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Before every
connection, there's
curiosity, a moment
of wonder, a feeling
that something meaningful
is about to happen.
Because great
marketing doesn't
begin with answers.
It begins with, "why?",
with a spark that asks,
"what if?", with
insight, with empathy,
with imagination.
And from that spark,
something powerful begins.
You build momentum.
You earn loyalty.
You inspire action.
You take data and
turn it into emotion,
into moments
people remember.
And now we're entering
a new chapter,
one defined not
just by creativity,
but by intelligence
that works with you,
for you, in real time.
Welcome to the world
of agentic marketing,
where you don't just
respond to change,
you anticipate
it, design it,
drive it; where every
journey is personal,
every message timely,
every experience
unforgettable.
Because now, you
have something more--
Agents that learn, adapt,
and act; fueled by AI,
guided by your
creativity, giving you
unlimited potential
to create at scale
without sacrificing
your creativity;
the ability to move with
speed without losing
your strategy; the power
to deliver relevance,
connection, and
results all at once.
This isn't about
replacing marketers.
It's about elevating them,
giving you space to focus
on what truly matters,
telling stories that
connect, building
trust that lasts,
shaping the future
of your brand.
This is your
next big leap,
your unfair advantage,
your moment.
So, what kind of
marketer will you
be when
intelligence becomes
your creative partner
and your imagination
has a partner
that never sleeps?
[HEART BEATING]
[INTENSE MUSIC]
Please welcome President
and Chief Marketing
Officer, Salesforce--
Ariel Kelman.
Thank you.
Hello, everyone.
Welcome to Chicago,
and welcome
to Connections 2025.
I couldn't be more
excited to be here.
This is my favorite
time of the year.
Because as much as I love
our sales and service
friends, as a
marketer, there's
nothing better than
to be able to talk
about the world of
marketing with Salesforce.
And we have so much
to cover today.
I think you saw
outside some signs
about agentic marketing.
So that's what we're
going to talk about today.
But I'd like to start off
with a simple question.
What if every marketing
message could start
a two-way conversation?
Two-way conversations
is what we want.
It's a human interaction.
If you think about
when we have our best
employees talking
to our customers,
they're listening.
They're being empathetic.
They're responding.
They're having a very
real conversation
that's likely to result
in a positive outcome.
But when it comes to
our marketing messages,
often, too much of it is
just blasting messages out
to channels.
But we think there's
a better way.
And that's what we're
going to talk about today.
Let me just give you a
little highlight first
of how this
looks in a couple
of different channels.
So let's take email.
We're all familiar with a
lot of the email marketing
that we do where
we send out
a message, a call to
action with a link--
not a two-way
conversation.
We're not even
subtle about it,
if you look "from" email
that we send a lot.
Right?
I mean, how many of
us have sent something
that says, do not reply?
Definitely tells
you not to reply.
Well, what if emails could
be a little bit different?
In a world of
agentic marketing,
if you think about having
an email-- and this
is from a retailer--
that comes to me,
and basically
it's given me
an offer of polo shirts.
OK.
Here's some polo shirts.
Are you interested?
And it's from my
stylecaster AI
Agent, Patrick.
And because I know it's an
Agent, I can just respond.
I have a question--
I like polo
shirts, but really
only if I can
get one in white.
So I just reply, can
I get one in white?
And then the Agent can go
and respond and say, sure,
no problem, we got that.
And since it knows me,
we can place an order.
Here's the total.
Would you like it?
Great, submit the order.
I didn't have to
click on a link.
I didn't have to
go to a forum.
And again, think
about this.
We're replicating
the conversations
with your best employees
have with your customers.
Now it's not just email,
but texts, as well.
You think texts should
be an inherently two-way
conversation.
But too many of
our marketing texts
are simply a
message and a link.
But instead, we can go
send people messages
and say, well, you
just bought this polo.
We got some shorts in.
Now, if I had just gotten
a message that said,
hey, we have shorts to
match your polo, I'd say,
shorts?
I got to try them on.
I would just delete it.
But since I know
it's an Agent,
I can tell them
my problem here
is that I don't know
what my size is.
I need to see
them in person.
They go, no worries.
By the way, your
size is size 33
and we put one
in the store
because we know you
want to try it on.
And we think about ads,
most ads today send people
just to static web
pages with a form.
But instead, if you
sent them from an ad
directly to an
Agent that could
have a two-way
conversation
right in your website.
And if your website--
instead of just showing
one-size-fits-all
information, if your
website could dynamically
render the content based
on what's most useful
for the conversation
you're having with
the Agent-- in this case,
I'm talking to the Agent
about polo shirts and
maybe some colors that I
like.
And it's showing those
in a way that reinforces
the conversation.
So this is the promise
of agentic marketing,
that we can have two-way,
interactive conversations
that really are effective
across every marketing
channel.
And that's what we're
going to talk about today.
We're going to talk about
how agentic marketing is
just changing everything
about how we market
to our customers, from how
we launch campaigns to how
we engage across channels,
to how we qualify
leads for our
B2B customers,
and how we
optimize campaigns.
But first, I really
want to thank everyone
for coming here
today because I know
everyone's super busy.
And we all have things
that we need to do,
and we're happy that
you're here today.
I want to thank
our customers.
And I especially
want to thank
our community members and
our community leaders.
If we have any community
leaders in the audience,
thank you for coming.
I know that you guys
have both a real job
and a second job that
you take to help everyone
in the community learn and
engage with each other.
So thank you for that.
Now as a company, at
Salesforce, for 25 years,
we've been grounded in
the same set of values--
trust, customer success,
innovation, equality,
sustainability.
And these are
important to us.
And it's allowed us to
really grow as a company.
Because of all the
success of our customers,
we've been able
to grow a lot.
We're going to surpass
this year $41 billion
in revenue.
But what really makes
me proud to work here
at Salesforce is the fact
that as we're doing well,
we're also doing good,
and being recognized
as one of the most
innovative companies,
one of the most
philanthropic,
and one of the most
ethical companies.
And speaking of
philanthropy,
I especially want
to highlight this.
For those of you who are
new to the Salesforce
family here, it's
our 1-1-1 model.
Many of you who have
been with us for a while
know about this.
But when Mark and Parker
started the company
25 years ago, we put 1%
of our equity, our time,
and our product into a
philanthropic project.
And this has resulted
in a massive amount
of great activity.
This year, we're going
to surpass 10 million
volunteer hours.
And what's even better is
almost 20,000 companies
have copied us.
Usually copying is not
good in the software
industry.
In this case, we love it--
so copying our 1-1-1 model
when they founded
their company.
So we think this is
absolutely fantastic.
And when we think about
all this change that's
happening in the
world and AI agents--
you hear everyone talking
about AI agents, AI
agents.
Well, how do we
get to this world
of agentic marketing?
That is what we're
going to spend
some time on today.
And I think the first
thing I want to talk about
is how AI agents work.
So just sort of
taking a step back
from the marketing
perspective, just
think about AI
agents in general.
They're really
doing three things.
So first, they
instantly understand
all of your data.
So I think as
most of us know,
the key to getting
enterprise AI to have
accurate results
that truly
provide value is they have
to be grounded in data.
And when we're talking
about marketing,
it's got to be grounded in
data about your customers.
So once it gets
grounded in that data,
then it can create a
plan, understanding
what is the job that it's
going to do, what is it
trying to accomplish.
Often, it iterates
through a couple of steps.
And then once it has a
plan, it takes action.
And this aspect
of taking action
is really what
differentiates AI agents
from chatbots.
Chatbots simply
passively sit there
and wait for someone
to ask a question,
and then give
you an answer.
But with AI agents,
they can take action.
They can go and do things
submit orders and process
results and kick
off campaigns,
as we're going to
see in a little bit.
So this action
orientation is really
what's gotten
people excited.
And when you have all
these agents taking
action, you have
an opportunity
for something
bigger, something
that we think about
as digital labor,
really enabling us
to scale up the work
that we're
doing massively.
Now in many cases,
especially when
I talk to CMOs,
everyone's overburdened.
Most CMOs I talk
to, their teams
have between two and
five times as much work
they're being asked to do,
as they have time to do.
And so the promise
of AI agents
is to be able to give
your employees agents
that scale massively,
and allow them to augment
the capabilities
of the employees,
while at the same time
using these agents
to be able to offload some
of the lower-value tasks
that they don't want to
do so they could focus
on the fun stuff.
If we could offload the
drudgery to these AI
agents, we can improve
the quality of life
for our marketing teams
and get more work done.
And when it comes to
platforms for AI agents,
Salesforce is the leader.
We have thousands of
customers using Agentforce
to build a wide
variety of agents
across sales, service,
marketing, HR,
manufacturing.
And what we're
trying to do here
is we give you everything
you need to be successful
building AI agents--
so all starting
with our metadata
platform,
and then our Data
Cloud layer that
pulls in all of the
data from your company
that these agents need.
And then with our
Customer 360 later,
we allow you to use
the applications
that you know and love
today and embed AI right
in the flow of work.
And then Agentforce
is the platform
that you use to build and
test and deploy agents.
And when you pull
all this together,
what our customers
have found
is that it's
massively faster
and more accurate to build
agents on Salesforce.
We had an analyst
firm talk to 20
of our customers.
And what they
found on average
is they were able
to build agents
16 times faster
than building
agents on their own
with custom development,
and these agents were
75% more accurate.
So not a small change.
Now, what does this
mean for marketers?
If you apply AI
agents to marketing,
we can do some amazing
things in two areas--
improving the productivity
of our marketers
and improving
the effectiveness
of our campaigns.
So you're going to see how
we can launch campaigns
in days, not weeks, how
we can qualify leads
around the clock.
Imagine if you had a lead
qualification agent that
was working 24 hours a
day, seven days a week,
and never said, I
don't like these leads.
I don't want to
follow up on those.
It's always working--
never had that before.
And then if we could adapt
every web experience--
if web experiences could
be dynamic based on what
we know about the
customer and what they're
talking to the
agent about,
it'd be pretty exciting.
So how do we get to
agentic marketing?
Well, people often ask,
I have some challenges.
I have some
things that I'm
worried about when they
think about applying
AI and marketing.
Well, first of
all, people are
worried about
expensive IT projects.
Do I have to build a bunch
of things from scratch?
How do I integrate it
into my applications?
I have fragmented data
in different places.
And then governance--
because in the enterprise,
we need to make sure
that AI is governed
so that these agents
are doing exactly
the things that we
want them to do,
and none of the
things that we
don't want them to do.
And that is why we
have put together
a complete
platform for being
successful in marketing
with AI agents.
And we think about this
as a new agentic marketing
stack--
so allowing our marketers
to work with agents
and drive
success together.
So how does this work?
We pull everything
together,
starting with our
metadata platform.
And then Data Cloud,
on top of that,
it pulls in data from all
of your different sources
across your enterprise--
with zero copy,
so you don't have to have
your data in more than one
place at the same time.
You don't have to re
implement your data.
And then we have
Marketing Cloud Next.
This is something
you're going to hear
a lot about today.
And you'll see there's a
little "new" button there.
That means there's
something new.
Yeah, I know.
It's fancy marketing.
And so we're going
to talk to you
about all the new
capabilities here.
And I think you're going
to be really impressed.
And then what Marketing
Cloud Next is doing it
is communicating out to
all of your channels.
And then Agentforce
on top, we
have prebuilt Agents for
a lot of common marketing
capabilities
that we show you.
But also it's a platform
to build your own Agents.
And then here's
something that's
really important when
we think about marketing
technology stacks--
it's open.
Every time I
talk to CMOs--
and I'd say when
I talk to myself--
it's very important that
you have a marketing
technology stack that will
work with a wide variety
of systems.
What's commonplace is
you have a combination
of packaged software,
custom application,
and integration to
pull it all together.
So making our marketing
technology stack
with Salesforce open was
an incredibly important
aspect.
And at every layer-- at
the Data Cloud layer,
we have connectors to
over 400 data sources.
With Marketing
Cloud Next, we
integrate to all the
popular marketing
channels.
And with Agentforce, you
can use any LLM, even
the ones that you
have built yourself.
But I want to drill
in on one layer
real quickly here,
which is Data Cloud.
Because as
marketers, I think
we spend a lot of
time with data.
We need our data
to be good in order
to really do anything--
to figure out
what our segments
are, to figure out
who to market to, to
look at the performance
of our campaigns.
And what Data
Cloud is doing
is providing
that data engine
to power modern
marketing and to power
this agentic future
of how you're
going to integrate--
how you're going
to activate
across all your channels.
So I'm going to talk a
little bit about this.
So with Data
Cloud, it allows
you to unify all of
your data with zero copy
so you can have a single
customer record that
captures all
of the activity
that your customers
have, all the information
about your customers.
And what this
allows you to do
is to provide deeper
personalization
with that knowledge
about the customer,
and segmentation
for your campaigns.
And then you can activate
across all the apps
and channels.
And then, most
importantly,
the data that you
need to power your AI
lives in Data Cloud.
So Data Cloud stores
both the structured
and the unstructured
data that's
important to make sure
that your Agents both take
the right
actions, and then
also construct
conversations
that are meaningful.
So Data Cloud has been
incredibly well-adopted.
It's literally the
fastest growing product
in the history
of Salesforce.
And we're also
proud that it's
been recognized by Gartner
as the leading customer
data platform, being the
winner of the 2025 Magic
Quadrant for customer
data platforms,
with the most
functionality and the most
customer success.
So how does
Data Cloud work?
[CHEERING]
Thank you.
Yes.
[APPLAUSE]
So how Data Cloud
works, the first thing
that you do is you connect
all of your data sources.
Now you can use Data Cloud
to pull all the data in.
But what a lot of
our customers do
is they use our zero
copy connectors.
And so a lot of
people will say,
well, I've done
some work and I've
built a customer
data warehouse
where I pulled together
maybe my Salesforce data,
my web analytics
data, some inventory
data from SAP.
I have it in a Snowflake
data warehouse,
or in Redshift,
or in BigQuery.
Well, if you've already
done that work, great.
You've won the lottery
because you've done
most of the hard work.
And what we can
do is zero copy,
your data can stay
in, let's say,
your Snowflake repository.
You don't have
to copy it again.
Once we map the data--
if you see this harmonize
and unify stage--
when we map all the
data models together,
as far as everything in
Salesforce is concerned,
all that data lives
natively in Salesforce,
even though it's in your
Snowflake or your Redshift
data warehouse and we're
reaching out in real time.
So no need to duplicate
or move the data.
So once you harmonize
and unify this data,
you'll have a single
customer profile.
And so at Salesforce,
we use our own products.
And my team starts with
240 million profiles
of customers from all the
different data sources
that we harmonize
down to 140
million unique profiles.
And then we go
and define a set
of governance rules--
who can use what
data, what it's
supposed to be used for.
And then we create
the segmentations.
And this is kind of where
the meat of the marketing
starts to happen,
where we can say,
what are these
segments that we
want to market to you?
And something that
we've done on my team
is I wanted to
take people away
from this world of having
marketers around the world
doing their own
Monkey SQL to define
who they want to
market to on their own.
Sometimes they're good at
it, sometimes they're not.
But instead, what I
think is becoming popular
is to say, well, let's
use AI-powered segments
that use machine learning
models to define segments,
in our case, for all the
combinations of product
interests, geography,
and segment,
and then load it up.
We have 1,400 different
AI-driven segments that
are constantly refactoring
with new lists of all
the best people
to market to.
So our marketers,
when they
want to do a campaign,
most of what they're doing
is they're picking
the segments.
And so Data Cloud
has the ability
to create these
AI-powered segments.
But also, we can
import models
that you've created
because a lot of you
create your own
machine learning models
for segments, as well.
And then lastly, when
it comes to activation,
if you want to get that
data into your Salesforce
user interfaces, there's
nothing you need to do.
It's as native as if you
created a custom object
in Salesforce, no matter
if it's living in Data
Cloud or if it's mapped
to another system using
zero copy.
And then of course,
we have connectors
for all the popular
advertising platforms
and for many third-party
business applications.
Well, enough of me
talking about Data Cloud.
I luckily have happened
to have a customer sitting
in the front row here.
I really want to thank--
this is Andrew Chang from
the University of Chicago
Medicine, who's a CMO.
[CHEERING, APPLAUSE]
Thank you for
joining us today.
I like your Jordans.
Yeah, thanks.
Thanks for having me.
Awesome, I appreciate it.
Well, maybe can you start
for telling everyone
a little bit about
what's it like
to be a CMO at a hospital
and research institution.
I'm curious what are
some of the things
that that organization
asks of the marketing
team.
Yeah.
What it's like to be
at a CMO in healthcare,
especially at
the University
of Chicago Medicine.
Based here in Chicago,
so welcome, everyone.
Thank you.
[CHEERING]
It's one of the most
freeing experiences,
in the sense that
we're the largest
industry in the world.
In this country,
we're 20% of our GDP.
And being able to have
a small part in the way
that we can try
to transform
the way that healthcare
works, especially
from the marketing
engagement standpoint--
you don't get to
say that every day.
And that's what we're
trying to do here
at UChicago Medicine
is, how do we
transform healthcare
and really elevate
the human experience.
Great.
And so what led you
to look at Data Cloud?
What were you trying
to accomplish?
Yeah.
So speaking of
human experience,
there's a lot of
people in this room.
But I'm going to tell a
little bit of a TMI story.
[LAUGHTER]
I'm thinking about
whether or not.
It's too late.
All right, I'm in.
[LAUGHTER]
No, we're just
among friends here.
Yeah, there's no
one else here.
I just turned
45 last year.
And the doctor tells
me, well, you're 45.
So you know what
it's time for?
I'm like, I don't.
[LAUGHTER]
I do.
And for those
of you in the--
Vision test?
It wasn't a vision test.
Uh, not the vision test.
It's the colonoscopy.
So absolutely important
procedure, as you
know personally.
And it is something that--
[LAUGHTER]
That was an inside joke
that went horribly wrong.
[LAUGHTER]
But here's the deal.
I've been trying
to schedule one
since last year.
And here's the
number to call.
Call the number,
leave a voicemail.
They call me back.
They leave a voicemail.
I call them back,
leave a voicemail.
And I say, hey, here's
my email address.
Can you just
email me what I
need to do to get
this scheduled?
They write back,
sorry, we can't do
this via email or text.
We have to talk live.
Six months
later, I'm still
waiting to get
that appointment.
And if something like
Agentforce had existed,
I would have been
already done by now,
at this point.
And I just texted my
daughter this morning.
I asked her-- she's 14--
have you ever received
a voicemail yet?
[LAUGHTER]
Nope.
Thumbs down emojis.
So how does Data
Cloud sort of play
at the heart
of what you're
trying to do to
revolutionize the customer
experience?
Yeah.
So with Data Cloud and
the CDP that Salesforce
has set up, this
has been our vision
since day one of
reinventing how marketing
works in healthcare.
How do we create a
experience that is
end-to-end from
search, booking,
check-in for your
appointment, wait room--
et cetera, et cetera,
et cetera-- to paying
your bills and medical
pharmacy refills?
How do you create
that experience
and put all that
data in one place
so that the patient
experience is seamless
and frictionless?
No matter where you
are in that journey,
we know where you are--
doesn't matter
who you talk to.
And we can proactively
serve you messages
or respond to messages.
And the way that Data
Cloud has been built
was that in mind first--
enterprise-wide tech stack
that is not just about
advertising and marketing.
It's about really having
the entire organization
come together in one place
and activate from that one
place.
Great.
And why did you pick
our product as a CDP?
There's several out there.
Yeah.
So we looked at a lot
of different CDPs.
But again, like
I just said,
Data Cloud was built
with that in mind
first, while a
lot of CDPs was
built with the advertising
capabilities in mind
first.
I don't know if you guys
remember the days when
they said cookies
are going away.
[LAUGHTER]
And at the time,
we were on a DMP
formerly known as Crux.
And so we're like, uh-oh.
Well, we better
start looking
at this cookieless future.
So we looked at different
tech stacks out there
and CDPs.
And it was just-- yeah, it
was fulfilling that need
of connecting to
third-party DSPs and ad
platforms.
But there was
nothing really
out there that connected
to the entire organization
that allowed us to create
this end-to-end experience
at UChicago Medicine.
And Data Cloud
was the only one.
Yes, you guys were
a little behind,
in that sense.
But because of that, were
able to leapfrog and build
with this agentic
future in mind.
And that is,
for us, it was
a pretty easy decision.
Excellent.
And I got to ask
you about AI Agents.
What are you guys looking
to do with Agentforce?
Yeah, absolutely.
There's a lot
that we can do.
Like the example
I just gave
about trying to
schedule an appointment,
I mean, I think
everyone in this room,
sadly, could
probably relate
to trying to book
an appointment
with your
doctor, or trying
to cancel an appointment
or change an appointment
with your physician
or your hospital
and your doctor's office.
And to this day,
you probably
have received a voicemail
about confirming
your appointment--
please call us back.
So you guys are going
to build an Agent to fix
this with Agentforce?
Yeah.
You shouldn't be able
to have to call us back
to confirm an appointment.
You should just text
us, or we should just
text you.
And if you need to
change your appointment,
let's just handle
that via SMS.
Or if you want to
call us, great.
We're happy to
take that, as well.
But let's give
patients the option
to interact with their
own health the way
that they are
comfortable with.
And that's what we're
using Agentforce for.
Exactly, having
a conversation.
Exactly.
Well, I look forward
to seeing your Agent.
May have to
move to Chicago
to get a doctor's
appointment.
I'm excited.
So thank you so much.
I really appreciate it.
Good luck in your work.
Thanks.
[CHEERING, APPLAUSE]
Next, we want to
talk about what's
next with the
Marketing Cloud.
And this is
really exciting.
I think what
you're going to see
throughout the rest
of the presentation is
a lot of the new
capabilities of Marketing
Cloud Next.
And this is very exciting
for me as a marketer.
We've been using a lot of
these products internally.
I think that's one
of the advantages
of the whole
dogfooding concept-- we
get to see these first.
Couldn't be more excited.
And to give you a grounder
on what our strategy is
with Marketing
Cloud Next, I
want to invite up on
stage Steve Hammond, who
runs our Marketing
Cloud products.
Thank you, Steve.
[CHEERING, APPLAUSE]
We are so excited
about what
we're delivering with
Marketing Cloud Next.
But before we
dive in, I want
to give you a
glimpse of some
of the incredible
innovation.
And we're not just talking
about a few features,
we're talking about
a whole new era
of marketing technology.
Let's go ahead
and roll the film.
[UPBEAT MUSIC]
All right.
I hope you could feel
the energy from all
the wonderful
things that we're
putting into
Marketing Cloud Next.
And what we've done is
we've taken the best
technologies
from marketing,
and we've combined them
with the best technologies
and the most
recent technologies
from AI to give you new
abilities in marketing
that have never been
available before.
In fact, as we
look at how you've
engaged with our
products over the years,
you've given
us your trust.
And with that trust,
together, we've
sent more than 2 trillion
messages per year
out of our systems.
And behind that, over
200 trillion decisions
are made to decide what to
send and when to send it.
And the incredible
opportunity with AI
in this next generation of
marketing is that we can
take those 2
trillion messages,
which Ariel
highlighted earlier,
are oftentimes
"do not reply."
How can someone
respond back?
How can you carry
on a conversation?
And to turn these two
trillion conversations
or messages into 2
trillion conversations--
highly personalized,
highly engaging messages,
and engagement with
your customers.
That is an incredible
opportunity,
and this is exactly
what we're delivering.
So with Marketing
Cloud, what
we've done is
we've taken nine
acquisitions that we've
made over the years--
these best-in-class
acquisitions that really
stand out, that deliver
for you mission-critical
success in marketing--
and we've combined them.
We've pulled them together
into microservices
that allow us to build
a completely modernized
Marketing Cloud, which
means that we put it
together into one unified,
native application on top
of the Salesforce
platform.
And what that gives
us is the ability
to be able to connect
the customer experience,
and also your teams.
Your marketing
organization
now has the reach beyond
the traditional marketing
channels.
Your marketing
organization
now has the ability to be
able to connect seamlessly
into commerce, into
service, into sales,
across the full
customer journey.
This is absolutely
exciting.
And it started with what
Ariel pointed out earlier,
the ability to
pull together
that full customer profile
on top of Data Cloud.
We've built
Marketing Cloud Next
on top of Data Cloud.
But on top of
that, we've also
rebuilt the
personalization engine--
the personalization engine
that you know and love
that's helped to
power personalized web
experiences,
personalized email,
and many other
forms of engagement.
And we've rebuilt that
on top of Data Cloud.
We've made it now possible
for this personalization
engine, the same
one that you
use for marketing, to
work in your commerce
situation.
The same engine can
give recommendations.
That same engine can show
up for your service teams.
When they pick up a call
and they open up the call
dialogue, they can
see the full history
of all the interactions
of that individual
across marketing channels.
They can also have
recommendations
of how to have that
conversation in a more
meaningful way.
The same thing
with your sales
teams-- your carrying,
your marketing engagement,
your profiles,
your offers,
everything across the
full customer journey
with this next generation
of Marketing Cloud.
And we've also simplified.
And that simplification
is beautiful.
Because I know, I've
been one of you.
I've been working
with thousands of you
and your companies
around the world.
One of the hardest
things with marketing
is all the different
technologies
you have to work with--
the integrations,
the way you have to
move data around.
We've minimized
all of that.
We've lowered the
total cost of ownership
when you're
doing marketing
by reducing integrations.
We've made it
easier for you
to be able to use these
products together,
simplified the interface.
And we've also added
agentic capabilities.
So you can
create campaigns,
you can create
audience segments,
you can create
content, all
with the latest
natural languages
through agentic
interactions.
And how we've built
it is also important.
We've built these
technologies
with your
customer in mind,
making sure that your
whole organization has
a view of the customer,
no matter where they are
in the customer journey.
Every part of your
business-- marketing,
service, sales, commerce--
all of your organization
has the same view
of the customer.
And on top of
that, because it's
the same data, the same
view of the customer,
you also have
the same metrics.
You don't have to
go back and forth
across the business
and try to justify,
are we looking
at the same data?
It's all the
same data now.
And because it's
the same system,
and we've modernized the
way that we built it,
with microservices in
a very modern approach
to the architecture.
It means that when your
customer is engaging
with your brand, no
matter where they are,
they can have an
engagement that
is meaningful to them.
We can trigger a response.
Again, we all know this
from the marketing side.
We can trigger a message.
We can trigger an
experience in a website.
But how do you
do the same thing
in a service engagement,
in a sales engagement?
That is now
entirely possible
using the same
profile and using
the same underlying
orchestration engine.
This is exciting.
And on top of
that, we've also
combined the value
of using B2B and B2C
in the same application.
You no longer have
to make a choice.
Do I use Account
Engagement or engagement?
We've now brought
them together
in the same
application interface
with personalization, with
marketing intelligence,
everything working
together in unison.
This is really exciting.
Now, I think probably
one of the most logical
questions you have
now is, great, Steve.
You've now introduced
a new technology.
How am I going
to use this?
How am I going
to access this?
How am I going to
be able to help
my teams with this?
When we built this
new technology,
we had that exact
thing in mind.
We know that you've spent
millions, if not hundreds
of millions of dollars
on your implementations,
on your audience segments,
on your journeys,
on your orchestration.
And we've kept
that in mind.
Because what we've created
is not a migration.
Instead, we created what
we call convergence.
We're bringing these
technologies together
for you, which
means initially,
when you want to get
your teams up to speed
and they're used to
using one application,
they can start using
the new application
environment in parallel.
We keep the
campaigns in sync.
We synchronize your
audience segments.
We synchronize
your contacts.
Everything runs in sync.
And then when your
teams get comfortable,
at the time of
your choice,
you can make the switch
over to the new UI.
You can get
comfortable with it
and then make
the move over.
And you can have
access to all
this incredible
new functionality.
We've designed this
new application
with you and for you.
And this is the
next generation
of Marketing Cloud.
We're very excited
about this.
The last thing I'll
highlight is that these
new technologies, all
working together across
the Salesforce platform,
are what will help you,
together with us, to
continue to deliver those
amazing messages, those
amazing communications
and engagements that you
have with your customers--
more than 2
trillion a year--
and move away from
the "do not reply"
and move to the next
generation of marketing,
which is to have
conversational marketing--
moving from 2 trillion
messages to 2 trillion
conversations.
Thank you.
[CHEERING, APPLAUSE]
Thank you, Steve.
That was fantastic.
OK, who's ready
to start seeing
some of this new product?
[CHEERING, APPLAUSE]
So there's four
areas that we're
going to talk about
today where there's
some really exciting
innovation in how
AI Agents are really
fundamentally changing
how we do marketing.
The first one we're
going to talk about
is how AI Agents, how
Agentforce can change
the way we build
and launch campaigns
to be much faster and
much more effective
once these
campaigns launch.
So I'm excited to
bring up on stage Pras
from our Marketing
Cloud product team
to tell us more.
Thank you, Pras.
So I've worked in
Marketing Cloud product
management for
over six years.
I have yet to run into a
marketer who's actually
happy about how
quickly they
can launch their
marketing campaigns.
You spend so much time
aligning your teams
and doing all this
busy work just
to get an idea
off the ground.
But it doesn't have
to be that way.
Agentforce can help you
launch your campaigns
in days, not weeks.
Campaign creation in
Marketing Cloud Next
allows you to collaborate
with Agentforce
and quickly generate
those campaigns,
those briefs,
and so much more.
Campaign creation
can help you
launch campaigns
that span touchpoints
and your channels.
Agentforce can
act autonomously
on your behalf, acting
on your business
data, your metadata,
and your workflows.
But you shouldn't just
take my word for it.
I'd love to tell
you about one
of our amazing customers.
Ford is one of
the most iconic
automotive manufacturers
in the world.
And Ford Pro, one of
their business units--
they deal with
fleet management
and telematics-- they
had a key challenge.
With connected vehicles
came this higher
expectation of real-time,
relevant, proactive
engagement.
Ford Pro knew they
had to evolve.
Agentforce is helping Ford
Pro transform all the data
they're getting from
their connected vehicles
into real time,
personalized engagement
that's driving customer
loyalty and increasing
revenue.
Now, I'm going
to show you what
this looks like in the
future of marketing.
Before we do
that, we're going
to have a little detour.
I see some smiles
around here.
This is a very familiar
place for a lot of us,
right?
This is Marketing
Cloud engagement.
We have spent years in
here building campaigns,
building our journeys.
It is really, really,
really powerful.
But the process of
getting your teams in here
and aligned and
creating those journeys,
creating those campaigns,
it's a little manual.
Let me show you
what the future is
going to look like.
We're going to
start off in Slack.
This is where my team,
they're already in here.
They're already
collaborating.
And we are in a
channel that's
for a new product launch.
And someone asked for
some help kicking off
the campaign.
Instead of looking
at my to-do list
with some existential
dread of adding yet
another thing, I'm going
to ask the campaign
coordinator Agent to
help me out right here.
And what it's doing--
and this is really
important here--
is that it's leveraging
all the historical data
that we have inside Slack.
It's looking at
past Slack channels.
It's looking at
linked materials.
This is a really big deal.
Because what that
means is that we're not
starting from scratch.
You're building upon
your past successes.
The lessons learned, all
those high-value assets
you've already built out--
they're being pulled right
into the Slack Canvas.
And just like that, we've
got ourselves a campaign
brief.
This is the future
of campaign building.
It's smarter, it's
faster, and it's entirely
in your control.
We've got creative.
We've got our audience
direction in here.
And my team can
start collaborating
with me live inside the
actual Canvas itself.
They're going to
start dropping
in things like performance
data, visual assets.
If there's
workbooks, they can
link all that information
right in here.
And if we're
missing something,
Agentforce can help
us out with that, too.
So I didn't see
campaign goals in here
as I was scanning
through my brief.
So I'm going to call on
the campaign coordinator
Agent.
And I'm going to have
it spin up some campaign
goals for us.
And what's
important about what
I'm asking you
to do here is
that it's using the
context of everything
it sees inside
the Slack Canvas
to generate these
campaign goals for us.
These look pretty
good to me,
so we're going
to keep them.
The next thing I'm
going to ask it to do
is to take all the
information we have here
for the campaign
brief, and we're
going to use it to set
up a campaign for us
in Marketing Cloud Next.
I'm going to
have it create
a segment-triggered
flow that's going
to kick off in 30 days.
Let's hop over into
Marketing Cloud Next.
This is the future
of Marketing Cloud.
And you'll
notice, the Agent
has brought
over everything
we asked it to do, right
into Marketing Cloud Next.
I've got the brief.
I've got details
related to my audience.
I've got base
orchestration
ready to kick off.
And of course, I
still have the context
of the conversation
we're having in Slack
in that channel
came over with me
into the Marketing Cloud
Next campaign record.
It looks like
magic, but I'd
love to show you
what's happening
behind the scenes.
This is how we stop
you from having
to swivel chair between
different systems.
We're looking at
Agent Builder.
And specifically,
we're going
to look at the marketing
campaigns topic.
I want to show you
what's happening here
behind the scenes.
That's why we
have two laptops.
What's happening
behind the scenes here?
So clicking
into this, we're
going to look at
the topic's actions.
Because what we've
asked it to do
here is to generate a
campaign from a brief.
You can get inside here.
And you can see,
the natural language
we are providing
to this Agent
and giving the
instructions on,
hey, I would like you to
draft a subject line based
on what you're seeing
inside the campaign.
Now let's hop
back into here.
That's a big deal.
Because this is
one platform.
You're not swivel chairing
between different systems.
Now, the campaign
orchestration,
or the summary of
what's happening
with orchestration,
is really important.
Because this is
how the rubber
hits the road, in terms
of how your messaging gets
out to your customers.
Let me show you
what's powering this.
This is Flow.
It's the
orchestration engine
behind the next generation
of Salesforce Marketing
Cloud.
And at the top, a
familiar thing--
it's your audience.
It's a segment
that we asked
it to spin up for us.
And below, we've
got an A/B test.
There are things
that we're
doing to flow to make
it feel more welcoming
for marketers.
We've got things like a
baked-in native A/B test
that you can run.
We've got our
decision splits.
You can decision on
any of the data that
lives inside the
Salesforce platform.
And finally,
your channels,
the engagement
channels that we have--
email, SMS, WhatsApp,
they're all baked right
into here.
This looks pretty
good to me.
So we're going to
slide back over
into our campaign,
ready to activate here.
I'm going to do a quick
refresh because I wanted
to pull all the latest
information back
from my Flow.
This looks good
to me, so we're
about to activate this.
But before I do, let's
recap where we just
started off.
We were in Slack where
the team's already
collaborating.
Then we co-created
with Agentforce.
That's our AI partner
through the campaign
planning, the segment
creation, content
creation.
And finally, we synced
all that information
into Marketing
Cloud Next, and it's
ready to activate.
That's the power of
Salesforce, Slack,
and Agentforce.
It's an intelligent,
unified platform
that's going to help
marketers at Ford Pro,
launch their campaigns
that are faster, smarter,
and more connected
than ever before.
Let's go ahead here
and hit Activate.
We just went from
idea to execution.
Now, I don't
know about you.
I'm pretty confident
my campaigns are great.
And it's going to
drive a lot of traffic
to the Ford Pro website.
To talk to you
about how we're
going to engage the
customers that are going
to come to the
Ford Pro website,
I'd love to introduce
our next speaker, Janani.
[CHEERING, APPLAUSE]
Thank you, Prasanna,
and hello, everybody.
My name is
Janani Narayanan,
and I head Product in
the Data Solutions teams,
which means it is my
team's responsibility
to build out
data platforms
and digital platforms
that power our marketing
automation engine, as well
as a lot of our customer
activations such
as email platform,
paid media, and
the one that powers
all of our AI
agents, one of which
we're going to
talk about today.
But before I
get started, I
want to reflect on this
statement you see up
there.
You cannot build
relationships with "do not
reply."
Now, as marketers,
we've gotten
used to certain
defaults, haven't we?
And one of them
is this idea
that customer
outreach always
has to be one-sided.
So from a customer's
perspective,
think about getting an
email that says "do not
reply."
That is like someone
walking up to you,
making a statement,
turning around,
and leaving
before you even
get a chance to respond.
And that's not
a conversation.
That is a broadcast
from the 1970s.
So it's no wonder that
our industry average email
click-through
rate is only 1.4%.
There's got to
be a better way.
Now, with Agentforce, you
can engage every customer
with a two-way
conversation.
You heard about our
Marketing Cloud Next GA
capabilities of
personalization
decisioning, as well
as web curation.
Using that, can
turn every channel
into a live
conversation, delivering
the right message
at the right moment
like never before.
In fact, one of our
customers, YDUQS--
I hope I got the
pronunciation right.
They were able to
increase their payments
with two-way
engagement up to a 40%.
So let's take a look at
how all of this works.
It all begins.
When you define a
role for the Agent.
It can be any role.
But in this case, the
Agent is set up to handle
all website inquiries
from customers, 24/7.
And then you need to
define the actions.
In this case, the Agent
can recommend products,
answer product questions,
complete orders,
view order history,
the entire spectrum.
And then you have to
establish some guardrails,
which are very critical.
Guardrails define when
an Agent should escalate
to a human in case the
conversation goes off
track, or if customer
sentiment deteriorates.
So the outcome
is that the Agent
has a great conversation
with the customer.
They get offered up a
promotion, they accept it,
they make the purchase.
Everybody is happy, in
one seamless conversation.
And that is the power
of modern marketing.
Now there is one
small problem.
It is all sitting
on a slide.
But we love demos,
so why don't we
bring it all to life
in a brilliant demo?
And I want to invite our
demo drivers of the day,
Dylan and Irene.
Let's give it up for them.
[CHEERING, APPLAUSE]
All right, so
let's get into it.
So what you're looking
at is Ford Pro's
automotive website.
And as you can see, it
is very modern, sleek,
visually stunning.
But for a
customer like me,
who is a business
user, and I
am in here shopping
for a fleet of vehicles
for my business.
And I have a straight
set of requirements.
A, it has to
meet my budget;
B, it has to be
fuel efficient;
and there has to be
limited downtime.
So for these
straightforward set
of requirements, I'm
spoiled for choices
on the website.
There are way too many
trims and packages
and models to
sift through.
And it can get
overwhelming.
Now I'm in here for
some sound guidance
and a fast
recommendation because I
have to move fast.
So what does a customer
do in this situation?
They leave your
website and turn
to a ChatGPT or a Gemini,
or your favorite LLM
flavor of the
day, for advice.
So what has ended
up happening here
is you have not lost
just any visitor.
You have lost a
prospect in the moment
of high purchase intent.
And that is after you
have spent millions
or thousands of dollars--
depending on the scale
of your business-- in
paid search, in
SEO and media,
to bring them on
to your website
in the first place.
As a marketer,
that's got to hurt.
Now in this
case, Ford Pro,
they lost the customer's
context, questions,
their intentions, and
perhaps even the customer
themselves.
Because what is
stopping an LLM
from recommending
a competitor?
We have to fix that.
Introducing web Agents
powered by Agentforce.
Now this is not your
ordinary chatbot.
It is also not a regular
conversational Agent.
It is a lot
more than that.
It will transform your
entire digital dotcom
experience, like
we'll see shortly.
All right, so I'm
on the website.
I'm going to strike
up a conversation
with the Agent.
And I'm going to
ask, I'm looking
for a new line
of fleet vehicles
that handles
well in the city
and can take on
Chicago winters.
So let's hit Enter.
Now personally,
what I want
is a bold, red
Mustang convertible,
top down-- you
get the picture.
But Dylan here
reminds me that I'm
in here shopping
for my business,
not for my impending
midlife crisis.
Something to
look forward to,
other than a colonoscopy.
All right.
So we have the
response here--
and I'll get to the
response in a bit.
But as you can
see, the website
has instantly adapted to
a new tone, a new layout,
as well as content.
And it has
dynamically rendered.
And it is
recommending something
like a Ford F-150
Lightning-- no Mustang,
but I'll take it.
Now, how this does
is using a feature
called web curation.
There's a lot
to unpack here.
So I'm going to pause
the demo briefly
to explain what is going
on behind the scenes.
Now Agentforce can tap
into all your product
data, whether it is
sitting in a CMS system
or in a Snowflake
instance.
Regardless, we are
able to bring that
into the Data
Cloud, zero copy,
meaning you do not have
to duplicate the data.
So Agentforce,
in this case,
let's say it has
access to the vehicle
specs, inventory details,
product descriptions,
marketing creatives,
branding blurb--
so all kinds of structured
and unstructured content
alike Agentforce
has access to.
Now when you hit the
Agent with a question
such as, show me a vehicle
that can handle Chicago
winters, it simply
doesn't just
look for matching
keywords.
What it does, it tries
to understand the intent
behind the question.
And through a
technique called
RAG, or
Retrieval-Augmented
Generation.
It performs a
semantic search.
Now all of these
terminologies--
RAG, semantic
search-- they simply
imply that
Agentforce is trying
to get the most relevant
content as a response that
is also rooted
and grounded
in your enterprise
data-- not off
of the public internet,
your trusted enterprise
data.
That emphasis is super
critical to understand.
And there's more.
Agentforce also
has access to all
the real-time signals
on website engagement.
For instance, as
a user, have I
been browsing
through trucks?
Have I been hovering
around the F-150 Lightning
product page?
Have I been looking
at EV specs?
So it combines all
of these signals
and puts together
a response
and packs it
off into an SDK
using the web
curation feature
to then dynamically
render the website
to give you a new
tone and layout that
is relevant to
the response
that you see there.
Now I want to quickly
highlight the response.
So Dylan, if you can
highlight "dual mode
or 4x4."
Even though none of
these exact words
were part of the
original question,
you see them there
because of the winter
drivability intent.
Now, why am I spending so
much time explaining this?
We spend a lot of time
with our customers.
And the number one
question we get asked
is, isn't this yet
another, smarter chatbot?
Fair question.
Fair comparison.
However, a chatbot
is rules based
and it is based off
of decision trees.
And the minute the
user goes off script,
the whole experience
comes down crumbling.
What you see here
is not a chatbot,
but more like having
your top product expert
available 24/7
on your website,
meeting your customers
where they are with what
they need--
total game changer.
All right, I expected a
little bit of applause
here, but that's fine.
[LAUGHTER, APPLAUSE]
All right, so let's
get back to the demo.
I'm going to ask a
few more questions
before we wrap up.
I'm going to tell
that I'm debating
between two models.
So it shows up a
comparison between the two
models with the pricing,
specs, towing capacity,
which is important
for my business.
Now I'm convinced.
I want to book
that test drive.
So the Agent brings up
all the nearest Ford Pro
dealership locations.
So within a matter
of a few minutes,
I went from being just
a curious visitor all
the way to a
booked test driver.
One seamless
conversation-- no bouncing
around pages, no form
fills, no handing
off to an agent
was even necessary.
It was all in
one conversation.
And like I alluded
to before, all
the real-time
website signals--
every click,
every question,
every response-- gets
into the Data Cloud
and then finds its way
into the Automotive Cloud,
where you can
stitch together
a unified profile
of your customer,
360 degree view as you
see there-- identity
information, my engagement
feed, the conversation,
my upcoming appointments--
everything in one
single place.
And that brings us to a
conclusion of this demo.
But I want to take a
quick moment recapping
what we just saw,
and how powerful this
is at the hands
of a marketer.
We started with
a website visit.
It's your classic
top-of-the-funnel,
high-volume, typically
low-conversion,
mostly anonymous
type of activity.
We took that and
converted that
into a high-value
interaction,
a high-value engagement.
And at Salesforce,
we believe
in being customer zero
to all our products.
Our web Agent
is live today
on the salesforce.com
website,
as well as the
help.com website.
Please go check it out.
In fact, our help Agent
has had around 850,000
conversations
with customers.
Now you may ask,
but Janani, I
do not operate at
Salesforce scale,
not at Ford Pro scale.
I am an SMB marketer.
How do I get access
to all this goodness?
I want to assure
you that we
were able to launch the
very initial version
of our web agent with a
small team in a matter
of a few months.
So if there is one
takeaway from this demo,
it has to be that
you can get started
as soon as today
to envision
the future of what
digital engagement
for your customers, for
your enterprise looks
like.
And with that, we now
have a booked test drive.
How do we convert
this hot lead
into a qualified customer?
Let us invite our SVP of
product, MaryAnn Patel,
who's somewhere here.
MaryAnn!
Over to you.
[CHEERING, APPLAUSE]
Thank you, Janani.
Thank you, Janani.
Marketers, every
single one of you
has had the
wonderful experience
of having a
lead generation
program that you poured
your blood, sweat,
and tears into, and didn't
get the ROI that you
wanted.
You focused on building
the right content
for the right ICP, getting
all the search clicks,
and yet, sales
dropped the pass
at the end of the day.
Marketing champions,
have you ever thought,
why am I spending so much
time on lead generation
if sales is not even going
to look at what I'm doing?
Yes?
All right.
Well, Agentforce
has got you covered.
Because now, you can
give every single one
of your prospects
the attention
that they deserve
autonomously.
Because with
lead generation,
Agentforce is qualifying
these leads for you
around the clock.
Agentforce is
agentic AI, so it's
letting you have real
two-way conversations.
Now these are not
just qualified leads,
they are meetings booked
on calendars with reps.
And that way, we
are connecting sales
and marketing together.
The CEO of
Assemble, he told us
that what he loves
about lead generation is
that nurtures
have gone up,
engagement has gone up.
And even better, the sales
team is tremendously happy
because closed, won
opportunities are up
and cost savings are real.
This is music to my ears.
Because in my
day job, I run
product for Sales Cloud.
Why am I at Connections?
Because I built
a product for you
so that sales
and marketing
can finally be
partners again.
To show you this, I
want to bring back
Dylan and Irene
to the stage,
and we're going to jump
into a live demo of how
humans and Agents
can work together.
Alrighty.
Ford Pro is the number
one commercial vehicle
brand in the country.
And they think fleet
sales are incredibly
important to them.
That's why I'm showing
you a fleet campaign
right here.
Now, what's great is
that interest is high.
But what kills my inner
marketing soul is these
5,000 "no" responses here.
How are we going
to fix that?
It's with Agentforce.
This is how we get real
impact to every single one
of those.
We're going to
create an Agent,
a lead qualification
Agent right here
from the campaign.
When I click on
this, I want you
to look at this screen.
What do you not see?
There's no code.
There's no scripts.
There's no prompts.
This is guided
configuration, just
for you as marketers.
We're going to
give the Agent
some nice qualifications--
name, title, all
of that good stuff.
And now we get
to the meat.
We have to add
a description.
Just like all
of us humans,
Agents need to know what
is their purpose in life.
And the description
gives them
their purpose, how they
interact with prospects,
and the actions they
should be taking.
And if you look at
the very top there,
we've assigned this
Agent to a user.
Because all of
you understand,
that gives you reporting,
permissions, trust,
visibility, all
out-of-the-box.
The next step
is we are going
to teach this Agent how
to talk to our prospects.
Now I want you
to think about,
if you had new
messaging today,
how would you go
about doing this?
You would go manually
update countless email
templates, call scripts,
bot scripts, campaigns,
seller enablement.
With Agentforce,
all you have to do
is provide instructions.
We start with the core
value proposition.
And for Ford Pro,
that's really
about fleet
reliability, as well as
total cost of ownership.
And like any
great seller, we
want to teach the Agent
those really great proof
points.
For you, think
about what are
the most compelling KPIs
that you normally share.
Things like uptime,
reliability,
the amazing service
package that they have--
all of that is right here.
Now we get to
the real magic.
Oh, actually, we don't
get to the real magic yet.
We first nudge.
We want to make sure that
this Agent follows up.
Remember, perseverance
is one of those skills
that we want every
marketer and seller
to have.
So we want to nudge when
people don't respond.
And we also
want to disclose
that this is the Ford
fleet team sending this.
Now we get to the magic.
So if you look on
the right-hand side,
I am pointing this Agent
to a real lead named
Tom here.
And we're going to take
all those instructions.
We're going to take all
of your harmonized sales
and marketing
information that you have
in Salesforce and
our reasoning engine
behind the
scenes, and we are
going to generate a
preview right now.
You're going to see
that this preview is
personalized to Tom.
It factors in his
interest in F-150's.
It talks about our
commercial programs
and uses some of
those amazing proof
points that I was
just showing you.
But this is not
spray-and-pray automation.
The best thing is
that Agentforce
is able to have
two-way conversations.
So if you want to
answer hard questions,
what do you need?
You need a lot of
product knowledge.
And that's why we
give grounding here.
I've connected
a data library,
and that includes
all the things
I would give a
normal seller--
things like price sheets,
brochures, Q&A. But
You know what?
This is going to be
the best seller ever
because they are not going
to forget a single thing.
In the background,
we're uploading
all of this information
into Data Cloud.
We're building new search
retrievers, vector search,
so they know exactly what
to say in the moment.
So when Tom asks a
question about, what
is the lead time
for my order,
Agentforce takes all of
that into consideration
and looks at his location.
He's in Incline Village.
He needs a bunch
of F-150's.
Agentforce knows the
action it needs to take.
It calculates exactly
what the lead time is.
And all of that
information
is right there,
including the source.
OK, this is amazing.
We are almost done.
We're just going to
teach the Agent who
it's going to talk to.
Remember, you can always
manually assign an Agent
to anyone.
But we want to have it
automatically also connect
with our prospects.
Here, it's decision
makers that
have the right
budget and who
are interested
in fleet sales.
And now we are
almost done.
But I want to
take a second
and just thank everyone
in this room, especially
my sales trailblazers
over here.
Hello!
It is feedback from
every single one of you
about how hard
it's been to create
Agents, how you don't want
to have to write code.
My team created
this experience
because we were
inspired by you.
You told us you wanted
a guided experience that
was approachable
and conversational
and used the
thing that you
do best, which is building
compelling messaging.
So thank you.
Keep the feedback coming.
We are listening,
I promise.
Alrighty, let's get
this Agent activated.
Here we have
this campaign.
And I'm going to
switch over into Gmail.
I'm going to look
at the Agent talking
to one of our prospects.
In this case, it's Andre.
Andre is also
interested in F-150's.
You see a personalized
communication.
But as I scroll
down, what I love--
all of Andre's questions
are also getting answered.
This Ford fleet Agent, it
knows exactly what to say.
It's giving those
proof points.
It's even connected
a case study.
You'll notice that
these responses
are helpful, timely,
and on brand.
And as we keep
scrolling down,
Andre is feeling a
little more confident,
asking some
more questions.
And now he's finally ready
to talk to a sales rep.
This is when we get
that meeting booked.
And so it's not just
a qualified prospect.
It's not something
the sales
team is going to ignore.
This is a real,
qualified opportunity.
So now that we've got
that meeting booked,
let's look back
at that campaign.
My heart feels
so much better.
Your effort has
not been wasted.
Those 5,000 "no" responses
are now down to just 25.
And the sales team has
all of those conversations
right inside of Salesforce
so that they can get
prepped for this meeting.
They can click into
Andre's record,
and they can look at all
of those conversations
in one place--
the ad that he clicked
on, those back-and-forth
conversations.
This is like a
campaign visualizer.
It tells them exactly
what happened,
exactly the
questions that he's
having, and how
to continue that
conversation forward.
And if we click on a
cold prospect here,
you'll see that
what it's done
is it's tried three
times, hasn't gotten
any response, and now
it has put this prospect
on a nurture campaign.
This is how we continue
building that interest
and building pipe.
Hey, Ariel.
I have an amazing idea.
Can we name this
Agentforce couples therapy
so that we bring sales
and marketing together,
one marriage at a time?
No?
OK, fine.
Well, either way,
this is still
the power of humans and
Agents working together.
Hot prospects get
meetings booked.
Cold prospects
are nurtured.
Nothing falls
through the cracks.
And finally, sales
and marketing
can be friends again, and
hopefully much, much more.
Alrighty.
Marketers and
marketing leaders,
I know the one thing
you care about even
more than the
marriage that you
have with your
sales team is data.
And let me show
you my love
language with the new
Agentforce Command Center.
This is where you
get visualization
of everything that
Agentforce is doing,
the impact that it is
having on your business.
Here you can look at every
single marketing Agent
that you have, including
that amazing lead
qualification Agent
that we just built
and all the
sessions it's doing.
I'm also able to tune it.
I want to be able
to see visibility
of what's happening.
So here I can get all
the metrics that I need--
health scores,
engagement scores.
Everything is right there.
And this is pretty
solid engagement,
but it's trending down.
I know you want to be
able to dig into that data
and explain exactly what's
happening and tune it.
So if we click in, we can
see all of those sessions
that it's having.
We're able to see the
topics that are landing
and what's not, so we know
where we want to improve.
And what's great
is that when
I go into one of
these sessions,
I can see exactly the
conversation that's
happening here.
You, as marketers,
you want
to make sure
that everything
that you care about
is being conveyed
to these prospects.
And you'll see
here, unfortunately,
after this webinar, this
prospect has gone cold.
What can we do about it?
We can scratch our
heads, we can think,
or Agentforce can
recommend exactly how
we want to improve this.
So here, I'm going to
go into the improvement
center.
And I'm going to see a
recommendation of making
sure that I add
a new topic so
that after a
webinar, it has
much more personalized
information.
And I could keep showing
you demos all day.
But I want to recap with
a couple of key things.
First, Agentforce
is all about
unlocking the power
of humans and Agents
working together to really
scale your business so
that every prospect gets
the attention that they
deserve.
Two, we have made
building Agents incredibly
straightforward.
Every single person in
this room and online
can go build
an Agent today
and know that they are
delivering amazing power
to their organizations.
And three, Agentforce
Command Center
gives you all of the
visibility that you need
to trust Agentforce and
have the amazing impact
right at your fingertips.
This is Agentforce,
built on Salesforce,
ready for you.
[APPLAUSE]
Alrighty.
We have talked a lot
about lead qualification.
And now to talk about
optimizing campaigns,
I want to welcome up the
CMO of Marketing Cloud
himself, Mr. Bobby Jania.
[CHEERING, APPLAUSE]
Thank you, MaryAnn.
As the CMO of
Marketing Cloud,
I track every dollar
we spend in paid media.
But here's the
unfortunate truth.
If you're not
constantly optimizing,
you're wasting more
money than you realize.
Agentforce can
change that.
With Agentforce, you
set the strategy.
And Agentforce then
monitors and acts, 24/7.
It can even move
the spend from items
that aren't working to
those that are performing.
And it can help you
do better segmentation
with better targeting.
This is thanks to
tools like Paid Media
Optimization and
Segment Intelligence.
So let's go ahead and
see this in live action.
I, like many of you, spend
most of my day in Slack.
And so Agentforce comes
right to where I am.
In this case, the
Marketing Cloud
Intelligence agent
is Slacking me,
giving me a weekly
update on my performance.
And I can see here that
it's performing OK.
Across the board,
most of my channel
is looking pretty good.
But there's a
handful of creative
that's underperforming.
And it's asking
me if I want
to re-optimize my spend.
Now I want to drill
in a little deeper,
but normally, that
would require me
to swivel chair, go to
a different application,
look at a different
dashboard.
But here, I can talk
right to Agentforce.
I can ask my question.
I want to see
the performance.
I want to see the details.
So it's going to turn
the click through rate
for my campaigns.
And I can see which
campaigns are working
and which ones are not.
And I can see
here that there's
a big enough difference
that, yeah, I do
want to take an action.
But I want to drill
down a little deeper
into the data, and I can.
This is Marketing
Cloud Intelligence.
This is where Ford Pro
has all of their marketing
performance data together.
What I really
want to call out
is that conversation
with Agentforce,
that came over with me.
It's right here,
all of that context.
And on top of
that, Ford Pro
has all of their marketing
performance data here.
They have all their data
across how their campaigns
are running on Meta,
Google, LinkedIn,
how their campaigns
are performing
in different segments.
This is all possible
because we're
bringing all of
the data together
with prebuilt
pipeline connectors
to all of the data
sources you're using today
for all of your marketing
performance data.
We're making
it really easy
to bring it all together
so that marketers are all
using this same
shared data model.
Now we've got
some optimization
we need to do.
So we're going to head
back to Agentforce.
And I'm going to look at
the sources for this data.
Again, I want to click
in a little deeper.
So I can go into my
ad performance data.
And from here, I
can scroll through.
I can see my key metrics.
What's my revenue,
my CPM, my clicks?
I can even see my click
per cost by creative here.
And sure enough,
there's four ads
that are underperforming,
and that's
driving down my ROI.
Now, I know one
of these ads
is actually a brand new
campaign that we just
launched.
And I want to give it
a little bit more time
before I go
reallocate that.
But I'm going to go
ahead and ask Agentforce
to go reallocate the
spend of those other ads.
And since Agentforce
is an open platform
and has APIs, we're able
to go out and connect
to those tools, provide
action in those tools,
change the spend, reduce
campaign spend in one,
increase it another.
And Agentforce is
even coming back here
with my projected
revenue now.
How has this changed
impacted my information?
What I also like is I have
this recommended action.
So it's telling me I
should review my Segment
Intelligence dashboard.
I can go ahead.
I can click in.
I can see how all my
segments are performing.
I can see that the
Midwest region is
performing really well.
But I want more than this.
I really want to see how
cities are performing.
And I don't
have that here,
and I don't really want
to go ask an analyst.
I don't really want to
create a new dashboard.
But again, that's
something I can just
now ask Agentforce.
I can ask that question.
The context will
come back to me.
In this case, it's saying
Chicago is overperforming
the other cities across
all of the industries.
And it's asking
me if I want
to create a new segment
for the Chicago market.
Now, you might notice that
the tech and innovation
market is
performing the best.
And what I know
that you don't yet
is that Chicago is one
of Ford Pro's largest
markets.
And the tech and
innovation segment
performs specifically
very well with EVs.
So I don't want to
create a segment for just
Chicago.
I want to go specific.
I want to go to just
tech innovation.
And since Agentforce
can take that action,
it's going to go
ahead and create
a full segment for me.
I can jump into
Data Cloud.
I can look at the segment
that we just created.
I can add, change
my demographic data.
I can pull in data
from Snowflake.
This is all right here,
all available for me.
So I'm going to go ahead
and activate this segment.
And let's fast forward.
We've got our new
campaign running.
I got a great
click through rate.
My engagement
numbers are going up.
This is looking
pretty good.
But I've got a theory.
I think that video ads
might perform better
than static ads.
So I can ask this
question to Agentforce.
I can go through
and get that data
pulled right back to me.
And sure enough,
it's true, video is.
Now this is a small
segment that we have.
And we don't normally
create video for that.
But what if we could?
What if we didn't have to
worry about always pulling
in an agency and doing
a big production?
What if we could
use other tools?
Agentforce is an
open platform.
And so we went and
connected our APIs
to the new Google
VO that just
got launched a
few weeks ago
and asked it to create
this exact video.
And in less
than 30 minutes,
we were able to
set it up where
we had a custom,
AI-generated video created
just for this campaign
as a great starting spot
for Ford.
So what have we seen here?
We've seen how
Agentforce is
able to move
the spend around
to maximize your spend.
We've seen how we can
adjust the targeting
and create
better segments.
And we've seen
how Agentforce
is able to connect to
third party systems
to take action not
just in Salesforce,
but everywhere where you
need to as a marketer.
That is optimizing
campaigns
without the busy work.
Back to you, Ariel.
[CHEERING, APPLAUSE]
Thank you, Bobby.
That was fantastic.
So I hope you guys are
as excited about this
as I am, of
really showing you
how Agents can
dramatically
change both the
effectiveness
of our campaigns
and the productivity
for our teams.
We talked about how to
use Agentforce to launch
campaigns a lot faster,
how to engage customers
with dynamic websites that
respond to conversations
with Agentforce,
how to qualify leads
in a whole new way,
and how to optimize
our campaigns.
But what you're
probably asking now
is, well, how do
I get started?
Now what's good is
that all of the things
that we showed you today,
you can implement quickly.
And some of them--
I just wanted to share
some recommendations.
We get asked this a lot.
So for launching new
campaigns with Agentforce,
I recommend picking one of
your next campaigns, one
of your next promos,
and to try it out.
For the website, I
highly recommend everyone
to start with a
website FAQ agent.
You just take all your
FAQ content, you load it
into Data Cloud.
In really only
a few weeks,
you can have a very rich,
powerful website Agent
that can deliver a much
better customer experience
on your website.
For qualification, start
with the stalled nurture
campaign.
Route those to our lead
qualification Agent.
And for optimization,
you can very quickly
roll out daily
performance summaries
that you saw in the
beginning of Bobby's
demos--
a great way to
get started.
Now, another great
way to get started
is to enjoy the
rest of the show.
We have tons of
content here.
We have over 270 sessions.
In this room, we're going
to have Bozoma Saint John
later.
And we have also a
really exciting session
called Agentic
Marketing Breakdown.
It's kind of
like Iron Chef,
but for marketing Agents.
You're going to see
some of the best Agents
that the community
has created.
So with that, I
want to thank you,
and I appreciate
everyone's time.
Thank you, and enjoy
the rest of the show.
[CHEERING, APPLAUSE]
[UPBEAT MUSIC]
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Connections 2025 Main Keynote
Join leaders at Salesforce to hear how Agentforce is reshaping the future of marketing and powering deeply personalized, 1-to-1 customer experiences.
Starring
- ARIEL KELMANPresident & CMO, Salesforce
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