In fact, the concept that echoed through every session was the rise of the AI agent. Far from being just another chatbot, Salesforce’s powerful agentic technology, Agentforce, is positioned as a new face for the brand—a concierge, a personal shopper and a problem-solver, all powered by a company's unique data and content. This vision has the potential to reshape everything from customer service to a marketer's daily workflow.

So, let’s unpack the key announcements that build toward this vision. We’ll explore what it means to redefine customer interactions through AI agents, look at the underlying platform changes in Data Cloud and Marketing Cloud that make it possible, and contextualize how this could transform your day-to-day reality.

AI agents are transforming brand communication into a dialogue. 

For years, digital marketing has largely been a monologue where brands broadcast messages and hope customers are listening. The vision presented at Connections signals a definitive move away from this dynamic. The future showcased by Salesforce is one of dialogue, where every touchpoint becomes an opportunity for a meaningful, two-way conversation orchestrated by AI.

This marks the end of the "do not reply" email. Imagine sending a promotional email with a curated set of product recommendations. Instead of that being the end of the interaction, it becomes the beginning. A customer could reply directly to the email with, “I like those pants, but do you have them in blue?” and Agentforce, acting as a personal shopper, would respond with available options, check inventory and even help complete the purchase. This transforms a static campaign into a dynamic, personal shopping experience.

This shift also forces us to rethink the purpose of content. We’ve traditionally viewed content as a destination; the goal was to get a visitor to land on a blog post or a product page. In the new paradigm, content becomes fuel for the AI engine. That blog post about new product features is no longer just for human readers; it’s a critical input that teaches AI Agents how to intelligently discuss those features with a customer. Every article, every product description, every FAQ becomes a knowledge source that makes the brand’s AI smarter and more helpful. 

Ultimately, this leads to a new front door for your website. AI Agents will become the primary way visitors interact with a brand online, moving beyond static navigation and simple search bars. It will be a conversational interface that can answer complex questions, make nuanced recommendations and even take action on the user's behalf, like booking a meeting or making a reservation.

A unified platform makes all your data ready for AI.

This conversational future requires an immense amount of power running behind the scenes. The strategy presented at Connections rests on two pillars: unifying the marketer’s experience with the Marketing Cloud Next platform and making all data AI-ready with major enhancements to Data Cloud.

One of the key enablers of this vision is the forthcoming Marketing Cloud Next platform, built on Salesforce Core. It’s designed to solve the problem of platform fragmentation that has long challenged marketers who navigate disparate tools for different channels. Instead, the new vision is one of consistency, where the experience is seamless from one tool to the next. The HTML editor for building a web campaign will look and feel just like the one for creating an email. The same powerful product recommendation engine will be used across every channel, from web to email to mobile. And a single, unified AI brain—Agentforce—will power every interaction. This consistency will not only streamline workflows but also make it significantly easier to cross-train teams, allowing them to become true cross-channel experts.

Of course, any AI is only as good as the data it’s trained on. This is where the enhancements to Data Cloud become critical. Salesforce showcased features designed to supercharge the process of getting data ready for AI agents and recommendation engines.

• A renewed focus on data foundations: While new features are exciting, they amplify the need for a solid data foundation. Without it, brands face common challenges like low-quality data that erodes trust, data sprawl across disconnected systems, and limited access that prevents teams from acting on insights. Getting the foundation right is the prerequisite to unlocking the true power of AI.
• Smarter, broader data resolution: We’re familiar with identity resolution for customer profiles, but a key enhancement is the extension of these resolution rules to all Data Model Objects (DMOs). Imagine being able to resolve your entire product catalog, ensuring clean, consistent product data for your AI to use.
• Making unstructured data usable: One of the most powerful announcements was the ability to "vectorize" unstructured data. In simple terms, this is a kind of technological magic that allows AI to understand the meaning and context of content without needing manual tags. The full text of a blog post can now be used as if it were perfectly structured data, allowing the AI to mathematically determine which parts are most relevant for answering a specific question.
• Secure, seamless collaboration: To further break down data silos, Salesforce announced Data Cloud-to-Data Cloud zero-copy connectors. This will allow different business units, or even different companies, to join their Data Cloud instances together. These “data clean rooms” enable data sharing for richer insights in a completely privacy-compliant way.

AI will become an essential co-pilot for every marketer.

So, what does this all mean for the marketer? Their role will evolve from a manual builder to something more akin to a creative director. Using Agentforce, a marketer will be able to generate campaign ideas, customer journeys and even certain components of creative assets simply by providing a strategic brief. Crucially, this output is fully editable. The marketer remains in complete control, but their time is freed up to focus on strategy, creative oversight and optimization, rather than the nuts and bolts of campaign setup and creative production.

Monks is also building tools that empower marketers to take their ability to scale content to the next level. Monks.Flow can be integrated into Salesforce to supercharge a marketer's ability to build net new creative assets that power these journeys and are incorporated into these HTML templates to support better, smarter dynamic personalization.

Collaboration will also become more fluid. These AI agents can be invited directly into Slack channels, acting as a new kind of teammate. Teams will be able to brainstorm with the agent, review its proposals in real-time and collaborate on campaign elements in the same digital space where they conduct the rest of their work.

Finally, this changes how we approach analytics. Instead of digging through complex dashboards and manually cross-referencing reports, marketers will be able to use AI dashboards to get instant, natural-language summaries of campaign and channel effectiveness. This boosts the productivity of not just marketers, but data scientists as well, allowing them to focus on deeper strategic questions instead of routine reporting.

Brands can prepare now for this conversational shift.

The message from Salesforce Connections was clear: the future of marketing is a shift from monologue to dialogue. This approach is built on the pillars of a unified platform that simplifies execution, smarter data that makes every piece of content valuable and AI co-pilots that empower marketers to work more strategically and creatively.

The key takeaway for brands isn't simply to "buy more AI." It's to start thinking differently today. How can we prepare our content to be AI fuel? How can we structure our data to be ready for these new conversational experiences? Those who begin asking these questions now will be the ones best prepared to lead in the conversational future. The time to prepare is now.

But a key theme was the need to unify disparate data sources, orchestrating teams around unified workflows to maximize data impact—in one word, the event focused on integration. This strongly resonated with me, because it’s exactly what my team is built to help brands achieve; as a unitary partner and systems integrator, we specialize in creating platform solutions that seamlessly integrate AI and customer data to drive growth. From new product announcements to sales stories, let’s look at the growing need for an integrated approach to customer relationship management (CRM) and the role that a unitary partner can play in helping brands maximize its impact.

Here's what Salesforce announced this year.

One of the most exciting announcements was the introduction of Einstein Copilot for Marketers, set to release in June. This tool translates customer data into actionable campaign briefs, offering generative AI features like copy creation and automated communications. Salesforce is also now orchestrating seamless handoffs between multiple Copilots to enhance team collaboration. These innovations bridge the gap between customer data insights and content creation to drive impact across the business. For example, you can pair Einstein Copilot for Marketers with Einstein Copilot for Merchandisers to uncover up-selling opportunities.

Salesforce also announced enhancements to Data Cloud for Commerce, providing a unified view of customer data from numerous commerce data points. This empowers marketers to create hyper-personalized experiences—but when paired with Einstein Copilot products, these efforts become even more impactful.

Another major announcement was the Zero Copy Data Partner Network, connecting technology, system integration, and data ecosystem partners. This network allows marketers to draw data from a broader array of sources (without that data needing to be housed on their Salesforce platform), amplifying their AI-driven efforts.

What’s interesting about these announcements is the emerging, overarching theme of integration and collaborative workflows to help marketing teams work better together. This is the bread and butter of a unitary partner who can ensure that data accessibility, unified customer views and team collaboration are optimized across the business. By bridging together expertise across disciplines like data, media, content, and technology, such a partner is best suited to deliver the full potential of these solutions as they work in harmony with one another.

Peek inside the success stories that were shaped by seamless integration.

While at Salesforce Connections, I had the chance to speak with brands—learning their needs, pain points and the opportunities they most look forward to—and got to watch the different speaker sessions that we hosted or participated in. These conversations presented a range of success stories demonstrating how integrated solutions helped brands unlock new possibilities in their marketing. Here are three goals that my team has been able to help brands achieve.

Data integration and unified customer views. In a talk that is available on demand, Alex Furth, Marketing Manager, Digital Innovation from Gatorade shared how Einstein AI and Data Cloud unified fragmented consumer data, enabling effective and tailored marketing strategies. Theresa McCombs Marketing Director, Brokerage Services and Julia Homier Digital Marketing Consultant, from Holmes Murphy told a similar story in the talk “Drive Financial Services Marketing ROI with AI-Powered Data,” where they detailed their journey with Salesforce's Marketing Cloud to enhance customer engagement and data management through centralized automation tools and Einstein AI. Both brands’ successes show how unified data solutions significantly enhance engagement and performance metrics, exemplifying the need for centralized, strategic data management.

Personalized engagement and customer loyalty. Our session with PepsiCo, “Data-Driven Engagement for PepsiCo Tasty Rewards,” focused on their Tasty Rewards loyalty program, which uses Salesforce Marketing Cloud and Einstein to drive loyalty and increase long-term value. They achieved a 100% increase in open rates and a 170% increase in click rates. If you missed the talk, you can still learn more about PepsiCo’s approach to scaled personalization from a different angle in a previously recorded webinar.

Meanwhile, Broadway Across America showcased how Salesforce’s solutions personalized customer experiences, significantly increasing month-over-month (MoM) subscriptions. “My favorite part of Connections was talking about some of the innovations we’re helping Broadway Across America with, mainly the SMS texting strategy for them in 25 different markets, and they’ve seen awesome results,” my colleague Amy Downs, VP of Commercial at Media.Monks, noted. “Their MoM subscription increase was 7%, compared to a 0.14% increase before we implemented that strategy.”

The lesson: data-driven engagement strategies drive significant increases in subscriptions and long-term customer loyalty—an important consideration for marketers who are embracing product-led growth strategies.

Marketing automation and strategic alignment. Another significant consideration that Theresa and Julia at Holmes Murphy emphasized was the importance of consolidating varied automation tools. By implementing Einstein AI and aligning marketing strategies with business objectives, together we were able to streamline operations and surpassed industry engagement benchmarks. Centralizing operations through consolidated automation tools not only boosts engagement but also enhances overall marketing efficiency, demonstrating the critical role of integrated, strategic automation in achieving business goals.

That’s a wrap on an event that’s all about connections.

Attending Salesforce Connections was an exhilarating experience, showcasing the transformative potential of integrating AI and data to drive marketing innovation. The success stories from brands like PepsiCo, Gatorade, Broadway Across America and Holmes Murphy highlighted how unifying data with Salesforce's powerful tools opens up new possibilities. These brands have achieved remarkable success by leveraging coordinated workflows and seamless data integration, and I’m excited to continue supporting brands in their journey to do the same by unlocking the full potential of their CRM and the technologies like AI that rely on it.