When Salesforce began shifting towards a credit-based consumption model, the questions on everyone’s minds were about consumption limits, guardrails, and cost.
Marketing Cloud Next (MCN) is the culmination of what Salesforce has been working towards to converge their marketing offerings. Built on Data Cloud, the rebuilt personalization engine means that rich agent-activity can be utilized across all of the Salesforce product suite – not just confined to marketing.
This makes monitoring consumption – and forecasting future credit spend – even more important. That’s why Salesforce have taken their existing Digital Wallet functionality, and added hot features for marketers.
Salesforce Digital Wallet
With the advent of Data Cloud, Salesforce began shifting towards a credit-based consumption model (as opposed to flat-fee licenses, or ‘seats’). Digital Wallet became an essential.
The overriding objective is to bring transparency around credit consumption while offering an easy-to-navigate self-service experience.
Now, Digital Wallet will be ‘baked’ into the Marketing Cloud Next app… with additional functionality specifically for marketers.
Digital Wallet for Marketing Cloud Next
In terms of credit, in Marketing Cloud Next you’ll find the following sources of consumption:
- Messaging – Email, SMS and WhatsApp sends
- Segmentations and activations (in Data Cloud)
- Data storage
- Einstein requests
Campaign Calendar
What is even better is that consumption can be predicted based on your campaign calendar. In the image below, you can see campaign start/end dates mapped onto the calendar. A summary of the campaign appears on a tooltip upon hovering on it, and if you click into the campaign, you can see the full view including factors that will impact consumption, such as the number of contacts in the segment.
Consumption Cards Tab
On this tab in the Marketing Cloud Next app, you will find each source of consumption and see visually how many limits you have consumed. Plus, each card references the related contract you have with Salesforce.
Consumption Cards + Agents
Each card has its own page, where a further breakdown of consumption, over time, can be viewed. This is where, in this particular demo, Agentforce came into the picture. Opening up the Agentforce sidebar, you can chat with the agent in natural language (the way that humans talk to each other). For example, asking for a campaign brief to be generated for re-engagement with the goal of encouraging repeat purchases.
Final Thoughts
While I commend Salesforce’s Digital Wallet for improving transparency around spent and remaining credits, there still remains question marks around credit consumption across the whole business. For example, what if the sales team consumes a disproportionate amount of credits that marketing had ear-marked for their campaigns, and extra credits are out of the question due to budget?
While there may be a simple answer to this (e.g. ‘Salesforce are working on something’, or ‘Marketing credits are exclusively for consumption in the Marketing Cloud Next app’), it’s something that came to mind for me, personally. Let’s hope there is a simple answer!
