5 Ways Salesforce’s Dreamforce 2019 Perfectly Sums Up the ‘MarTech’ Mood

The world’s most creative and successful MarTech and SalesTech platform, Salesforce is organizing its annual conference – Dreamforce, between 19 and 22 November. The venue – Downtown SF, which is expected to be packed with some of the biggest names in the tech business.

The period between 2011 and 2019 can be called the ‘Salesforce economy’. The Salesforce economy witnessed the birth, evolution, and maturity of three big technology platforms – Marketing Clouds, Sales Intelligence, Retail, and Customer Data Management. 5 Ways Salesforce’s Dreamforce 2019 Perfectly Sums Up the ‘MarTech’ Mood, by virtue of its vision and cooperativeness, is truly at the center of this matured MarTech ecosystem that has over 8000 vendors providing products, solutions, and service in over 50 different Marketing, Advertising and Sales Tech categories. These categories also players delivering solutions specifically to niche customers. These include AI-based Voice Commerce, Search Intelligence, Personalization, and the “epic disruption” of the year- TikTok Advertising.

Here’s why covering and attending MarTech events like Dreamforce is such fun!!!

On Every CMO’s Bucket-List, this Thanksgiving

If you are the CEO or CMO of a MarTech company competing in the US-UK MarTech space which is worth $65 million (and, globally $121 billion), I can’t afford to be wrong on the ROI thing, or can we?¹

Before thanksgiving, it makes sense to attend the CMO’s top bucket-list entry – Salesforce Dreamforce 2019. And, we’re listening to what Salesforce has planned for the guests.

It should be hard to convince, why you should attend Dreamforce, and with whom. A majority of Marketing and Sales Automation professionals are 100% convinced that Dreamforce allows them to meet and learn from CMOs and vice-versa. CMOs walk into the arena with badges and walk out with new ideas, energy, and enthusiasm.

We cover many Marketing and Technology-related events and conferences around the world. But, Salesforce’s Dreamforce remains the top-activity to do before the year ends for most Marketing and Sales professionals. If you wish to catch up with the names and meet faces running the ‘subscription’ economy in the US, this is the place to be. Right time, right place, with the right people talking the right things.

Enjoy our Salesforce’s Dreamforce archives.

Salesforce Dreamforce Takes You by Sheer Numbers – Attendees and Generating ROI

In 2016: 171,000+ registered to attend – 25+ keynotes, 3,300 breakout and theater sessions (represented by 83 countries)

In 2017: 3,200 sessions, 2400 expert speakers, 10 million Online viewers (represented by 91 countries)

In 2018: 50+ keynotes, 2,700 sessions, 5000 hours of hands-on training and job orientation, 13.5 million online views (represented by 103 countries)

Each year, Salesforce announces new products and collaborations through its Trailblazer community. If it was the year of Einstein in 2016, the 2018 edition was flooded by 12 cutting-edge MarTech products. 2019 Dreamforce is already sold-out on numbers and fan-following, largely because of the keynotes planned, and the Corporate Trailblazer fund announced earlier this week. More is about to come… Yes, Dreamforce is about ‘dreamy’ numbers that realized.

Recommended: Salesforce Launches Its Own Content Management System

I am personally a huge fan of Salesforce’s ROI Calculator.

For instance, ROI calculator helps us to enhance the lead volume of Marketing campaigns, measured based on the basis of the average conversion rate from lead to opportunity, leads are generated by Marketing per year, average deal size and opportunity win rate.

4-Days Where Business Meets Philanthropy and Forecast Spellers

In keynotes, you can learn the journeys of businesses and how they become disruptors in Cloud, SaaS markets.

Salesforce Dreamforce has changed forms and sizes every year. But, the idea and message remains same and to-the-point – “4 Days You Will Learn About Business, and a lot more”. Every new edition is bigger than the last one– and it amazes MarTech journalists like me to brush shoulders with the CEOs and CMOs who have been in the business for over 20+ years or more. However, the event is all big on channeling funds to corporate social responsibility activities, community service, and environmental conservation. There are hundreds of activities you can undertake through attending the event, or by donating to the cause.

This year’s speakers include the 44th POTUS Barack Obama, Apple CEO Tim Cook, Workday CEO Aneel Bhusri, Cellist’s Yo-Yo Ma, GOT actress and founder of SameYou Emilia Clarke, US’s World and Olympic champion Megan Rapinoe, and many other luminaries from the various walks of life.

See Your Dreams; Enforce Your Dream

One thing I have learned from Dreamforce attendees and exhibitionists is – Dreams need to be enforced. For example, in this interview with Lattice Engine’s Nipul Choksi, we learned that CDPs will eventually become the centerpiece of every MarTech and SalesTech stack by 2022-2024. And, it’s happening sooner than expected already. Today, Lattice Engine is part of Dun & Bradstreet. Dun & Bradstreet had acquired Lattice Engine in a record-deal to leverage Lattice Engine’s CDP strength in the Salesforce community.

Read Also: CDPs and Analytics Take CRM Lead Management Providers to New Heights

With this MarTech acquisition, “Salesforce CRM customers will see better alignment with their Marketing counterparts by leveraging D&B Optimizer, D&B Hoovers, and Lattice Atlas, which will now be grounded in the same foundational data asset and the power of the Dun & Bradstreet D-U-N-S^® Number.”*

Perfectly Contouring the MarTech MOOD with Connected Experiences Beyond Sales

A different ‘force’ descends to downtown SF during the event that somehow raises an aura of current-day MarTech emotions. If it was AI and Automation discussed at length between 2011-20126, the mood shifted to talking about enterprise governance, customer data privacy, personalization, and connected commerce experiences.

Lidiane Jones, SVP Product at Salesforce Commerce Cloud stated –

For any retail or e-commerce business to succeed, they must become GDPR-compliant. However, the majority of consumers (63% to be exact) say companies don’t use their data transparently.

At Salesforce, this is something that we’re able to help support our customers with. Our products, like Commerce Cloud, are complete with features that not only enable merchants to comply with GDPR but also serve as a trusted partner to their customers — ensuring that all commerce operations remain reliable, compliant and secure.

In one of the interviews in 2018, Doug Winter, CEO, Seismic had outlined why Marketers need to have the full insight into how sellers and buyers engage.

Doug had said, “Marketers now have the ability to see what is impacting Sales cycles and what is actually slowing them down. That type of Customer Intelligence gives Marketing a lot of insight into what content strategies to further pursue and what to put on the back burner. Now, we can truly understand how marketing is making an impact and how they can better support sales.”

In the modern context of delivering meaningful Customer Experiences, a marketer’s job doesn’t end with just acquiring customers. It extends to building a strong relationship that goes beyond measuring CX results and attaining revenue goals. Like Salesforce has done… it equips others to do it as well.

We wish the event organizers, managers, speakers, attendees, and viewers a great outing at Salesforce’s Dreamforce 2019.

Like we have done for the previous two years at MarTech Series, we will cover Dreamforce from close quarters.

(To speak to us, drop us a line at news@martechseries.com)

¹Source: Report: Martech: 2020 and beyond

*Source: Dun & Bradstreet Completes Acquisition of Lattice Engines