Siloed data made it hard to deliver truly personalized experiences.
At Salesforce, we had billions of data records outside our CRM. This siloed data lived on systems that didn’t speak the same language. If a customer attended Dreamforce, then went to our website and clicked on a Google ad, we couldn’t easily identify it was all the same person. And different teams across the company couldn’t all access this data. Marketers needed to connect all that data to unique profiles, while following privacy laws and respecting user opt-ins. And they needed a way to use it — in real time — to target customers and prospects with the right message at the right time.
Data Cloud wrangles over a billion disparate data records into tidy audience segments to power personalized marketing journeys.
Data Cloud connects all our data — billions of records — from dozens of sources like our CRM, events, webinars, website, and even third-party data. Bringing the data into the same view was the first step, but the data didn’t adhere to the same format. Data Cloud harmonized the data into consistent profiles. Now, marketers have access to what we call a truth profile for every single customer and prospect.
Now, if customers browse on the Agentforce product page on salesforce.com and attends Dreamforce where they walk through the Agentforce booth, we can track all that activity, in real time, in their truth profile. Then this data is visible in Data Cloud for marketers to build relevant emails containing the right offers — in this case, maybe a promo for an upcoming Agentforce webinar.
But to build targeted email campaigns at scale, we need to act on this data in real time. It starts with building the right audience segments. In Data Cloud, marketers can create hyper-personalized segments to then build campaigns around. After a big event like Dreamforce, customers who attended a Marketing Cloud breakout session and also viewed a Marketing Cloud session on Salesforce+ are added to a segment for high-value Data Cloud prospects. We use this segment to personalize their next email to include an offer to take a trial of Data Cloud.
The payoff has been undeniable, driving significant ROI across the business:
$23 million has been identified in potential revenue from customer license renewals, and Salesforce can now automatically notify sales teams about these opportunities using AI-powered Slack notifications. There's also been a 60% increase in marketing lead revenue and contract value per lead, as well as 98,000 fewer support cases projected in the first half of 2025 compared to the same period last year.
Tableau delivers key insights and trends — right in the flow of work.
Tableau helps us visualize all this complex data. Marketers have set up dashboards to easily understand key trends and get insights on campaign performance by segment. And with Tableau Pulse, these insights are delivered right in the flow of work to marketers, so they don’t have to look at the entire dashboard to figure out the trends. Tableau Pulse generates it for them.
Real-time data powers personalized website experiences.
The personalized experience doesn’t stop at these email journeys. Data Cloud also enables us to tailor the salesforce.com experience for known customers or prospects. When the website recognizes a visitor as someone with a profile in Data Cloud, Marketing Cloud Personalization serves up the right content on the page, based upon all that rich data in their truth profile.
If we know a prospect recently watched a Dreamforce episode on Salesforce+, took an AI trail on Trailhead, and opened an email about an upcoming World Tour event, they’ll be greeted with “Hello, [name]” and will see a customized homepage featuring a registration promo for the upcoming World Tour event and also one for an upcoming AI webinar.
Data Cloud helps us identify our high-value segments faster so we are able to target them with relevant, personalized messaging. This has allowed us to increase the speed of our campaign optimization, which in turn has improved marketing metrics across all stages of the user journey.
Sonia LeleSenior Director, Data Science, Salesforce
Sellers get up-to-the-minute information about which customers are ready to buy.
All that rich profile data for every customer and prospect doesn’t end with the marketing team. Remember that customer who had attended Dreamforce and browsed on the Agentforce pages of salesforce.com? Sales reps see all this engagement data, too, in our CRM. And this helps them know which customers to prioritize. Now when the sales rep follows up with that customer interested in Agentforce, the rep tailors the follow-up to include a demo on Agentforce.
Data Cloud — and our truth profile — also powers Agentforce for Sales to generate recommended next steps for AEs. The rep who’s following up with their customer who attended Dreamforce can get an AI-powered recommendation to send an Agentforce demo. That’s because Agentforce for Sales recommendations are grounded in all of this rich truth profile data. Now our sellers can focus their time on prospects and customers with the highest propensity to buy — and with the right follow-ups.
Data Cloud also creates a “top contacts” segment for sales reps which includes customers who have visited a pricing page on salesforce.com. It pulls data from Sales Cloud (where the contact is stored) and data from Google Analytics (where the website engagement is tracked). Data Cloud combines these attributes to create this top contacts audience segment with a strong purchase signal. And the best part? AEs get a notification on Slack when one of their customers or prospects has visited a pricing page. This means they can follow up in real time with the right product information.
