REVIEWSTop takeaways Salesforce Dreamforce 2023 | September 12-14, 2023 | Salesforce made their annual conference, Dreamforce 2023, all about AI. In Salesforce speak: that’s AI + Data + CRM. 1500+ sessions spread over a few days dazzled, and possibly overwhelmed, 40,000 people on site, and many more behind their computer.
Most of us were not at Dreamforce in San Francisco (no cost, no greenhouse gasses*, no crazy hotel prices, no hassle: well done! ). At Salesforce+ you can still watch it live for free, or on demand, fast forward when needed, and only see what interests. Don’t miss a day at work. (See resources section below,)
Afraid you missed anything? No worries, we got you covered. We will update this article over the next few days, with the Salesforce Dreamforce 2023 Top 20 Take Aways.
*Even though, Salesforce has made this year’s event as sustainable as possible.
Top Takeaways Salesforce Dreamforce 2023
Starting with the Top Takeaways from the Dreamforce 2023 Keynote Announcement by Benioff / Day 1
- We’re in an AI revolution. It will impact who we are; how we operate, and bring us back to our core values. It will be both a tech and a trust revolution. Lots of companies in B2C marketing share a well-known secret: they’re using your data to make money! Large Language Model [LLM] providers: given or stolen: they use your data to get smarter. In addition, LLMs are very convincing liars. It can make business situation turn toxic. So think differently.
- Salesforce is uniquely a trusted AI platform for customer companies. Yes, higher levels of customer success and productivity and growth and transformation and strategy with this new technology, but Salesforce thinks differently “We prioritize accurate, verifiable results, our product policies protect human rights, and we advance responsible AI globally, just as we always have, and transparency builds trust.”
Top Takeaways in terms of Key Innovation in terms of Salesforce Product & Release announcements
Einstein CoPilot
To supercharge your Salesforce CRM with AI. Integrated directly within Salesforce, means it can use company data, and comes with its own in-built Studio platform to allow companies to create and customise their own apps and services. When users ask questions in natural language, they receive “relevant and trustworthy” answers that leverage Salesforce Data Cloud.
Einstein1
Best way to make sense of all your data. Einstein 1 is the tech name for “the trusted AI platform for customer companies”. “Built to be low-code and open to all, Salesforce says Einstein 1, which also integrates its Data Cloud, is grounded in the company’s broad metadata framework, able to bring together data from the likes of Slack, Tableau and Mulesoft, as well as integrations with the likes of Google Workspace and Microsoft 365.” The announcement follows Salesforce’s launch of Einstein GPT a few months ago.
The Big Ohana News
DATA CLOUD: it will essentially become free for Rnterprise clients to get into the game. I.e. clients will get two free Tableau creator licenses and free Data Cloud licenses for up to 10,000 profiles.
Please don’t be fooled by the word ‘free’ in every other sentence at DF23. Salesforce’s objective is to make $50B/year, from its clients. Salesforce merely gets you started with AI, but like Hubspot, as soon as it gets interesting, you’ll pay, and it won’t be cheap.
FLOW! Brush up on your flow building skills today! It’s everywhere. If you are not good at it yet, start now. Data Cloud will be in there.
CloudAnalysts are leaders in Data Cloud and have been for a few years. We are certified and experienced Data cloud consultants, who are ready to serve your company with what it needs to get into the AI game, strategically:
a) A ‘Test & Learn’ Foundational Configuration to learn what Data Cloud and Tableau really is and how they can use it.
b) A Data Development Plan. Let’s face this: most client data is incomplete, maybe inaccurate, and adding AI is not going to be giving you reliable answers without you putting this in order first. The best news is, you can leverage AI to improve your data! Exciting times.
c) An AI adoption roadmap for implementing generativeAI across your organisation.
Key innovation takeaways from Dreamforce 2023
What unfolded over the 3 days in terms of Business Management Innovation:
- Transformative Leadership: Marc Benioff and Bob Sternfels on how to navigate an era of accelerated innovation.
- 3 Tips to Unlock Your AI Potential: The most important moment in a transformation is before you begin. Assess AI readiness and strategically plan for long-term success.
- Boost Service Efficiency and Delight Customers. Every company needs an AI strategy now. Start with learning how Einstein is redefining customer satisfaction and service efficiency. See our latest product roadmap and demos so you can get started with AI today.
- Who’s in charge of the AI Revolution? Who gets to build the future of AI? You are.
- TIME100 Talks: Fulfil technology’s promise to build a better world is not without considerable challenges. Policy for AI must start with equity in mind.
Salesforce AI Product Keynotes & Spotlights
Marketing Generation AI | Einstein 1 for Marketing
Generative AI is disrupting marketing everywhere. Say hello to the Einstein Copilot bringing AI natively into Salesforce. To drive growth, marketers must innovate across the campaign lifecycle. Now, they can transform their business with Data + AI + CRM.
It is expected to lead to 27% increase in customer lifetime value!
The Salesforce Marketing Cloud Path of Innovation
What was mentioned at DF23, but what was actually already available:
| Pardot (aka Marketing Cloud Account Engagement) gets nothing in this Dreamforce. Before you’re super disappointed: realise that as Pardot and the CRM are so deeply integrated, we also will be able to trigger more targeted Pardot journeys and emails based on Salesforce flows (which will have Data Cloud-based triggers) and lead fields updates, etc. So, with very savvy configuration…. we can get Pardot also empowered with the new AI story and features, to a certain degree. Einstein for Account Engagement (Pardot): undisclosed. Maybe ‘Dynamic Content’ is to be improved later. | n/a Q1 2024? |
| Data Spaces in Data Cloud –> For Marketing As not many customers nor consultants actually know Data Cloud, so this was news. | Already in Data Cloud. See our training course |
| AI-powered Einstein lookalike segments in Data Cloud: help you focus on your high-value segments and create more of them. The Einstein lookalike segment is based on insights from your existing segments. All customers with the latest SKU can use Einstein lookalike segments. We like this. | GA |
What’s really new and upcoming in Marketing Cloud/ Data Cloud
| Email Copy Creation Generate content faster, based on your past top performing campaigns; powered by Data Cloud. | Q3 2023 |
| Subject Line Creation Quickly Adjust/refine the tone of subject lines; powered by Data Cloud E.g. generates 3 subject line variations, based on top performing emails. Marketers can decide to accept a suggestion or do A/B testing | Q3 2023 |
| Typeface Partnership Salesforce partnered with Typeface so that marketers can generate content (images and layouts) that are specific to your brand guidelines. | GA Q4 2023 |
| Marketing GPT (Learn more about marketing GPT and Commerce GPT lifting shoppers campaign performance) Leveraging GPT via natural language prompts, marketers gain efficiency and can scale content creation to achieve more advanced personalisation. | GA / enhancement Q4 2023 |
| Segmentation Create Segments with Einstein GPT ≈ Marketers can quickly create audience segments and improve targeting using natural language AI prompts to query Data Cloud. ≈ Marketers will be guided by AI-derived recommendations to create the most impactful segments (predicted to increase overall campaign engagement). ≈ >> This speeds up what has been time-consuming/challenging to client re. segmentation: historic perform analysis and writing audience segmentation queries. | Q3 2023 |
| Waterfall Segmentation in Data Cloud | Q1 2024 |
| Segment Intelligence Segment Intelligence is something different. It helps marketers understand campaign performance relative to a specific audience segment. This allows you to prove ROI by automatically connecting first-party data, revenue data (from Salesforce Opportunities), with paid media data (Meta/Google). Marketing Cloud Intelligence comes in 3 editions: Starter $3K/m, Growth $10k/m; Plus (quote). (TIP: in Pardot: you get this almost for free with the Google Ads connector. ) | GA Q4 2023 |
| Personalization Real-Time Event Stream View the Unified Customer Profile screen for accounts and individuals, referred to as users throughout Personalization. After you view a profile, you can see the event stream for the account or user. (Marketing Cloud Personalization: $100,000+ /yr/org) | GA Q4 2023 |
Data Graphs, Data Cloud’s Real-time Personalisation Model
Data Cloud itself has obviously evolved from being a data engine for Marketing Cloud to being a data engine for every cloud.
Data graphs were shown as innovation today, but were actually a new Data Cloud, feature back in summer 2021.
DF23 – Sales Cloud with AI
Unleash the heightened potential of Sales Cloud with its new AI functionality! You can now can automate your prospecting, supercharge your inbox, and streamline customer meetings to boost your sales.
Expect a 29% increase in productivity for your sales team. That’s almost 1/3! As productivity gains for Sales staff relate to you generating a pro-rata increase in revenue, THIS is the one to prioritise.
Sales Cloud AI Innovation Roadmap
| Copilot for Sales – the new features applied to Sales Cloud | Pilot 01 ’24 |
| Automated Prospecting | 02 ’24 |
| Sales GPT — the big time saver for your sales team! This connects your sales data with the generative capabilities of AI and LLMs. Generate personalised emails in sales cloud to send to contacts / leads. Sales GPT provides nearly-there drafts, already contextualised and ‘grounded’ in your Salesforce data. Using GPT, but your data stays secure. | GA |
| Einstein Forecasting | GA |
Salesforce Everywhere
Service Cloud and AI
Reimagine Service for the AI Era: Step into the AI era with confidence. Activate AI in customer service to reduce costs, empower your teams, and meet customer expectations at scale using the #1 AI platform for service.
MuleSoft – the Future of AI and Hyper-automation
MuleSoft’s hyper-automation platform brings together AI with best-in-class integration, automation, and API management to transform employee and customer experiences.
Tableau Reimagines Analytics for the AI Era
Tableau puts you in the driver seat of the AI revolution and experience the next generation of analytics, powered by connected data and trusted AI, to truly democratise data for better business decisions.
How to Build, Test, and Ship AI-powered Apps
Apply ALM best practices for rapid, secure, and scalable AI innovation across your Customer 360 with Einstein for Developers, Sandboxes, Data Mask, DevOps Center, and more.
Commerce Cloud
- Automate B2C Commerce Growth with the #1 AI Platform. Learn how companies drive growth with commerce innovations that elevate merchant productivity, unlock service center revenue, automate sales reordering, and redefine business purchasing with AI.
- AI-Powered Personalisation in B2B Commerce: Discussing how AI can enable personalised product recommendations, tailored promotion strategies, and customized marketing campaigns to enhance customer engagement and drive sales.
Today, there is already a strong AI power embedded into Commerce cloud, as you can see of this innovation timeline.
| Salesforce Payments | “Offers an easy-to-use payment solution that quickly and seamlessly collects payments. It includes back-end and front-end components that support payment services offered through Stripe, PayPal, and Apple Pay.” | GA |
| Order Management, now powered by AI. | A fab order management process is a must to meet customers’ high delivery expectations ((Amazon as std.) — | GA |
| Omni-channel Inventory | For near real-time inventory availability at the location level across all fulfilment channels. | GA |
| Re-order Portal | Commerce reorder portal simplifies repeat orders. You can configure a cadence or Einstein Next-Best-Action to invite a buyer to the portal. | GA |
| Pay Now AI incorporation: TBD. | Provide your customers a seamless payment experience. Create payment links that guide customers to branded payment pages on all devices, also mobile. | GA |
| Generative Product Descriptions | Accelerates building multiple versions of descriptions and translations. With 1-click: generate descriptions from public market data and past products, i.e. data in Salesforce, powered by Data Cloud). Once the merchandiser reviews/approves, the descriptions are embedded. Automatically fill in missing catalog data for merchants. Best: revolutionise the customer experience with auto-generated product descriptions, tailored to every buyer! | GA |
| Copilot for Commerce (part of Einstein 1) | Copilot, the built-in rightside panel in the user interface, offering what’s similar to the ‘next best action’ form of multi-step action plans where users can select/deselect the follow-up actions to take forward. | Pilot in Q4 2023 |
| Goals-Based Commerce (this is exciting stuff!!) | Automate growth and conversion strategies while maximizing user productivity. This empowers businesses to set targets and goals, and then provides actionable insights and proactive recommendations on how to meet them – for example, to improve margins or to increase average order value (AOV). By typing prompts, Goals-Based Commerce will understand the user’s intent, and recommend storefront design, merchandising setups, and promotions (that can be executed using Marketing Cloud). Powered by the magic combination of Data Cloud, Einstein AI, and Flow. Awesomesauce. | Beta in Q3 2023 |
| Commerce Concierge (Make interactions faster, and more natural.) | Uses bots + Generative AI to help brands deliver a 1:1 shopper experience; on any messaging channel. Prompt-based exchanges help shoppers discover products effortlessly. Generate a rich messaging experience, for example, by pulling in catalogs without the shopper needing to switch channels. | Q4 2023 |
| Commerce Intelligence | Details TBC | GA Q4 2023 |
| Digital Subscriptions | Details TBC | Pilot in Q3 2023 |
Analytics
The Salesforce Unified Analytics Experience. Enhance the Salesforce experience with unified analytics by seamlessly integrating Tableau, CRM Analytics, and Reports & Dashboards to provide CRM users with contextual, actionable insights.
Customer Success Keynote: Maximize ROI with a Path to AI: Hear how industry disruptors have successfully started getting value from AI. No matter where you are on your journey, Salesforce Customer Success and Partners can guide you on a trusted path to AI.
Resources
Salesforce+ : view the most important sessions related to these Top Takeaways Salesforce Dreamforce 2023 – on demand videos.
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Last Updated on September 20, 2023
