Since the ExactTarget Marketing Cloud rebranded as Salesforce Marketing Cloud, marketers have all been eagerly anticipating new features and the opportunity to find out what this means for them. Here are some of the key features of Salesforce Marketing Cloud from the Dreamforce 2015 keynote:

Journey Builder for Apps

Create customer journeys easily and seamlessly with Salesforce Marketing Cloud’s Journey Builder. With the announcement of Journey Builder for Apps, you can now integrate Journey Builder right into your applications to improve customers’ digital experiences on mobile devices. Here are some ways companies can leverage this capability to engage more deeply with their customers:

• Connect with your audience in the moment through real-time, geo-targeted alerts and notifications
• Deliver 1:1 personalized communications based on data-driven triggers, including events, location, or stage in customer lifecycle
• Optimize effectiveness of communications — in-app, in-product, or through any other channel —  through testing and measuring to make align to your business goals.

Time will tell, but Journey Builder’s integration feature may prove to be a key differentiator from other customer journey apps.

Social Studio

With Social Studio (integration of Radian6 and Buddy Media), companies now have the ability to listen to online conversations about their brand, and to engage and respond in real-time. They also have the ability to publish and syndicate content to social networks, while monitoring campaign performances with a single dashboard.

Integrated Channels

The Salesforce Marketing Cloud integrates many communication channels to deliver a more personalized, relevant experience for customers across channels. Supported channels include email, social, web, SMS and push notifications.

Analytics

This may be the most exciting feature for me. The Marketing Cloud promises marketers the ability to drive meaningful, relevant customer engagement with this capability, as it allows consolidation of data from multiple channels to gain a deeper and more comprehensive view of customer behaviors. Marketers can then use this insight to optimize communications on every channel they’re using to engage more deeply with each customer.

This was a great product keynote at Dreamforce, especially seeing as marketers are more prominent than ever at this event. Marketers today are no longer solely responsible for customer acquisition — they are becoming more involved in the entire customer lifecycle. To learn more about how marketers can leverage Salesforce, download our State of Salesforce report, or check out the recap of our session for marketers at Dreamforce.

To learn more about how the best marketers are using Salesforce, download our special report.