Salesforce unleashes AI for shopping

Salesforce has unveiled new data and AI-powered tools to transform the shopping experience. With generative AI built into Commerce Cloud and Marketing Cloud, retail merchandisers and marketers will be able to tap into generative tools with a real-time understanding of customer behavior and preferences to optimise every customer interaction.

This, says the global customer relations company, will increase loyalty, drive revenue, and boost employee productivity.

These new retail innovations are powered by the Einstein 1 Platform. The Einstein 1 Platform connects with retail or shopper data, securely integrating with large language models (LLMs) to ensure real-time context, brand voice consistency, data governance, and security. This delivers new shopper, merchandiser, and retail marketer experiences with connected data and AI powered apps.

Salesforce provided the following information:

Why it matters: Eighty-three percent of global retailers have seen operational efficiency improvements with AI, according to new Salesforce data. And 63% of marketers say that trusted customer data is important to implementing generative AI in their businesses. Retailers need a solution that can bring all of their customer data together into one, trusted platform and use it to power the most efficient, AI-driven retail experiences.

What’s new for shoppers:

• Einstein Copilot for Shoppers, a new extension of Einstein Copilot, is a consumer-facing version of the generative AI assistant that powers personalised conversations with shoppers. Customers can find products and make purchases faster using natural language interactions on retailers’ channels like digital storefronts and messaging apps. For example, a shopper in the Pacific Northwest can tell Einstein Copilot for Shoppers they need supplies for a camping trip. Based on existing customer data, such as the shopper’s location, preferences, and past purchases, Einstein Copilot for Shoppers can recommend a waterproof and windproof tent in their preferred color along with a link for immediate checkout. 

What’s new for retail merchandisers:

• Page Designer uses generative AI-powered natural language prompts to design, build, and customise ecommerce sites and pages more quickly. For example, a merchandiser can easily build a campaign landing page for a new line of running shoes by inputting a few prompts into Page Designer to quickly generate a new web page that mirrors the branding on its existing storefront.  
• Return Insights in Order Management analyses data, looks at patterns in returns activity, and uses AI to prompt retailers to make product display changes that minimise future returns. It also uses sentiment analysis to assess commentary on product reviews and return reason codes to then recommend actions that quickly address issues with specific products.
• Inventory Insights gives digital retailers a clear view of available inventory so they can ensure products remain in stock whenever possible. With near real-time access to inventory data and insights, retailers can easily manage inventory reservations and product holds, anticipate new inventory demand, and give customer service reps product recommendations that they can add to a cart for their customer. 
• Customer and Product Insights uses data from Commerce Cloud, Marketing Cloud, and Data Cloud to help merchandisers better visualise trends, such as the top product bundles sold and the most engaged shopper demographics, to build new targeted commerce experiences.

What’s new for retail marketers: 

• Global Promotion Management helps retailers bring together customer marketing and promotions data with predictive insights to forecast potential promotion revenue, so retailers can easily coordinate pricing and rewards initiatives for both loyalty members and non-loyalty customers. Using guided setup with pre-defined promotion templates, marketers can quickly define, launch, and distribute omni-channel promotions with discounts and loyalty rewards to better engage with their customer base.
• Referral Marketing helps brands launch referral programs and quickly improve conversions with pre-built templates and a built-in ‘Likely to Refer’ AI tool to identify customers with the highest likelihood of participating in referral programs. Brands can now review trends and fine-tune promotions to create connected experiences across interactive email campaigns, landing pages, A/B testing, and send-time personalization. 
• Segment Creation helps retailers improve targeting and personalisation using generative AI prompts, with trusted data from Data Cloud. Now, retailers can build new segments in minutes that can be activated across marketing, commerce, service touch points for tailored journeys, offers, and recommendations across the shopper experience.
• Content Creation for Marketing Cloud Engagement helps retail marketers solve content bottlenecks in their campaign and personalisation strategy. Using natural language prompts powered by generative AI — grounded by first-party data within the Einstein Trust Layer — marketers can automatically create personalised on-brand visual content, email subject lines, and body copy at scale to improve customer satisfaction and conversion.

Customer perspective: “At Shoe Carnival, we pride ourselves on delivering fun, personalised shopping experiences for our customers and loyalty members, both in our stores and online. Salesforce’s unified platform empowers us to leverage data and AI to deliver a tailored omni-channel retail experience across marketing, commerce, service, and loyalty management.” – Kent Zimmerman, VP, eCommerce & CRM at Shoe Carnival

In addition to new commerce and marketing AI product innovations, Salesforce announced a series of solutions for media networks, theft, employee productivity, and real estate that help retailers better manage operations and create new revenue streams.