Three data-driven capabilities that can help you beat the competition
With its Spring ’26 release, Salesforce is solving some of the most vexing problems for marketers seeking to improve ROI and build lifetime value. New customer journey tools include agentic responses to email and a way to accelerate marketers’ understanding of multi-touch attribution. And for commerce companies that operate Loyalty programs, Salesforce is providing the groundwork for connecting rewards across complementary brands. Individually, each of the three new capabilities presents meaningful marketing muscle; when combined, they can provide hefty improvement in marketing efficiency and customer engagement. The three data-driven capabilities are:
01
Conversational Email
Deliver the information your customer is seeking when they are most ready to act on it
How the technology works: Building on the interest generated from your marketing emails, an AI agent reads inbound replies and responds in real time. (This is the end of “do not reply.”) The agent can answer questions about products promoted in the email, pricing, return policies and other services. It seamlessly hands off to a human when the conversation requires it. Use cases A. Deployed as a complementary or alternate channel to chatbots, the Conversational Email can deliver clear and applicable answers to the questions consumers are telling you they want answered before they make a purchase, i.e., What is your return policy? Can I get free shipping? What size do I need? B. The ability to answer emailed questions in real time can also benefit commerce companies by leading to an improved customer experience that can reduce product returns and unhappy calls to customer service. C. Data gathered by the agent can help improve the segmentation and content of marketing emails going forward Readiness assessment To successfully deliver agentic replies to email, you will need the following:- Clean data that the agent will use to answer questions, i.e., current and verified information about product materials, pricing and policies
- A brand voice for the agents that is consistent across all of your service channels – tone, phrasing, vocabulary, etc.
- A mapped process for the human handoff, including escalation protocol and governance
02
Multi-touch Attribution
Finally, an easy way to understand how your marketing plans and media dollars are working for you
How the technology works: In order to fully understand the marketing funnel, multi-touch attribution moves away from last-click with a system of issuing credit to every touchpoint that led to a conversion. Out-of-the-box dashboards make analysis and insight generation easy to access and straightforward to share with internal teams and media agencies. Use cases A. Ability to understand the best marketing funnel for a wide variety of segmentation that includes customer groups by lifetime value, product categories, channel preferences, discounting vs full-price, etc. B. Ease of access to data and insights — dashboards that are simple to configure provide relevant information in a way that marketers can use to relay actionable information about what’s working and what isn’t C. Faster and more meaningful A/B testing of content and delivery channels Readiness assessment To successfully stand up multi-touch attribution, you will need the following:- A unified customer profile with clean data (we recommend using Data Cloud)
- A roadmap for determining campaigns/customer segments to test using the new attribution model
- A governance process for optimizing campaigns and segments based on new data from multi-touch attribution
03
Partner Account Linking
Work with like-minded, complementary brands to enhance the experience for you, your customers, and your partners.
How the technology works: Connect your Loyalty accounts with the Loyalty accounts of other brands to enhance the rewards you both offer by allowing consumers to combine or exchange rewards. Partnerships work best when the brands are compatible with dual sales, e.g., a clothing brand and a shoe brand with separate owners; a hotel chain and a spa or gym; a women’s retailer and a children’s retailer that share an owner; a hardware store and a home design store. Use cases Both partners offer a points multiplier, e.g., 3x if customers purchase at both brands within a certain timeframe; one recommendation is to set a minimum purchase level for each brand that is higher than the average sale for Loyalty members) Members of one Loyalty program can trade their points for rewards offered by the companion program (membership is required in both Loyalty programs) Customers signing up for the Loyalty program of one brand are offered automatic entry into the Loyalty program of one or more additional brands; the program can also be offered to current Loyalty program members from any of the participating brands Readiness assessment To successfully launch and operate Partner Account Linking, you will need the following:- Data is key. You need the ability to match the same customer across two partners while honoring privacy and consent
- Details of the shared offer programs, including customer journeys and KPIs for tracking success
- Work with your partners to define and test new customer service processes for the combined Loyalty offers
How OSF Can Help You Incorporate the New Salesforce Spring ’26 Features Into Your Business
The key to getting started with conversational email, multi-touch attribution and partner linking involves creating a business and operations plan that details what you want to achieve and how you will get there. Deploying these new marketing technologies will require partnership among several teams, including marketing, technology, ecommerce, product, legal and customer service. Our OSF Advisory team can support you every step of the way. We help create strategy roadmaps and operating plans, and work with you to get buy-in from senior level executives and all other key stakeholders. Our team has deep experience in multi-cloud Salesforce implementation, and can share industry best practices for customer journeys, KPIs and optimization strategies. Contact OSF Digital to start the conversation.Author: Robin Kamen
Robin Kamen is a senior consultant of OSF Digital Strategy. She is a digital marketing and strategy leader with experience building global brands and driving customer engagement and ROI across many verticals.
Contact: Kateryna Melkomukova
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