is the time to start!
Businesses are relying on Salesforce to enhance their customer journeys and experiences, and they’re looking for individuals with expertise in the Salesforce Marketing Cloud and Pardot. Elevate your career and set yourself up for success by earning a Salesforce Marketing Certification.
Why Get Certified?
The marketing landscape is rapidly evolving, driven by innovation, strategy, data, and talented marketers like yourself. The Salesforce State of Marketing Report provides insights into this new era of marketing transformation. In partnership with our customers and partners, Salesforce is creating millions of job opportunities around the world. According to the IDC, the Salesforce Economy will generate 4.2 million new jobs and impact the global GDP by over $1.2 trillion by 2024. By gaining certification, you’ll stay competitive and stand out in the Salesforce ecosystem.
Where to Begin?
Getting started with learning Marketing Cloud and Pardot has never been easier, thanks to Trailhead. Trailhead offers free, self-paced learning modules, projects, and trailmixes customized by role and skill level. With Trailhead GO, the exclusive iOS app, you can learn at your own pace, wherever and whenever you want. If you need additional guidance, check out Trailhead LIVE, where you can watch live and on-demand videos from experts on the latest in-demand skills.
You can use Trailhead to explore a career in Salesforce marketing and the endless potential it offers. Start with the “Build Your Marketing Career on Salesforce” trailmix if you’re new to marketing with Salesforce. For a deeper understanding of Salesforce marketing solutions, take a look at Trailhead Academy, which provides in-person and virtual training globally.
Ready to Get Certified!
The resources you need to get certified are available on Trailhead. Learn about the various marketing certifications offered by Salesforce, review exam guides, and register for your exam on Trailhead. This video can answer all your certification questions.
Join the Trailblazer Community to connect with other marketers and get help and inspiration. Attend events and join local Community Groups to prepare for your exam, find a study buddy, and support others in the community.
What’s Next?
After getting certified, continue your learning journey with Trailhead. New marketing content is added regularly, and you can use Trailhead Connect to network and find a mentor. Showcase your newly acquired skills on Trailblazer.me, a unified profile that displays your Salesforce skills and credentials.
The world of marketing technology is changing rapidly, and while there is uncertainty around the economy and automation in particular, one thing is clear: companies that leverage AI and marketing technology most effectively are poised to inherit the business success of the future. …and we could not be more excited to be part of that future.
