Hey Smart Marketers!
Welcome to these Summer Series about Data Cloud!
Before jumping in, I just wanted to let you know that I’m conducting a survey about Salesforce Data Cloud to validate/deny some assumptions I have. I would really be grateful if you could take 5 minutes to fill it out. Here’s the survey link.
Now let’s get back to today’s topic: Data Cloud and its pricing model.
Let’s get one thing straight: marketers are not DBAs.
Our job is more about engagement, copywriting, creativity and driving results than it is around calculating data consumption costs.
Yet, here we are, with Salesforce Data Cloud’s consumption-based model, in a world where every action has a cost attached, adding a layer of stress we never signed up for.
Some of you may reply that Salesforce Marketing Cloud is already consumption-based with Contacts and Super Messages being at the heart of the economic model. And it is now more than ever with Salesforce enforcing limits on API calls and Automation Executions… (Regarding this topic I’d recommend reading what Bobby Jaina, CMO of Salesforce Marketing Cloud, told Lucy Mazalon from SalesforceBen).
However, compared to Salesforce Marketing Cloud, Data Cloud comes with a model that makes costs hard to predict and to control…
The world of SAAS is moving to Consumption-based… but is it the right path?
Don’t get me wrong… the way Salesforce is pricing Salesforce Data Cloud makes perfect sense.
Its capabilities and features mainly involve ingesting data (which can get expensive), all sort of data manipulations (which can also cost a lot) and exporting data (same here!).
Like all tools where Data is the alpha and the omega, it’s priced based on usage. Makes sense!
But here’s the catch: it doesn’t align with our user persona.
This cloud main use-cases are for marketers … and marketers, even data-aware ones, are not here to optimize queries.
We want to crunch data to discover new insights.
When we dig into data, we don’t always know how deep we should go.
This ambiguity transforms a strategic tool into a potential financial trap, making every byte of data processed a calculated risk.
Fear of the Send Button: Amplified
It happened to all of us.
That test email sent to full data-base… rings a bell?
We all have stories with the send button (or journey activation if you prefer)… every marketer double checks everything before … triple-checking!
But at least, the risk is measurable and also we perfectly understand what’s at stake and the metrics that could go wrong…
Coming back to Salesforce Data Cloud, the fear isn’t just about campaign success or customer feedback but about unexpected costs spiraling out of control.
Again, Marketers are not DBAs…
If every decision comes with the looming fear of budget overages, forget about creativity and time-to-market. And also, if we’re overage: what should we stop doing?
That again is not a question to ask a marketer.
A Digital Wallet to rule them all?
Salesforce recently launched the Digital Wallet that will help monitor all consumption-based clouds.
That’s a good point for visibility (we may even end up with a dashboard for Super Messages!)… but is it enough?
I’m not sure it eliminates anxiety.
Monitoring query costs doesn’t directly tie to revenue, so marketers don’t know where to stop.
We need more than a tracker; we need assurance that we can focus on marketing without constantly worrying about overages and unexpected charges.
The uncertainty of not knowing what to stop or where to draw the line adds to the stress.
At the end of the day, my main take here is that Salesforce Data Cloud main personae are data analysts:
- Prime users for: Connecting, Harmonizing and Unifying Profiles
- Executing for Marketers for: Analysis and Predictions
Marketers should now focus on Activation tools until we find a way to align the economic model and the marketers’ job and skills.
What do you think?
See you next week!
Other ways I can help you: