Top 10 Posts of 2023: Salesforce Marketers Edition

It’s time for the Salesforce Ben team to reflect on the past year. As always in the Salesforce ecosystem, the past year has had its fair share of twists and turns – some positive, and others not so ideal. 

“2023: The Year of GPT” – it has a nice rhyme to it, doesn’t it? GPT technology took the world by storm, and Salesforce didn’t hesitate to ensure its customers are/will be getting the best (and safest) AI capabilities – of course, marketers were on this list. 

On our side, there have been changes that will pinpoint 2023 as the next generation of The DRIP. In case you haven’t seen already, Salesforce Ben underwent a rebrand (a year in the making!) that brought content for marketers onto the main site. The DRIP still lives on as email and social media updates especially for marketers. 

But what were the most popular posts for marketers? We determined the top 10 rundown based on the amount of pageviews (with the stipulation that they had been published this year). The results are in – let’s check out the gems in the crown!

10. Marketing Cloud & Commerce Cloud On Data Cloud – New Generative AI Capabilities

Einstein 1 is the relaunch of the Salesforce platform to create a trusted AI platform that Salesforce customers can use with confidence. 

While it’s still going to be a few years before Marketing Cloud and Commerce Cloud are fully migrated on to the core platform, these new capabilities show there are signs that there’s some momentum. 

At Dreamforce ‘23, 26 generative AI capabilities on the roadmap were announced – with an additional 25+ set to arrive by the end of 2024. 

9. Are You Ready to Invest in Data Cloud?

Data Cloud is the fastest growing organically built product in Salesforce’s history (i.e. Salesforce built it themselves, not via acquisitions). It is the foundation that speeds up the connectivity between different ‘clouds’ across the platform. 

At Dreamforce ‘23, Salesforce announced that Data Cloud is available for free (up to 10,000 unified profiles), which inevitably spurred interest. 

However, even though Data Cloud is the foundation that all customers leverage everyday, it’s also an offering that organizations can purchase for additional capabilities. From demystifying the costs, which skills you need in your team, and other readiness factors, we outlined what it takes to be ready to introduce Data Cloud into your org. 

8. Top 10 Marketing Keynote Highlights from Dreamforce ’23

The Marketing Keynote at Dreamforce ‘23, titled “Marketing in Generation AI”, was full of new innovations that the Marketing Cloud engineering teams have been working hard on shipping, wrapped together by awesome demos.

The session started with context on prompt engineering – the art of writing prompts to get the most optimal answer. It’s a skill that barely existed 6-12 months ago, but is one that we need to all acquire in order to use AI effectively.

Other highlights included Campaign Recommendations (with Einstein able to drum up a suggested campaign which you can opt to start executing in Marketing Cloud), data-driven Campaign Briefs and Preview, Segment Intelligence for Data Cloud, and much more. 

7. The Future of Salesforce Marketing Cloud (Next 5 Years)

Salesforce Marketing Cloud and Pardot (Marketing Cloud Account Engagement) have become two of the leading platforms for multi-channel marketing. What could be on the horizon? The themes we covered were: 

• A single Marketing Cloud platform? Built on Data Cloud.
• Marketing Cloud sandboxes? To test configuration and upskill.
• Marketing Cloud segmentation consolidation? Moving towards there being less methods of segmentation.
• Marketing analytics tools consolidation? Tableau + Datorama + Data Cloud.
• Moving towards suite pricing? Versus licensing individual Salesforce products.

Note: Please bear in mind that much of what was covered is speculative and not set in stone, but was interesting to share nonetheless.

6. AMPscript in Salesforce Marketing Cloud: Expectations vs. Reality

When starting working with Salesforce Marketing Cloud, you quickly learn that in order to use all the fancy personalization and segmentation techniques that we marketers love so much, you need to roll up your sleeves and become a so-called technical marketer by learning a thing or two about coding. 

As a non-technical person, getting the grip of AMPscript was quite a challenge. Alina wanted to make the journey for those just starting out a little easier. Consider it your AMPscript starter pack! 

5. The Complete Guide to Pardot Score (Account Engagement)

We could consider this a long-overdue guide, as after 7 years running The DRIP, I had missed the opportunity to create an all-encompassing guide to one of Account Engagement’s (Pardot) key features: scoring. 

Getting the wheels in motion, this guide outlined what the score is used for, how it changes based on prospect interactions, editing your scoring model, how score decay should be planned – and much more.

4. Your First Steps to Enable Data Cloud

As mentioned, At Dreamforce ‘23, Salesforce announced that Data Cloud is available for free (up to 10,000 unified profiles), which inevitably spurred interest. 

Getting our hands on this previously mysterious Salesforce product, this guide walks you through how to enable Data Cloud, and also the important questions: who can use it? Just because you can, should you use it? And also, how can we keep our expectations in line? This article clears up a number of misconceptions about Data Cloud.

3. The History and Future of Salesforce Data Cloud

Another entry on this top 10 rundown that paints a vision for the future. However, we should take a look back in time to understand where we’ve come from (note, name changes!), and why Data Cloud stands strong in a crowded market. 

The glimpse into the future included the expansion of Data Cloud across more of the Salesforce platform, and how we could start closing the skills gap. 

2. Individual Email Results in Salesforce (For Marketing Cloud)

Email marketing collects a mass of email analytics data. Sent emails are tracked on each side – both in Sales Cloud and Marketing Cloud. This is where Individual Email Results (IERs) come in, to store Marketing Cloud email analytics in Salesforce. 

This was clearly a popular topic for marketers out there who want to bring valuable email marketing insights to others in the wider organization. 

Pankaj takes us through IERs, including how to view them, their storage and deletion, plus common issues you may come across.

1. Marketing GPT

We introduced this year as “2023: The Year of GPT”. As GPT technology took the world by storm, Salesforce didn’t hesitate to ensure marketers are/will be getting the best (and safest) AI capabilities. 

With Marketing GPT (now Marketing for Einstein 1), Salesforce aims to give marketers an AI-connected user interface that augments campaign brief conception, audience/segment discovery, and content creation. This was the ‘big bang’ announcement at the Connections event, which took place in June. 

Bonus: Honorable Mentions

For each piece of content that we publish at SF Ben, we place a prediction on the number of views it will receive in the first week. The content below exceeded our forecasted expectations by at least 250% – so they deserve a mention! 

• Account Engagement (Pardot) Overview for Salesforce Architects
• 4 Upcoming Email Marketing Changes (+ What To Action in Account Engagement)
• Could Marketing Cloud Account Engagement Be Renamed Pardot?

Summary

There you have it – all of The DRIP posts that got marketers talking this year. We can’t wait to bring you more exciting marketing content in 2024.

Let us know in the comments what your favorite post of the year was, or anything you’d like us to cover in the new year.