Dreamforce has not always been the ‘go-to’ event for Salesforce Marketing Cloud specialists and users. The yearly Connections conference, exclusively about Marketing Cloud, usually offers more content for our niche. However, I’m happy to say that as Marketing Cloud matures and companies increasingly go for an integrated platform approach, we see more relevant sessions on the Dreamforce line-up, including both introductory content, as well as deep-dive sessions, and also some sessions on recent SFMC-related acquisitions.
As an owner of a Salesforce Marketing Cloud training company, I was keen to start my planning for Dreamforce early, so I could get the most out of the event and take home some valuable knowledge. Based on the schedule that is online now, I have selected 12 sessions we look forward to attending, covering different aspects of SFMC.
1. 3 Reasons to Leverage Marketing Cloud for Promotional & Transactional Messaging
Although this is aimed at a beginner level, the Transactional API is relatively new. If you want confirmation messages like order confirmations to be sent immediately, and with all the personalization sweetness SFMC has to offer, this session is for you.
2. 8 Ways to Build Smarter Content in Marketing Cloud
The Content builder has evolved since it’s launch. This session focuses on these new features that help you create smarter content with the help of Einstein, and help to be more efficient. By the looks of the description, we could be in for a session that is too generic. But hey, I’m a sucker for AI 🙂
3. Barceló Hotel Group Upgrades Customer Experience with Marketing Cloud, Globally
You can bring your personalization across channels to a whole new level when connecting different clouds. Barceló Hotel Group uses Marketing Cloud, Audience Studio, and Advertising Studio to join data and insights from known and unknown customers; these help build rich and actionable audience segments and campaigns.
4. Creating an Audience Strategy using Advertising Studio
If you are looking for a session where you can lay back and listen, this is not for you. This
circle of success is a round table discussion on how to go about creating an audience segmentation strategy in Advertising Studio. Get the most out of this session by participating.
5. Datorama 101: How to Use Marketing Cloud Analytics to Optimize ROI & Growth
I still can’t tell the difference between Datorama, Interaction Studio, and Salesforce DMP. So this session hopefully will end the confusion on the Datorama part. Be on the lookout for me asking questions if I still don’t understand after this session.
6. Einstein for Marketing Cloud: Recent Innovations and Roadmap
Einstein in Marketing Cloud can help personalize content and delivery at scale. If you are looking for ways to make your weekly newsletter smarter, this session is for you.
7. How Luxury Escapes Delivers Real-Time Personalization
Are you still sending old fashioned batch campaigns to segments of your audience? Luxury Escapes use Interaction Studio and Einstein to deliver real-time messaging to their customers. If you are looking to elevate your life-cycle campaigns, this session should help you to get into the right real-time mindset.
8. Intro to MuleSoft Anypoint Platform
This is not a specific Marketing Cloud topic, but you probably need to integrate to external systems, and have spent considerable amounts of effort in defining and developing these integrations. This is where Mulesoft comes in. As this is an intro, this is for everyone without Mulesoft knowledge.
9. L’Oreal Reinvents the Advertising & Digital Journey with Salesforce and Google
Another use case presentation covering an integrated approach to marketing. This use case also uses Google Analytics 360. Nice to watch for those of you that are considering a paid Google Analytics version.
10. Marketing Keynote: The New Decade of Data, Trust and Engagement
The description for this session is a bit vague, but it’s a keynote! And it’s about delivering trust, engagement and experiences. Wow…bring your buzzword-bingo form to this one!
11. Merging the Digital and Physical Retail Experience with Nordstrom
Aligning experiences for brick & mortar and online channels is not an easy task. Nordstrom has cracked this nut using Marketing Cloud. If you are a retailer with both on- and offline channels, this session should provide you with new ideas.
12. Wake Up Sleepy Subscribers with a Re-Engagement Campaign
Every e-mail database suffers from subscribers without any activity. How can you identify and solve the inactivity issues with re-engagement messages, and what can you do with those who still do not re-engage? This is the topic of this interactive group discussion led by experienced Salesforce experts that share their best practices.
Summary
I hope this gets you started when you land in San Francisco, or stream the conference online. Please share your marketing cloud sessions in the comments or give me a shout out on Twitter @vongaalen if you are attending one of these sessions. I am looking forward to meeting you!