The Cloud’s Out of the Bag: New Marketing Cloud Advanced Edition

The Cloud’s out in the open now: Salesforce Marketing Cloud Advanced Edition is the next era of better data-driven marketing for those who strive for better campaign workflows, better CXM, better insights, better deal closure cycles, and well honestly: simply better. 

If you missed the Marketing & Commerce Keynote at Dreamforce (or caught the keynote and want the key information in one place) you’re in the right place to unpack everything about Marketing Cloud Advanced Edition (MCA). (Special thanks to a few key people at Salesforce who helped us create this guide: Neha Shah, Guilda Hilaire, Ruth Bolster, Kylie Yancey,  Sydney Kerwit, and Prasanna Vijayakumar) 

MC Advanced Edition was designed for small to midsize businesses and builds upon the foundation of Marketing Cloud Growth Edition (MCG). As we described in our Pre-Dreamforce Marketing recap, MC Growth was the first iteration of Marketing Cloud that was built on CRM with Data Cloud and AI/Trust embedded. With many of our clients excited to explore MC Growth capabilities (notably our friends at Broadtree Partners and Dave Slenzak), ListEngage has created numerous MC Growth-specific solutions and use cases.  Knowing the MC Growth platform as well as we do, we couldn’t be more excited about what we saw at the keynote on Marketing Cloud Advanced Edition. Read on to learn why.

Why Marketing Cloud Advanced Edition Changes Things

AI is augmenting everything around us and with MC Advanced, AI comes front and center with greater capacity for Salesforce customers to scale their marketing beyond the current state and grow into their ideal future marketing powerhouse. In addition to features that align with greater AI, we’re also excited about easier setup and workflows, better ability to experiment and test, built-in conversational SMS (conversational SMS requires Digital Engagement and Service Cloud), AI-driven engagement scoring and frequency predictions, and all-new, highly business-relevant dashboards and insights. 

We’ll break down each key feature and value added in this next section line by line. 

The Biggest Value Adds in Marketing Cloud Advanced Edition

Improved Setup & Campaign Builds 

When you’re using a platform day in and day out, ease of configuration is paramount. One thing that really stands out with Marketing Cloud Advanced Edition is how much simpler Salesforce is making configuration tasks for the marketer. *This is a feature that you’ll find in both MC Growth and MC Advanced edition, so no matter which version you’re looking into, it’s included!

Initial setup is easy! Breaking out everything you need for setup by basic settings, channels, and reporting/operations this new assistant makes setup a breeze. Data Kits can be stood up with just a few clicks. Plus, with this setup assistant, you’ll know what’s required versus what’s optional.

In addition, Salesforce designed Campaign Building to be much simpler than ever. From the Campaign Home screen, marketers can see and act on: 

• Quick View: Recent campaigns widget featuring type, status, start date, and end date in a scannable format 
• Quick Starts: Quick start links with knowledge and help articles linked directly to elements on your campaign home 

Two-Way Communication Unlocked 

Built-in conversational SMS is one of the most exciting elements of this announcement for the cross-channel-obsessed team at ListEngage. We see this as a unique opportunity to have semi-automated, two-way communication with end customers and audience members. Consider this: we’re no longer sending “{FirstName}, we’ve got news for you” followed by “Standard one-stop shop messaging” as the reply to SMS subscribers who decide to engage on that channel. We’re able to hold a conversation with the people we’re targeting and can route the conversations to a ChatBot or an Agent. Unified conversational SMS means: 

• Communication Increased: Prior promotions that were one-way promotions are eligible to be a connected conversation
• Data Activation Level Up: Near real-time unified data delivers connected interactions across departments and you’re now able to respond to key audience members instantly 
• Self-Service: Through the AI-powered Experiences, you’ll automate interactions with ChatBots that are self-service friendly and promote transactions quickly to the SMS recipient  

*Please note, conversational SMS requires both Digital Engagement and Service Cloud.

Don’t Guess When You Can Test

We’re all test-and-learn fanatics at ListEngage, and for us, the new Path Experiment feature is somersault-worthy. Marketers understand how crucial it is to test and to have options in how to test. MC Advanced with Path Experiments allows for simplified testing with multiple options built right into your Campaign Flows. Path Experiments mean: 

• Multiple Variation Testing: You’ll have the opportunity to test up to 10 paths across channels, copy, and cadence all in one flow 
• Unbiased Testing: This update ensures unbiased testing with a randomly assigned set of individuals assigned to each path to ensure fair and unbiased distribution. This means better data, better reporting, and better next steps. 
• Customized Distribution: You’ll be able to custom-craft the distribution of individuals across paths to meet your unique criteria and testing goals 

Engagement Scoring & Frequency

Users of Marketing Cloud Engagement are familiar with the features of Einstein Engagement Scoring and Einstein Engagement Frequency. If you know, you know – that these features are an awesome addition to MC Advanced. 

With Einstein Engagement Scoring, you’ll be able to predict engagement for segmentation and personalization automatically (or should we say auto-magically because we’re fancy 😏), while providing greater visibility to your cross-functional teams, and incorporating scored segments directly into campaigns. This means: 

• Next Likely Action: Scores are set on the foundational application of measuring an individual’s likelihood of opening, clicking, churning, and/or converting. This means better audience analysis and in turn, better marketing of course.
• Campaign Operations and Testing Support: You’ll be able to use the scores to create better audiences, segments, path splits in flow, and personalized content. Think of this as your foundation for a quick win for long-term impact.

Einstein Engagement Frequency supports you in sending the right number of messages to reduce churn while also increasing engagement. This means: 

• Insights on Messages: You’ll have insights at your fingertips on the distribution of email sends relative to subscriber engagement for your set period of time.
• Optional Send Range: Einstein will predict the optimal frequency range of emails to maximize your engagement goals.
• Under-Messaged & Over-Messaged Solutions: You’ll have the opportunity to create data extensions for over and under-messaged subscribers to adjust your cadence based on data in the most tangible way.

Connecting Marketing to Business Insights

Marketers understand how important it is to tie performance back to business results. In other platforms, sometimes that type of analysis has to be done outside the marketing platform altogether. Because the next generation of Marketing Clouds brings together CRM+Data+AI+Marketing, it’s now easier to get those insights right in your marketing UI. MC Advanced offers improved reporting and insights; specifically:

• Opportunity Influence dashboards: This dashboard connects campaign performance to sales opportunities, and allows viewers to understand first-touch and last-touch attribution. *This feature is available in both MC Growth and MC Advanced!
• Campaign Performance Summarization for Copilot: With MC Advanced, you don’t just get the reporting, you get the insights too. Einstein will provide AI-generated campaign summaries and insights. *This feature is available in both MC Growth and MC Advanced!

Getting Started with Marketing Cloud Advanced Edition 

From a software perspective, Salesforce is making it easy for users of Marketing Cloud Growth Edition to upgrade to Marketing Cloud Advanced Edition while keeping their data intact. Contact your Salesforce rep for more information or to get started.

We’re here to help! When evaluating Salesforce technology, ListEngage can help you with everything from business impact to marketing strategy to technical implementation. We are predicting MC Advanced to be a game changer for our customers and the ecosystem as a whole. Contact us for a no-obligation discussion.