Salesforce launches pilot NFT cloud

With Salesforce Connections taking place in person this week, the cloud-native vendor dropped a long list of announcements about its Commerce and Marketing Cloud offerings, including a pilot NFT cloud under the Commerce umbrella.

It also announced a series of new partnerships, with the partners set to debut new apps on the Salesforce AppExchange.

NFTs for Commerce. The NFT cloud, currently in closed pilot, will let brands securely (and with no coding required) mint, manage and sell non-fungible tokens within the Salesforce Customer 360 platform. Adam Kaplan, SVP emerging technology at Salesforce, explained the benefit to brands at a pre-Connections press conference.

“It’s really about driving engagement and community,” he said. “We’re seeing super-passionate communities in the NFT space. It’s not about the art. Yes, the art should be great, but that’s not how brands are leaning into this.” What’s important, he explained, is utility. “What we mean by utility is that as an NFT holder I receive certain benefits. It could be something in the digital world, it could be something in the physical world.”

Examples in the fashion sector include being able to vote on the color for a new piece of clothing, receiving exclusive clothing items, joining meet-ups with designers. Primary use cases, he said, include fashion, retail, CPG and media.

Other Commerce Cloud announcements. In addition to the recently announced integration of TikTok with Commerce Cloud, enhancements include:

• Commerce Marketplace, allowing brands to display and sell products from other companies, increasing cart value and earning commissions.
• Commerce for Customer Service, giving service agents a full view of order history and enabling them to provide a superior post-purchase experience issuing, for example, returns, exchanges and promotions.
• Seamless Commerce, an all-in-one sales, order management and payment solution.

New to marketing cloud. Marketing Cloud news was less eye-catching, but included:

• Triggered campaign messages allowing personalized customer engagement based on product catalog and behavioral triggers.
• A digital command center for Slack, monitoring activity across both Marketing and Commerce Clouds.
• Intelligence Connector for Commerce Cloud, allowing marketers to connect campaign and order data.

New partners joining the Salesforce CDP eco-system include Acxiom, Criteo, LiveRamp, MediaMath, Neustar and The Trade Desk. New Commerce partners include  Amplience, Avalara, Bringg, AppFrontier, Forter, and Poq.

Why we care. The investment in developing an NFT cloud might look like Salesforce trying to catch the trendy Web3 wave if it weren’t for the serious and plausible explanation of how brands can benefit. This economy is all about experience, community, trust and what one might call products-as-a-service. It’s intriguing to hear how NFTs can fit into that framework.

Also, don’t overlook the Commerce Marketplace, allowing merchants to behave like their on Amazon without leaving the Salesforce eco-system.

About The Author

Kim Davis is the Editorial Director of MarTech. Born in London, but a New Yorker for over two decades, Kim started covering enterprise software ten years ago. His experience encompasses SaaS for the enterprise, digital- ad data-driven urban planning, and applications of SaaS, digital technology, and data in the marketing space.

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He first wrote about marketing technology as editor of Haymarket’s The Hub, a dedicated marketing tech website, which subsequently became a channel on the established direct marketing brand DMN. Kim joined DMN proper in 2016, as a senior editor, becoming Executive Editor, then Editor-in-Chief a position he held until January 2020.

Prior to working in tech journalism, Kim was Associate Editor at a New York Times hyper-local news site, The Local: East Village, and has previously worked as an editor of an academic publication, and as a music journalist. He has written hundreds of New York restaurant reviews for a personal blog, and has been an occasional guest contributor to Eater.

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