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Smart and flexible solutions are needed to strengthen online business and marketing, create personalized customer experiences and thereby generate sales in an innovative way. This article will highlight which approaches are possible.

Article on the Salesforce Germany blog

I had the opportunity to publish my article on the official Salesforce Germany blog. As I know, many of my readers don’t speak german, I prepared an english transcript for you, that you can find below.

However, if you happen to be one of my german speaking readers, you might as well read the original publication “Intelligentes und krisenresistentes Marketing mit der Salesforce Marketing Cloud und Einstein” on the Salesforce Germany blog.

English transcript

In the current situation, many companies lose their offline business due to lockdowns in their countries. Therefore they are challenged to strengthen the online area and to focus on digital customer relations more than ever!

But how can you achieve this with your company without letting the effort explode? A step-by-step strategy, which on the one hand brings rapid improvements in the current situation, and on the other hand includes adjustments as a preparation for the “Next Normal” is essential for success. Artificial intelligence can support many of these tasks so that your current campaigns can be taken to the next level with little effort. The intelligent features of Salesforce Marketing Cloud can help you get there.

Content personalization as a first step

If you are not already doing so, it is especially important to start with the basic topic of personalization. Use existing data and address your customers by name - even in the subject line to improve the opening rate. Once this step has been completed, you should take care of relevant communication by dividing customer groups into individual segments - for example, according to interests, products purchased, demographic data, etc. Once these cornerstones are in place, you can move on to more innovative solutions.

Innovative approaches for further optimization

You have already implemented the basic measures for personalised communication, but are not yet achieving the desired result? The information should definitely reach your customers, preferably via the appropriate channel at the appropriate time and at the lowest possible cost? With the clever use of Einstein - the artificial intelligence of Salesforce - you can optimize your campaigns to achieve this.

The featureset is constantly being expanded to make it easier for you to send relevant messages to your customers at the right frequency and time. Some of the functions can be easily applied via the Journey Builder user interface for visual planning of customer journeys. For example, you can make decisions based on the email opening probability, allowing you to choose the most appropriate and cost-effective way to communicate. If the likelihood of a contact is very high, you can select the intended email for that customer from your existing campaign. Of course, the email should be sent at the perfect time based on historical data of your contacts - Einstein’s send time optimization makes it possible with just one click.

For the remaining customers, depending on the likelihood of opening, an incentive in the form of a voucher including a hint in the subject line can be provided. Or simply a different channel - such as SMS, mobile push or an online advertising campaign - can be chosen. It is as simple as it sounds.

For the continuing transition to the “Next Normal” there are numerous features that can improve your online performance: Product recommendations based on customer behaviour on your website, campaigns for shopping cart abandonments and much more are amongst the current and constantly growing range of features.

As a Salesforce Marketing Champion and consultant at ec4u - a Salesforce Partner specialized in digitalization-related topics - it is my passion to help you, my customers and all Salesforce Trailblazers to enable this transformation of customer experiences and to make you the “Digital Champion” of your customers. Having helped several companies with the implementation, I’ve seen the business value and positive effects myself and recommend using these features to deliver an awesome customer experience, reduce your costs through more targeted communication and increase your sales performance at the same time.

Do you want to learn more about the possibilities of artificial intelligence in Marketing Cloud and how to get the most out of other products on the Salesforce platform? Then join the presentations and interactive discussions at the “ec4u CRM Summercamp” - a free event on July 16th starting at 10 am CEST. Due to the current challenges, of course live and online, comfortably from your desk. Register and be part of it. I look forward to your participation!