Salesforce Digital 360: Everything You Need to Know

Speaker 1: Welcome to the In The Clouds Podcast. In the clouds is a marketing cloud podcast powered by Lev, the most influential marketing focused Salesforce consultancy in the world. Lev is customer experience obsessed. And podcast hosts Bobby Tichy and Cole Fisher have partnered with some of the world's most well known brands to help them master meaningful one on one connections with their customers. In this podcast, they'll combine strategy and deep technical expertise to share best practices, how tos, and real life use cases and solutions for the world's top brands using Salesforce products today.

Bobby Tichy: Welcome to In The Clouds Podcast. This is your host, Bobby Tichy alongside Cole Fisher. Cole, it's been a little while. How you doing?

Cole Fisher: How you been, Bobby? I'm doing all right, man. We're weathering the storm. Right?

Bobby Tichy: A number of storms it seems like. We've got a special guest today from Salesforce. This is the first time we've had someone from Salesforce on the line. So Ben, you are a hot commodity. We're really excited to have you on the podcast. And if you wouldn't mind just doing a brief intro and then we'll dive into some of the talking points.

Ben Yerushalmi: Sure, happy to. And thanks for inviting me to the podcast. It is the first time I've ever been billed as a hot commodity, so trust me, I'm blushing.

Bobby Tichy: It's a good thing.

Ben Yerushalmi: Yeah, no. Anyway, Ben Yerushalmi. I'm a VP at Salesforce and I run a group known as Cloud Solution Alliances. And I focus on the products that sit within our digital 360 portfolio. And Cloud Solution Alliances focuses on driving capability, capacity and competency into our partner ecosystem. So what does that mean? Capability, do partners have the skills that they need to go out and drive customer success? And then more importantly, do we have the ability to train on those skills? Capacity, do we have enough of those skills in the GOs and the verticals and the market segments that we service? And then competency, can we measure it? Do we have certifications, super badges, other types of credentials that allow us to with confidence know that we've got an enabled partner ecosystem around those products? And then we get fairly involved with some of the go to market activities that are driven by our product teams.

Bobby Tichy: Awesome. And where are you based, Ben?

Ben Yerushalmi: I'm in San Francisco weathering the pandemic.

Bobby Tichy: So you mentioned Digital 360, and that's why we wanted to have you on, as we started to learn about this offering a little bit more. We were really intrigued by it and just wanted to get a little bit more information on what it is, how it functions, and all that good stuff. And I think before we dive into that, obviously 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. And we've been putting 360 on a lot of stuff, so we've got Customer 360, which is our integrated platform built on today's number one CRM, and that's across everything. And then we just launched Customer 360 Audiences, which is our CDP product. And then we launched this Digital 360. So if you add those things together, what do you get? What's the difference between them? And so maybe I was going to do the math on three times 360, but I couldn't do it fast enough.

Bobby Tichy: 1080.

Cole Fisher: Bobby's been watching skateboarding. He knows the 1080.

Ben Yerushalmi: There you go, there you go. So let me see if I can sort of frame that question up and run through it. So why don't we just start with Customer 360 since you brought that up? So Customer 360 is our integrated platform. It's built on our number one CRM, and that helps customers or helps businesses 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. And so 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. Look, it's not a one size fit all, but it's really a menu of options based on wherever companies are in their digital journey, so whether that's a CG 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. I mean, I could break those down if you want to, but let me pause there if you want to dig in.

Bobby Tichy: Yeah. 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 all of those products sit in a business unit under Adam Blitzer, who's the EVP and GM of that business. And that 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 B to B and B to C 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. I think with the announcement, 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 stuff sits within that Digital 360 portfolio of products.

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

Ben Yerushalmi: Hey, great question. I know it can get a little bit confusing. 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. So it is a major component of the digital 360 portfolio. It's sold bundled with our Marketing Cloud. And that just went GA this last October, so sort of late in October. And it was part of the Digital 360 announcement that we did back in September. And so when you think about it, so to build a unified customer profile, connects and ingests data from your siloed data sources, helps transform and cleanse the data through data mapping, and then stitches that all together into a unified customer profile through exact match identity matching, and helps you get to that golden customer record, helps segment and enrich customer data. It basically gives marketers a single place for segmentation instead of building segments and siloed systems. Marketer friendly, drag and drop, self service tools to build these segments and really get immediate population count. And then obviously, enables personalization everywhere, so activates segments to any engagement platform, including Marketing Cloud, so email, SMS, push, Journey Builder, and then through Interaction Studio or Evergage, which is an acquisition that we made I think back in the first quarter, for realtime interaction and realtime engagement, and then to really help do things like optimization for next best offer and everything. If you're familiar with the Interaction Studio product, it's very, very cool. Does that help?

Cole Fisher: Yeah. That's super helpful. So Ben, when we're thinking about the messaging of why, and we're coming to a CMO or a CDO about Digital 360, what's the presentation like? What is the problem that we're solving? What is the value presented to the CMO, CDO and messaging that we're providing to them? To sum it up: What is the problem that Digital 360 solves for us?

Ben Yerushalmi: Sure. So look, 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 kind of digital only, and that's here to stay. I think anybody who wasn't sort of accelerating their ability to go digital has absolutely done it sort of in the last nine months. And your customers are kind of expecting to engage with your brand in new ways, like all digital shopping, curbside pickup, shopping on social, just to kind of name a few. And in the past, that was the domain of the most visionary brands. Right? But now that's kind of 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. And so those are the things that the CMOs and the CDOs are thinking about. But 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. The skill shortages in the market, all of those things just make this a very challenging thing to deliver end to end. And so 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.

Bobby Tichy: So we've kind of understood the what and the why. As we go to the who, who's best suited for Digital 360? It obviously makes a ton of sense at the CMO and CDO level. But what industries or types of companies are you seeing getting the most value out of Digital 360?

Ben Yerushalmi: Sure, sure. To start with, our products are really built for companies of any size and any industry, so it's not what industry are you targeting, we're targeting them all. And I can break it down by cloud, but let's think about it within the context of Digital 360. One industry that we serve particularly well would be retail and consumer goods with companies like Adidas, Loreal, Health Cosmetics, Kellogg, to name a few. And RCG is typically ahead of the curve in pushing boundaries of innovation in the customer experience with things like live shopping, all the things that you can do in mobile applications, using social media as a means of engagement, and in parallel, investing in the B to B experience as well. These companies typically go to market direct to consumer in addition to wholesale. And we're able to serve the needs of all of that across B to B and B to C commerce, experience and our Marketing Cloud. So super good fit there. Other industries that we're seeing, manufacturing, automotive, energy, which are typically slower, are all really picking up the pace when it comes to moving to a digital first footing. Companies like i Robot, who make Roomba, Harman Audio, and other consumer electronics companies have been really successful in their pivot to direct to consumer. One of the things that I want to think about when you think about these things sort of bundled, we also want to be able to talk about if I just look at Marketing Cloud, Marketing Cloud goes across multiple industries. Right? I mean, obviously RCG, but you've got financial services, HLS, tel co, and when you're thinking about Marketing Cloud, for example, when you boil it down and you kind of take the marketing out of Marketing Cloud, it's truly just an engagement layer. It could be for internal company journeys, leveraging Journey Builder. It could be constituency engagement in public sector, student lifecycle management and higher ed, and so on. It goes across all industries. And one of the things that we're thinking about for commerce is really getting out of shirts and shoes and really expanding into additional industries as well, from tel co, to media, to financial services and HLS. So we're really opening up the total addressable market for our commerce products as well. And then if you think about Experience Cloud, for example, I remember getting a text from my boss back at the early part of the pandemic, and it was check your inbox. You have an escalation from the White House. And my boss and I sit on opposite sides of the political spectrum, so I wasn't really sure what that was going to be all about.

Cole Fisher: Sounds like fake news.

Ben Yerushalmi: Yeah. It sounds like fake news, but it wasn't. It was, well, at the time, Community Cloud, but it was a massive request being made around leveraging what is now Experience Cloud to be used with the SBA paycheck protection program, just being able to help them scale and handle the demand at launch. So it's really, it's across all industries when you really think about it.

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

Ben Yerushalmi: Sure. So the thing to remember is that Digital 360 is a suite of products and services, marketing commerce experience, that helps our joint customers move to a digital first footing. But you guys, look, you're consultants, you've done this before. There's no one path to digital success. Right? So for many customers, the entry point could be Marketing Cloud, but could just as easily be commerce, could be our order management, which is new this year. Could be Customer 360 Audiences, which is our CDP product. Could be Experience Cloud. And my advice is always, and I'm sure yours is the same, start with the pain point. What's that pressing need? What are the compelling use cases? And look, in a lot of cases, it's obvious. These are existential questions for a lot of businesses today, so there's sort of no one path in. And that's really where partners like Lev come in, and that's 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 of course, 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. Right?

Bobby Tichy: Yeah. For sure, and which is the same to be said about implementation. Right? There's no bread and butter, cookie cutter way of going about it. So I think that makes a lot of sense. You talked about RCG obviously being a good candidate for Digital 360. But to your point, there's a lot of applications across all industries. What's a cool success story, and maybe a nontraditional industry that you can share about D 360?

Ben Yerushalmi: Sure. Are you guys familiar with Sonos?

Bobby Tichy: Yeah. Sure.

Ben Yerushalmi: Sonos is a great one. Sonos, if you're not familiar, they sell wireless connected speakers and home audio systems. I think I've been a Sonos customer I think since there was a Sonos, so long such that I think a lot of my speakers are no longer compatible with the latest release of the controller for my iOS devices, and so they gave me a whole bunch of 30% coupons to upgrade my system. And so in the middle of the pandemic, I've been upgrading my system as they've been really transforming their business. So I think that's a pretty good one because I've sort of lived through it. But like a lot of other high tech manufacturers, Sonos relied really heavily on retail distribution channels. And due to COVID-19, the channels were impacted and they needed to reach their customers in an all new digital way. I mean, we had their CEO I think co- present when we launched Digital 360 at the Mexico back in September. And he really said, " Look, this was an existential challenge for the company." It really was. It was transform or die. And so they partnered with Salesforce and powered a connected end to end digital customer experience built on our number one CRM platform and a lot of the Digital 360 products. And so they started with Commerce Cloud and quickly launched and scaled a new direct to consumer channel, and continued to meet the existing retailer demand with the B to B commerce product with order volumes at holiday levels and fulfillment challenges caused by COVID crisis, they were able to quickly launch in cart messaging for transparent delivery estimates. And we've seen that across, incidentally, we've seen that across our entire Commerce Cloud business, that really since the pandemic has been in full swing. Our Commerce Cloud, our B to C Commerce Cloud has been operating at above holiday level volume pretty much every day, so I mean, it's a real testament to one of the key components of the Digital 360 suite. Additionally, Marketing Cloud was leveraged to fuel multi channel campaign journeys, including re- targeting for abandoned cart, newly in stock products and new promotions, and then when customers need help, they leverage the Experience Cloud to power self service community with knowledge articles and common FAQs. They used Einstein bots to help automate 50% of the most common customer issues. And then, and this is a great cross channel or cross cloud story, the remaining cases are managed by live agents using our service cloud. So really cool sort of story of the pandemic, story of full digital transformation that leverages the Digital 360 suite, and by doing that, they were able to accelerate their direct to consumer revenue by over 400% year over year, as they sort of went to that all digital selling channel, which now contributes about 45% of their overall revenue.

Cole Fisher: Oh, wow. That's really cool. So for companies like Sonos, are they considered officially leveraging Digital 360? Or is this kind of a test pilot that's being rolled out, and there's still a timeline before this goes GA?

Ben Yerushalmi: Sure. Okay. So remember that Digital 360 isn't necessarily a new product. It is a suite of products. Now within that suite of products, we have launched a number of new products this year, so from order management, to B to B on lightning, to payment, and then of course, our C 360 Audiences product, which is our CDP, which shares the 360 component to just about everything. And so everything that Sonos leveraged is a GA product. So across Marketing, across Commerce, across Experience Cloud, everything there is GA.

Cole Fisher: Okay. So when we think about implementation then, do we approach this as we still think about this as three discrete clouds, Marketing, Experience, and Commerce separately? Or is there kind of like a combined solution of functionality that we think about when we roll this out?

Ben Yerushalmi: Sure. Well, look, again, each one of these clouds are standalone clouds and can be. But obviously, when you're dealing with a suite of products and services from Salesforce, they're all pre- integrated and then obviously, those are things that as we continue to innovate, the integrations continue to evolve. And so you can buy standalone Marketing Cloud. You can buy standalone Commerce Cloud. But obviously, these things work better together when they're leveraged to drive a complete Digital 360 solution.

Cole Fisher: Very cool. So this is all super exciting and really interesting stuff. I think if there are current customers or anybody that's interested in learning more about Digital 360 or what it means for their business, as you pointed out, this is not a single approach for any one business, or one industry, or anything like that. So I think there's a lot of kind of questions to ask yourself as business when you come into this. So I think I'll just put in the plug to say if you do have an interest, get ahold of your Salesforce AE, your account exec. Unless, Ben, unless you want to give out the bat phone line that goes directly to your cell phone and field all the questions yourself. I think that sounds probably the best step forward for companies or people that are interested in Digital 360.

Ben Yerushalmi: Absolutely. Our AEs scale way better than I do.

Bobby Tichy: Awesome. Well, thanks again, Ben, for joining us as we transition to completely unrelated. I wanted to ask you guys. What is your favorite holiday tradition?

Ben Yerushalmi: I like that.

Cole Fisher: Ben, do you have one, or do you need to think? Because I can inaudible.

Ben Yerushalmi: It's funny. I was kind of talking tonight, I know this is going to air later. But tonight is the first night of Hanukah. And we're a blended family, if you will. And so my daughter does get eight days of presents, but she goes and gets them from underneath the Christmas tree, so it's I think a modern American family.

Bobby Tichy: Nice.

Ben Yerushalmi: So that's I think a tradition that she'll remember when she grows up.

Cole Fisher: Oh, that's neat. Double dip best of both traditions. I like that.

Ben Yerushalmi: Yeah.

Bobby Tichy: I certainly hope that, Ben, you're also getting eight presents as well.

Ben Yerushalmi: All I ever want is to go out and spend my own money on my own stuff without getting yelled at.

Cole Fisher: I thought you were going to say to be on a podcast with Bobby and Cole.

Ben Yerushalmi: That was my second thing.

Bobby Tichy: Cole, how about you?

Cole Fisher: For me, I think it was every Christmas when I was a kid, we used to drive from Indiana to Vermont, and we had family up in Vermont. And so every year it was a 16 hour drive. We would make it, rain, sleet, blizzard, whatever, we would make the drive. And when you get up there, if you've ever been to Stowe, Vermont, it's just kind of... I mean, you could Google it if you've never been there, but it's just the New England picture perfect ski lodge town carved into the side of a mountain with one little New England church steeple rising above the skyline. It's gorgeous. We'd ski. We'd sled. All the traditions, I mean, that was kind of like the quintessential Christmas tradition for me.

Ben Yerushalmi: And wasn't the first ski resort in Stowe started by the Von Trapps?

Cole Fisher: It was. In fact, my uncle was Maria Von Trapp's dentist. When there were too many family, too much family at their house, we would stay at the Von Trapp Lodge, and it's just beautiful up there, yeah. But yeah, yeah, you're absolutely right. Good call.

Bobby Tichy: Well, I think mine is much less exciting than either of yours. I have to say, and this goes back to for those who have listened to the podcast in the past, Cole and I are obsessed with food and drinks. And I think my favorite tradition has to be my wife and I starting really at Thanksgiving, every single night we will have eggnog until Christmas. So right now, we have seven different cartons, all different brands of eggnog in our refrigerator as we try to figure out which is the best one because they always come out with new ones, or new flavors, or new brands. So I wish it was like Stowe, Vermont, or getting eight presents, but I don't know. Eggnog's pretty great.

Cole Fisher: It's just drinking 30 pounds of body weight on before the New Year, that's all.

Bobby Tichy: Yeah. The buttermilk and fat really helps you get ready for the Christmas meal, where you just feel almost as awful as Thanksgiving.

Cole Fisher: That's great.

Bobby Tichy: Awesome. Well, Ben, thank you again for joining. We really appreciate it. Thank you for all those listening. As always, you can reach out to us at intheclouds@ levdigital. com. And we'll see you next time.

Ben Yerushalmi: Great. Thanks for having me.