Each year, Trailblazers from all over the world gather at Dreamforce to share brand success stories, information on current industry trends, and plans for adapting to future changes in the ever-evolving world of marketing.

At this year’s Marketing Cloud keynote, Intelligent Marketing for the Empowered Consumer, leaders from Salesforce, along with customer Trailblazers from Warner Bros. Entertainment, Ticketmaster, and BBVA, took the stage to share fresh insights on intelligent marketing, announce a dynamic new acquisition, and showcase recent Trailblazer triumphs.

Intelligent Marketing is the present and future of marketing

We are living in the age of intelligent marketing, founded by truly disruptive technologies and powered by AI and IoT, which are the foundations of the 4th Industrial Revolution. Technology has empowered consumers and brands alike, as never before. Consumers have more control over their brand interactions and purchasing experiences, while brands have newfound opportunities to engage their audiences in meaningful 1-to-1 conversations and build loyalty.

Using technology to market intelligently to today’s connected consumers was a key theme of the Intelligent Marketing for the Empowered Consumer keynote, which focused on the mix of channels and forms of interactions that make up the modern marketing landscape. After all, 79% of consumers say the experience a company provides is as important as its products and services. Today’s most successful marketers are using AI-powered automation through myriad channels to reach consumers with relevant, personalized content in real time, at all stages of the customer journey.

Authentic personalization is now more essential to marketers than ever, as 84% of customers say treating them as a person — and not a number — is key to winning their business. Innovations in real-time two-way communication, from AI-supported live chat to dynamic chatbots, are transforming consumers’ brand interactions for the better. Brands now have all the tools they need to deliver truly personalized customer experiences at every touchpoint.

Announcing the acquisition of Datorama

Intelligent marketing is personalized marketing, and AI is key to collecting and processing insights that allow brands to connect with consumers in increasingly purposeful ways at scale.

According to the Fourth Annual Salesforce State of Marketing report, 57% of marketers using AI say it’s essential to helping their company create 1-to-1 marketing across every touchpoint. That’s why Salesforce is excited to welcome Datorama to the Ohana, as the newest member of the Marketing Cloud family.

Datorama is cross-platform marketing intelligence that gives marketers a single source of truth they can use to evaluate actions to take across their marketing investments. It automatically interprets and classifies marketing data, using an expansive library of APIs and AI-powered connectors. The engine can capture all marketing data from any source (including Salesforce Marketing Cloud, Google Analytics, and all customer channels), and instantly provide clearly detailed insights about campaign performance. Marketers can customize the Datorama dashboard to align with their unique KPIs and customers, and receive intelligently tailored marketing recommendations powered by AI.

In the keynote, we saw some of Datorama’s incredible capabilities — including its unified dashboard and powerful AI insights. Guest speaker Keith Camoosa, SVP of Data Intelligence at Warner Bros. Entertainment, shared examples of how the Datorama dashboard has served as a transparent source of truth, enabling the company’s marketing teams to connect with fans in more meaningful ways than ever before.

Innovation isn’t just about technology

To achieve the most successful results, the innovative technology powering intelligent marketing needs to be used by innovative, transformative people —  like Salesforce Customer Trailblazer Kristin Bond from Women of Email, who is not only driving transformation in the marketing industry, but is also giving back to the community by empowering female marketers.

For more information, check out Women of Email.

Ticketmaster

With half a billion tickets sold annually, (that’s 15 per second, across 29 different countries!) Ticketmaster operates at massive scale. Despite this scale, to consumers, each individual ticket purchase is identity-based and personal. Ticketmaster knew that unlocking true 1-to-1 conversations was key to engaging their customers, and turned to Salesforce Marketing Cloud integrated with Google Analytics 360 to start doing just that.

Guest speaker Kathryn Frederick, EVP of Growth & Insights at Ticketmaster, discussed how Salesforce combined with Google allows Ticketmaster to see customer journeys over lifetimes, anticipate customer tastes changing, and optimize customer experiences. The partner platform has the potential to become fundamental to Ticketmaster’s ongoing marketing efforts, making it easier than ever to provide the right fan with the right ticket — at the right time, through the right channels, and with the right message.

BBVA

Multinational Spanish banking group BBVA is another example of a trailblazing organization using Salesforce Marketing Cloud and Interaction Studio to provide revolutionary customer experiences. By adopting a customer-focused approach, BBVA has been able to deliver sophisticated, journey-based marketing across all relevant channels — with real-time, next-best-action precision, online and offline.

Guest speaker, Javier Donoso, Global Head of Data Insights and CRM at BBVA, discussed marketing in a post-GDPR world, and shared that his company’s intention is to redefine banking relationships by focusing on customers’ life goals. BBVA aims to create personalized customer journeys that are mobile-first, but continue across digital and physical platforms. This includes providing customers and new prospects with innovative tools like BBVA’s Valora app, which helps customers search for homes through an Augmented Reality experience.

Explore more from Salesforce

With the age of intelligent marketing in full swing, it’s essential for marketers to keep pace with the industry’s new and dynamic changes. In this new era, the most successful brands are the ones using the intelligent power of AI to help provide engaging, personalized experiences for their customers — at scale.

Stay tuned for the release of the full Dreamforce 2018 Marketing Cloud Keynote video to see for yourself exactly what happened at Intelligent Marketing for the Empowered Consumer. Plus, check out our Marketing Cloud Release Notes for an overview of the new products we’ve announced, and learn more about each product through our Trailmix.

With another year’s Dreamforce behind us, it’s time to mark your calendar for Salesforce Connections 2019. We’ll see you in Chicago next June 17-19!