Dreamforce 2012: Salesforce.com Adds Marketing Cloud For Social Insight

Salesforce.com has added another cloud to its lineup at its Dreamforce event in San Francisco, as it looks to address marketers’ social media needs.

The company has been proselytising about the “social revolution” this week and wants its customers to take advantage of the wealth of unstructured data on sites like Facebook and Twitter. Despite ditching its efforts to trademark the term ‘social enterprise’, it is pressing on with its social media strategy.

Its Marketing Cloud, launched today at Dreamforce 2012, brings together two of its biggest acquisitions of the last year and a half: social marketing firm Buddy Media and social analytics provider Radian6. The product was first made public following the announcement of the $689 million Buddy Media acquisition but has now become a genuine product designed to “manage the entire social marketing lifecycle”.

Rob Begg, VP of marketing at Salesforce.com, said social marketing has been “very difficult” for busineses, as it was too isolated across organisations, with too many different teams working on different projects. Businesses have also suffered from having many different social profiles to keep up to date, he claimed.

Dream a little Dreamforce…

“Customers want to be able to look across all social activities all in one suite so they know what is working, with who and when, and what campaigns are working well,” Begg said during a briefing earlier this week.

“It’s the first unified social makreting platform for marketers… taking social insight and turning it into action and ultimately get customers.”

From the Marketing Cloud, users can buy ads on the likes of Facebook and other social networks, update their social sites and gain insight into how successful their changes have been. The service allows for greater targeting of social campaigns, with the ability to use filters for age, interests, geography and others.

Rules can also be created. Begg said this could be used where a certain threshold needs to be reached by a specific time. If the target is not reached, a campaign can be killed, potentially saving budget.

“By combining Buddy Media, the world’s leading social media marketing platform, with Salesforce Radian6, the world’s leading social media listening platform, Salesforce.com will deliver the first comprehensive Marketing Cloud,” Joe Ciarallo, vice president of communications at Buddy Media, recently told TechWeekEurope.

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