Chapter 4: Salesforce AI for Marketing and Commerce

This chapter will cover the Einstein features that are available in the Salesforce Marketing and Commerce Clouds. First, we will examine how these clouds are different from the core clouds we've looked at so far and what that means for Einstein features. We will then survey the features in Marketing Cloud and Commerce Cloud from a high-level point of view to allow you to judge whether they might be right for your organization.

In this chapter, we're going to cover the following main topics:

• Introducing Einstein for marketing and commerce
• Using Marketing Cloud Einstein
• Implementing Commerce Cloud Einstein

After completing this chapter, you will have gained an understanding of how to personalize customer journeys across marketing and e-commerce activities using Einstein Platform features.

Technical requirements

There are no technical requirements for this chapter as, unfortunately, the features under discussion are not generally available for trial use. If you have access to a Marketing Cloud test instance or a Commerce Cloud sandbox, you can follow the descriptions provided.

Introducing Einstein for marketing and commerce

Marketing and eCommerce are some of the biggest areas in the current tech landscape. This includes the AI space, where options to customize and personalize marketing and promotional activities attract many players.

Unsurprisingly, Salesforce also has offerings in both these areas: Marketing Cloud and Commerce Cloud. However, these two products are significantly different from the clouds we've been dealing with so far. Neither of these two products was originally developed by Salesforce; instead, they were brought in-house via acquisitions. Marketing Cloud came from ExactTarget and Commerce Cloud came from Demandware.

Both of these companies were leaders in their space when acquired by Salesforce and they have only improved since their acquisition. However, they are built on substantially different technical architectures and while Salesforce has sprinkled a veneer of consistency over the user interface, they are different products...

Using Marketing Cloud Einstein

Marketing Cloud Einstein arguably has the most advanced standard offerings in the Salesforce Einstein platform. Just take a look at the following screenshot, which shows an overview dashboard that contains a multitude of features:

Figure 4.1 – Marketing Cloud Einstein dashboard

The marketing space is also an area where Salesforce continuously fuels its in-house capabilities with new acquisitions, such as the recent acquisitions of Evergage or Datorama. The fundamental purpose of these offerings is to be able to deeply personalize the communications that are made to customers and potential customers. We will see how to do this in the following sections.

Einstein Engagement Scoring

It's no secret that some people are more likely to open messages and engage with your content than others. Nor is it hard to see how having a good metric for that likelihood to engage could help your marketing efforts. For instance,...

Implementing Commerce Cloud Einstein

Commerce Cloud Einstein is Salesforce's AI offering for B2C storefronts built on Commerce Cloud. It is focused on providing easy out-of-the-box offerings that drive fast value. It does so by saving time and effort in setting up the features while providing a great user experience to customers. We will start with the biggest and most important feature: Einstein Product Recommendations.

Einstein Product Recommendations

We have already met the powerful recommendations engine driving Einstein Recommendations in Marketing Cloud. Einstein Product Recommendations is the native Commerce Cloud option for providing recommendations for other products in the catalog. In contrast to the general-purpose Einstein Recommendations, Einstein Product Recommendations is focused entirely on providing good product recommendations as part of an e-commerce website. Therefore, the two are complementary, although they overlap in some functionality.

The configuration...

Summary

In this chapter, we have examined the AI features present in the Marketing and Commerce Clouds. This was a high-paced exploration of a multitude of features that help personalize the customer journey across both email and the web, and you may be feeling slightly dizzy from the experience. Well done for hanging on.

In the Using Einstein Marketing Cloud section, we looked at features such as Einstein Splits and Send Time Optimization, which can help you target the right people at the right time with your email messages. We also looked at Einstein Recommendations and Content Selection, which can tailor the content of messages to individual users. Overall, we saw a deep level of capability, perhaps deeper than anywhere else in the Einstein Platform, that can be deployed in a range of common scenarios with little configuration required.

For Commerce Cloud, we looked at specialized AI capabilities that focus on personalizing the shopping experience. This included recommending...

Questions

1. Why would you use Einstein Send Time Optimization?
2. Where do you activate the personas generated by Einstein Engagement Scoring?
3. What classic AI application does Einstein Commerce Insights use?