I’ve been to Dreamforce twice. Once as an attendee. Another time as a Campfire speaker. And both times as a marketer.
Going to Dreamforce as a marketer is probably a different experience than, say, attending as an IT professional. I got so excited at Dreamforce whenever I saw a session geared toward marketers. Or when I randomly met other marketing people.
That’s actually how I found out about Sercante. I was watching my colleague present a session and saw that the next person presenting had a marketing-focused session. So, I stuck around to watch the presentation. The next presenter happened to be Sercante Founder & CEO Andrea Tarrell, and the rest is history.
The Sercante Home for Marketers at Dreamforce
Being a marketer herself, Andrea knows what it’s like to be a marketer at Salesforce conferences. So, she created the Sercante Home for Marketers with that idea in mind. The goal was to build a space where marketers could go and find their people at Dreamforce while supplementing all the things they’re learning at Dreamforce with even more marketing insights and strategies. And it has been super successful.
Now in its second year, The Home for Marketers welcomed more than 2,700 people across 16 events in 2023. Visitors represented a range of marketing hats, which included marketing managers, CMOs, marketing operations professionals, content marketers, and marketing consultants, among others.
Here’s a few things that went on there:
- Event Marketers Panel | read about it
- EDU Panel | read about it
- Salesforce Career Show Podcast | listen
- Welcome Bash Party | see photos
- Dreamforce Party: An Intergalactic Night | see photos
- Visit from our Dreamforce ticket giveaway winner | read about it
Dreamforce 2023 Session Highlights
It’s awesome that all the marketers at Dreamforce had a place to hang out in between sessions and find their people. After all of the marketers filled up on grub and made new friends, they went down to Moscone to catch a few sessions.
Here are a few that our friends were there to see:
The Future of Trusted AI with Marc Benioff and Sam Altman
Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff had a candid conversation with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman about the future of business and how AI is affecting it.
The biggest takeaway from the conversation was the idea that in the coming years, every new product will incorporate AI in some way. It may even become unthinkable to use technology that doesn’t use AI to complete tasks. The pair also talked about the process OpenAI went through to develop ChatGPT and the direction the company is taking to make sure it continues to be a revolutionary product moving forward.
Marketing Keynote: Marketing in Generation AI
The Marketing Keynote at Dreamforce ’23, titled “Marketing in Generation AI,” unveiled innovations from the Marketing Cloud engineering teams. Salesforce Marketing Cloud GM Steve Hammond emphasized efficiency and the role of AI in scaling personalization. The session introduced prompt engineering and grounding, emphasizing that AI’s effectiveness depends on data quality.
Watch the replay here.
Winter ‘24 Marketing Cloud Release Highlights
This was a big one for all the marketers who attended Dreamforce 2023. That’s because it highlighted all the major enhancements coming to Marketing Cloud this winter.
Sercante Salesforce Product Director Heather Rinke had the honor of co-presenting the Marketing Cloud Release Highlights session with two members of the Salesforce product team: Ruth Bolster, product marketing manager, and Whitni Freeman, lead solution engineer.
Empowering Nonprofits in Times of Change with Data + AI + CRM + Trust
This session introduced Einstein, Salesforce’s proprietary AI, for Nonprofit Cloud, promising nonprofits the ability to leverage predictive and generative AI to enhance donor engagement and data management. It focused on how these tools can simplify the creation of annual reports, segment and standardize donor data, and craft compelling donation appeals.
Overall, the combination of Einstein for Nonprofit Cloud and Data Cloud is seen as a potential game-changer, offering nonprofits automation and insights to better communicate with donors and fulfill their core missions.
Biggest Dreamforce 2023 Takeaway: AI is the Future of Business
As we saw in the sessions highlighted in this blog post, AI truly is infiltrating all aspects of business. And Salesforce is investing deeply in the tools.
Have any other big takeaways from the conference? Tell us about them in the comments. And make sure to sign up for MarDreamin’ 2023, a marketing-focused Salesforce community conference held virtually in November, to keep the AI conversation going.