Salesforce Unveils Marketing Cloud Lightning, Enabling Marketers to Deliver Next-Generation Customer Experiences

ATLANTA, May 10, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Salesforce (NYSE: CRM), the Customer Success Platform and world's #1 CRM company, today announced Marketing Cloud Lightning—a new user experience, platform and ecosystem that will give marketers the ability to create 1-to-1 customer journeys that span sales, service, marketing and more. Salesforce Lightning propelled Sales Cloud and Service Cloud to the next level, and by extending it to Marketing Cloud, companies will be able to deliver smarter journeys across the entire Customer Success Platform, culminating in unmatched customer experiences. In addition, the company announced Marketing Cloud for Google Customer Match, the latest innovation in its ongoing strategic partnership with Google, which marketers can use to deploy CRM-powered advertising across Google Search, YouTube and Gmail.

Today's connected customers expect personalized, seamless experiences whether they're receiving a promotional offer via SMS or querying a service department via a tweet—they want brands to meet their needs, on their terms. As the lines between sales, service and marketing continue to blur, marketers are taking a leadership role in delivering a unified customer experience. In fact, according to Salesforce's recent 2016 State of Marketing report, the majority of high-performing marketing teams (58 percent) are driving customer experience initiatives across the business, compared to 8 percent of underperformers. To accomplish this, marketers need a new platform that enables them to deliver a consistent brand experience across every touch point, regardless of channel or device.

Marketing Cloud Lightning—Enabling Marketers to Deliver Next-Generation Customer Experiences
Earlier this year, Salesforce introduced Sales Cloud Lightning and Service Cloud Lightning, the next-generation of its sales and service solutions built on the Lightning Platform. Today, the company unveiled Marketing Cloud Lightning, its vision to bring the power of Lightning to digital marketers so they can create more intelligent and personalized customer experiences. Marketing Cloud Lightning will enable marketers to:

• Have a consistent user experience across the Customer Success Platform. The new Marketing Cloud Lightning will offer a modern and intelligent user experience across any device, enabling marketers to work faster and smarter, and deliver better results. With common Salesforce identity and navigation, marketers will now be able to work seamlessly across the entire Customer Success Platform—streamlining processes that span marketing, sales, service or other departments and enabling more comprehensive, integrated customer journeys.
• Leverage Lightning Components to extend and build new apps. Marketing Cloud Lightning includes new Lightning Components—the reusable building blocks for assembling apps with drag-and-drop ease—enabling companies to develop and customize new business apps that meet their unique needs, leveraging the combined capabilities of Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, custom apps and now Marketing Cloud. Salesforce will deliver Lightning Components ranging from core email functionality, like previewing emails and tracking email open rates, to journey capabilities, like automatically adding a lead or contact to a journey and reviewing the journey history of a specific lead or contact. In addition, customers will be able to use third-party components built by Salesforce partners and available from the Salesforce AppExchange.
• Leverage data science to analyze information from the web and data throughout Salesforce to predict customer behavior. With new Predictive Journeys technology, marketers will be able to use data science to analyze information from the web like browsing activity and purchase history, along with all of their Salesforce data, like service hold times, customer satisfaction scores and email marketing campaign performance, to anticipate customer behavior and ultimately drive business results.
• Build and automate journeys for the entire customer experience. With Marketing Cloud Lightning, any activity in Salesforce can trigger a customer journey. For example, if a customer clicks on a Facebook Lead Ad, which automatically populates the lead with the information the customer has shared with Facebook, that lead can then be routed to Salesforce where a more personalized journey can be triggered based on what is known about the customer. Similarly, if the customer indicates in a post purchase follow-up email survey that she's not satisfied, a case could be automatically opened, triggering a new journey.

Comments on the News

• "In today's connected world, marketers manage the entire customer experience," said Scott McCorkle, CEO of Salesforce Marketing Cloud, Salesforce. "With Marketing Cloud Lightning, marketers will now have the tools they need to create smarter, faster 1-to-1 customer journeys that span sales, service, marketing and more—enabling them to deliver seamless, highly personalized experiences."
• "We've built our entire value proposition around customer experience and engagement. Salesforce and Marketing Cloud gives us the flexibility and personalization to communicate with our travelers across any channel," said Brad Rutta, vice president of marketing and communications, Berkshire Hathaway Travel Protection. "As our customer journeys continue to evolve, our products and services require a platform that can scale to meet customers' needs."
• "Nestle sells more than 1 billion products per day, however, from a generating demand standpoint, we focus not only on marketing and sales, but also on holistically engaging with consumers to leverage all opportunities for interaction across a personalized journey," said Antonio Sciuto, chief marketing officer, Nestlé Waters North America. "Salesforce has enabled us to scale our understanding of how all consumer touch points fit together to help us fuel smarter, 1-to-1 journeys across channels to delight consumers and lead to more satisfied customers."
• "As marketers seek to integrate multiple silos of customer information to provide personalized, connected experiences for customers, it's vital to have a platform that enables this in a smart, fast and connected way," said Rebecca Wettemann, vice president of research, Nucleus Research. "We've already seen significant ROI for Marketing Cloud customers, and by extending the power of Lightning to Marketing Cloud, we'll see new ways to engage customers 1-to-1 while driving even greater productivity and broader benefits."

Salesforce Powers Smarter Digital Advertising on Google with the World's #1 CRM
Today's connected customers expect personalized and relevant experiences, cueing marketers to adopt identity-based advertising strategies. To help companies adapt to this shift, today Salesforce delivered Advertising Studio, its new advertising solution, which allows users to leverage Salesforce CRM data to deploy smarter digital advertising across the world's largest audience platforms, such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and now Google. By integrating with Google's Customer Match API, Salesforce clients can optimize ads for their highest-value customers—those that are part of loyalty programs or have signed up for an email list—across Google Search, YouTube, and Gmail. Now marketers can:

• Leverage a single view of the customer in Salesforce to easily create audience segments and target them on Google Search, Gmail and YouTube;
• Generate Similar Audiences to reach new customers on YouTube and Gmail who are likely to be interested in key products and services.
• Coordinate advertising on Google properties directly alongside other digital advertising and marketing campaigns across email, mobile, social, web and IoT.

Salesforce for Marketers Enables Brands to Deliver 1-to-1 Customer Journeys
Marketing Cloud Lightning is the latest breakthrough by Salesforce to help marketers transform the way they connect with customers. Because Marketing Cloud Lightning is an integral part of the Customer Success Platform, companies can leverage every facet of Salesforce's solutions to enhance their marketing programs. For example, marketers can:

• Deliver consistent customer experiences across every interaction using Marketing Cloud Lightning, Sales Cloud Lightning and Service Cloud Lightning;
• Ensure the best leads are passed to the sales team, while the rest are placed in nurture journeys using Pardot;
• Channel the energy of the most engaged customers to evangelize the brand and help other customers with Community Cloud;
• Gain a 360-degree view of their business by turning customer data into actionable insights with Analytics Cloud;
• Process and analyze billions of signals from connected sensors, apps and devices to create contextually relevant customer experiences with the IoT Cloud; and
• Build digital experiences and custom apps that embody the brand and that customers will love using App Cloud.

From sales to service, app development to online communities, Salesforce provides a complete Customer Success Platform that enables brands to deliver exceptional experiences and delight customers at every opportunity. Leading brands like Berkshire Hathaway Travel Protection, DonorsChoose.org, Life Time, Mattel, Nestlé Waters and Room & Board are connecting with their customers in a whole new way with Salesforce.

Pricing & Availability

• Marketing Cloud Lightning supporting unified customer journeys and data is generally available today. The Marketing Cloud Lightning Experience and the first set of Marketing Cloud Lightning Components are expected to be in preview the latter half of 2016. The new experience will be included at no additional cost in every Marketing Cloud edition, which starts at $400 per month.
• Predictive Journeys, including Predictive Scoring and Audiences, is currently in beta and will be included for accounts with the Salesforce Marketing Enterprise edition and available to Pro and Corporate editions with the Advanced Data & Analytics package at a $0.10 per contact rate.
• Advertising Studio is expected to be generally available in July, which will include Marketing Cloud for Google Customer Match. Advertising Studio is sold as an add-on to Marketing Cloud editions.

Additional Information

• Watch the Salesforce Connections Keynote: https://www.salesforce.com/video/238243/ 
• Learn more about the Salesforce Marketing Cloud: https://www.salesforce.com/marketing-cloud/overview/
• Learn more about the new Advertising Studio and Marketing Cloud for Google Customer Match: https://www.marketingcloud.com/blog/marketing-cloud-advertising-studio-open-display-ecosystem 
• Learn more about the new Email Studio app: http://www.marketingcloud.com/blog/email-studio-launch
• Learn more about the new Marketing Cloud mobile app: http://www.marketingcloud.com/blog/marketing-cloud-mobile-app   

Connect with Salesforce

• Like Salesforce and Salesforce Marketing Cloud on Facebook.http://facebook.com/salesforce
• Follow @salesforce and @marketingcloud on Twitter.http://twitter.com/salesforce
• Read the Salesforce Marketing Cloud blog at http://www.exacttarget.com/blog/ and the Salesforce blog at https://www.salesforce.com/blog/category/marketing.html.

About Salesforce
Salesforce, the Customer Success Platform and world's #1 CRM, empowers companies to connect with their customers in a whole new way. For more information about Salesforce (NYSE: CRM), visit:www.salesforce.com.

Any unreleased services or features referenced in this or other press releases or public statements are not currently available and may not be delivered on time or at all. Customers who purchase Salesforce applications should make their purchase decisions based upon features that are currently available. Salesforce has headquarters in San Francisco, with offices in Europe and Asia, and trades on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol "CRM." For more information please visit http://www.salesforce.com, or call 1-800-NO-SOFTWARE.

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