Dreamforce 2018: Latest Trends You Should Know About
Posted: Thu Dec 05, 2024 6:56 am
Over the past week in San Francisco, I have had the opportunity to speak with marketing professionals from both the US and the rest of the world about the new technologies that are impacting the sector, the most relevant projects and, of course, the approach and evolution of digital marketing in their respective markets.
There is no other time or place on the planet where you can have such a density of practical knowledge, the latest trends and networking options at your fingertips.
The range of options is so vast that it's almost impossible to avoid the feeling that there's something you're missing out on.
Trying to explain the magnitude of this event to someone who has not experienced it is quite difficult. As usual, all tickets were sold out in advance. More than 170,000 people gathered to discover, first-hand, the latest technological advances from Silicon Valley, as well as the bets of giants such as Amazon, Uber or Unilever in the field of marketing, sales and customer management.
As soon as I had my credentials, backpack, water bottle and conference materials, I was on my way.
Digital Trust: regaining user trust
One of the major trends and common elements discussed at this edition of Dreamforce has been Digital Trust; or in other words, the urgent need to regain the trust of customers and Internet users, especially in everything related to the collection and use of their personal data.
Traditionally, the customer-facing pitch has been that by providing their data, it is possible to provide them with a much more personalized and satisfactory user experience.
The problem is that the last year has been plagued by scandals of all kinds involving data leaks or misuse of data.
According to Accenture’s “ Digital Trust in the IoT Era ” report , 54% of digital consumers are cautious about the information they share, due to their low confidence in the level of security provided by organizations on the Internet.
Facebook, for example, has been in the headlines over the past year for its shortcomings in this area. The result has been a drop from second to fifth place in Business Insider's annual digital trust ranking.
The conclusions drawn from Dreamforce are clear: it is essential to offer greater transparency to users and facilitate their access to stored data.
Voice Marketing: Einstein Voice
Natural language recognition capabilities have become one of the main areas of development for AI (Artificial Intelligence) applications.
Salesforce's introduction of Einstein Voice was not a surprise to anyone, but rather a clear statement of intent and a forecast of the future of user and customer interaction.
The most optimistic estimates suggest that Einstein Voice will be available from June 2019. However, the important thing is not when, but how much it will impact marketing and digital customer management.
Einstein Voice is expected to be available in two flavors: voice assistant and bot.
Among its many applications, it will include creating tasks and updating data using voice, or providing customer service through integration with Alexa and Google Assistant.
Application Integration and Analytics: Customer 360 and Google Analytics 360 Integration
If you still think Salesforce is a CRM, I'm sorry to say you're stuck in 2008.
Today, Salesforce has become a huge platform that brings together its advanced sales and customer management system, its AI-based predictive analytics solution (Einstein), as well as a varied catalogue of sector-specific or complementary applications, such as Commerce Cloud or Heroku, among others.
If we add to this the external applications that each company may be using, managing the scattered data of each client can become a real nightmare.
Earlier this year, Salesforce acquired integration specialist Mulesoft. The result of this merger was Customer 360, which aims to seamlessly integrate all data and applications, both its own and those of third parties.
One of the best examples of this integration is the agreement closed by Salesforce and Google at the end of 2017 to interconnect the Google Analytics 360º, Salesforce Sales Cloud and Salesforce Marketing Cloud platforms.
Thanks to this union, it is possible to have a complete vision of the impact that your business is having on leads and customers through advertisements, websites, apps, emails, call centers, sales managers, etc.
Artificial Intelligence and Business Intelligence: Einstein Analytics
Salesforce has long since made a decisive commitment to AI. Its paraguay phone number library knowledge of customer behavior, combined with analytical solutions based on Machine Learning, are leading to a paradigm shift in the way marketing is planned and customer relationships are managed.
I recommend you take a look at an article I published this past spring:
How Companies Using Salesforce Can Use AI
Also, I recently updated this other article on this subject:
How Artificial Intelligence will change the foundations of Marketing
With the arrival of Einstein Analytics, Salesforce aims to democratize access to data analytics, making it available to users without technical knowledge, as it did in the past with its No-Code development platform.
As far as my personal experience is concerned, the experience gained from this edition has been fantastic. I am returning with interesting collaboration agreements with North American companies, as well as with a renewed conviction that marketing in the near future is inextricably linked to new technologies.
I have no doubt that marketing departments will continue to evolve with the presence of increasingly technical and analytical profiles, accompanied by creative specialists.
You can rest assured that we at ShowerThinking will be prepared.
There is no other time or place on the planet where you can have such a density of practical knowledge, the latest trends and networking options at your fingertips.
The range of options is so vast that it's almost impossible to avoid the feeling that there's something you're missing out on.
Trying to explain the magnitude of this event to someone who has not experienced it is quite difficult. As usual, all tickets were sold out in advance. More than 170,000 people gathered to discover, first-hand, the latest technological advances from Silicon Valley, as well as the bets of giants such as Amazon, Uber or Unilever in the field of marketing, sales and customer management.
As soon as I had my credentials, backpack, water bottle and conference materials, I was on my way.
Digital Trust: regaining user trust
One of the major trends and common elements discussed at this edition of Dreamforce has been Digital Trust; or in other words, the urgent need to regain the trust of customers and Internet users, especially in everything related to the collection and use of their personal data.
Traditionally, the customer-facing pitch has been that by providing their data, it is possible to provide them with a much more personalized and satisfactory user experience.
The problem is that the last year has been plagued by scandals of all kinds involving data leaks or misuse of data.
According to Accenture’s “ Digital Trust in the IoT Era ” report , 54% of digital consumers are cautious about the information they share, due to their low confidence in the level of security provided by organizations on the Internet.
Facebook, for example, has been in the headlines over the past year for its shortcomings in this area. The result has been a drop from second to fifth place in Business Insider's annual digital trust ranking.
The conclusions drawn from Dreamforce are clear: it is essential to offer greater transparency to users and facilitate their access to stored data.
Voice Marketing: Einstein Voice
Natural language recognition capabilities have become one of the main areas of development for AI (Artificial Intelligence) applications.
Salesforce's introduction of Einstein Voice was not a surprise to anyone, but rather a clear statement of intent and a forecast of the future of user and customer interaction.
The most optimistic estimates suggest that Einstein Voice will be available from June 2019. However, the important thing is not when, but how much it will impact marketing and digital customer management.
Einstein Voice is expected to be available in two flavors: voice assistant and bot.
Among its many applications, it will include creating tasks and updating data using voice, or providing customer service through integration with Alexa and Google Assistant.
Application Integration and Analytics: Customer 360 and Google Analytics 360 Integration
If you still think Salesforce is a CRM, I'm sorry to say you're stuck in 2008.
Today, Salesforce has become a huge platform that brings together its advanced sales and customer management system, its AI-based predictive analytics solution (Einstein), as well as a varied catalogue of sector-specific or complementary applications, such as Commerce Cloud or Heroku, among others.
If we add to this the external applications that each company may be using, managing the scattered data of each client can become a real nightmare.
Earlier this year, Salesforce acquired integration specialist Mulesoft. The result of this merger was Customer 360, which aims to seamlessly integrate all data and applications, both its own and those of third parties.
One of the best examples of this integration is the agreement closed by Salesforce and Google at the end of 2017 to interconnect the Google Analytics 360º, Salesforce Sales Cloud and Salesforce Marketing Cloud platforms.
Thanks to this union, it is possible to have a complete vision of the impact that your business is having on leads and customers through advertisements, websites, apps, emails, call centers, sales managers, etc.
Artificial Intelligence and Business Intelligence: Einstein Analytics
Salesforce has long since made a decisive commitment to AI. Its paraguay phone number library knowledge of customer behavior, combined with analytical solutions based on Machine Learning, are leading to a paradigm shift in the way marketing is planned and customer relationships are managed.
I recommend you take a look at an article I published this past spring:
How Companies Using Salesforce Can Use AI
Also, I recently updated this other article on this subject:
How Artificial Intelligence will change the foundations of Marketing
With the arrival of Einstein Analytics, Salesforce aims to democratize access to data analytics, making it available to users without technical knowledge, as it did in the past with its No-Code development platform.
As far as my personal experience is concerned, the experience gained from this edition has been fantastic. I am returning with interesting collaboration agreements with North American companies, as well as with a renewed conviction that marketing in the near future is inextricably linked to new technologies.
I have no doubt that marketing departments will continue to evolve with the presence of increasingly technical and analytical profiles, accompanied by creative specialists.
You can rest assured that we at ShowerThinking will be prepared.