Salesforce, Inc. (CRM) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

[Presentation] Hello and thank you so much for joining us today. My name is Daisy Han, and I'm a product marketing manager here at Salesforce. Today, I am joined by Leandro Perez, Salesforce's APAC Chief Marketing Officer; and Evelyn Cass, principal solution engineer. And here's our agenda for today. I'll be taking you through the top findings from our latest State of Marketing report, with Leandro providing a perspective on how the findings line up with the real challenges and priorities that him and his team are facing. Evelyn will then take you through the latest and greatest marketing cloud announcements that can help you stay competitive. We will have time for a Q&A at the end, so if you do have any questions, please pop them into the chat. Let's start with the methodology of the State of Marketing report so that you can get a full understanding of where we're getting all this data. We surveyed over 4,800 marketers across 29 countries for a truly global view into what marketers are facing, including Australia and New Zealand, Singapore and India to form an APAC view. This is a comprehensive study that features respondents spanning a wide range of industries; company sizes; business models; and seniority, from senior managers all the way up the corporate ladder to chief executives like Leandro here. We covered this range to build a realistic view of the current state of marketers focus areas and concerns in 2024, and we have found some telling key trends. The report provides a snapshot of marketing for marketers, including the tools they're using and how they're divvying up their budgets compared to years past and as well looking at specific channel engagement. We're also looking at how marketers are using KPIs to quantify success and fine-tune their efforts. And we're looking at hot topics like building up a first-party profile, data access speed and AI challenges that marketers are facing. Today, we're highlighting the top 5 key findings that are impacting marketers today. And for the full findings that you can drill down into, you can download the report along with other resources that you can find in your webinar window. So let's get into it. We will start with the marketers' top priorities and challenges. In APAC, marketers are focusing on value in improving their ROI and making better use of their existing tool sets. Insights from our survey report that marketers are using an average of 8 different marketing tools and technologies. And we're all feeling the tightening of inflation and budget constraints. And as marketers are trying to maintain or exceed performance with fewer resources, optimizing our current tech stack is a promising solution that covers efficiencies. Everyone knows AI is the hot topic right now, and you can't even attend a barbecue these days without hearing about it. Our survey tells us that, from a global perspective, taking advantage of AI is a marketer's biggest priority and as well their biggest challenge. And this ranks within the top 5 for APAC marketers as well, which makes sense when you consider that a focus on real-time engagement with customers and building and retaining trust is also right up there. Customers are at the heart of everything we do as marketers. And though we're conscious that new technologies like AI can help us streamline our operations or provide more personalized customer experiences, we are also aware that we need to balance innovation with guardrails so that we can keep our customers' trust. So Leandro, let's use you as a benchmark against these findings. Can you speak to which of these priorities and challenges that you most identify with?

Thank you, Daisy. Well, look. Looking at the list here: Improving marketing ROI, attribution is always top of mind. Definitely in these times like now where there are rising inflation costs, businesses are being put under pressure, so -- marketing is not immune from that. And so it is also something that I'm looking at with my team, as all the CMOs that I talk to. I would say the fourth one down, implementing or leveraging AI, is probably my second area there, as I see it as a way to get increased ROI. And also it's at the new cusp of a new technology, so it's always being able to leverage something like that to get an unfair advantage. If we flip to challenges, I think the #1 there, building, retaining trust with customers -- trust is our #1 value here at Salesforce, so it's always important for me, for everything that we're doing that we maintain customers' trust. And I would say this is no difference. And especially with new tech like AI, it's important that you approach it with that mindset as well.

Yes, absolutely. And to your point, leveraging AI is definitely a clear priority for marketers, whether it's global or in APAC, but how well do marketers feel that's going? That is the question, so let's dig into that a bit more. Marketers are shoring up their data foundations to fuel AI, analytics and growth, but there is no shortage of data sources. And many marketers are looking to deepen their customer relationships through loyalty programs and omnichannel experiences, but satisfaction is low on these initiatives too. On average, only 1 in 3 marketers is fully satisfied with performance on core initiatives, highlighting the gap between expectations and outcomes, so the struggle to unify customer data is real. And it's a necessity to create personalized relevant experiences or risk falling behind. So Leandro, let's turn to you again. Do these findings surprise you? And how do they measure up with your own satisfaction with key performance indicators?

Yes. Look. No surprises here, unlocking the value of AI, implementing a loyalty program, using customer data to create more relevant experiences. They're all very relevant. In fact, they're all complicated and complex initiatives. They require a lot of cross-functional teaming. I would say underlyingly what I've realized, which is similar to the approach we have at Salesforce here, is that they all require a single view of your customer, regardless of department -- or function, I should say, for them to be effective. You can't really rule out any of these, which is probably why it's complex as well, as that is something that you do need to coordinate with multiple teams.

Yes, absolutely. And of course, any AI strategy starts with unified data because, without that, you don't really have the right fuel for the car, so let's explore that a tiny bit more. So as I mentioned, we are -- we as marketers are shoring up our data foundations as fuel for AI. And businesses have long struggled to connect disparate data sources to create timely, consistent and personalized experiences across customer journeys. KPIs that rely on holistic views of data are proving difficult to measure. Marketers are looking for a connected view of their customer touch points and taking a [ full-funnel ] approach to data and also with sales and service. Our survey insights tell us that marketers are juggling a lot and doing a great job of using a broad set of tactics to capture data. Marketers use an average of 9 different tactics across the full customer journey to collect data. We can see that the #1 and #4 strategies in APAC fall out of a marketer's traditional view: capturing customer service data and capturing transactional data. And these sources are also first-party data in all but name, as they're gleaned directly from customer activity within the business. Leandro, last year, the focus for marketers was really about first-party data and the transitioning to a cookie-less future. And now we're in a space where some have built and progressed their first-party data strategy, but looking at these tactics, where do you see the ROI for increased focus or increased investment?

Yes. Well, firstly, in my conversations, many CMOs and marketers are still chasing the cookie-less future, so first-party data is still critical, I would say, but if I look at this list, what you cited there is super interesting. And it's something that I think is important and related to what I mentioned before, like a marketer to be successful today or a marketing team to be successful today definitely needs more data than just what resides in the marketing stacks of information. So customer service data, critical. You do not want to be running a campaign to a customer who currently has an active service case where maybe their product isn't working as intended the last time you sold to them. So I think it's really important that you do that. And then I think, if we flip -- and we talked a little bit about AI earlier. And I know we're going to talk a little more later, but as there's new technologies that are not just human to human but AI to human, if you don't have all those data sources, that AI is not going to be able to have a great conversation [ with the customer ], as smart as it is, right? So really important that you're connecting sales data; service data; maybe if you've got multiple marketing teams, all the marketing data. And maybe even IT is collecting data as well.

Yes, absolutely. As you said, it's not just about collecting the right data. It's about activating that data and putting it to good use. So marketers are under pressure to apply the information they collect about prospects and customers, and fast. Timeliness matters, so -- and how long does it take for a platform to update this data? And how quickly can marketers act on it? Well, about 2 in 5 marketers of the global average still don't have the real-time data at their fingertips for crucial tasks. And they rely instead on potentially outdated insights. Even teams with real-time data are slowed down by their ability to activate it. While over half of APAC marketers say data is available in real time to execute a campaign, 58% needs IT's help to do so. And this could hint at a lack of the tools needed to quickly unearth real-time data or maybe a shortage or -- of expertise in order to use these tools. And Leandro, I know you and your team have ramped up your ability to gather and analyze data which you use in business reporting. You do a lot of business reviews. So has it changed the way that you can quickly change course, and can you talk more about this?

Sure. Firstly, I'll start off with I'm still surprised it was 58%. That's a huge number. I think marketers need to take kind of control of their destiny. In this day and age, all the technology exists. Like you mentioned, in my team, we've been on a multiyear journey to ensure we have people in my team that understand how to use data cloud to bring all that data together from multiple sources. We have folks that have set up Tableau dashboards. I think starting off with a team inside marketing that can help you have that control of the destiny but then ensuring that everyone on your team is able to use these tools and technologies. We followed a kind of progression of ensuring people skill up. We use our own tools like Trailhead, the free online learning platform, so that people can skill up, learn about Marketing Cloud, learn about Tableau, learn about Data Cloud. And at the end of the day, I expect all marketers to want these skills. They're very desirable skills to be able to be in control because, to your point, when you're meeting with a stakeholder, they're going to expect you to be able to defend a reason for why you're doing campaign A or B or why you're going after a certain segment. And being able to have that data in your hand is super critical.

It must be very empowering for your team as marketers to have access to numbers. Because I know, at an executive level, that's what they expect and that's not necessarily something that marketers are always able to provide.

Yes. I think it's been a progression in marketing. I talk about this a lot. I think it's important that, as marketers, we take ourselves as seriously as we want other people to take us. And that means coming prepared, coming with data points. CFO is not going to look at just how positive you are about the campaign or being able to have customer lifetime value going down and being able to say why and things that need to be done, so it's super important.

Perfect. So activating data is the key to applying it to AI, as we've discussed. Marketers are overhauling their engagement strategies in a highly competitive landscape. They're looking to AI, both generative and predictive, to help personalize at scale and boost efficiency. However, security and customer trust are both still concerns as adoption ramps up. Marketers are focused on making AI successful with the right data because, once you have your data unified and harmonized, you have the right fuel to get better AI results. The 2 most popular AI use cases amongst marketers include both predictive AI, which many of you are no doubt using already with automated customer interactions like Marketing Cloud's send time optimization; and also generative AI, which we've newly launched with capabilities like content generation, for example, getting Einstein to create e-mail subject clients for you. We see marketers are incorporating both into their toolkits, although APAC marketers show a little bit more reluctance when it comes to running at full speed with AI. Globally, 75% of marketers are already rolling up their sleeves and experimenting with more fully implementing AI. And in APAC, only 47% of customers are currently using predictive and 61% are using generative AI. So nearly half are planning to use AI in their organizations in the next 18 months, so Leandro, let's -- we've talked a lot about AI, but what have you heard amongst your circles, CMOs and fellow marketing leaders, when it comes to AI and the concerns around AI that might be affecting adoption in APAC?

Well, firstly, AI, we all know, isn't a new topic. It's actually been around for a long time. In fact, at Salesforce, we first introduced some of our AI capabilities over 10 years ago. And every week now, Einstein, our AI capability, does 1 trillion predictions. It's truly incredible. I guess, when I talk to CMOs and other marketers, firstly, getting them to understand the difference between predictive and generative AI -- many of them are actually using predictive and may not know it, so that's -- you mentioned a few examples there before. So that's first thing, that I sort of make sure that they're aware of, hey, they're already on this journey. You're really using AI capabilities, like the ones that you mentioned in Marketing Cloud. As it comes to generative AI. And I look at the list here, generating content, like you mentioned, subject lines. They're some of the early use cases. I'd say they're some of the simpler ones. Where I'm seeing appetite is obviously how you get this to be in the flow of work. How do you make it so that someone can actually get real value from this, as opposed to another system they have to go to, to do a "once in a while" use case? So at the moment, I would say a bit of the adoption in APAC is a little bit of them unsure what to do. And then I know there are some concerns which we're going to cover in a minute, but the most important thing is just knowing how it can work and what benefit because they realize that, to roll that out, they're going to be on a project working with IT and so forth to be able to scale. And to do that without knowing what the benefit will be is really hard. So to share an example here, and I'll be quick. At Salesforce, we recently rolled out a use case where we, every year, want to certify our employees on the right messaging that we do so that everyone knows the latest messaging. And we used to do that human to human, someone teaching someone else in a setting. This year, we used AI. We used Einstein, where Einstein is the coach. And so you submit a video to Einstein. And it marks you and grades you; and ensures that the whole company, we have over 70,000 employees, are on message and get real-time feedback from Einstein. So they're the kind of examples that, when you get into the water supply, marketers get really excited about.

Yes. And from a brand perspective, I imagine it's also about AI. For example, ChatGPT, it doesn't know your brand voice. And you certainly wouldn't want to create a campaign using ChatGPT.

100% no. And I know we're going to go to that soon, so I'll reserve my judgment for the next slide that we've got coming up.

Excellent. Excited to hear it. So let's dig into what the research are saying about the concerns around AI. The top 2 biggest concerns for generative AI relate to data, whether it's not having enough of the right data or the threat of breaches. Marketers, especially at the executive level, have concerns about embracing this technology while protecting data integrity. CMOs and team leads especially cite data exposure as their top concern, and VPs as their #2 concern. And that's no surprise, when we've heard a lot about the catastrophic effect that data breaches, in the news, can have on a brand. Marketers know the benefits of generative AI's use cases. And they're eager to test the waters with the technology for themselves, particularly when compared to their peers. 88% of marketers worry about missing out on generative AI's benefits. And that's compared to 78% of sales and 73% of service colleagues, but marketers, especially at the executive level, have concerns about embracing this technology while protecting their data integrity and also job stability, so Leandro, can you talk a little bit more about this and the importance of having a developed AI strategy rather than blindly diving into AI?

Yes. Look. And I'm going to date myself a little bit here. For the folks that have been around, like myself, they'll remember the introduction of the iPhone, very similar actually. I remember this personally, where it was the new hot hardware that people were using in their personal life. And they wanted to bring it to the workplace because it was way better than all the other mobile devices that the companies were giving folks, but then immediately, IT was like, well, you can't have your work e-mail on your personal phone, right? That's clearly a data breach. And we're in the same space now with AI. You mentioned ChatGPT before. That is a great tool for personal use, but it absolutely does not have a place for you to be sending corporate information to because, once you send it to it, you're not quite sure what it will do with that data. And so you do not want to be sending it your latest customer reports, right, on who are your customer lists. What's your latest campaign strategy? Because maybe a competitor, and we've seen that in the news, will receive that information as an output to their responses. So very, very critical that you have a company that you can deal with that has [indiscernible] processing [indiscernible] in place to ensure that. And we call that a zero-retention policy. We've got that with all the partners that we work with. And we'll talk a little bit later about how that's been implemented, but I think that's number one. And number two, you mentioned the word strategy. You do not want your general employee dictating the strategy. You want to have a strategy that you can lead first; and tell our employees, "This is how we will approach AI," because otherwise, it is the wild, wild West, much to -- like the campaign we've had in market at the moment.

Yes, absolutely, yes. So customer expectations for personalization continue to rise. And there's a stark difference between how the highest- and lowest-performing marketing teams are delivering. Creating a unique brand experience requires ongoing targeted engagement throughout the customer journey. The most commonly used strategy is to provide tailored support content like troubleshooting tips. However, strategies targeting early moments in the customer journey, where less information about a customer is available, like onboarding content, aren't as commonly used. Instead of focusing on one end of the customer journey or another, it's important to take a more holistic approach, but it's hard. Only 56% of marketers who rank themselves as high performers use a life cycle approach for personalization. And that gap only widens when you compare it to moderate and underperformers. So Leandro, turning to you again. How are you and your team tackling connecting personalized journeys and personalization across the entire customer life cycle?

Yes. Look. And now obviously I'm in B2B with my team, but I know in the research here there's B2C folks, B2B2B -- B2B2C folks, so the whole spectrum is covered. In B2B, which is not too dissimilar to personal examples, people are doing more research online before they want to talk to a sales rep, right? It's no different to, by the way, if you're probably -- researching to buy a fridge, you probably do a lot more online than you used to, as opposed to just going into the store. In B2B, on top of that, there's a lot of buying groups that are happening, so it's not just a CIO making a purchase, or even a CFO. There's usually all sorts of folks across the business ensuring that that's the right solution before they make a purchase, so this means that for us it's really important that we understand the folks that we're interacting with where they are in that journey. And it's important that you have technology that can then tailor it based on that. So there's no point that someone that has come to an event of yours maybe knows a lot about the product that you're then hitting them very high-level messaging around, "Hey. We're here to sell you a product," right, like in fact what they probably want is testimonials. Or they want some ROI steps that you might be able to share, so for us it's really important that we have technology that, on our website, at our events when we're reaching out, can actually personalize by that stage. And that's all backed by being able to have that single view of the customer. So if we know that this is a more senior financial executive and they've looked at this piece of content -- and maybe they've gone on Trailhead to do a trail. Or they've watched this video. We would then have a different piece of experience and different piece of content for them on the website and what we might reach out to as well.

Yes. And that's so key because, with customer expectations higher than ever, it just takes one bad interaction for a -- for you to lose a customer these days.

Correct, correct.

So we've just had -- we just talked about when marketers are personalizing their content. Now let's take a look at where and the channels that they're doing this on. So personalization isn't just about when you -- where you reach your customers. Marketers are leaning on a wide array of channels to connect with their audiences and personalizing on those interactions to different extents. High-performing marketers are able to personalize across 2x as many channels as their underperforming peers. Channels where content is easy to test and iterate on the fly, like website and app, mobile messaging, e-mail marketing and social media, see the most advanced personalization efforts. In APAC, we appear to be spending more effort than our global peers in personalizing direct mail and print ads, ranking third in channels, with highest full personalization, compared to ranking seventh globally. Channels are demanding more production time and planning, so channels like audio, organic search and events and sponsorships have the most work to do. Leandro, is there anything that you find interesting when it comes to the focus of personalization efforts in APAC?

Yes. Look. To start off with, I was a little disappointed, right? I'm looking here direct mail and print ads, which I'm a huge fan of, but there's many more channels than that now, especially more digital channels. And as you can see here, the top-performing brands are using at least 6. So in our region, we know across, whether it's Australia, Singapore, India and everything in-between, mobile messaging is so important, right? WhatsApp, LINE, Telegram; like all these things are just growing faster than any part in the world. And so I was surprised. I know in my team we're definitely leveraging those technologies and those channels. Beyond that, I think -- everything else, I think it makes sense that, at a global level, website, mobile messaging are top because we are interacting more digitally than ever before.

Yes. And especially us as a tech company, we would like to think we're on all the digital channel.

Well, yes, yes.

So if we go to the next slide. We've just covered all the external efforts that marketers are making to connect with audiences. Now let's talk about the internal tracking because we are nothing if we can't report on our initiatives. Marketing without metrics is like driving with your eyes closed. To make sure efforts are on the right track, marketers are using data to track value, refine performance and to drive sales forward. The 3 most common marketing KPIs align with the sales functions: showing efforts to reduce siloed work; coordinate in the presales process; and present a cohesive, unified front to customers and prospects. High-performing marketers take this to heart, with 94% in APAC saying that their marketing strategy makes a significant impact on sales. Leandro, as we've talked about, reporting in KPIs, especially attribution to sales through a marketing-driven pipeline, is very important to your team and something you have to constantly report on. And I think it's interesting to note that, while customer retention rates ranks as #4 when it comes to being tracked closely by APAC marketers, satisfaction and lifetime value are actually the least tracked. Can you add some commentary on this?

Yes. Look. My only observation, and I've seen this in many organizations, would be that there are some metrics that may be less important to the business long term, but they're not necessarily what the stakeholders they work with are asking; so for example, marketing, sales funnel, which I know in B2B in particular is what your partner in sales would absolutely be asking you about every day, versus customer lifetime value, which [ is ] critical, is maybe not what you're having that conversation every day. So I think what this is just showing is that many marketers are under, like we opened with, a lot of pressure right now to ensure that what they're doing delivers. And that's why you're seeing marketing and sales funnel. You're seeing pipeline there. You're seeing customer retention rates versus some of the things that are a bit longer term and maybe a conversation that your CEO or CFO would care about a little bit lower on the list just because you're not having those conversations every day. My advice to marketers would be don't lose sight of the bigger picture. Of course, you absolutely need to ensure that the metrics you're aligning on are things that, day to day, your key stakeholders care about, but you've got to think about the business too, right, because the business won't be around if you're only focusing on the short term and not the long term.

Yes. And to your point, we know that, with pressures and budgetary constraints and more examination of businesses, it makes sense that these are the metrics, like, marketers are more having to report on when it comes to revenue.

Yes.

So if we can go to the next slide. So we know that cultivating a deep relationship with customers is another way to move the needle, so let's examine that a bit more. Account-based marketing requires a close collaboration between marketing and sales teams to identify and prioritize key accounts. On average, B2B marketers in APAC reserve 14% of their budget for ABM programs, which at their core unleash a concentrated marketing effort for more targeted results, so how are marketers approaching ABM? Well, around 6 in 10 use ABM for new customer acquisition, while around 5 in 10 use it for product-led growth. Leandro, one noticeable difference in APAC compared to worldwide is that global marketers are actually using their ABM more than us when it comes to upselling, whereas we are using it more in adoption, why do you think this might be?

Yes. Look. Firstly, I'm going to comment. This number, when this report comes out, my ABM team always brings it right to me and says, "Leandro, how much are we spending on ABM?" And so I'm just, for any folks out there leading teams: You can use this to your advantage or disadvantage, depending on where you sit on that equation, but look. I think, when I looked at this, mine -- my theory is that ABM is still quite new, in APAC in particular, not just for the marketing teams but also for the sales teams and folks that leverage this capability, so I think my understanding would be that folks just don't yet know the full spectrum of what ABM can do. And so where they first go to is, "Okay, well, we've got customers. Can you just make sure that they're happy?" versus some of those more advanced markets are understanding that it can be a key tool to help you understand, well, what's the next best product. And actually this is where at Salesforce we're using AI. And in APAC, we look at, if a customer has a product A, what's the next propensity item that they might purchase. And it might be Marketing Cloud or it might be Service Cloud. And this is where we absolutely use that for our ABM purposes, but many companies are not there yet. And so what I would say is, marketers, you need to keep educating your partners in sales. And yourself, keep pushing the boundaries. Because this can be a winning strategy.

And in the face of increasingly competitive and tech-driven marketing landscapes, marketers are more determined than ever to captivate customers and find new ways to connect with audiences. It seems pretty obvious that 92% of marketers in APAC believe they must continually innovate to remain competitive, as marketers are inherently keen to keep up with what's new. We are very trendy people. And the rise in customer expectations really amplifies the importance of fueling innovation; and raises the stakes when it comes to creating connected, personalized and immersive experiences. To talk to you about some of the highlights from marketing -- of the Marketing Cloud innovations from Connections that can help you stay ahead and competitive, I will pass over to my colleague Evelyn.

Cool. Thank you, Daisy. In a sense, it comes down to better data; better AI, so use of AI; and then better personalization, so we will dig into these in more detail. So let's jump ahead and have a look at better data with waterfall segmentation on the next slide there. So what is waterfall segmentation? Essentially this is new capability of Salesforce Data Cloud. And what it is, is it really is tackling the problem that marketers had which was how do we minimize oversaturating our messaging with our audience. So marketers, time and time again, come to us and ask the question, "How do I manage prioritization and ringfencing of our messaging and our marketing segments?" So with waterfall segmentation now in Data Cloud, users can set up a prioritized list of audience segments where a user can exist in only one segment at a time. And that's fantastic in terms of marketing, marketers being able to prioritize use cases like you mentioned before, case management, over some of our evergreen-type scenarios that are out there. And as a result, marketers can now be more precise and more targeted with their outreach, making sure that they're not oversaturating their messaging to their audience. And if I skip ahead again to the next slide. What we're also looking at as part of the new capability with Data Cloud is now all of the hundreds of connectors that are available. So between now and the lead-up to Dreamforce later in the year, we're actually releasing hundreds more connectors over time. So some of the top few to name that we have today are the Azure Synapse connector. We have Databricks with the AWS and Azure connectors, ServiceNow, HubSpot and NetSuite. These connectors are really crucial because they're bringing in structured and unstructured data with batch and streaming and also real-time capabilities depending on the connector type. Now this is really important for our marketers because, so often, marketers are needing access to specific types of data. It's not just necessarily customer profile data, but it could be business performance data. Or it could be even transactional data that we need. And so without having -- without marketers having to wait for those lengthy times to rely on other departments in the business to give them access to that data, marketers can now access that data themselves through these real-time connectors so that they can actually execute messaging that is relevant to the right segment in the moments that matter to their customers. So that's really, really neat. We're going to see a lot more in the space there in -- as we lead up to September with Dreamforce. So if I jump ahead to the next slide, we're going to delve into how marketers are doing better with AI. And really this comes down to Einstein Copilot, which we'll jump on to the next slide. So Einstein Copilot is really, really -- this is a game changer for our marketers. This is really neat capability. Essentially it means that users can now interact with Salesforce data and insights conversationally using gen AI so we can leverage generative AI through Einstein Copilot to create campaigns, campaign briefs, e-mails and segments, all within one generative AI prompt. So for our marketers who may not be fully adopting gen AI today, they certainly can now. And this is quite a game changer in terms of giving marketers back their time and focus so that, instead of a marketer having to be a project manager constantly, we can actually spend more time doing the projects we love, which is driving results for our business and moving the needle with our campaign initiatives. And if I jump next to the slide, we're going to then delve into how marketers can actually leverage better personalization with our Marketing Cloud Einstein personalization capabilities. So essentially what we have here is, on the next slide there, we're going to look at the Einstein Personalization service is now available to customers within the Data Cloud suite. So what this means is that essentially, leveraging Data Cloud and our segmentation capabilities, marketers can now provide one-to-one experiences using data gathered from all across customer touch points, both online and off-line, by using a combination of machine learning models and business rules. So what MCP or Einstein Personalization allows now is the customers to create really hyper-relevant hyper-targeted in-the-moment content across digital channels as well as off-line servicing channels too. So making sure that we build in a lot of what we -- personalization capabilities into our flow of work. And that's just not from the segment audience generation perspective but also journey execution flows. And I'll talk about some of the enhancements that we have now available within Journey Builder on the next slide here. So looking ahead, with Einstein Personalization, you can now start to stack rank your journeys as well, so if we jump into the next slide, I'll talk about how you can do that. So with our Journey Builder optimization now, you've actually got the ability for marketers to stack rank and prioritize the ranking of their journeys, so for instance, marketers can now apply a flag to Journey Builder to flag whether a journey is on a high, standard or low system flag. And again this comes back to ringfencing, so making sure that marketers can now prioritize certain journey campaigns that might have a flow of work like case management without needing to run multiple suppression rules to exclude customers from other journeys. You can actually flag those journeys out of the box as high priority whilst dropping the journey priority down on some -- other evergreen journeys such as welcome series or dormant subscriber retargeting journeys as well. So really neat enhancements. That's a wrap from me in terms of the top 3 marketing capability announcements from Connections. On the next slide here, you can actually have a quick look at all of the capability available to you. And in case you missed it, there's some great reference material via the highlights recaps videos on Salesforce+.

Perfect. Thank you so much for sharing that, Evelyn. And it's amazing to hear about all these great features that is automating and helping marketers do their jobs better, making it easier for them to do their jobs but still keeping them in the command seat.

Yes, absolutely.

Yes. So if -- we now have -- if we want to go to the next slide. We actually have some time for some Q&A, so if you bear with us, we will just pull up our chat to see if anyone has asked any questions during the session.

We are being asked: Will we have access to the slides afterwards? You can watch the session on demand afterwards. So if you registered, you will receive a follow-up link with all the resources and this entire recorded session, so you can watch it at -- if you want to rewatch it. We're just going to have a quick look if there's any other questions to answer. And there's a question: "In my ninth marketing download version, it appears that the order of the marketers' top priorities is different from your presentation." Indeed it is because the report that you will have has the global perspective, and this webinar is focused on APAC results. Because we're all APAC marketers, we wanted to make it really relevant for you.

Keep those questions coming. I'm going to take the one there that says how is Salesforce's approach to AI different to other organizations. So thank you for asking that question. I think from a -- I guess, at a highest level, well, I mentioned that our #1 value is trust. And that's why we've taken our approach that everything that we will do, whether it's Einstein Copilot or any of our AI features, actually go through what we call the Einstein Trust Layer. And the Einstein Trust Layer is something that is a multistep process. You can get more detail from your account representative or if you just look on our website actually. And what it means is that, anytime that you might be sending a query to potentially a large language model, if it is a generative AI use case, it goes through a series of steps. And in those steps, what it would require us doing is actually, firstly, auditing, taking track of what the request was. If it goes to an external model, what will happen is that, that response that comes back, things will be masked so that there's no private information that's shared. We have zero-retention policies in place with many of the providers. If you're using your own model, obviously then that's not needed, but if you're using a public model -- and then when it comes back and an important step is that -- you've mentioned this before. Some of these public models, they can, they may give an erroneous response actually. We call that hallucination. And so there's a toxicity detection there ensuring that what's coming back is actually a legitimate answer and it can be triangulated from a few sources before it goes back to the user. So all that's happening when you type, "Can you help me create a brief for a brand campaign for this organization?" So that's the difference between going out to a public model and using something like Salesforce for it. And we would love to have a conversation with you. We've got experts here that can do that to share the difference, but I will say, like I answered before, it's really important that you take control of this; and that you don't let an organic approach to AI happen to you, which is when all those issues with trust come up which we talked about with data breaches and things like that. So super, super important.

Yes, absolutely. And exactly like you said, the data retention -- sorry. Zero data retention and data masking is so important because, at the end of the day, trust is our #1 priority. And your data is not our product. So we'll have a quick look to see if there's any other questions here. Are there plans to enhance Pardot or merge Pardot with Salesforce Marketing Cloud? Without AI-driven features in Pardot, should a business consider moving to Salesforce Marketing Cloud ASAP? What's your advice for users who are with Pardot? Evelyn, this is your expertise...