Today’s launch of Salesforce Marketing Cloud Predictive Decisions means it is now easier than ever for marketers to capitalize on their exponentially expanding data and embrace a new paradigm of customer engagement.

What’s in this new customer engagement paradigm? A marketer’s nirvana: true one-to-one personalization throughout the customer journey.

Predictive intelligence enables marketing programs to go beyond contextual engagement — using predictions to give customers what they want, before they know they want it. Predictive Decisions leads a new wave of solutions that integrate data from any channel to enable marketers to intelligently speak to their customers.

Marketers already acknowledge the need for more analytics. Bluewolf’s State of Salesforce report, which includes insight from more than one thousand Salesforce customers globally, found that 100% of marketers plan to increase investment in analytics. For those who are already invested in analytics, 77% say that adoption of analytics is strong. Marketers who adopt predictive solutions first will not only avoid being crushed by their own data, but will become leaders in this new paradigm. 

Some of our clients, like Iron Mountain, are ahead of the curve and have already implemented predictive analytics techniques into their sales processes to get closer to their customers. Sales teams are already deriving value from intelligent tools; marketing is the next frontier.

To deliver relevant communications, companies need personalization strategies that scale. Automation is indispensable, making use of intelligent algorithms to predict and recommend the next best product, action, or content — without any action from marketers. Leading marketers will not just be able to predict what their customers want, but also use tools like Predictive Decisions to differentiate their brand and increase loyalty. “Customers want relevant experiences when interacting with companies,” according to Bluewolf’s CMO, Corinne Sklar. “This is more than just investing in dashboards, it’s about action — giving employees the insights needed to drive meaningful customer moments, and using data to predict future behavior and enhance the customer experience.”

Marketing, at its best, is indistinguishable from pure one-to-one communication with each customer. Intelligent solutions are taking marketers one step closer to true personalization, and, in doing so, open up a new world of possibilities to get closer to customers.

Learn more about customer engagement marketing, read our State of Salesforce report. What opportunities await marketers with predictive solutions? Let me know your thoughts in the comments below, or tweet @Bluewolf.