Dreamforce 2021 Day 3

The Dreamforce 2021 is over! We’re going to miss this event until next year but we still have a lot of topics and announcements to introduce to you.

Those were 3 days of much excitment and learning, aiming for us all to grow in the Salesforce universe. Here’s the agenda we followed to attend day #3, September 23rd:

1. Personal Connections: key to success in an All-Digital World
2. Digital-First Leadership: Balancing Service, Speed & Trust
3. Building Loyalty at scale in the New Age of Retail

1. Personal Connections: Key to Success in an All-Digital World

Small businesses represent the best of us, but running a business is more complicated than ever nowadays.
This Dreamforce 2021 session was hosted by Eric Bensley, VP of SMB Marketing at Salesforce. The discussion was all about connections for SMB (small and medium businesses) and how to get the most out of it with personalisation – the perfect tool for a deep connection with customers.

However, during the last year, connections had deeply changed. And it might be difficult to generate meaningful connections in today’s digital world, due to the ever-changing expectations of customers and the absence of presential contact.

Using Salesforce Customer 360, it is easier for businesses to become more personal, strengthen relationships and creating long-lasting connections.

The session was then continued by Reksha Srivatsan, Senior Director of SMB Product Marketing at Salesforce, giving some tips on how to get more personal with tailored marketing campaigns. We all demand more personalisation today than ever! 72% of marketers say that achieving customer expectations is now harder than it was a year ago.

Some companies, like Canva, shared what they are doing to excel customer’s expectations. By simplifying the access to a design tool for anyone, Canva grew exponentially into the most used free solution. They solved a customer’s problem!

Iman Maghroori, Distinguished Solution Engineer at Salesforce, entered then the session to deliver a demo of B2B marketing automation solution, Pardot, on how to build a simple e-mail campaign, updating content with just drag and drop. Then, he introduced Engagement Studio to design a journey for nurturing programs and how to track the results of these programs.

The session went back to Reksha and started speaking about how to strengthen relationships with customers. First, give the sales team everything they might need to know about their customers. Second, give your sales teams time back in the day with AI, so they can focus all their time on connecting with customers and building meaningful relationships. And third, give them the digital tools to help them sell. Selling with empathy is the key.

The final tip Reksha mentioned was to create long-lasting connections. It is all about the customer experience. 80% of customers say that the buying experience is even more important than the product itself. These great experiences build connections. And connections build loyalty!

2. Digital-First Leadership: Balancing Service, Speed & Trust

Just before the newly created US-EU Council on Trade and Technology (TTC) meeting in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on September 29, will address issues ranging from technology standards, supply chain security, climate and green technology, data governance and competitiveness, as well as human rights and export controls, Salesforce brought a debate between Gina Raimondo, US Secretary of Commerce, and Thierry Breton, European Commissioner for the Internal Market, mediated by Sara Fischer, Media Reporter at Axios.

And there were three main subjects discussed:

• The inequality and division between people with and without access to technology

Both agreed the pandemic period change the way we live, work, and has highlighted deep inequalities. People who do not have access to technology were left behind without broadband or a computer, there was no way to participate in meetings, classes, online and everyday medical consultations and assistance became virtual. Which also places access to technology as a basic asset to be guaranteed to people.

• The tension between innovation and regulation when we change so fast and laws often don’t keep pace.

And as the EU and US share the same values, innovating, promoting market base competition, and keeping consumers safe, it is natural that new laws are discussed together, having the appropriate level of regulation in order to do all that.

• A regulating data to empower consumers

Living in a data-driven based economy, they should secure data trusted flows, protect individual privacy, and guarantee that industrial data have safe spaces and companies have clear and sustainable rules

As the e-Commerce Directive was enacted in June of 2000 and online life has shifted considerably since the need for changes is inevitable. We know that is going to be difficult to have an agreement between the EU and the US, but both governments were committed and engaged to ensure that the cooperation resulted in broad-based growth in both economies.

3. Building Loyalty at Scale in the New Age of Retail

This Dreamforce 2021 session was hosted by Rob Garf, VP & GM of Retail at Salesforce, and regards the topic of online shopping and how everyone switched to e-commerce during the last year. Retailers became really overwhelmed with new shopping behaviours. Customers started to prioritize health, safety, convenience, and trust, more than ever before.

The customer is at the centre of everything. So, retailers must accelerate digital transformation and remain agile, answer the expectations of a highly demanding audience.

Salesforce Customer 350 eliminates friction across channels, providing a unique place to analyse all your customers. Rob introduced a Slack-First Customer 360 for retail demo in action.

Then, Molly Mecham made it to the stage to talk about the changes that are happening in retail. She said that each customer runs across 9 touch points in his shopping journey. And this journey is fragmented between the physical and the digital world.

Any store must be an anywhere store.

So, Dreamforce 2021 came to an end! Stay tuned with us for more updates about the main topics of this incredible event. If you’re looking to review the sessions you might miss, we reviewed the day 2 sessions as well as day 1 review of the event.