Salesforce Unveils Updates to Buoy Marketing Cloud Capabilities

Amid speculation it is in negotiations to make its second big-ticket purchase in less than a year, Salesforce has announced a series of Datorama updates to its marketing cloud, which it hopes will prove advantageous in its ubercompetitive sector of the industry. Salesforce is reportedly in talks to buy Israel-based ClickSoftware Technologies for $1.5 billion, a deal which, if realized, would come six months after it purchased AI outfit Datorama in a transaction thought to be valued at $800 million. Using its recently acquired capabilities, Salesforce today announced several features within its marketing cloud offering. They include Datorama Marketing Cloud Connectors, a new service that lets marketers better visualize campaign performance on social media properties (both paid and earned) and compare that to performance on other channels such as email and mobile; Datorama Developer Portal, a set of tools that lets media planning and buying teams more seamlessly onboard advertising briefs from marketers, including a dashboard that lets them implement a campaign based on these signals and share among concerned stakeholders; and Datorama Activation Center, a service that lets organizations unearth and share customer insights based on audience data and further optimize their campaigns, such as changing spend on an ongoing campaign based on those insights. Jay Wilder, Datorama director of product marketing, told Adweek that providing marketing cloud analytics is a challenge that needs constant innovation and that much of the integrations have been geared toward removing the headaches inherent in the process. “It's really about connecting the data to the decision that has to be made and then making that as automatic as possible,” Wilder said. “Once you have all the data coming in real time and you can see the performance, then you want to take control of that.” Jon Suarez-Davis, Salesforce, svp product marketing, marketing cloud, told Adweek the integrations that have taken place since the Datorama acquisition have been the direct result of what marketers have asked for. “Every single customer is asking for the solution as to how do they bring all their marketing investment into one place and then try and make sense of it," he said. Suarez-Davis, added, “Whether they have an in-house, out-house or hybrid model, they need it all and they need it all fast. ... Marketers are now responsible for the entire customer experience, so what we're doing is we're really focusing on how we can integrate [insights] across marketing, commerce, service and sales.” Salesforce declined to comment when asked about its reported interest in purchasing ClickSoftware Technologies. Although, with heightened competition in the marketing cloud space, many market observers forecast a raft of M&A activity in the sector in 2019 with the ability to help marketers identify their customers across a range of different environments considered an attractive capability for some of its largest names.

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Salesforce Unveils Updates to Buoy Marketing Cloud Capabilities

Including social media insights, developer portal and activation center

Ronan Shields

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Ronan Shields