salesforce.com (CRM) Announces New Instagram-Focused Marketing Tools

salesforce.com (NYSE: CRM) posted the following to its official blog on Tuesday:

Marketing and visual storytelling have been synonymous from the days of full page ads in newspapers and magazines, to full color billboards and television. In the digital and mobile world, there has never been a channel at scale to rival TV in its ability to powerfully engage consumers with the beauty of the visual image.

That is until Instagram launched in late 2010. Almost overnight, it attracted a large audience eager to use their ever improving smartphone cameras to share what they captured in a channel solely dedicated to visual storytelling. Instagram’s clever filters added to the experience, and passionate communities were born around different interests like fashion, food and travel.

It wasn’t long before innovative marketers recognized this global adoption and brands began setting up a presence on Instagram to take advantage of engagement levels that today include 70 million daily photo uploads and 2.5 billion likes per day. Global brands like L’Oreal, McDonald’s, KLM and Chobani were among the early adopters, utilizing Instagram to engage with customers, convert fans into brand advocates and find new customers.

When Instagram initially launched its advertising offering in 2013, its user community was 150 million strong. By June 2015, that community had grown to over 300 million globally. According to a recent report from eMarketer, Instagram is expected to represent over 10% of Facebook’s global revenues by 2017, including 28% of all US mobile revenues.

Today, we are excited to announce that Salesforce is offering a whole new set of tools for marketers to engage with customers on Instagram across our suite of Marketing Cloud products; Social.com for managing advertising campaigns at scale, Active Audiences to unlock and sync CRM data in Salesforce to optimize advertising and Social Studio for publishing, engagement, customer service, and analytics.

Already we are seeing great success with our customers who sync their CRM data and email lists with digital advertising. Here are a few examples:

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  Amusement park operator Cedar Fair saw 3X ROI by marketing season passes to last year’s day-pass holders, and to lookalikes of last year’s day-pass holders.

  
  


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  An online retailer reached 77% more of its email list by adding efficient Facebook advertising. The company saw a 17:1 ROI on ads that reached email openers, and immediately implemented coordinated email and Facebook advertising as an always-on tactic.

  
  


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  An apparel retailer earned a 10:1 ROI (return on ad spend) by reaching customers who had recently signed up for email in a store, and inviting them to shop online.

  
  


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  Apartments.com saw a 35% increase in engagement rates and 30% lower cost to drive traffic to its promotion using Active Audiences to reach subscribers and lookalikes.

  
  

“L’Oreal as the world leader in beauty, uses visual channels to communicate with our consumers, with the objective of promoting education around our beauty products. Our ambition of delivering beauty for all, requires a tailored approach in our messaging. Social.com enables us to be hyper-targeted in our social media buying, and serve the right message to the right audience. This is particularly relevant for retargeting on Instagram, as the platform is 100% visual.” —Marco Ruschioni, CRM Director, L’Oreal

With the Salesforce Marketing Cloud Instagram integration, marketers can:

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  Advertise: Buy and manage Instagram advertising with Social.com. Now, advertisers have a single platform for Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn. Most of the ad targeting available for Facebook is also available on Instagram, including Active Audiences. Active Audiences unlocks your CRM data in Salesforce to securely and powerfully reach your customers, target lookalikes, and optimize advertising within the customer journey. Using Active Audiences, Marketing Cloud customers can now sync audience segments to Instagram for targeted advertising.

  
  


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  Publish: Marketers want to understand the effectiveness of their Instagram campaigns in driving reach and effectiveness. They also want to use their most compelling Instagram content in other digital campaigns. Social Studio helps marketers publish great content to Instagram, track campaign performance, and share the most successful Instagram images with multiple teams and across social networks.

  
  


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  Engage: Marketers can earn a more relevant voice in the Instagram community by participating in conversations happening on their profiles. With Social Studio, community management teams can review discussions, automatically route and prioritize critical responses and collaborate as a team.

  
  


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  Service: The world’s leading brands are resolving customer service issues via social media, alongside email, mobile, live chat and other care channels. With the combined power of the Service Cloud and Marketing Cloud, brands will be able to resolve customer service issues on Instagram in a timely manner and deliver a great experience.

  
  


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  Analyze: Our powerful social listening and analysis capabilities, born out of Radian6 and now part of Social Studio mobile app.

  
  

As Instagram says so eloquently; images are a universal language. Salesforce is now excited to offer marketers the opportunity to extend their reach to customers on one of the most engaging channels in mobile, and coordinate those efforts with every other channel in the customer journey.

At Salesforce, we have a history of leadership and innovation in digital advertising and social marketing. We are a partner to all of the major social networks, including Facebook where we are a Facebook Marketing Partner across Ad Technology, Content Marketing, Community Management, and Audience Onboarding. Additionally, Salesforce is a launch partner of Twitter’s Ads API program, Pinterest’s MarTech Developer Alpha, and LinkedIn’s Sponsored Updates program.

Learn more about Salesforce Marketing Cloud: request a demo or read the latest Salesforce Marketing Cloud Advertising Benchmark report, highlighting pricing and industry trends with aggregate data compiled from the campaigns of global brands.

salesforce.com (CRM) Announces New Instagram-Focused Marketing Tools

salesforce.com: LiveIntent Integration Is Another Content Marketing Value-Add

Summary

• Email marketing hybrid LiveIntent is out with news of an integration with salesforce.com and its Marketing Cloud Active Audiences Platform.


• LiveIntent, for those unfamiliar, is a private company that offers what is most easily described as a real-time bidding platform for email marketing.


• This helps salesforce.com customers avoid banner blindness for prop advertisements, position content with core-content strengthening value-add items, and helps the email itself become more visible in general.


• Because of the uniqueness of the LiveIntent integration this is now another hurdle a salesforce.com customer has to jump to exit the ecosystem.

Email marketing hybrid LiveIntent is out with news of an integration with salesforce.com (NYSE:CRM) and its Marketing Cloud Active Audiences Platform; this is an integration that I think could be much more meaningful to salesforce.com than many are probably viewing it as currently.

LiveIntent, for those unfamiliar, is a private company that offers what is most easily described as a real-time bidding platform for email marketing – think The Rubicon Project (NYSE:RUBI)/Criteo (NASDAQ:CRTO) but strictly for emails. LiveIntent offers a fascinating (highly polarizing for those determining its value to housing platforms – salesforce.com in this case) platform that uses end-user specific identifiers and data to dial-in email proximity marketing at the time the email is opened, not when the email is sent.

Those are two big differentiators to be clear on, that we’re talking about intent based advertisements and advertising that are not interruption based. I think the salesforce.com integration is big in that the proximity marketing is intent based AND I think that’s the sole reason salesforce.com chose to integrate at all. I’ll clarify.

To be perfectly clear, LiveIntent advertisements come in the form of email skins or whitespace fillers – the advertisements are not disruptive or directly distracting, at least according to feedback data that LiveIntent has gathered. LiveIntent also offers a programmatic delivery of customer owned (in this case salesforce.com’s customers) advertising inventory as well. This means that the customer (again, salesforce.com’s customers) can choose to use LiveIntent to programmatically deliver its own ads or it can choose to create revenue via delivery of outside party ads. In either case, so far LiveIntent has shown metrics that are impressive and that should benefit salesforce.com customers (at least those metrics that have been made public).

salesforce.com doesn’t need help from anybody. I think its market cap and its dominant positioning in the CRM space speaks to that pretty clearly. That said, it still chose to integrate with LiveIntent which means it desired the integration. Again, I think the sole reason for this is that the email proximity marketing offered by LiveIntent isn’t simply guess work marketing. It’s relevant marketing that has higher click through rates, “10X engagement” when skins are deployed, and “28 seconds” of view time (data sourced from a LiveIntent presentation at LiveIntent.com – data gathered by LiveIntent via salesforce.com, HubSpot, Marketo, etc.).

As LiveIntent CEO Matt Keiser phrases it, “it practically rivals television”. That might be a bit of hyperbole but LiveIntent is clearly on to something if salesforce.com is taking notice.

So how does this benefit salesforce.com customers?

Well, the ability to use data and analytics to advertise is never a bad thing. LiveIntent allows salesforce.com customers to not deploy pre-set advertisements but to advertise using all the tools of modern technology in real-time. This helps them avoid banner blindness for prop advertisements, position content with core-content strengthening value-add items (think Microsoft sending an email about the new Xbox while wrapping the email in a new sporting-game skin to a user that has data gathered that says he or she likes sports), and helps the email itself become more visible in general. All are good things.

Then there’s also the fact that salesforce.com customers can recoup costs that are normally sunk in email deployment. With email typically being a loss leader from an advertisement and engagement standpoint the ability to in-email advertise can incrementally contribute back to the breakeven of the effort. Potentially allowing the customer to do more or to simply not have a negative contribution margin from the initiative.

But without a doubt the single largest value-add of the integration is the “integration” of new tech to the old tech emailing. Using those CRM notes, using that collected data, and using the entirety of the customer’s journey to better target and make more effective the actual touch point. The ability for the programmatic, RTB platform from LiveIntent to increase efficacy levels is only as good as the data inputs its pulling from – inputs that are all within the salesforce.com platform. This should do well to strengthen the already strong value-prop of the CRM offered and make even stickier the CRM.

That’s a good thing for salesforce.com and those invested.

So while this might have seemed like just another incremental integration, because of the uniqueness of the LiveIntent offering, it certainly isn’t. This is now another hurdle a salesforce.com customer has to jump to exit the ecosystem.

Continue to be long CRM.

Good luck everybody.

Source: salesforce.com: LiveIntent Integration Is Another Content Marketing Value-Add

Disclosure: I am/we are long RUBI. (More…)I wrote this article myself, and it expresses my own opinions. I am not receiving compensation for it (other than from Seeking Alpha). I have no business relationship with any company whose stock is mentioned in this article.

salesforce.com: LiveIntent Integration Is Another Content Marketing Value-Add

salesforce.com (CRM) Debuts Next-Gen Marketing Cloud

salesforce.com (NYSE: CRM) unveiled the next generation of the Marketing Cloud, making any journey possible. With new enhancements to Journey Builder, companies now have one place to map and optimize journeys that span sales, service, marketing, custom apps and more. In addition, the next generation of Active Audiences allows marketers to seamlessly orchestrate ad targeting alongside digital marketing and across the digital advertising ecosystem with partners Facebook, LiveRamp, LiveIntent, Neustar, Twitter and Viant.

The ubiquity of smartphones, connected products, apps, wearable devices and digital communications creates trillions of customer interactions every day. The customer’s journey and every customer interaction, whether it’s engaging with a marketing campaign, speaking with a salesperson or getting a customer support case resolved, is an opportunity to build a relationship and define the brand. Because of this, companies are now competing on customer experience.

However, delivering an exceptional customer experience across all channels is not easy. While marketers have ample access to customer data, activating that data and engaging customers with relevant content across every channel is a significant challenge. To address this challenge, marketers are moving from manually executed batch and blast campaigns to event-triggered automation and real-time personalization.

“Marketers now have an unprecedented opportunity to engage customers at every step of their journey,” said Scott McCorkle, CEO of Salesforce Marketing Cloud, Salesforce. “The next generation of the Salesforce Marketing Cloud uniquely helps companies take action on data from any customer interaction to deliver the right content at the right time across every channel.”

The Next Generation of the Salesforce Marketing Cloud: Now Any Journey is PossibleThe Marketing Cloud is the world’s #1 digital marketing platform. It enables marketers to build a single view of the customer, map and optimize every journey, deliver personalized content on every channel — email, advertising, social, web, mobile, apps — and measure the impact on their business. The next generation of the Marketing Cloud delivers breakthrough innovations that empower marketers to create any kind of journey and activate CRM data to run ads across more than 100 digital advertising networks and technologies including web/display, social, mobile, apps and video.

• Next Generation Journey Builder: The next generation of Journey Builder empowers companies to guide customers on 1-to-1 journeys across channels and devices to ensure they always deliver the right message, at the right time, via the right channel. Now companies can make any journey possible and connect every interaction across every department, from post-service customer satisfaction to product adoption programs, and loyalty programs to employee onboarding. Marketers can empower all teams within the organization to unleash the power of the world’s #1 CRM and connect all interactions along the customer journey to deliver customer success.
  
  • New Native Journeys With Sales Cloud and Service Cloud: New pre-built Sales Cloud and Service Cloud events and activities in Journey Builder make it easier than ever to manage customer journeys that span marketing, sales, service and other kinds of interactions.
  
  
  • New Pre-Built Journey Triggers: Now, for the first time, Salesforce objects like contacts, leads, accounts and cases, as well as custom objects are available as pre-built triggers in Journey Builder. Marketers can automate inbound event-driven triggers, such as a customer joining a loyalty program or downloading an app, which then send the customer a message on any channel to begin their journey. Triggers can also automatically modify data in the customer contact record or set up wait times and decision splits to adjust the journey in real-time based on customer interactions across sales, marketing and service.
  
  


• Next Generation Active Audiences: Today, Salesforce announces the next generation of its ad platform Active Audiences, which syncs ad targeting with CRM, empowering marketers to run more relevant ads across all of the places they execute campaigns. New partnerships will extend its scope to reach audiences across the broad display advertising ecosystem. Active Audiences can now help marketers:
  
  • Connect with customers and prospects across the display advertising ecosystem: New Marketing Cloud partners announced today — LiveRamp, LiveIntent, Neustar and Viant — will empower Salesforce users to activate CRM data and run ads across more than 100 digital advertising networks and technologies.
  
  
  • Coordinate targeted, relevant advertising to drive sales, service, and marketing journeys: Full integration with Journey Builder empowers marketers to bring targeted, relevant advertising in line with sales, service and marketing journeys. Active Audiences orchestrates digital advertising based on the customer’s entire experience with a brand – the emails and mobile messages they open, their purchase history, their engagement with the customer service team and where they are in a sales cycle.
  
  
  • Target people across social networks: Salesforce is a Facebook Marketing Partner for ad technology, content marketing, community management, and audience onboarding; a LinkedIn Certified Marketing Partner across sponsored updates and company pages; and a Twitter Official Partner. Through Active Audiences, marketers can reach their customers and lookalikes on Facebook and Twitter. With Salesforce Social.com, they can create and optimize media at scale across Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.
  
  

Comments on the News

• “Having the rich breadth and depth of data from our online and offline customer engagement in the Salesforce Marketing Cloud allows us to deliver more relevant content to our customers,” said Kimberly Ruthenbeck, director of Web Customer Experience, Room & Board. “Making the right offer to an engaged customer at the optimal time is every retailer’s sweet spot. The direct conversion from customers who engage with predictive content powered by the Marketing Cloud and then click to buy is 150 percent higher than the site average.”


• “With the Salesforce Marketing Cloud, FleetCor is bridging the gap between marketing, sales, and service,” said Pamela Coan, director of customer marketing, FleetCor. “By integrating all of our customer data, we can now act on it in real-time across customer facing departments, which is leading to increased customer engagement and satisfaction.”


• “Leading organizations that successfully exploit business moments are able to accurately create distinct brand, customer service or sales values based on a nuanced understanding of their customers’ journeys,” wrote Brian Prentice, research VP, Tiffani Bova, distinguished analyst VP, and Olive Huang, research director of Gartner, in the May 2015 report entitled, “Connect Business Moments, Personas and Journey Maps to Boost Customer Experience Outcomes.” “To optimize brand, sales and customer service actions, each part of the enterprise must be working off a common view of their customers’ journeys. This way, organizations are able to assess the impact of their actions relative to the overall customer experience and avoid confirmation biases.”

Global Leaders Deliver 1:1 Customer Journeys at Scale with the Salesforce Marketing CloudLeading global brands like FleetCor, Room & Board and the Michael J. Fox Foundation harness the Marketing Cloud to connect with customers in a whole new way. Companies that have deployed Marketing Cloud have seen an average of 43 percent increase in marketing campaign ROI, 44 percent increase in lead volume and 46 percent faster campaign deployment, according to a recent third-party research report sponsored by Salesforce1. The Marketing Cloud’s customer journey capabilities are seeing increased traction, as Salesforce gained the most market share in the worldwide CRM marketing software category based on 2014 total market share revenue, according to Gartner.

Source: Gartner Inc., Market Share: All Software Markets, Worldwide, 2014, Bianca Francesca, et al, March 31, 2015.

Pricing and Availability

• Salesforce Marketing Cloud and Journey Builder are generally available today for customers. Journey Builder pricing starts at $3,750 per month.


• New Journey Builder activities, triggers and events with Sales Cloud and Service Cloud will be available in Q4 2015.


• Active Audiences is generally available today for customers. New Active Audiences display features are expected to be generally available in Q3 2015. Active Audiences pricing starts at $4,200 per month.

salesforce.com (CRM) Debuts Next-Gen Marketing Cloud