The Spot for Marketers on Salesforce

Data Management, Pro Tips
July 7, 2026

Segmenting in Data 360 for Account Engagement Users

Cara Weese

If you’ve spent years building Dynamic Lists and Engagement Studio programs, opening Data 360 for the first time can feel overwhelming. Unified Individuals, Segments, Calculated Insights, Data Spaces; it looks like a whole new world. But here’s the thing: it’s not.

At its core, segmentation hasn’t changed. You’re still trying to get the right message to the right person at the right time. What has changed is how much data you have to work with. Instead of building audiences from Prospect records and email engagement alone, Data 360 lets you layer in website activity, CRM data, opportunity history, subscription preferences, and more.

Here’s how to bridge what you already know with what you’ll find in Data 360.

The Biggest Mindset Shift: From Lists to Audiences

In Account Engagement, everything starts with a list.

Need a webinar audience? Build a list.
Need a re-engagement campaign? Build a list.
Need a nurture track? Build a list.

In Data 360, you build reusable audience definitions instead. One segment can power multiple campaigns, journeys, and channels. You’re not creating a new list for every initiative. Think of it this way:

Account Engagement: Campaign → Build List → Send Message
Data 360: Define Audience → Activate Anywhere

The shift from campaign-specific lists to reusable audiences is the most important concept to internalize before you start building.

Terminology Translation

Before you build anything, here’s the cheat sheet:

Account Engagement	Data 360	What It Means
Prospect	Unified Individual	The person you’re marketing to
Dynamic List	Segment	A reusable audience built from defined criteria
Dynamic List Rules	Segment Criteria	The logic used to determine audience membership
List Member	Segment Member	Someone who qualifies for the audience
Prospect Activity	Engagement Data	Behavioral data used for targeting
Marketing List	Published Segment	A ready-to-use audience for activation
Score & Grade	Attributes	Signals used to identify high-intent audiences

Once that mapping clicks, the platform becomes a lot less intimidating.

Before You Build: Know Your Data

One thing that surprises most Account Engagement users is how much data is available in Data 360. Depending on your setup, you may have access to:

Prospect data
CRM data
Email engagement
Forms
Landing Pages
Website activity
Preference center subscriptions
Opportunity data
External data sources

This is where Data 360 starts to shine.

In Account Engagement, we ask: “Who opened my email in the last 30 days?”

In Data 360, we ask: “Who opened my email in the last 30 days, visited my pricing page, and doesn’t currently have an open opportunity?”

That’s a fundamentally more sophisticated audience, and it’s exactly why organizations are investing in Data 360.

One important caveat: Not every org has the same data sources connected. Before building complex segments, take time to understand what’s actually flowing into Data 360 and how frequently it refreshes. Knowing your data inventory upfront will save you a lot of troubleshooting later.

Building Your First Segment

Navigate to Data Cloud > Segments and select New. You’ll see four segment types:

Standard Segments are your go-to. These are the closest equivalents to Account Engagement Dynamic Lists and support the vast majority of marketing use cases. Start here.

Waterfall Segments let you prioritize audiences and prevent contacts from qualifying for multiple competing campaigns simultaneously — useful when running multiple offers at once.

Real-Time Segments evaluate audiences on demand for use cases requiring immediate qualification. Powerful, but they come with limitations.

Once you’ve selected Standard Segment, there are four ways to build your audience.

Option 1: Use the Visual Builder

The Visual Builder offers the most flexibility and is where most marketers spend the majority of their time. The process is straightforward:

Create a New Segment
Select your Data Space (most often your Default Data Space)
Choose the object you want to segment on (most often Unified Individual)

Using the Visual Builder when creating a new segment

Name your Segment
Configure your publishing settings
Drag attributes onto the canvas and define your criteria
Save and publish

Understanding Direct Attributes vs. Related Attributes

This is one of the biggest mindset shifts for Account Engagement users.

When building criteria in the Visual Builder, you’ll typically see two types of attributes:

Direct Attributes

Direct Attributes live directly on the object you’re segmenting against.

For example, if you’re building a segment on the Unified Individual object, direct attributes might include:

First Name
Last Name
Country
State
Preferred Language

Think of these as fields that belong directly to the person.

Example: Country = United States

This is a simple, direct attribute filter.

Related Attributes

Related Attributes come from connected objects that are related to the object you’re segmenting on.

Examples include:

Email engagement activity
Opportunities
Campaign Membership
Website activity
Orders
Cases

Think of these as records associated with the person rather than fields that live directly on the person.

Example: Opened an email in the last 30 days

The email open isn’t stored directly on the Unified Individual record. It’s stored on a related engagement object.

When Should You Use Each?

A simple rule:

Use Direct Attributes when filtering on profile or demographic information.
Use Related Attributes when filtering on behavior, engagement, transactions, or relationships.

If you’re asking “Who is this person?” you’re usually looking at Direct Attributes.

If you’re asking “What has this person done?” you’re usually looking at Related Attributes.

Understanding that distinction makes segment building much easier and helps explain why some criteria appear in different areas of the builder.

Option 2: Use Quick Filters

Need a common audience fast? Quick Filters offer predefined criteria for standard scenarios like:

New Contacts created today
New Leads created today
Recent Campaign Members
Contacts related to a won Opportunity

Access Quick Filters by navigating to Campaign while in the Marketing Cloud Next app. Open a campaign and select Select Segment. It’s a great starting point if you’re brand new to the platform.

Accessing quick filters by going to Campaign

Once in campaign select "Select Segment."

Option 3: Use Einstein to Build a Draft

Not sure where to begin? Einstein Segment Creation lets you describe the audience you want in plain language:

How to build a draft using Einstein Segment Creation

Show me subscribers who opened an email in the last 30 days, visited our pricing page, and are subscribed to product updates.

Einstein generates a draft segment you can review, refine, and publish. Think of it as a shortcut to a first draft and always validate the output before going live.

Option 4: Use a Dynamic Segment

If you find yourself creating the same types of audiences repeatedly, Dynamic Builders can help streamline the process. Instead of starting from scratch each time, Dynamic Builders let you create reusable audience templates with configurable criteria. Marketers can then generate new segments from those templates by simply selecting or updating a few values, helping ensure consistency across campaigns while reducing manual effort. They’re especially useful for organizations with standardized audience definitions or recurring segmentation needs, allowing teams to scale segmentation without rebuilding the same logic over and over.

Which option should you choose? If you’re just getting started, use Quick Filters for common audiences or the Visual Builder for custom logic. Einstein Segment Creation is a great way to generate a first draft from natural language, while Dynamic Builders are best when your organization wants to standardize and reuse the same audience patterns across multiple campaigns.

Tips, Gotchas, and Things I Tell Every Client

Use the IN Operator Instead of Stacking OR Conditions

If your CRM has multiple versions of the same value, the IN operator saves you a lot of time. Instead of building three separate OR conditions, write:

Country IN (USA, US, United States)

It supports up to 100 values. Clean, readable, and much easier to maintain.

Understand Measurements, Operators, and Values

When working with behavioral data, Data 360 often asks you to combine three pieces:

Measurement
Operator
Value

For example: Email Opens → Count → At Least → 1

This translates to: “The person has opened at least one email.”

Another example: Email Clicks → Count → Greater Than → 5

This translates to: “The person has clicked more than five emails.”

Think of it like a sentence: Measurement + Operator + Value = Audience Rule

Examples:

Count At Least 1
Count Equals 0
Sum Greater Than 1000
Count Between 5 and 10

If a segment returns unexpected results, this combination is often the first place I investigate. The measurement may be correct, but the operator or value may not align with the business requirement.

Use Include and Exclude Intentionally

One of the most common mistakes I see is placing all data requirements into the “Include” section. Instead, think of Include as those who belong and Exclude as those who don’t belong. Separating those concepts creates cleaner segments and makes troubleshooting much easier.

Include Criteria: Country IN (USA, US, United States)

Exclude Criteria: Emailed in the last 3 days

Use EQUALS When Your Data Is Clean

When a field is standardized, and you only need one exact match, EQUALS is the right call. Country EQUALS USA will only return records where the value is exactly “USA.” No flexibility, but that’s the point.

Build Frequency and Recency Into Your Logic

This is where Data 360 starts to feel genuinely different from Account Engagement. You can filter by:

Has been emailed X times in the last Y days is great for suppression. If someone has received 3 emails in the last 7 days, you probably don’t want to send them a fourth.
Has not engaged in X days is your re-engagement and deliverability workhorse. Use it to identify lapsed subscribers before they become a problem.
Subscribed to [Preference] will build audiences based on what contacts have explicitly opted into. Increasingly important for compliance and deliverability.

Always Preview Before You Publish

Segment Preview lets you check audience size, sample records, and whether your include/exclude logic is working as intended. A few minutes here can save hours of troubleshooting later.

Account for Processing Time

Data 360 isn’t always instantaneous. Initial data ingestion can take days, depending on volume. Segment calculations take time and Dynamic Lists connected to a Data 360 Segment can take up to three hours to populate the first time. If nothing shows up immediately, give it time before assuming something is broken.

Not All Account Engagement Activity Is Automatically Available

A common misconception: not every historical activity flows into Data 360 by default. What’s available depends on your connector configuration and the Filter By Date you set when connecting. Before building complex engagement-based segments, confirm what data is actually being ingested.

Data 360 Doesn’t Honor CRM Visibility Rules

This one surprises many Salesforce Admins. Users can segment records in Data 360 that they can’t see in the CRM. If access control matters for your org, address it before rolling out segmentation broadly. The most reliable controls are user permissions and Business Units.

From Segment to Activation

One of the biggest misconceptions I encounter: adopting Data 360 means abandoning Account Engagement. It doesn’t. One of my favorite use cases is building sophisticated audiences in Data 360 and activating them directly through Account Engagement via the Data 360 Connector. To connect a Data 360 Segment to Account Engagement:

Navigate to Account Engagement → Segmentation → Lists
Create a Dynamic List
Select Data Cloud Segment as the Dynamic List Type
Choose your published segment

The first sync takes up to three hours. After that, membership updates automatically whenever the segment refreshes. Once connected, the Dynamic List works anywhere in Account Engagement, including Engagement Studio, Automation Rules, List Emails, Completion Actions, and Reporting. Data 360 identifies the audience. Account Engagement engages it. That’s where the value compounds.

Three Segments to Build First

Not sure where to start? These three are worth building in almost every org.

Recently Engaged Contacts: people actively interacting with your brand. Use for webinar invitations, product launches, or newsletters.

Opened an email in the last 30 days, OR
Clicked an email in the last 30 days, OR
Visited your website in the last 30 days

Inactive Subscribers (90+ Days): Subscribers who’ve gone quiet. Use for re-engagement campaigns, deliverability cleanup, or preference center outreach. This audience frequently surfaces new pipeline.

Opted in, AND
No opens in 90 days, OR
No clicks in 90 days

Preference Center Subscribers: Contacts who’ve told you exactly what they want. Use for targeted newsletters, product announcements, or event promotions.

Opt in to Product Updates

Data 360 segmentation isn’t replacing the skills you’ve built in Account Engagement; it’s extending them. You’re still defining criteria, building audiences, and activating campaigns. The difference is you now have richer data and more ways to use it. Start simple. Build a Quick Filter segment, get comfortable with the interface, then move into the Visual Builder. Before long, you’ll stop asking how to recreate Dynamic Lists and start asking what was possible all along.

Pro Tips, Strategy
July 7, 2026

Is Your Setup Costing You 14%? The Case for CRM Optimization

Heather Rinke

Think about your last pipeline review. How many times did you hear “oh yeah, I just haven’t updated that”? Meanwhile, marketers, RevOps, and sales leaders are left with limited pipeline visibility, wondering which campaigns are actually moving the needle, and how far off the team will be from the original forecast. This CRM data quality issue is the symptom of a much bigger problem. And it’s quietly costing you revenue. With how much the CRM can impact sales performance and the buyer’s experience, it’s critical that marketing, sales, and operations leadership understand the case for CRM optimization.

For most revenue teams, the CRM has become the thing sellers tolerate rather than the thing that helps them win. That’s not a people problem. It’s a design problem. Sellers are wrestling with clunky interfaces and manual processes, while hunting down intel in fragmented systems, and buyers feel the friction when they’re waiting to be followed up with, or have to repeat themselves on a call.

In Sercante l Trilliad’s playbook, The CRM Paradox: Why Your System is Killing Pipeline (And How to Fix It), it dives into the statistics and impacts on sellers, buyers, and the overall business when the CRM is not set up to be aligned with how sellers actually sell, and includes a proven framework for identifying the friction and how to start solving it. Get the highlights on the case for CRM optimization below and download the playbook to get all the details.

The case for CRM optimization: Your real cost of a “broken” CRM

CRMs weren’t originally built for sellers. They were built for reporting, tracking, and management oversight. So when we drop a seller into a system designed for someone else’s job, friction is the natural result.

The numbers tell the story:

48% of sales leaders say their CRM is more of a burden than a help (Forbes).
76% of salespeople say their CRM is too complex, time-consuming, and outdated (Medium).
Companies with low CRM adoption have reported closing 14% fewer deals (ARP Ideas).

Here’s the cycle every revenue leader knows but rarely names: friction leads to low CRM adoption. Low adoption leads to bad data. Bad data leads to obscured buyer views, bad forecasts—and lost revenue.

You’ve most likely felt the downstream cost of seller friction firsthand.

For marketers:

The leaky funnel: Marketing hands off a lead and loses sight of it. Without tracking, delayed follow-ups let hot leads go cold.
Painful ROI reporting: Low CRM data quality hides campaign impact, making it impossible to prove what actually drove the deal.
Limited personalization: Poor data tracking means limited customer insight, stopping teams from building the tailored experiences today’s buyers expect.

For sales leaders:

Blind forecasting: Low CRM adoption leads to inaccurate deal data, forcing leaders to guess on pipeline numbers, making forecasting challenging.
Limited coaching: Without the right deal context in the system of record, managers can’t spot where sellers are stuck or guide them effectively.

For RevOps:

Funnel visibility gaps: Siloed intelligence makes it impossible to accurately track funnel velocity and shifting conversion rates.
Legacy drag: Outdated setups force teams to build manual workarounds rather than scalable, automated workflows, making the data issue worse as well as efficiency.

For customer success:

Reactive support: A lack of proactive data insights means CSMs can’t identify or save at-risk accounts before they decide to churn.
Eroded kickoff trust: Passing accounts with limited sales context creates a clunky onboarding experience that kills lifetime value.

Where the CRM friction actually lives

Before you can fix it, you have to find it. In most organizations, the drag clusters in five predictable places.

Administrative burden. Sellers spend 60%+ of their time on manual data entry instead of selling (Salesforce). Every redundant field and extra click is selling time you’re paying for and not getting.
The seller’s CRM perception. If sellers don’t see the CRM as being useful and only have frustrating experiences when using it, their view of the CRM will only continue to lead to low CRM adoption.
Siloed intelligence. Critical deal context lives in Slack, email, and “shadow” spreadsheets—everywhere except the system of record. When the insight isn’t where the seller is working, it may as well not exist.
Legacy configuration. Many orgs are running a CRM built for 2018 reporting needs, not 2026 workflows. The business changed. The setup didn’t.
The marketing visibility gap. This is the one that quietly breaks cross-functional trust. Marketing hands off a lead and loses sight of it. Sales picks it up with no context. And no one can prove what actually drove the deal.

Ask yourself: Which of these five is costing my team the most right now? You probably already know the answer.

Your buyer feels every bit of it

Here’s the part that’s easy to miss from inside a pipeline dashboard: internal friction never stays internal. If your sellers are fighting their tools, they aren’t fighting for your buyers.

In Part III of Sercante l Trilliad’s series, Built to Buy, industry experts explore what a broken seller experience looks like from the buyer’s side of the table:

The delayed hand-off. A hot marketing lead goes cold because the assignment logic is broken or buried in a rep’s queue. The buyer raised their hand—and heard nothing back.
The interrogation session. A prospect repeats their pain points, budget, and scope on a call because the marketing context never synced to the record. To them, it feels like your left hand doesn’t know what your right hand is doing.
The missing follow-up. A customized proposal arrives days late because the seller is drowning in admin instead of engaging. By then, attention has moved on.

Watch Part III of Built to Buy Series: A Better CRM For Sellers = A Better Experience for Buyers

Your customer doesn’t think, “Am I in a marketing, sales, or success experience?” They just know they’re having an experience—and they want it to be easy. When your departments feel out of sync, buyers quietly move to a competitor who feels organized. A CRM that feels clunky to your seller feels clunky to your buyer.

Getting started on your CRM optimization

The key to getting started is acknowledging the impact that the state of the CRM has on your business for sellers, your buyers, and every department. Then it’s about spotting where the friction actually lives and mapping out the next steps for solving it.

If you’d like to fast-track getting started with your CRM optimization, reach out to the Sercante l Trilliad team for a Seller Experience Audit. Then, receive a clear blueprint for quick wins with a big impact and a roadmap for your ideal CRM seller experience.

Contact us for your CRM Seller Experience audit

Getting Started, Marketing Automations, Pro Tips
June 1, 2026

Agentforce Marketing Features, a Guide for Account Engagement Users

Erin Duncan

Agentforce Marketing has quickly become a focal point for Salesforce Marketers. However, many Account Engagement customers are still trying to understand how this new platform operates and how it fits alongside their current tools. While Agentforce Marketing is designed to encompass all the features of Account Engagement, it introduces distinct features and a completely new lexicon. To bridge the gap, let’s dive into the Account Engagement that you know and love and how these features are translated, in name and functionality, to Agentforce Marketing.

What’s in a Name?

Let’s start with what initially trips users up – the product name. A common question I get from users is whether this new platform is called “Agentforce Marketing” or “Marketing Cloud Next” and the answer is both!

“Agentforce Marketing” appears to be the name that will stick around in the long term, but “Marketing Cloud Next” is used in most of the help articles and guides about this new platform. My guess is “Marketing Cloud Next” may be phased out as the tool grows and evolves. For the time being, both names are correct and refer to the latest Marketing Automation Tools from Salesforce.

There are also a few other names you may run into, including

Marketing Cloud Growth: This refers to the “Growth” edition of Agentforce Marketing.
Marketing Cloud Advanced: This refers to the “Advanced” edition of Agentforce Marketing.
Marketing Cloud on Core: This name was adopted by the community pre “Marketing Cloud Next”. It helped us designate a difference between OG “Marketing Cloud” (aka Marketing Cloud Engagement) and the new platform. “On Core” designates that this Marketing Platform, unlike Engagement or Account Engagement, is truly built on the core Salesforce platform.
Account Engagement +: This term is more Salesforce SKU-based and refers to Account Engagement users who are also using the Agentforce Marketing Platform alongside their Account Engagement org.
Engagement + / Marketing Cloud +: Similar to the above, this is Salesforce SKU-based and refers to Marketing Cloud Engagement customers using the Agentforce Marketing Platform alongside their Engagement org.

Features and Terminology

Prospects

In Account Engagement, a Prospect refers to an identified individual. Prospects can remain solely in Account Engagement or sync to Salesforce Leads and Contacts. The equivalent of a Prospect in Agentforce Marketing is a Unified Individual.

A Unified Individual is a consolidated record of metadata related to multiple Prospect, Lead, and Contact records for the same person. To put this in simpler terms, say you have multiple Lead and Contact records for the same individual within your CRM. Each of these records has different information about said customer and each record retains its own engagement and activity data. This disparate view of your customer gives your teams an incomplete and sometimes incorrect picture of your customer. Data 360 unites these disparate records using Identity Resolution rules and provides your team with a consolidated and complete view of each customer, the Unified Individual.

Learn more about Unified Individuals in the Data and Identity in Data 360 Trailhead Module.

Now, a few releases ago, Salesforce also added a Prospect object to CRM. This means that marketers can create pre-lead or unqualified records directly in Salesforce to mimic the same functionality we have in Account Engagement. Currently the CRM Prospect record cannot sync with Account Engagement Prospects, but I expect functionality around the Prospect CRM object to grow and this could be something we see in a few releases.

Lists

In Account Engagement, there are two main List types:

Static Lists are built one time and only update with manual changes.
Dynamic Lists are rule-based and automatically update when a Prospect’s data changes.

The equivalent of a List in Agentforce Marketing is a Data 360 Segment.

Data 360 Segments consist of Unified Individuals that match filtering rule criteria that you set. Similar to Account Engagement Dynamic Lists, you can assign multiple rule criteria to a Segment with AND/OR logic between each rule. You can also match a field against multiple values using the “Is In” operator. The image below shows an example of a Segment using multiple rule criteria in Agentforce Marketing.

A Segment using multiple rule criteria in Agentforce Marketing

Whether a Data 360 Segment is static or dynamic depends on its publish schedule. You can set a Segment to “Do Not Schedule”, essentially making the list static, or configure a publish schedule to refresh your Segment as needed. The image below depicts the Edit Properties window in Agentforce Marketing where the publish schedule is defined.

The edit Properties window in Agentforce Marketing where the publish schedule is defined.

Segments can be used in Agentforce Marketing or, with the Data 360 Connector, synced down to Account Engagement as a Dynamic List.

Now, if you prefer to curate your list rather than use Segment rules, you can either add Leads/Contacts to your Campaign and then create a Segment of Campaign Members:

Or, after the Summer ‘26 release, utilize the new List and Audience Flow features to circumvent the need for a Data 360 Segment.

Learn more about segments in the Segmentation in Data 360 Trailhead Module.

Engagement Studio Program

Engagement Studio Programs enable you to automate multi-touch customer journeys using triggers, rules, and actions. These programs nurture Prospects through the sales funnel and ensure timely and relevant communications. The Agentforce Marketing equivalent to Engagement Studio Programs is Flow Builder.

Flow Builder is the automation engine of Agentforce Marketing, helping you build and execute complex, multi-channel marketing campaigns. Engagement Studio Programs and Flow Builder have a lot of overlap: They both have a top-down vertical layout, use elements as steps within the program/flow, and allow you to customize processes down different paths based on conditions.

Learn more about Flows in the Flow Builder Basics Trailhead Module and the Understanding Campaigns and Flows in Marketing Cloud Next help article.

Completion Action

In Account Engagement, Completion Actions trigger when a Prospect takes a specific action, such as filling out a form. The Agentforce Marketing equivalent of this is Automation Event-Triggered Flows.

Automation Event-Triggered Flows, sometimes referred to as Form-Triggered Flows or just Event-Triggered Flows, trigger when an individual takes an action. Automation Event-Triggered Flows allow you to trigger a single action or build an entire customer journey to nurture the individual after an event.

Agentforce Marketing includes several pre-configured events and Engagement Signals can be used to build any additional desired events.

Automation Rule

Account Engagement Automation Rules are repeatable, criteria-based rules that find matching Prospects and apply actions to them. The Agentforce Marketing equivalent to Automation Rules is Flow Builder, but the type of flow depends on your criteria.

If you are converting Lead records when they meet specific criteria, use a Data 360 Triggered Flow.
If you are creating consent records when an individual opts into your marketing communications via a form, use an Event-Triggered Flow with a Consent Request Element.
If you have multiple criteria and/or want more control over when the action fires, create a Segment and use a Segment-Triggered Flow.

Scoring and Grading

Account Engagement uses Scoring and Grading to help you identify, qualify, and prioritize Prospects in your org.

In Account Engagement, Scoring indicates how engaged a Prospect is by assigning numerical points to each activity the Prospect performs, its Agentforce Marketing equivalent is Engagement Scoring. Similar to Account Engagement Scoring, Agentforce Marketing’s Engagement Scoring assigns numerical points to activities. A default scoring system is provided, but you can fully customize the conditions and points.

In Account Engagement, Grading indicates how closely the prospect fits your ideal customer by evaluating pre-configured criteria and assigning a letter grade. The Agentforce Marketing equivalent of Grading is Fit Scoring. Similar to Engagement Scoring, Fit Scoring assigns numerical points to individuals if they match your fit criteria. Fit Scoring conditions and points can also be fully customized.

In Account Engagement, Prospects do not have a metric that reflects a combination of the Score and Grade. Score and Grade are kept as completely separate metrics, but can be used together to establish a qualification threshold. In Agentforce Marketing, individuals do have a combined rating called Overall Score. The Overall Score will always be between 0 and 100. The Overall Score is initially 50% Engagement and 50% Fit, but this can be customized as needed as well.

The image below shows how Agentforce Marketing’s score weights can be customized.

With Advanced Edition you can also score the fit, engagement, and intent of your Accounts.

Mailability

In Account Engagement, a prospect’s mailability or mailable status refers to whether or not they can receive marketing emails. If an Account Engagement Prospect has a hard bounce, five soft bounces, has unsubscribed themselves, or has been manually opted out, they are considered unmailable.

Agentforce Marketing uses Consent for a more comprehensive approach to mailability. Within Agentforce Marketing, individuals set their subscription preferences to indicate the channel they want to receive communication within (Email, SMS, WhatsApp) and the subscription (newsletter, events, product updates etc.). For example, an individual may subscribe to receive event updates via SMS and receive your newsletter via email. Agentforce Marketing will create a consent record within Data 360 for each choice.

Learn more about consent differences between the two systems in the Understanding Consent Differences Between Account Engagement and Marketing Cloud Next help article.

If you plan on using Account Engagement and Agentforce Marketing side-by-side, it may be beneficial to align consent between the two systems.

A/B Testing

In Account Engagement, A/B Testing allows you to optimize your email content by sending two versions of an email to a small subset of your recipient list. The engagement data of these two email variations is used to determine a winning version that is then sent to the remaining subset of your recipient list. Agentforce Marketing’s equivalent is Path Experiment, however Path Experiment allows you to do much more than send just two variations of a single email.

Path Experiment, which is available for the Advanced Edition of Agentforce Marketing, allows you to experiment with up to 10 different versions of a customer journey to determine the most effective path. This means you can test content variations (i.e. which subject line gets more opens?), channel variations (i.e. do you get more opens with email or sms?), and even cadence variations (do we get better results sending more or less emails?). Similar to A/B Testing, Path Experiment allows you to test with a subset of your audience before sending your remaining audience members down the winning path.

Learn more about Path Experiment in the Marketing Cloud Flow Element: Path Experiment help article.

Sender Domains

In Account Engagement, Sender Domains define where you can send emails from. For example, if my Sender is [email protected] then Salesforce.com is my Sender Domain. The Agentforce Marketing equivalent is Authenticated Domains. For both sender and authenticated domains you will need to work with your IT team to create DNS records. These records help improve the deliverability of your emails by defining you as a legitimate sender.

Learn more about Authenticated Domains in the Domain Settings in Marketing Cloud Next help article.

Dynamic Content

In Account Engagement, Dynamic Content enables you to create field-based variations of content. If the Prospect’s field matches the designated field value, then they will see that content variation on your website or within your marketing assets. Agentforce Marketing also has Dynamic Content, but it has more advanced functionality.

Agentforce Marketing’s Dynamic Content functionality allows you to personalize your email based on fields or any data source connected to your individual. For example, you can build the variations based off of Account data or data from an event the recipient recently attended. You can also personalize multiple sections of your marketing assets, or personalization points, within one Dynamic Content variation. This allows you to dynamically update nearly every aspect of an email more efficiently.

Agentforce Marketing Dynamic Content relies on:

Personalization Point: An element of content that’s eligible for a personalization decision. For example, an email’s subject line and preheader or an image component within the email are “points” that you can personalize.
Personalization Decision: Criteria that determines who’s eligible to receive a personalization response.
Targeting Rule: Conditions for showing a specific variation.

Learn more about Dynamic Content in the How Dynamic Content and Salesforce Personalization Work Together help article.

Page Actions

In Account Engagement, Page Actions trigger additional actions after a Prospect views a specific page of your website. In Agentforce Marketing, you can accomplish the same goal using website tracking and the Website Engagement Data Model Object (DMO).

The Website Engagement DMO records website page views and clicks, and engagement signals can be created to zero in on specific page view activities. For example, you can create an Engagement Signal that records when a visitor lands on your Pricing page, a good indicator that they may be interested in making a purchase. These Engagement Signals can then be used to trigger Automation Event-Triggered Flows so you can further automate next steps.

Learn more about website engagement and Engagement Signals in the Marketing Cloud Next: Custom Event-Triggered Flow blog post.

Campaign

Account Engagement uses both Salesforce and Account Engagement Campaigns. Account Engagement Campaigns are considered thematic touchpoints (similar to a source in other systems), while Salesforce campaigns are a Salesforce CRM object used to plan, manage, and track marketing initiatives. Salesforce and Account Engagement Campaigns are united with the Connected Campaigns feature.

Agentforce Marketing utilizes the Salesforce CRM Campaigns object for both purposes. Campaigns are not only a record that helps organize the audience, assets, and metrics for a specific marketing effort, but they also indicate a touchpoint for your individual.

Campaigns serve as a centralized hub for a marketing initiative within Agentforce Marketing. Within a Campaign you will find all the relevant information for your Campaign including your Campaign Brief, Campaign Members, associated flows, and reports.

Where to find your Campaign brief, members, associated flows, and reports

The user interface shown above is unique to viewing Campaigns within the Marketing app. Don’t let the user interface confuse you though, this is the default Salesforce Campaign object that is used by other processes and applications within Salesforce.

Campaign Influence

In Account Engagement, Campaign Influence helps you tie marketing efforts to your opportunities to see which campaigns are the most influential and successful. Account Engagement Campaign Influence can be a little hands-on, requiring you to add all Leads/Contacts that engage with your Campaign as Campaign Members. Agentforce Marketing uses Opportunity Influence to automate and streamline influence. Opportunity Influence uses engagement data to automatically tie Opportunity revenue back to a specific Campaign without the need for Campaign Membership.

Learn more about Opportunity Influence in the Attribute Revenue to a Specific Campaign help article.

AI Assistant

In Account Engagement, AI Assistant is generative AI that assists in drafting forms and landing pages as well as creating email subject lines, headers, and body copy. Agentforce Marketing uses Agentforce and Generative AI to assist with generating copy and so much more. Agentforce Marketing not only helps you generate forms, landing pages, and email content, but can also streamline the entire campaign creation process with the Campaign Creation and Content Builder agents.

Learn more about Agentforce Marketing’s AI features in the AI in Marketing Cloud Next Trailhead Module.The above gives you an overview of how terminology and features translate between Account Engagement and Agentforce Marketing. If you are ready to take the next step in your Agentforce Marketing journey, check out our A Strategic Path to Navigating Marketing Cloud Convergence blog post or contact us!

Community, Data Management, Industry News, New Features
May 21, 2026

The Decoupled Future of Growth: From a Rigid, UI-Bound CRM to an “AI-First” Engine

Heather Rinke

The recent unveiling of Salesforce Headless 360 marks a significant paradigm shift in the CRM industry, signaling a move away from rigid, UI-bound ecosystems toward a decoupled, “AI-first” infrastructure. For growth leaders, marketing executives, and revenue operations professionals, this means the CRM is no longer a destination users must manually log into, but rather a background engine. This engine can be accessed conveniently via natural language and “agentic” interfaces like Slack, Teams, or custom coding tools, fundamentally changing how teams interact with critical customer data and functionality.

1. Agentic Orchestration and the Model Context Protocol (MCP)

The core of this transformation is the decoupling of the CRM interface from its data layer, opening up the platform with comprehensive external API access. This shift converts Salesforce data, workflows, and business logic into over 60 composable Model Context Protocol (MCP) tools. These tools act as building blocks that allow AI agents to seamlessly interact with Salesforce without a traditional UI.

This agentic approach promises to automate complex workflows. Operational tasks, such as updating a Salesforce record or opportunity, can now be executed through agentic interfaces like Slack, completely bypassing the need to log into the traditional CRM UI. This functionality also supports extending beyond Salesforce-owned products to a wide variety of other interfaces such as Microsoft Teams, custom web and mobile apps, or even communication channels like Voice, WhatApp or SMS, as long as they adhere to the MCP protocol. The ultimate positive evolution is toward improved operational efficiency, giving users a consistent experience wherever they are already working, allowing teams to execute tasks like managing pipeline, building dashboards, and campaign journeys easier and without as many technical barriers.

2. Evolving Skillsets: Prompt Engineering and Data Hygiene

As systems transition to an agentic execution model, this democratizes the platform by transforming how non-developers, such as business users and admins, interact with and build upon the system. This highlights a growing need for a critical emerging competency: prompt engineering. For end users, especially marketers and sales representatives, the ability to write precise instructions are paramount to getting the desired results from AI. This shift necessitates that teams quickly adopt an “AI-first” approach for building solutions.

However, foundational pieces also remain crucial; even Headless 360, requirements like good data quality and metadata hygiene practices are still essential for success. AI does not natively “know” your business; it relies on your data (the facts) and your metadata (the context, rules, and structure) to make real-time decisions. Keeping data clean, deduplicated and up to date, and ensuring fields have descriptions, picklists are organized and accurate, gives AI the correct information, and the business logic and context to understand what it means.

3. Strategic Skepticism and Navigating Release Reality

While the potential for improved operational efficiency is high, leaders should approach the Headless 360 announcement with strategic skepticism. As with many major platform evolutions, the full scope of Headless 360 will likely unfold in phases rather than arriving as an immediate, all-in-one solution. While the announcements focus on a complete platform of tools, all are not generally available at this time, with some features in pilot now or planned for release in the summer and beyond, so customers should prepare for implementation over a phased roadmap. Ultimately, the move to Headless360 is a necessary and welcome alignment with modern market standards, ensuring Salesforce remains competitive as organizations increasingly adopt headless architectures.

Executives should view this development as a positive step forward, particularly for organizations that prioritize prompt engineering training and robust data governance. The headless model offers a more seamless and convenient way to integrate Salesforce functionality where users typically work day-to-day, which is an effective strategy for boosting user adoption. The foundation for this is already emerging, with capabilities such as the Agentic Enterprise Search (also known as Ask Agentforce) feature currently in beta, which uses natural language queries to synthesize summaries from connected systems.

Conclusion

The Headless 360 announcement marks the beginning of a future where growth is driven by a decentralized, AI-first engine. As technical complexity is abstracted away by agentic interfaces, success will hinge on empowering teams to adopt prompt engineering as a new competency and maintaining unwavering data hygiene. Organizations that can adapt their skillsets and navigate the gap between marketing promise and practical application will be best positioned to leverage this evolution for superior operational efficiency and accelerated growth.

Strategy, Technology
May 15, 2026

Ads in ChatGPT: What B2B Marketers Need to Know

Andrea Tarrell

ChatGPT Welcome to Ads Manager Beta message

In case you missed it, last week OpenAI announced that their ad network is now open for a public beta.

If you’re a “bleeding edge” type, you probably already signed up for an Ads Manager Beta account. If you’re more of “an early middle” type, perhaps you’re taking a wait-and-see approach.

I would strongly advocate for early experimentation with this – it is most certainly going to become a core part of the B2B marketing mix over the next 12 months. Early learnings can help you determine quickly if/how you pivot your marketing spend and focus for the balance of 2026.

What’s on offer from OpenAI

Back in February, OpenAI announced it was trialing ads with a few select partners. On May 5, 2026, OpenAI announced it was making a self-serve advertising platform available for public beta, with no minimum spend requirement.

This is welcome news to any B2B marketers who have seen traffic dip as a result of LLMs cannibalizing click-through traffic from Google.

Capabilities of ChatGPT Ads

This ad platform is early, and we should expect that it will evolve rapidly. Think early days of Google and Facebook.

The rules will change, and the best practices will change, it is the definition of a moving target. But for now, here’s what we’re working with:

Audience

Through the news Ads Manager Beta, advertisers can reach logged-in users over the age of 18 in the US, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. Ads will be shown to Free users and “Go” tier users (lowest tier of paid accounts). All other paid accounts will not be shown ads.

Targeting

You can target based on “context hints” or descriptive phrases of the type of conversations you’d like to be placed in. OpenAI will use these hints as matching signals alongside the content of your landing page and ad copy.

Certain sensitive topics (health, mental health, politics) are excluded from targeting.

Ad Format

Ads can contain:

Your brand name
Favicon
Headline
Description
Image
Link

Here’s a rough mockup of what that would look like for a user:

Pricing

Parameter	Detail
CPC (Cost Per Click)	Clicks objective. Recommended starting max bid: $3-5 USD. Custom max bids available. B2B campaigns may see higher CPCs ($8-15) due to audience depth.
CPM (Cost Per Thousand)	Reach objective. Default max bid: $60 CPM. Suitable for brand awareness and early-funnel exposure.
Auction type	Relevance-weighted second-price auction. Winning ad pays just above the second-highest relevant bid.
Minimum budget	No published minimum as of self-serve launch. Recommended test budget: $2,000-5,000 per month for meaningful data collection.

Measurement

In-platform metrics include:

Impressions
Clicks
Spend
CTR
Average CPC/CPM, conversions

UTM parameters persist through ad clicks. Remember to set utm_source=chatgpt before launching ads—retroactive attribution is impossible!

What’s NOT Possible with ChatGPT Ads

Demographic Targeting

You cannot target ads based on demographics. This is a tough pill to swallow in B2B when potential buyers often fit a defined set of criteria, or when you are focused on an ABM strategy.

A lot of B2B marketing starts with asking: “Who is our buyer?”

With ChatGPT Ads, we need to ask: “What question does our best buyer ask right before they need us?”

Agency Managed Accounts

Every business that wants to run ads on ChatGPT needs to sign up for its’ own account at: https://ads.openai.com/. You can add users from your agency after the account is approved and provisioned.

Integration

As of this publish date, ChatGPT Ads does not have connectors with any CRM or marketing analytics platforms.

Advanced Measurement

I can’t stress this enough: the platform is early. It’s basic. There is data you can get from other platforms that you will not get yet with ChatGPT Ads. But OpenAI has a vested interest in getting this feature stood up – the more you can measure the path to revenue, the more advertisers are going to be willing to pour money into a channel.

Predictability

“Inventory ceilings” are likely going to be an issue for early movers. I would estimate about 20-25% of all ChatGPT users meet the criteria to be shown ads through this beta. What percentage of those users are B2B decision makers with intent for your particular product? It’s impossible to get a precise estimate of that with the tools OpenAI has made available today.

You may find yourself allocating $20K to a pilot and only spending $12K based on how often users are looking for what you’re promoting – but that in and of itself is a valuable insight that can tell you how to prioritize this in your marketing mix.

What are the other LLMs & AI Platforms doing?

Google / Gemini

Not really in the AI ad game yet. Traditional Google Ads placements are sometimes surfaced in Google Search AI overviews. No native conversational ads in Gemini – yet.

Microsoft Copilot

Already selling ads. Ads appear within Copilot responses and other AI surfaces (Bing, Edge) through existing Microsoft Advertising inventory, including Performance Max, Multimedia, and Search campaigns.

Claude

Staunchly anti-ad. So much so that they made a Super Bowl commercial about it.

Meta AI (Consumer Chat)

No built-in ad slots in chatbot outputs, though Meta uses AI signals to inform ads across its properties.

Perplexity AI

Focused on subscriptions and business features. No current in-chat ads.

What should you do next with ChatGPT Ads?

I would recommend leaning in and experimenting with this early. Costs at this stage will be lower (with less competition for clicks and impressions), and the early learnings are extremely valuable.

To do a meaningful test, I would suggest a budget of $2K+ per month over a 60-90 day window.

Because this is brand new, you’re not going to find team members or agencies with “years of experience” implementing this strategy…. so you should pick someone to manage it that has a data-driven mindset, is agile/iterative, and has the bandwidth to actively manage this and ensure it is successful.

I suspect that the biggest learning curve is going to be how to write “context hints.” There’s going to be a little bit of art here since it’s different from how other platforms operate. Context hints should be written in the user’s language, with the right specificity, mapped to the decision stage you want to capture your audience in – it’s going to take a high degree of user empathy to get this right.

Just Global is actively sharing their early learnings on ChatGPT Ads. If you’re ready to dive into the “how” and initial best practices, check out their e-book!

Just Global l Trilliad Life on the Edge: B2B Growth in the Age of AI Download Ebook

New Features, Privacy & Compliance, Release Notes
May 15, 2026

Upcoming Salesforce Platform Security Changes and How to Prepare

Heather Rinke

With the upcoming June 2026 updates Salesforce has just announced, Salesforce is once again raising the bar for platform security. While these updates are designed to keep your data safer than ever, they do require some proactive heavy lifting from admins to ensure integrations don’t break and user access remains seamless.

In line with the messaging we’ve seen from Salesforce recently—focusing on the intersection of AI, Data, and Trust—these enhancements are mandatory. We want to make sure you’re ahead of the curve. Let’s dive into the core security requirements and what you need to do to prepare.

Email Domain Verification

What is changing: Salesforce now strictly requires all outbound email-sending domains to be verified. To verify a domain, you must establish ownership using either DKIM key (recommended) or a verified entry in the authorized email domains list. As part of this change, Salesforce will no longer deliver emails from unverified domains, even if the specific sender’s individual email address was previously verified.
Why it matters: Email deliverability is becoming stricter globally, with major mail providers increasingly filtering or rejecting unauthenticated domains. If your organization attempts to send an email from an unverified domain, the delivery will fail and the email will be silently dropped. It won’t generate a bounce notification or an error message for your automations.
Who is impacted: Any emails sent directly from the Salesforce platform, which includes emails sent via the Email Composer, Apex email, Flow-triggered emails and even system-generated emails like notifications of a new Lead or Opportunity assignment.
Timeline: Enforcement began rolling out to sandboxes in March 2026, and production orgs in April 2026.
How to prepare:
- You can check the verification status in your org by going to Deliverability settings in Setup and enter your domain in the Check Domain Verification section.
- Ensure your email sending domains are verified using one of the following methods:
  - Create a DKIM Key (Recommended)
  - Alternative Option: Authorized Email Domains
- Enable a Safety Net: To minimize immediate business disruption while waiting for domain verification, enable “Use a substitute email address for unverified domains” on the Deliverability Setup page.

More Information: Spring ’26 Email-Sending Domain Verification Requirement

MFA Mandatory for All Users

What is changing: While Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) has been a contractual “requirement” for some time, Salesforce is moving toward technical enforcement for all UI logins (i.e. the login.salesforce.com page). This means any user logging into the Salesforce UI must use Multi-Factor Authentication. The ability to toggle this off for specific profiles or bypass it via legacy settings is being deprecated.
Why it matters: Data breaches are commonly linked to compromised credentials. Making MFA a technical requirement for every single user, ensures that even if a password is compromised via social engineering, your org remains protected.
Who is impacted: All users logging into Salesforce (direct UI or SSO logins) in production or sandbox orgs and do not have one of these permissions: System Administrator profile, Modify All Data, View All Data, Customize Application, or Author Apex. (Users with these permissions are considered “privileged” and have their own MFA requirements, see the next section)
Timeline: Enforcement is rolling out in waves, starting in Sandboxes on June 22, 2026, and production orgs starting July 20th.
- Ahead of enforcement, orgs that have the setting “Require multi-factor authentication (MFA) for all direct UI logins to your Salesforce org” disabled may start seeing this pop-up message as a heads-up on the upcoming enforcement.
- Orgs with that have been updated will see the “Require multi-factor authentication (MFA) for all direct UI logins to your Salesforce org” setting (under Setup > Session Settings) enabled and greyed out.

How to prepare:
- Audit users still not using MFA to assess who will be impacted. Use the “Identity Verification Methods Report” to view the methods being used by your organization.
- Identify users relying on the “Waive Multi-Factor Authentication for Exempt Users” permission. To restore this exemption for valid use cases (e.g., automated testing tools), you can contact Salesforce Support for approval.
- Identify the MFA methods available for your users and determine how they choose a method during initial registration.
- If you are using Single Sign-On (SSO) through another identity provider (e.g. Okta, Entra), make sure that provider is using MFA and sending valid signals to validate MFA was used (for more information, see Salesforce’s breakdown of signal requirements).
- Ensure users are prepared for the change and how to register their MFA method.
More information: Prepare for MFA Enforcement for All Employee Users

Phishing-Resistant MFA for Admins or Privileged Users

What is changing: Salesforce is introducing a requirement for phishing-resistant MFA for users with “privileged” access. This means moving away from verification codes and toward FIDO2/WebAuthn-based passkeys, hardware security keys (e.g. YubiKeys) or built-in authenticators (e.g. Windows Hello or FaceID) that use FIDO2/WebAuthn standards.
Why it matters: Admins hold the keys to the kingdom. Phishing-resistant methods ensure a stronger protection against identity-based threats, and ensures access is tied to authorized users.
Who is impacted:
This change affects all users logging into Salesforce (direct UI or SSO logins) in production or sandbox orgs who meet any of the following conditions:
- Users assigned with the System Administrator profile
- Users assigned with any one of these privileged permissions: Modify All Data, View All Data, Customize Application, or Author Apex
Once in effect, users will be prompted to register their phishing-resistant MFA method on their next login.

What it will look like to register the phishing-resistant MFA method on the next login.

Timeline: This change will be introduced in sandboxes starting June 22, 2026, and in production orgs starting July 1, 2026
How to prepare:
- Audit all users who have the System Administrator profile, or one of these permissions: Modify All Data, View All Data, Customize Application, or Author Apex. You can use Salesforce Reports, User List Views, SOQL, or the User Access and Permissions Assistant.
- Identify users relying on the “Waive Multi-Factor Authentication for Exempt Users” permission. To restore this exemption for valid use cases (e.g., automated testing tools), you can contact Salesforce Support for approval.
- Ensure Security Keys and/or Built-In Authenticators are enabled in your Org. You can also enable Passwordless login using Passkeys for faster logins.
- If you are using Single Sign-On (SSO) through another identity provider (e.g. Okta, Entra), make sure that provider is updated to use phishing-resistant MFA, or enable Salesforce MFA for SSO logins (for more information, see how to configure SSO for MFA compliance).
- Test your MFA implementation to ensure you can successfully enroll and use phishing-resistant MFA to login
- Ensure users are prepared for the change and how to register their MFA method. Encourage them to pre-register before the enforcement date to avoid disruptions.
- More information: Prepare for Phishing-Resistant MFA Enforcement for Privileged Users including Admins

Containment for “High Risk” Connections

What is changing: Salesforce will automatically detect and contain traffic that:
- Are from “High-Risk” connections through Connected App or API usage.
  - Examples of “high risk” connections include anonymizing VPNs (e.g. NordVPN, ExpressVPN, Surfshark, or ProtonVPN), Proxies (e.g. HideMyAss or KProxy) or high-risk IP addresses (e.g. public wifi, blocklisted IPs)
  - Connected App or API usage may include integrations, plugins (e.g. Salesforce Inspector Reloaded) or use of CLI tools.
- Are significant, novel deviations from typical user login activity based on network, client, authentication events, and geolocation. (detected through an AI-driven monitoring system)
- If a high risk connection is identified, the following actions will be taken:
  - The affected user account will be frozen.
  - All OAuth refresh tokens granted to the user will be revoked.
  - An email will be delivered to org admins from Salesforce Security (See Administrator Notifications below).
  - The affected user will need to contact their org admin to restore access to their account.
Why it matters: This enhancement is aimed at protecting against suspicious activity via anonymizing VPNs, proxies, or high-risk IP addresses; credential harvesting; and token theft.
Timeline: This change started April 24, 2026
How to prepare:
- Ensure users running integrations, plugins or connects are not doing so from high-risk sources
- If automated containment affects a user, review their session and restore access by unfreezing their user
- Users will need to avoid connecting from high-risk connections to prevent re-containment. They will also need reauthorize any connected apps
- If your only admin account is locked out, contact Salesforce Support by phone to have your account reactivated
More information: Preventing Connections from Anonymizing VPNs, Proxies and High-Risk IP Addresses

Step-Up Authentication for Reports

What is changing: Salesforce is introducing “Step-Up Authentication.” Even if a user is already logged in, they will be prompted to re-verify their identity (via MFA) when they attempt to run or view reports if a configurable amount of time has passed since their last step-up challenge.

What it looks like when a user is prompted to re-verify their identity (via MFA)

Why it matters: This change is intended to prevent malicious data breaches or unauthorized transfer of data to external locations. Given that report views and exports can be susceptible to scraping or unauthorized external use, the step-up authentication ensures these actions require a stronger authentication challenge.
Who is affected: This change impacts all users (direct login or SSO) who run or export reports.
Timeline: Sandboxes will see this available starting May 27, 026 and enforced starting June 3, 2026. Production orgs will see this available starting May 27, 026 and enforced starting June 10, 2026.
How to prepare:
- Ensure all users (especially SSO users) have a registered Salesforce MFA method, a valid email, or an SMS phone number, as they will need this to pass the challenge.
- Review and Configure the Policy: In Setup, go to Identity Verification settings and adjust the cool-down period threshold if your business requires a timeframe different from the 120-minute default.

The Bottom Line

June 2026 is right around the corner. By leaning into preparing for these enhancements now, you’re not just racing to a deadline—you’re hardening your business against the next generation of digital threats.

As you prepare for the rollout, keep these three steps top of mind:

Audit: Identify which users will be impacted by the permission changes.
Test: Run your critical processes in a Sandbox environment.
Educate: Ensure your stakeholders understand the ‘why’ behind the new security protocols.

With a clear plan in place, the transition to a more secure Salesforce platform will be a seamless one.Need a hand getting your security posture ready for 2026? The Sercante team is ready to help you audit and prepare your org for these upcoming changes and your overall security posture. Reach out today!

Pro Tips, Strategy
April 15, 2026

Moving Past Efficiency: How to Drive AI Seller Effectiveness in 2026

Behrang Asadi

The B2B sales engine is at a tipping point. While revenue leaders have more access to technology and data than ever, the majority of a seller’s time is still lost to non-selling tasks. Even when sellers do engage, traditional training often fails to stick under the pressure of real-world conversations. In response, many teams have deployed siloed AI point solutions, yet these efficiency plays rarely impact the bottom line. To move the needle, leaders must shift from mere activity to true AI seller effectiveness, transforming AI from a basic writing assistant into a strategic co-pilot that expands revenue capacity and win rates.

This critical shift in approach was also identified as a must for leaders to make this year, in Trilliad’s 2026 Growth Imperatives. The traditional sales development playbook isn’t working. Therefore, it’s time to adjust to a strategy that holistically creates a sales performance system.

Unlock your data
The Era of Precision Growth in B2B
Trilliad Growth Imperatives 2026
Download eBook

The State of AI in Sales

The pursuit of AI efficiency in 2025 often led to simply accelerating unchanged, low-yield sales behaviors. To avoid this, organizations must recognize where the true value of intelligence lies:

Selling vs. Shuffling: Only 29% of a seller’s time is actually spent selling, with the rest lost to administrative tasks, manual data entry, and prospecting (Salesforce).
The Pilot Problem: A staggering 87% of AI projects fail due to poor data quality (RAND), while 70% fail due to a lack of operational enablement (ADAPTOVATE).
Systemic Intelligence: When asked where the most untapped ROI for AI exists, 42.4% of leaders pointed to system-level AI, tools built to enhance organizational intelligence, compared to only 5.3% who prioritized seller-level productivity tools (Varicent).

The State of AI in Enterprise
Closing the Gap Between Investment and Impact
Why 95% of AI pilots fail to deliver results
The 4-pillar playbook to fix it
Download Report

Unlocking true AI seller effectiveness goes beyond singular tools. It requires a holistic view of how intelligence empowers the entire revenue organization.

“Last year was the year of efficiency. This is the year of effectiveness. If sellers can do more of the same bad behaviors faster, that does not drive growth. Effectiveness is what turns efficiency into real results.”

– Seth Marrs, Chief Strategy Officer, Sandler, 2026 Growth Imperatives

By shifting the mandate to effectiveness, leaders ensure that every efficiency gain is anchored in better outcomes, not just faster cycles.

Shifting from Episodic Sales Development to Durable Performance Systems

For too long, B2B organizations have treated sales development as a series of episodic events, one-time workshops, or annual resets that decay as soon as the team returns to the field. To drive lasting growth, sales performance must be engineered as an always-on system that operates with the same analytical rigor as forecasting or finance.

The most critical hurdle to this transition is the Ebbinghaus Forgetting Curve. Without intentional reinforcement, humans forget 75% of new information in just six days (Harvard Business Review) and up to 84% within 90 days (Ardent Learning). In the context of 2026, training decay isn’t just an educational hurdle it is a strategic business risk that directly threatens sales revenue stability.

Just as Sercante builds change enablement plans focused on continual reinforcement to ensure technology adoption, sales leaders must move toward a mindset of performance engineering. This ensures that your investment in a sales methodology actually sticks when a seller is facing a high-stakes negotiation.

Unlocking AI Seller Effectiveness

The path to seller excellence is paved with data. By prioritizing an integrated data layer, organizations can identify top-performing behaviors and fuel AI that personalizes reinforcement at scale.

Establishing your data foundation

Modern revenue organizations are often drowning in data but starving for insight. Despite managing an average of over 600 applications (WalkMe Inc.), sellers frequently lack the deep buyer context, such as specific pricing views or topics consumed, needed to lead high-value conversations.

The solution isn’t to connect every disparate system at once. That pursuit of “data perfection” only stalls progress. Instead, focus on untrapping the right data for the right outcome. Start by defining the desired end-experience: What data would empower your sellers to lead with insight tomorrow? This customer-centric lens serves as the ultimate filter for your sales AI roadmap.

Discover what's possible with the AI Roadmap
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Using AI to scale personalized sales development

With a solid data foundation, sales leaders can move from subjective coaching to evidence-based interventions. AI can monitor actual customer interactions in real-time to identify skill gaps and trigger personalized support for sellers. Some examples of what that could look like are:

Real-Time Behavioral Monitoring: AI detects the moment a seller stops setting upfront contracts or skips deep pain discovery.
Triggered “Just-in-Time” Reinforcement: If a seller struggles to articulate value against a specific competitor, the system automatically pushes a relevant AI role-play scenario to their dashboard.
Exemplar Pattern Matching: Technology identifies the unique behaviors of top-performers and codifies them into the training system for the entire team.
Evidence-Based Coaching: Managers focus their energy only on the specific areas where data shows a seller is struggling, replacing generic sessions with precision coaching.

This shift turns the sales process into a self-optimizing, sales training reinforcement loop, closing the execution gap in real-time.

Sandler seller training reinforcement loop

(Source: Sandler)

“Technology now allows us to have an always-on view of sales performance. That means we can move from point-in-time training events to sustained sales performance systems that reinforce, measure, and improve performance over time.”

– David Braun, President, Sandler, 2026 Growth Imperatives

When AI Seller Effectiveness Impacts the Bottom Line

Focusing on AI-powered effectiveness rather than just efficiency creates a 15% growth in revenue capacity per seller (Sandler). By automating non-selling tasks and reinvesting that time into high-yield, reinforced selling behaviors, organizations achieve significant revenue expansion.

Furthermore, systematic reinforcement leads to 10% higher win rates (Sandler). When training moves from an activity checkbox to constant feedback loops, sellers are empowered to handle larger quotas with evidence-based precision.

Shifting your mindset: Critical questions for sales leaders

To guide your transition to a progressive sales performance system, move beyond asking “Did we train them?” and instead ask:

Behavioral Clues: Which specific selling behaviors correlate with our highest-win-rate deals?
Data Visibility: Can our sellers easily access the customer data they need to understand buyer pain points?
Risk Identification: Where exactly is training decay occurring before it impacts the quarterly forecast?
Resource Allocation: Is our development spend personalized to individual skill gaps or wasted on generalization?
Performance Measurement: Can we connect our performance investment to measurable financial outcomes for the CFO?

Answering these questions not only starts to guide the team toward shifting its mindset. The exercise can also help to prioritize the data that will need to be unlocked and the AI initiatives to prioritize first to reach the most impactful sales goals.

Taking your next steps

Unlocking AI seller effectiveness requires a fundamental shift from episodic workshops to durable sales performance systems. It mandates an integrated data layer that provides sellers with context, identifies exemplar behaviors, and proves ROI to the highest levels of the organization. Getting started requires taking a step back to consider: What data can your team access today? Where is training decay hurting your win rates? Then get started by prioritizing the right data to access and the most impactful AI to set up for your sales goals.

If you’d like support with making the transition from siloed AI efficiency to AI seller effectiveness, reach out to the Sercante team. We partner with growth leaders daily to optimize CRM environments and technology stacks that empower sellers to expand their revenue potential.

Unlock sales growth with an optimized CRM seller experience
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Emails & Forms, New Features
April 13, 2026

What’s New with Agentforce Marketing Email Templates

Nick Loeser

Email templates are essential to marketers who want to create emails efficiently and protect the brand consistency of their communications. Agentforce Marketing email templates became available in the Winter ‘26 release but some exciting new features and updates became available in Spring ‘26! Let’s take a look at the features of email templates and some of the quirky aspects of using them that you’ll want to know.

Product Note: In previous blog posts, Agentforce Marketing has also been referred to or known as Marketing Cloud on Core and Marketing Cloud Next. This product may have also been referred to under its Edition names, Marketing Cloud Growth and Marketing Cloud Advanced.

Creating a custom template

To get started with a new email template, navigate to your Content Workspace for Marketing Cloud, then select Add > Email Template.

How to get started with a new email template

You’ll see two options, “Select A Template” and “Use Components”.

Selecting an email template creation method

The Components option will launch the drag and drop Email Builder for Marketing Cloud and will provide the email building experience you’re accustomed to.

Important: You cannot save an Email as an Email Template, or an Email Template as an Email, so be sure you’re selecting the correct content type before building!

New: Prebuilt Templates

With the Spring ‘26 release came 17 new pre-built email templates (also 17 pre-built Landing Page templates. These templates are customized by use case, your options are:

About Us – Brand Story
Appointment Scheduling
Coming Soon – Launch
Free Trial – Demo Request
Gated Content
Lead Generation
Localized Offer
Newsletter
Offer Promotion
On-Demand Content
Partnership Program
Product – Service Deep Dive
Survey – Feedback
Testimonial – Case Study
Thank You – Confirmation
Waitlist – Early Access
Webinar

You can select each template to get a preview of its layout and components on the right hand side.

Each template has a header component for your logo, a stylized footer, content and image components, and at least one CTA button.

To use a prebuilt template, select the template and then click Select in the bottom right corner. You can also view and access the email templates you’ve saved in your CMS by selecting the Custom Templates header.

Once you’ve selected the email template you’d like to start with, easily stylize the template by applying your brand from the right side menu.

The standard templates can be completely customized like any other template. The stock photos they include are automatically saved in the same location as the email template.

Important: Don’t worry, you cannot overwrite the standard templates. You can customize a standard template to your company and brand and save it as a customized template for future use. This will give you a custom template based on the standard design, but the original standard template is preserved.

New: Change Data Sources

Email templates and Emails can be associated with Data Sources. This allows you to add personalization from a specific data source, including Events.

As of Spring ’26, you can only add one Event Data Provider, meaning you can only add a single unique form (Event) to an email as a data source. By adding an Event Data Provider you’re able to personalize the email with data that was provided in the Event (aka, the form). So if you ask someone their food preference on an event registration form, you can add that field from the form inside the email. This allows you to add the email to an event flow and create a follow-up email in the flow without waiting the standard 24 hours for Unification of the record*.

*Personalization is typically only available in an email for Unified Individuals because the Data Graph (which powers personalization) must run first. So in our example, if a user supplies a food preference in a form, you must wait for the Data Graph to run so the data is added to the Unified Individuals profile and available for use in personalization. Adding an Event Data Provider bypasses the need to do this.

Two important notes: You can only add a single Event Data Provider, you’ll need a unique email for each form you wish to personalize with form data. Furthermore, once you add a data source you cannot remove it! Be careful when adding a data source. If you add the wrong source you’ll need to start a new email to correct your error.

New: Lockable Elements

Marketers and brand managers are going to love the ability to lock elements inside a template! But, this new found power comes with a few quirks.

Newly Created Templates are Automatically Locked!

Post Spring ‘26 release, new email templates are locked by default. You’re able to either manually unlock specific sections you would like marketers to be able to edit or use the “Allow users to modify settings, styles, data sources, and layouts in emails that use this template” toggle option found on the settings tab to unlock all sections. When creating a new template, the toggle will be off.

New email templated are locked by default, how to manually unlock sections.

Lock only certain content, but not all

If you wish to restrict users from editing only some content, for example a branded header or footer, but you want to leave the rest of the content open to editing, you have to unlock the sections one at a time. It’s a bit counterintuitive, but everything must be locked first, then sections are individually unlocked.

Step 1: Make sure the “Allow users to modify…” toggle is OFF, meaning no content in the email is currently editable.

Step 2: Select the individual component you wish to unlock and change the toggle to On. This unlocks the one section component you have selected on the canvas.

Don’t forget your subject line and preheader

If you’re locking down your template and only unlocking certain sections, it’s easy to overlook the Subject line and preheader! On the Email Settings panel, scroll down to the Subject Line and Preheader section and click the lock icon to unlock these settings for your users. This enables your users to change the subject line and preheader when using the template for an email.

Use of templates, important caveats

One final note on using templates, your order of operations is important. As mentioned previously, you cannot save an “Email” as an “Email Template”. Likewise, you cannot save a template as an email. When you’re ready to create an email that’s using a template, make sure you select “Add > Email”, then select a template.

Lastly, something that I learned the hard way after creating a 6-email series for a nurture campaign. Segment Triggered Flows (nurture series) only use Emails, not Email Templates (so the opposite like Account Engagement Engagement Studio Programs). So when you’re adding emails to a flow you will only see Emails, not templates.

Final thoughts

Email templates are a much-needed addition to Agentforce Marketing and I’m excited to see how they grow from here. I love the functionality they offer, like customized data sources and lockable regions. They also did a terrific job creating a large variety of standard templates to get you started!

Marketing Automations, Pro Tips
April 10, 2026

Saving Time with Flow Templates in Agentforce Marketing

Mike Morris

Agentforce Marketing (aka: Marketing Cloud Next) introduced marketing teams to Salesforce Flow for the first time. While flows provide increased capabilities over tools like Engagement Studio in Account Engagement and Journey Builder in Marketing Cloud Engagement, building them can be time-consuming and even intimidating to new users.

In this post, we’ll explore how to create and use templates to increase efficiency while taking full advantage of the power of Flow.

Non-Admin Flow Types

“Non-admin” flows power Agentforce Marketing and allow marketers to automate key processes without needing administrator-level permissions. Common use cases include sending emails, delivering SMS messages, and creating Salesforce records.

There are two primary Flow types within Agentforce Marketing:

Form-Triggered: These have a 1-to-1 relationship with a marketing form. They are used to create or update Salesforce records, manage consent, and handle immediate post-submission tasks.
Segment-Triggered: These are primarily used to send individual or a series of emails and SMS messages. They also power Path Experiment (available in the Advanced Edition) and provide access to additional flow elements allowing marketers to build customized journeys.

Flow is extremely powerful, but getting started can be tough. The Flow canvas is a “blank slate” that requires thought and configuration.

Let’s take a look at how marketers can simplify and scale their efforts using flow templates with a real-world scenario.

Example Scenario

The marketing team has a high volume of assets that they would like to gate on the website using Agentforce Marketing forms. They need to ensure that existing contacts or leads are updated when a form is submitted before creating any new lead records. Additionally, they must generate consent records whenever a user opts in to marketing communications and add them to the correct Salesforce campaign for tracking purposes.

User Setup and Permissions

To replicate the experience of a marketing user, all flows and images in this post were created with a Salesforce user with the following profile and permissions. These are reflective of a standard marketing user.

Profile
- Standard User
Permission Sets
- Marketing Cloud Admin
- Tableau Next Included App Business User (This provides access to the Marketing Performance Dashboards)
CMS Contributor Role
- Content Manager

Form and Flow Templates

The first step is determining the fields that need to be included on the form. The best approach is to take a minimalistic approach and only ask for information that will be used or is needed for lead routing.

Hidden fields on forms are very useful for capturing form-specific data for use in your flow. For example, you can use them to automatically pass the Campaign ID and Campaign Member Status.

Creating the Form Template

Select the “Marketing” app from the App Launcher.
Click the “Content” tab to enter the Salesforce CMS.
Click on the “Content Workspace for Marketing Cloud” workspace.
Click the “Add” button and select “Content”.
Choose the “Form” CMS content type.
Add Data Source as “Lead”.

Drag the input fields into the form, and configure the labels, unique names, and determine if the field should be required or hidden.
Set the desired action at form submission (show thank you message or redirect).
Add a title, API Name, and description and then save.

Here’s an example of my form. Note that all fields have been set to required (with the exception of the opt-in checkbox). It’s important to know that Flow will overwrite data in Salesforce if a submission is received with blank data. If optional fields are needed, formulas can be created in the flow to protect data.

Creating A Flow

From the form you just created, click “New Flow” in the flow section.
Select “Open Flow in Flow Builder”.

Customize the flow as needed and save.

Customizing the Flow

The flow needed to meet our requirements is a little complicated, but that’s the whole point of this post. We don’t want the marketing team building this logic repeatedly.

This flow was built by a user with the “Marketing Cloud Admin” permission set. The “Marketing Cloud Manager” role lacks access to certain required elements. If you’d prefer, your Salesforce Administrator can also set up this template for you.

Flow Summary

Here’s a summary of the actions being performed in the flow.

Creates an opt-in consent record if the consent box on the form is checked.
Finds existing Salesforce contacts based on the email address and last name in the form submission.
- Updates existing contact records, if found.
Finds existing Salesforce leads based on the email address and last name in the form submission.
- Updates existing lead records, if found.
- Created new leads, if matching records are not found.
Retrieves campaign members based on the CRM ID of the person who submitted the form and the campaign ID included in the hidden field on the form.
- Updates the campaign member status of existing members to the value included in the Campaign Member Status hidden field from the form.
- Created new campaign members using the hidden fields from the form.

Saving the Flow as a Template

We can now complete the creation of the flow template.

Save As Template

From the Flow tab, open the latest version of the flow.
Delete the associated form from the “Start” element.
- Click “Edit” next to “Event: Form Submission”.
- Click the “X” to delete the form.

Click “Save As New Flow”.
- Add the flow label and a detailed description of what the flow does and when it should be used. The API Name will automatically populate based on the flow label.

Example of how to add a flow label and form description

Note: You may run into an issue saving due to the presence of the Consent Request element. If this happens, delete the field reference in the Contact Point value and save.

How to solve the issue of being unable to save

Click “Save As New Version”.
- It’s important to create a new version of the flow before saving as a template. The initial version of the flow will be v0.
- Saving a new version will increment the version number and ensure your updates are available in the flow template.
Click the dropdown to the right of the “Save As New Version” button and select “Save as Template”.
Confirm that the template has been created by completing the following steps:
- Click the Flows tab.
- Click the “New” button.
- Enter the template name in the search box..

How to confirm that a template has been created

Using Your Templates

Now that all the heavy lifting is done, you or your team can use your form and flow templates to quickly support additional assets. Here’s how.

Repeat the following steps for all new assets

Create the Salesforce campaign that will be used for the form and the campaign members.
- When creating the campaign from the Marketing App, do not select a campaign template.
- Selecting a template will result in an additional flow being created.

Do not select a template at the following screen.

Do not select a campaign template when creating the campaign from the marketing app

Navigate to the form template in the CMS.
Select the “Clone” from the dropdown menu to the right of the form name.

Name the new form based on the asset name.
Update the Campaign ID and Campaign Member Status (hidden field values) and Form Submission action.

How to update the campaign ID and campaign member status

From the Flow tab, click the “New” button.
Search for and select the gated content template.
Click “Edit” next to “Event: Form Submission” and select the cloned form.
Update the Contact Point value in the Consent Request element to reference the email address from the associated form.
Click “Save” and name the new flow.
- Click “Show Advanced” and delete the value in the “Source Template” field.
  - Non-admin users will not be able to activate the flow if this step is omitted.

Save the flow screen, highlighting the Source Template field.

The Consent Request element can be a bit finicky. If you see an error after updating the Contact Point, just delete the element and add it back.

Exit the flow details page and associate the flow to the correct campaign using the “Associated Record” lookup.

How to associate the flow to the correct campaign using the "Associated Record" lookup

Return to the CMS and publish the form (this will also activate the flow).
Add the embed code to the web page promoting the asset.

Save Time and Increase Efficiency with Templates

Building the initial form and flow template featured in this post took approximately one hour. Because the logic is quite involved, I spent a portion of that time testing to ensure everything functioned exactly as intended.

Once the templates were ready, I put them to the test with a stopwatch. While the steps in the “Using Your Template” section might look detailed, I was able to create a brand-new form and flow in just 4 minutes and 1 second. That is a massive 93% time savings!

Beyond just saving time, templates ensure accuracy and process consistency. Asking multiple people to manually replicate the complex requirements stated in this post would almost certainly result in errors.

If you frequently build forms and flows with similar structures, do yourself a favor and templatize. Your future self (and coworkers) will thank you.

Sercante is recognized as a Marketing Cloud Growth and Advanced Implementation Expert and has the expertise to support your Agentforce Marketing needs. If you’re interested in support with Agentforce Marketing, reach out to us and let us know how we can help.

Pro Tips, Strategy
April 8, 2026

AI Answer Engine Optimization: A GEO Strategy for B2B Brand Discovery

Behrang Asadi

The traditional B2B search journey is undergoing a shift, moving away from static search engine results pages toward fluid, conversational AI interfaces. As buyer behavior evolves, AI answer engine optimization (AEO) has emerged as an imperative for brand visibility, serving as the new entry point for the modern buyer. To ensure brands stay top of mind during the critical buyer research, discovery, and evaluation phases, industry leaders in Trilliad’s 2026 Growth Imperatives have identified integrating a Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) strategy into the marketing mix as no longer optional, but a competitive necessity.

AI is the New Entry Point for Modern Buyers

The way buyers discover solutions has been fundamentally reshaped by AI answer engines, with up to 80% of users now relying on AI-generated summaries to distill complex information (Bain & Company). This efficiency has led to a zero-click reality, where 60% of searches end without a single click to a third-party website because the AI provides the answer directly (Search Engine Land). For B2B brands, this creates the danger of “AI Invisibility”. If you aren’t cited in the AI’s synthesis, you can be excluded from the buyer’s journey before human evaluation even begins.

Brands that fail to optimize for generative engine visibility risk a slow decay in market share as AI assistants become the primary tool for synthesizing vendor lists and evaluation criteria.

“The front door has shifted. Your website is no longer the first place buyers meet your brand. AI search platforms are now the front door, and if you are not showing up there, you are not even being considered.”

– Marcus Hiles, SVP Strategy, Just Global, 2026 Growth Imperatives

To ensure brand visibility in AI answer engines, marketers must adopt a framework built for Large Language Models (LLMs) in addition to their traditional search engine strategy.

AI Answer Engine Optimization

Just as brands spent decades perfecting SEO strategies to appease Google’s crawlers, they must now develop a GEO strategy to ensure their brand is picked up by AI answer engines. LLMs look for authoritative, structured, and contextually relevant data that can be easily synthesized into a conversational response.

To improve your LLM visibility, focus on how your content is structured to answer the questions that the audience will be asking and the schema of the page.

Content Optimization for LLM Visibility Checklist

Schema: Use an FAQPage or QAPage to provide clear, structured answers that AI can easily parse.
Formatting: Use short, declarative, factual paragraphs along with bullets, numbered steps, and tables for clarity. Incorporate statistics, unique insights, and expert quotes that AI engines are likely to reference as primary sources.
Optimize for Intent: Structure content around “How-to” and “What is” queries that address specific pain points in the buying cycle.

Area	Key action
Meta Data	Answer the buyer’s question in your meta description	✔
URLs	Use a natural prompt-style slug	✔
H1/H2	Write as questions or declarative answers	✔
Intro	Begin each section with a 30-80 word “answer block”	✔
Schema	Use FAQPage or QAPage + Article schema	✔
Content	Short, declarative, factual paragraphs	✔
Lists	Add bullets, numbered steps, or tables for clarity	✔
Internal Links	Descriptive anchors between topical pages	✔
Visuals	Alt text answers a sub-question	✔
Recency	Display and maintain “last updated” dates	✔

(Source: Trilliad 2026 Growth Imperatives)

By checking these boxes, you ensure your data is machine-readable, which is the first step toward moving from a hidden data point to a featured recommendation.

Getting Started with an AI Answer Engine Assessment

The most effective way to frame your GEO strategy is to understand your current baseline: how is your brand currently showing up (or not) in AI answer engines? An assessment allows you to see the gaps in your visibility and identify which topics your competitors are dominating within AI-generated summaries. By identifying where you are missing from the conversation, you can prioritize your optimization efforts for the greatest immediate impact. This same approach for prioritizing AI initiatives by the most impactful outcome aligns with pillar one of the 4-pillar playbook of The State of AI in Enterprise Report: anchor to the business vision. When teams have a starting point of how their brand is already showing up or not showing up in AI answer engines, it guides them toward establishing a clear goal with measurable outcomes to then guide the rest of their GEO strategy and effectively measure performance.

If you’d like to get started with an AEO Assessment, reach out to the Sercante team. They offer a comprehensive AEO assessment designed to help brands audit their LLM presence and build a roadmap for discovery.

Understanding your current standing allows you to pivot your strategy toward the ultimate goal: securing a spot on the initial vendor shortlist.

Winning with GEO: Brand visibility on the Day One List

Successful GEO can increase LLM visibility for a brand by approximately 40% (Aggarwal et al., 2024). When content is optimized for AI, brands significantly increase their chances of appearing in the crucial “Day One” vendor shortlists, the initial lists formed from AI answer engines that buyers discover and then move forward with for further research and evaluation.

Incorporating a GEO strategy into the overall marketing mix is critical to ensure brand discovery with today’s modern buyers. The landscape has changed, but the goal remains the same: meet the buyers where they are.

Getting Started, Pro Tips, Strategy
April 2, 2026

Dispelling the Myth of Data Perfection: A Prioritized Data Roadmap for AI

Austin Frink

In the current market landscape, Chief Revenue Officers and growth leaders are facing a fundamental breakdown of the traditional go-to-market (GTM) engine. As organizations scramble to gain traction by implementing AI pilots, they often hit a wall: the daunting reality of their own data. Many leaders feel overwhelmed, thinking they have to have perfect data before seeing any real progress. However, this is a myth that stalls momentum. It doesn’t take perfect data to achieve real results with AI. It takes the right data for the right outcomes. The solution to moving beyond this roadblock is a data roadmap for AI that prioritizes based on business impact.

By shifting the focus from total data readiness to targeted, phased integration, organizations can finally start building an integrated data layer, the connective tissue needed for a modern growth engine. This was the resounding theme from Trilliad’s 2026 Growth Imperatives that industry leaders shared as being a top priority for GTM leaders to focus on this year to unlock sustainable success. It is the data that serves as the foundation to power impactful AI, analytics, and workflows across the customer lifecycle to deliver the connected customer experiences modern buyers expect. Which is why it is so critical for teams to move past a notion of ultimate data readiness and start prioritizing the data that needs to be connected now to start gaining real momentum.

Download the 2026 Trilliad Growth Imperatives eBook

The AI Mandate Reality Check for a Data Foundation

Data continues to be the foundation that powers experience, but with the AI era, it has a newfound importance. Sercante’s State of AI in Enterprise report reveals that organizations are dealing with more tech than ever before, yet they have yet to see meaningful results from their AI initiatives.

The average large enterprise now manages a technology stack of over 600 applications, leading to unparalleled volumes of fragmented data (WalkMe Inc.).
Currently, 56% of executives have yet to see a true impact on the bottom line from their AI deployments (Oxygen Staff).
87% of AI failures are rooted in poor data quality (RAND).

It is true that organizations need a solid data foundation to gain impactful outputs from AI. However, the belief that every one of those 600+ apps must be connected simultaneously is a recipe for gridlock. To gain momentum, leaders must identify the specific data needed for the intended outcomes and build from there.

“Uncertainty is chaos. It drains energy. It drains time. It feels out of control. Building a plan gives a sense of control. It alleviates the chaotic, stressful, anxiety-feeling that leaders feel and makes their path clear.”

Lauren Noonan, VP of Growth & Alliances, Sercante

This sense of control with data begins when the pursuit of perfection is replaced with a disciplined, strategic roadmap.

Download The State of AI in Enterprise report

A Prioritized Data Roadmap for AI

Creating a data foundation is not an “all or nothing” technical project. It is a strategic initiative that should be grounded in measurable, targeted business outcomes. It’s not about gaining more data. It’s about unlocking the right data. It can be overwhelming for leaders to think about connecting all their systems. That’s where the roadmap comes in. It gives leaders a clear plan to move forward with to start gaining real traction with their data and AI.

“More data does not make you better at anything. You need the right data, the right activation layer, and a team and process that knows what to do with what they are seeing.”

Andrea Tarrell, Founder & CEO, Sercante

Establishing the vision for your data

Answering the question of “what is the end goal?” is the first step in setting your vision. Without a vision to anchor your data and AI initiatives, it can feel like departments are running in several different directions, which can cause more silos and make it feel like busy activity without a lot of real results.

“Without a vision to ground your strategy, technology can feel like motion without progress.”

Jenna Packard, Strategy Director, Sercante

By defining the end goal first and the metrics that will be used to measure success, you create a filter for prioritization. This ensures the data initiatives are aimed at enhancements that drive measurable growth.

A sequenced path for your data and AI

As Jenna Packard shared in her article, The AI Roadmap for Enterprise, “a roadmap is highly sequenced, helping organizations understand which capabilities to build first and how each piece creates a foundation for the next.” A roadmap, or vision map, captures your end goal and measurable outcomes, then organizes the technology and data required to make it happen.

When creating the roadmap and thinking about what should come first, consider the following:

Specific Data Sources: Which data sources must be unlocked to fuel the AI to get the results we’re after?
Integration Effort: What is the technical and operational burden to enable this specific capability?
Support Systems: What is the infrastructure needed to ensure data connections run smoothly?
Data Integrity: Is there anything that needs to happen first to ensure that data will be clean, accurate, and actionable?

Answering these questions will allow the team to start placing the actions that need to happen on the roadmap to unlock the right data for the intended outcome. The end result gives teams a clear path forward to gain momentum, replacing reactive data fixes with impactful strategic discipline.

Getting Started with Your Prioritized Data Roadmap for AI

Data perfection is not a realistic end goal, and waiting for it only stalls progress. It takes a disciplined approach to step back, identify the end vision with measurable business outcomes, and then let that guide your data roadmap for AI. By prioritizing the right data for the right outcomes, you unlock the ability to gain real, measurable results with AI, fuel impactful analytics, and deliver connected customer experiences that modern buyers expect.

If you’d like support with creating your vision map for data and AI, reach out to the Sercante team. We partner with go-to-market teams daily to establish strategic roadmaps and design data foundations that result in scalable, impactful AI solutions.

Learn more about the vision map for data and AI

Pro Tips, Strategy
March 25, 2026

The AI Roadmap for Enterprise: A Framework for Identifying Value-Driven AI Use Cases

Jenna Packard

The promise of artificial intelligence has sparked a gold rush, yet many organizations find themselves starving for insight despite being drowning in data. While the potential is vast, the reality is stark: 56% of executives have yet to see a true impact on their bottom lines from AI investments (Oxygen Staff). The bottleneck is rarely the technology. More often, it’s a strategy problem. Organizations invest in AI capabilities without connecting them to measurable business outcomes. An effective AI roadmap for enterprise initiatives fixes this by anchoring use cases to concrete results.

Why Don’t the Majority of Organizations Have Operational AI?

Across the enterprise landscape, activity hasn’t translated into traction. Pilots are multiplying across departments, yet 92% of companies have yet to operationalize AI in any meaningful way (McKinsey & Company). Instead of a unified force, AI initiatives are often stuck in siloed efforts where marketing, sales, and customer success are running separate tests without a connective tissue to bind them.

These teams are set up to fail when they’re answering to too many stakeholders instead of working as a cohesive unit. Without an overarching vision, organizations focus on AI point solutions to maximize output, yet they neglect the core process alignment required to see a return on investment.

Transitioning from these isolated experiments to a state of systematic effectiveness requires a strategic shift in how teams define and sequence their goals.

The AI Roadmap for Enterprise

The foundation of operational success is shifting the question from “What can AI do?” to “What value is AI going to bring to the company?” An AI roadmap brings structure to ambition, connecting what organizations want from AI to how they’ll actually get there. Unlike a simple list of cool features, a roadmap is highly sequenced, helping organizations understand which capabilities to build first and how each piece creates a foundation for the next.

By tying every integration and deployment to a clear end goal, leaders can cut through the noise and move forward with a prioritized plan. This is the foundation of the first pillar in the playbook for scaling AI for success in the State of AI in Enterprise report. This roadmap ensures that AI is not just a line-item overhead but the essential machinery that enhances internal capabilities for high-resolution customer experiences.

A successful roadmap relies on the ability to turn these high-level visions into measurable, tangible targets.

Getting Specific with Your Metrics for Value-Driven AI Use Cases

One of the primary reasons AI projects fail to scale is a lack of measurable outcomes. For example, many teams may have efficiency as one of their goals, but efficiency can mean a lot of different things. To find real value, you must define exactly what you are measuring, whether it is revenue per customer, faster conversion behavior, or the accuracy of RFP turnaround times.

Establish a Baseline: You cannot prove impact without knowing your starting point.
Define Success Early: Connect every AI use case to clear KPIs, remember to get specific!
Avoid the Capability Trap: Don’t lead with the technology. Lead with the specific business outcomes you intend to solve.

Once these outcomes are defined, the focus must shift to the fuel that powers them: your data.

Establishing Your Data Foundation

A significant barrier to scaling AI is the illusion of data perfection. Shattering this preconceived notion was one of the core disciplines that industry experts across the Trilliad organization emphasized as being critical for operationalizing the data layer for impactful AI in the 2026 Growth Imperatives.

Download the 2026 Trilliad Growth Imperatives

Many leaders feel pressure to connect every application before they can begin—a mindset that stalls progress before it starts. An AI roadmap cuts through this by sequencing which data to unlock first and how each step builds toward the next, keeping focus on the data that actually moves the needle.

Distrust in AI outputs usually traces back to the data layer. A standardized, well-governed data foundation is what transforms AI from a source of noise into a reliable driver of decisions.

Equally important is designing for adoption and ensuring change enablement is built into each phase for the people who will actually be using the solution.

Addressing the Human Factor in AI

70% of AI project failures are organizational (ADAPTOVATE). When teams only focus on the technical aspects and do not consider the human factor, it results in low AI adoption and limited results. Change is inherently hard, and people are bringing varying levels of uncertainty and AI mindsets to an AI rollout. Therefore, to sustain adoption, you must incorporate impactful change enablement strategies that include:

Transparent Communication: Address your team’s fears and questions, such as “Am I being replaced?” early and honestly.
Persona-Based Enablement: Tailor training to the specific journey of each role to ensure they are set up for success.
Continued Reinforcement: Enablement should not be treated as a one-and-done engagement. How will you continually reinforce the best practices for using the AI solution to maximize results?

By engineering sustained execution, you ensure that your AI investment sticks and reflects in real-world situations across marketing, sales, and customer success.

“Recognizing the need for humans in the process design is key to AI success… including pinpointing where human expertise and intervention are essential.”

– Debra Engles, Change Enablement Director, Sercante

Your Path to Delivering Real Value with AI

When you organize your people, processes, and data around a cohesive, sequential AI roadmap for enterprise initiatives, you move past the pilot phase into a state of competitive advantage. By grounding your strategy in measurable outcomes and the human factor, you transform AI from a buzzword into a high-performance growth engine.

If you’d like support with creating your AI roadmap, reach out to the Sercante team. We partner with go-to-market leaders daily to help them bring their AI vision to reality and achieve their business goals.

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