As we enter a hybrid working environment, we must recognize how much has changed in the last two years. In-person and virtual events are now an industry norm. Inbound and Dreamforce 2022 were no different and the focus on the need for personalized experiences seemed to be the most important trend across both events.
Staying informed on these new updates is a priority for our team, so we’ve put together our list of the most exciting new developments in the world of martech.
Dive Into our 2022 Industry Update:
- Inbound 2022’s Connected Platforms
a. Quotes & Deals
b. Dev Tools & Connectivity
c. Data Management Updates
d. Power Your Marketing - Enter Dreamforce 2022
a. What’s the Deal with Genie?
b. Integrations for Collaboration
c. WhatsApp Partnership
d. Snowflake is Raining Down the Updates - Level Up Your Marketing Ecosystem
Inbound 2022: The Year of Connected Platforms
The “BIG thing” this year at HubSpot’s Inbound 2022 was connected platforms. Hubspot wants to help you build meaningful and personalized customer experiences down to the campaign and asset levels and as a saleforce pardot consultant we can’t help but get excited. They’re bringing forth new updates and dev tools that help you manage data efficiently so you can power more marketing campaigns and create custom content aligned to every nuance of your customer database while maintaining a clean marketing process. (We’d be remiss to not also mention their stacked list of speakers including former President Barack Obama!)
Quotes and Deals Update
New updates to goals and deals allow you to offer flexible pricing and payment options to your clients, so you can improve your revenue strategy. Additionally, you’ll be able to set payment schedules, collect payments for meetings or consultations, convert CTA buttons into payment links in emails, add payment fields to forms and sync everything to QuickBooks to help trigger workflows tasks.
Dev Tools and Connectivity Updates
Imagine being able to quickly detect and fix data errors automatically, well, with HubSpot’s new data quality command center you’ll be able to. This year, HubSpot’s all about expanding control over your data by expanding its seamless connectivity beyond QuickBooks and Shopify, now you’ll be able to connect the following through their HubSpot App marketplace. Here’s a list of some of their newest integrations.
The best part of these improvements is the data health syncing features that help alert you when possible issues with your data are happening. This can ensure consistency and allow for quick troubleshooting. Speaking of troubleshooting, one of the most existing features for developers this year is the new GitHub integration, so you can easily store, track and create a sandbox for your codebase.
Data Management Updates
While we’ve talked a little bit about data, the coolest feature HubSpot now offers is its new data import experience. Rather than clean a spreadsheet and re-import every time you catch an error, now you can fix them while you process the data into your CRM to ensure you’re catching the right issues without having to open up excel.
With data, consistency is key, HubSpot now offers the ability to keep your data clean over time with their property validations feature. You can create and enforce rules for properties to ensure that data doesn’t morph over time. This tool is a game changer for personalization, better customer experiences and ensuring you’ve got the most reliable database possible as you’re creating lead workflows.
“These new data management updates will really keep your database clean, that’s an important first step toward personalization that can simply not be overlooked. ”
- Raja, GNW Consulting
The new Data Model overview gives you a look into how your data is structured and organized within HubSpot. We’re excited about this tool because it can help you visualize your data and identify opportunities to use their CRM tool for virtually any business use case.
Power your Marketing with Custom Content
Imagine being able to build an entire website, no code needed, for free within HubSpot. Well, that’s one exciting new feature in this year’s suite of free tools if you’re using their CMS. We expect this feature to be heavily used by small businesses looking to create a simple website that can scale over time to fit their exact needs.
Other customization options include new activity types, configurable activity buttons, and new ways to message including LinkedIn, WhatsApp and SMS. New development tools that require advanced coding allow you to create custom cards and tabs within each contact record to bring in more data or provide additional insights to sales and marketing teams.
The new campaigns tool allows you to collaborate better from the campaign to asset level, so you can compare campaigns, comment within a thread and understand the true performance of each individual strategy. Teams can work together to ensure that every asset is crafted to specific success standards.
Last, but certainly not least, is our favorite update: Customer Journey Analytics will enable you to see how each individual brand touchpoint is performing so you can build a robust report of what custom content is performing, what gaps currently exist in the process to gain a true understanding of what paths prospects and customers are taking along the ways you can always deliver a true customized experience at an optimal value.
Enter Dreamforce 2022
Dreamforce2022 introduced many new updates from Salesforce Genie to new partnerships with WhatsApp and Snowflake, this annual event focused on connecting audiences and the next wave of customer experience marketing.
What’s the deal with Genie?
The biggest announcement at Dreamforce this year was without a doubt Salesforce Genie – a hyper scale real-time data platform that powers their new Customer 360 platform including Marketing Cloud.
They’ve dubbed this new product as the “first real-time CRM” which allows the ability to connect all customer data quickly and from multiple sources to create a unique customer experience in-the-moment. We feel this is a game changer for your marketing ecosystem.
With Genie, you can surface the most relevant workflows, use unified customer data profiles to tailor experiences automatically with Salesforce Einstein and ensure security, compliance and privacy every step of the way. You can also benefit from multiple integrations such as Mulesoft, Slack and Tableau to name a few.
“Unified data is the future of marketing and I think Genie is the first step in having the visibility to truly create unique experiences based on a single customer profile. I’m excited to see how Genie will unlock new possibilities for our clients.”
- Raja, GNW Consulting
Integrations for Collaboration
At its core, Salesforce has always had a focus on connecting internal teams together. Their Slack canvas addition helps your teams take notes, collaborate and determine next steps and create time-saving automations.
Slack canvas also allows for the:
- Sharing important files, such as account plans, briefing docs and team contacts
- Creating a curated list of relevant channels that the team needs to reference
- Implementing common workflows, like reporting a customer issue or website ticket
- Quickly accessing opportunity data from Salesforce Sales Cloud, plus usage and spend data
Other features include the use of Slack huddles which allow you to host co-working sessions with multi-person screen sharing, all the slack messaging tools you know and love and more.
“We use Slack because it offers the flexibility our team needs to efficiently work together, but remote. We think this integration will really help position teams for success. ”
- Raja, GNW Consulting
WhatsApp Partnership
A second goal for Salesforce is to connect businesses to client’s and their newly announced partnership with Meta’s WhatsApp is the perfect approach to making seamless customer communication a reality.
The popular global messaging platform can enable businesses to aggregate high-quality customer data through Salesforce Genie to target the right shoppers with the information they need. Some prime examples of how this integration can be used include:
- Leveraging the tool for abandoned-cart shoppers
- Creating a loyalty and rewards program
- Send special offers in a highly personalized way
WhatsApp wants to make the one-to-one online experiences feel like real life interactions that aren’t disjointed, but feel authentic and unified with the overall shopper’s journey. We recommend working with a martech consultant to help you ensure these 1:1 interactions are as seamless and strategy-driven as possible.
Snowflake is Raining Down the Updates
This year, Snowflake and Salesforce announced new “zero copy” data sharing capabilities that aim to minimize risk, costs and create flexibility that traditional sync methods don’t allow.
To bring enterprise data together, teams need to maintain complex pipelines that can often result in duplication that results in issues maintaining and moving such data to create experiences. New capabilities through Snowflake allow you to use and move this data without having to worry about duplication.
Admins can now control and manage risk permissions at scale while still collaborating across the cloud. This integration aims to tear data silos and provide a unified view for real-time insights and analytics.
Here’s what you can expect from this new partnership:
- Share data in real time between Salesforce and Snowflake
- Enrich Customer Data Platform profiles for deep personalization
- Unify analytics across data platforms for faster insights
- Visualize data from both Salesforce and Snowflake in Tableau
Ready to Level Up Your Marketing Ecosystem
Wondering how these updates can fit into your marketing ecosystem? Partner with GNW Consulting to unlock new opportunities and stay ahead of the curve, so you can reap the benefits of these Salesforce and HubSpot updates as soon as possible.
