It’s that time of year again. After wrapping up the holidays and ushering in the new year, the annual Consumer Electronics Show (CES) takes center stage in Las Vegas. To anyone relevant in the consumer technology space, CES is a must-attend for showcasing the latest wares and driving buzz around upcoming innovations. Headlining companies normally include tech giants like Apple, Google, and Samsung. However, there is one company you wouldn’t expect to see at CES making its first appearance this year—salesforce.com.

Yes, salesforce.com. “Why,” you ask, “Would salesforce.com be at CES?” "Did Marc Benioff wander into the Las Vegas Convention Center, hoping to scope out a larger venue for Dreamforce?" Benioff even asked himself "What am I doing here?" during an interview to which he answered: "I don't even know."

Well, the answer is simple—it’s all about the customer experience. Customer centricity and a fully integrated customer experience have disrupted traditional marketing, and the empowered customer has leveled the playing field. Salesforce.com is at CES to demonstrate the power of the Salesforce Marketing Cloud to better understand and connect with customers who are constantly connected to that cloud via a range of devices, many of which are on display at CES.

Many organizations are struggling to grasp the implications of such a change, while others, like Virgin America, Toyota, and Starwood have become leaders in their industries by embracing it. Those organizations ignoring the change believe it’s a fad brought by technology—particularly social, mobile, and location-aware apps and connected devices—or they simply don’t know how to adapt. They fail to realize that these changes are happening on a massive scale and have only just begun. Companies who fail to be agile and adapt will face the consequences, as with so many other disruptive innovations. Salesforce.com clearly sees this opportunity and is trying to encourage organizations to act quickly by embracing the Salesforce Marketing Cloud.

How does the Salesforce Marketing Cloud help drive an integrated customer experience? How is this the “New Marketing?” At CES, salesforce.com is answering these questions in five ways:

1. Listening

A social command center begins with listening. Social listening provides real-time customer insights.

With over 3 million conversations happening around an event like CES, it can be difficult to turn social interactions into actionable insights. The Salesforce Marketing Cloud excels in this capacity, enabling organizations to filter out the noise and focus on what really matters.

2. Partner Ecosystem

Salesforce.com excels at enabling seamless integration of partner solutions and is extending the success of its popular AppExchange marketplace into the Marketing Cloud. This supports robust segmentation capabilities.

Specialized providers offer detailed insights about individuals and organizations. Examples include demographics, influence, and sentiment. At CES, they highlight the most active age groups, most influential social users, and trending locations. 

3. Engagement

The Marketing Cloud enables real-time engagement and routing of customer inquiries. This promotes rapid resolutions to inquiries, transparency within an organization, and a better usage of customer feedback.

At CES, questions around exhibitors, logistics, and general show feedback are answered quickly and efficiently, enabling happy customers to promote to their own communities.

4. Integration

The Marketing Cloud is a fully integrated platform that manages social activity. This includes both inbound communications and execution of social campaigns, linked to a single CRM view of each individual.

At CES, integration was demonstrated at the next level by using connected devices and machine data to produce proactive alerts. Benioff cites examples of appliances like dishwashers and cars (Toyota Friend app) that could proactively provide alerts. Think of the possibilities from a marketing perspective.

5. Mobility

The Marketing Cloud is designed to support customer interactions from mobile devices, anywhere, any time. CES, themselves, realized the need for a mobile app and built it in record time by leveraging the power of Heroku and salesforce.com. The result, an incredible custom app for attendees and those interested.

What does all this mean? You need to be where your customers are, listen, engage, and understand who they are. Salesforce gets it. Bluewolf gets it. Do you? If not, it’s never too late to change. We can help.