Salesforce ExactTarget Launches ‘Journey Builder’

Global cloud computing company Salesforce ExactTarget Marketing Cloud has released the next generation of its customer journey management platform, ‘Journey Builder’.

At a briefing for press and analysts at Salesforce’s San Francisco headquarters, Scott McCorkle, chief executive of Salesforce ExactTarget Marketing Cloud, said the future of marketing is in the customer journey.

However the majority of organisations are failing to handle customer journeys with expertise.

“Most organisations have disconnected individual interactions and individual campaigns. Often it is because different organisational units might own parts of the customer experience or even in the same organisation there can be different communications happening from different parts of the customer journey. That is a problem,” McCorkle said at the event earlier today.

Further complicating the issue is the rise of connected devices.

“The world is connected, everything is coming together and if we are in a world where the physical and digital are converging as rapidly as they are then we all have a wonderful opportunity that is really an imperative to meet customer needs anywhere, anytime.”

Salesforce has what they believe is the solution to this issue in their ‘Journey Builder’ tool.

The customer journey management platform was first unveiled at the company’s premier event, Dreamforce, last year.

Today the firm released a number of additions to the tool including Journey Maps, Journey Triggers and Journey Metrics.

Journey Maps is a drag and drop interface that allows marketers to visualise the customer journey. McCorkle said Journey Maps is designed to be a digital version of what marketers map out on whiteboards.

“Journey Builder works the way marketers think, not the way computer systems typically work,” McCorkle said.

He described the tool as highly visual, flexible and free form: “It allows a marketer to express the journey in a way that is digestible, presentable and can be communicated across the entire organisation.”

Journey Triggers predicts and delivers messages to consumers based on their behaviour. For example, a marketer can set up a message to be automatically sent when a shopping cart is abandoned online.

Marketers can also set up their own triggers. For example, Salesforce used a hypothetical consumer interaction with the FitBit brand to show how the brand can automatically send messages to its new users to congratulate them on their first 5,000 steps since setting up their device.

The third update for Journey Builder is Journey Metrics. With Journey Metrics marketers can define exactly what success is for them – for example a brand’s goal may be to convert 40% of their abandoned shopping carts into a sale. Journey Metrics will then track the preferred metric.

For more information see the release below:

Salesforce ExactTarget Marketing Cloud Launches the Next Generation of Journey Builder; Accelerates the Transformation of Marketing to Customer Journeys

• Marketing Cloud delivers the comprehensive customer journey solution to plan, personalize and optimize 1:1 customer interactions across channels and devices
• Breakthrough innovations including Journey Maps, Journey Triggers and Journey Metrics empower marketers to deliver amazing customer journeys
• Leading brands like Microsoft, Sony PlayStation and SkyMall connect with customers in entirely new ways using Salesforce ExactTarget Marketing Cloud Journey Builder

SAN FRANCISCO (July 30, 2014) – The ExactTarget Marketing Cloud from salesforce.com (NYSE:CRM),  the world’s #1 CRM platform, today launched the next generation of Journey Builder, the comprehensive customer journey management platform to plan, personalize and optimize 1:1 customer interactions across channels and devices. Global marketing leaders like Microsoft, Sony PlayStation and SkyMall use Journey Builder to move from campaigns to customer journeys and deliver amazing customer experiences across sales, service and marketing.

Comments on the news:

• “The future of marketing is the customer journey. Marketers need to understand the complete journey people have with their brand, and how to measure and optimize its impact on their business,” said Scott McCorkle, CEO, Salesforce ExactTarget Marketing Cloud. “With Journey Builder, marketers now have the ability to get a more complete view of their customers, identify where they are in the journey with their brand, optimize every point of interaction on that journey, and measure the impact of all customer communications.”
• “ExactTarget Marketing Cloud’s Journey Builder product is going to help us get closer to our customers,” said Kevin Weiss, chairman & CEO for SkyMall. “We’re building 1:1 customer journeys in real time across all channels and devices, better serving customer needs and interests through the joy of shopping.”
• “Businesses must now invest in customer journey management to optimize and lead customer journeys rather than reacting to new technology trends,” said Brian Solis, Principal Analyst, Altimeter Group. “Everything begins with uncovering the journey of connected customers and how it differs from the funnel you’ve organized around today’s already familiar customers.”

The Future of Marketing is 1:1 Customer Journeys
Marketers today realize that every moment matters. McKinsey reports that more than 50 percent of customer interactions happen during a multi-event, multi-channel journey, and journey led transformations deliver impact across customer satisfaction and revenue growth. However, marketers face challenges with the customer journey, as 66 percent of companies say they lack an in-depth understanding of their customers. In order to stay ahead of the competition and be there to welcome customers to the future, marketers need to shift from the campaign to the customer journey.

Introducing the Next Generation of ExactTarget Marketing Cloud Journey Builder
With the next generation of Journey Builder, the future of marketing has arrived. Marketers will be able to map customer journeys to digital marketing interactions across email, mobile, social, web, connected products and more, to power personalized customer journeys that are dynamically optimized based on customer engagement.

With next generation Journey Builder, marketers will be able to:

• Plan the Customer Journey with Journey Maps – When it comes time to develop a new customer journey, Journey Builder delivers a drag-and-drop interface that makes it easy to map the exact path customers will experience with a brand across lifecycle stages and channels. With Journey Maps, marketers now have an easy to use canvas – an intuitive visual process – to map customer journeys across email, mobile, social, web and connected devices, measure performance, optimize for best results and create a holistic view of how customers experience the brand.
• Personalize the Customer Journey with Journey Triggers – Predict and automatically deliver the right message, channel, and timing for each customer experience by setting up predictive intelligence triggers. With new Journey Triggers, marketers will be able to automatically trigger content and offers based on customer behaviors such as abandoned shopping cart, abandoned web browser, product purchase or affinity changes.
• Optimize the Customer Journey with Journey Metrics – New visual analytics empower marketers to test and monitor the effectiveness of every interaction, and visualize which channels, messages and times are performing best, beyond just clicks and web conversions. Now marketers will be able to track and test every part of the journey in real time against goals using behavioral data such as purchases, downloads, loyalty achievements and app usage.

The next generation of Journey Builder was unveiled by ExactTarget Marketing Cloud CEO Scott McCorkle today before press and analysts in San Francisco, and will also be featured at Connections, the conference for digital marketers. Marketers from around the world will attend the three-day event, which takes place September 23-25, 2014, and features keynotes from salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff, entrepreneur, musician and philanthropist will.i.am, GE SVP & CMO Beth Comstock and DonorsChoose.org CEO Charles Best.
Global Marketing Leaders Deliver 1:1 Customer Journeys at Scale with the ExactTarget Marketing Cloud
ExactTarget Marketing Cloud, the platform for 1:1 customer journeys, accelerates the marketing of leading companies such as Microsoft, Sony PlayStaytion and SkyMall. The ExactTarget Marketing Cloud enables marketers to build a single view of the customer, plan and optimize the customer journey, deliver personalized content across every channel and device, and measure the impact on their business.
Pricing & Availability

• ExactTarget Marketing Cloud Journey Builder is generally available today for customers. Journey Maps, Journey Triggers and Journey Metrics are scheduled to be generally available in Q3 FY15.
• Pricing starts at $5,000 per year for a subscription license, along with tiered pricing based on the number of messages sent (CPM).