How Salesforce’s Digital 360 is Creating Better Digital Experiences

Last year Salesforce released Digital 360 — a suite of products and services that brings together key components and new innovations in the Salesforce Customer 360 platform to help digital leaders transform their customer engagement. 

But, what does that really mean? 

We invited Ben Yerushalmi, a VP at Salesforce, who oversees the Cloud Solution Alliances group to our In the Clouds podcast to find out more about this intriguing offering. He shared how it differs from Customer 360, where it fits in with Customer Audiences, and what problem for marketers it helps to solve. 

In the Clouds: The big announcement this year from Salesforce has been Customer 360. And for those who haven't been as close to it or may not fully understand what that is, if you wouldn't just mind describing Customer 360, Digital 360, and then the differences between those two.

Ben Yerushalmi: Sure. So Customer 360 is our integrated platform. It's built on our number one CRM, and that helps business put customers at the center of everything that they do, and that's our heritage. Right? In sales, in service. But we know that CDOs, CMOs, commerce leaders, are really focused on a different set of tools that are going to help them digitize their relationships and interactions that they have with their own end customers. 

Enter Digital 360, and that's really an all in suite of products, expert services, partners, learnings, all tailored towards that CDO, CMO buyer, that'll really empower companies to launch integrated, all digital relationships with their customers across every touch point, from marketing, to commerce, to experience. And I'll go back to marketing, commerce and experience here in a second because those are the main components of what make up Digital 360. It’s not a one-size-fits-all, but it's really a menu of options based on wherever companies are in their digital journey, so whether that's a consumer goods company going direct to consumer for the first time, driven by the necessity of the pandemic, or maybe somebody's consolidating from multiple systems to a single platform, or just up leveling their digital game. And that really applies to everything within Digital 360, products, services, and of course all the offerings that we've got from our partners. 

In the Clouds: I think the biggest thing that I want to make sure I understand is it's not necessarily a new product offering. It's a suite of products under the current Salesforce ecosystem. We're just going to market with them in a way that really focuses in on the CDO or the CMO and what their purview might consist of?

Ben Yerushalmi: Correct, correct. So it includes all of our Marketing Cloud assets, so think Marketing Cloud, Pardot, the newly launched Customer 360 Audiences, which is our CDP, all of the various studios, from Ad Studio to Audience Studio that sit within our messaging and journeys products within Marketing Cloud. 

On the Commerce side, it's both B2B and B2C commerce, as well as all of the things that we've launched in the last 12 months, from order management to headless/ API first, to the acquisition that we just made of Mobify, so all of those things that sit in there. We also announced payments, which is a partnership with Stripe. And then Experience Cloud, so that includes the artist formerly known as Community Cloud. That includes CMS, Page Designer, and some of those other assets. And so it's everything that sits in that portfolio. And I don't want it to sound like it's all just old stuff. We've launched in the last 12 months I think more NPI, or new products, within that digital suite than I think at any point in our history. So from order management to the headless stuff, to the Customer 360 Audiences, which is our CDP, to CMS, so there's been a lot of innovation coming out of Salesforce. And all of that sits within that Digital 360 portfolio of products.

In the Clouds: So Ben, you mentioned Customer 360 Audiences. How does that fit into the framework of Digital 360?

Ben Yerushalmi: Customer 360 Audiences is Salesforce's enterprise customer data platform, or our CDP. And that helps marketers build a unified customer profile, segment and enrich customer data, and enable personalization across every customer interaction. It is a major component of the digital 360 portfolio, and sold bundled with our Marketing Cloud. 

It basically gives marketers a single place for segmentation instead of building segments and siloed systems. It includes marketer-friendly, drag and drop, self-service tools to build these segments and really get immediate population count. It enables personalization everywhere, and activates segments to any engagement platform, including Marketing Cloud — which includes email, SMS, push, Journey Builder, and then through Interaction Studio (formerly Evergage) — for real time interaction and real time engagement and optimization. 

In the Clouds: What is the problem that Digital 360 solves for us?

Ben Yerushalmi: In the not too distant past, earlier this year, your customers were used to engaging with you sort of in the physical world. Right? They were shopping in your stores. They were visiting your offices. They were making in-person appointments. But today, that's kind of all changed. And your customers aren't just digital first, they're digital only, and that's here to stay. I think anybody who wasn't accelerating their ability to go digital has absolutely done it in the last nine months. And your customers are expecting to engage with your brand in new ways, like all digital shopping, curbside pickup, shopping on social, just to name a few. 

In the past, that was the domain of the most visionary brands. Right? But now that's an existential imperative for a lot of companies, a lot of our joint customers. And so they've got to do that to stay relevant, and business just has to adapt. Those are the things that the CMOs and the CDOs are thinking about. 

Digitizing human relationships is complex and it's hard. You're dealing with siloed data, legacy technology tools, and just sort of this rapid pace of change. Digital 360 is really here to solve exactly that. With the suite of connected products, the expert services from both our partners and our own consulting, the different types of education and opportunities that we're putting out there to help enable and educate, the technology and the expertise combined are really the things that we're able to bring to the CMO and CDO.

In the Clouds: If somebody doesn't have Salesforce Marketing Cloud, what does Digital 360 look like for them?

Ben Yerushalmi: For many customers, the entry point could be Marketing Cloud, but could just as easily be Commerce Cloud, or order management, which is new this year. It could be Customer 360 Audiences, which is our CDP product. It could be Experience Cloud. And my advice is always, start with the pain point. What's the pressing need? What are the compelling use cases? In a lot of cases, it's obvious. These are existential questions for a lot of businesses today, so there's no one path in. That’s really where partners like Lev come in, to help customers think about moving to a digital-first model, architecting a digital transformation roadmap that's really appropriate for the customer in the industry. And then, integrating the Digital 360 products with the rest of their enterprise computing, and really taking those first steps on that digital journey. That's a roundabout way of saying there's no one way. 
 
You can listen to the entire In the Clouds episode here, and if you’re interested in learning more about Digital 360, reach out to your Salesforce Account Executive.