



Although the cloud giant has stepped away from the explicit "social enterprise" rhetoric in recent years, social media continues to be one of the pipelines that keeps Salesforce.com running.

The latest integration for the company's cornerstone Marketing Cloud platform is tapping into a social media brand that also might have been written off in the past but can be no longer -- at least not by major retailers.

That would be Instagram, which will be delivering data to the Marketing Cloud through its advertising API.

"Global brands like L'Oreal, McDonald's, KLM and Chobani were among the early adopters, utilizing Instagram to engage with customers, convert fans into brand advocates and find new customers," noted Scott McCorkle, CEO of Salesforce Marketing Cloud, in a blog post on Tuesday.

Instagram's business arm sees roughly 70 million photos uploaded daily and 2.5 billion likes per day as well, on average.

The offering isn't exactly new on Instagram's end, but Tuesday does mark the first date in which businesses can proactively publicize their inclusion as initial Instagram Ads API partners.

"Instagram ads will be available to advertisers of all types later this year," an Instagram spokesperson told ZDNet. "We are currently testing self-serve buying interfaces and APIs with a small group of partners, and we expect to make them more widely available over the coming months."

Much like it has with Twitter, Pinterest and Instagram's parent company Facebook, Salesforce is going all in with the Instagram Ads link and funneling that data to its corporate customer in a variety of means.

A few examples include resolving customer service issues presented on Instagram through both Marketing and Service Clouds as well as syncing CRM data with Salesforce's Active Audiences tool for honing in on key demographics and Social Studio for publishing campaigns and customer engagement.

Aside from Salesforce, the initial test pool tapping into the Instagram API include 4C, Brand Networks, Ampush, Kenshoo, Laundry, Service, MediaVest, Nanigans, Olapic, Resolution Media, SocialCode, Social Moov and Unified.

The Instagram infusion follows up a refresh for Salesforce's Marketing Cloud in June, which included some additions to its upgraded Journey Builder tool for mapping customer experiences and engagement.

Marketing Cloud subscribers can likely expect more news, features and updates soon as Salesforce's annual extravaganza, Dreamforce, is just over a month away. The San Francisco-headquartered corporation will also be publishing second quarter financial results on Thursday, August 20.

Image via Salesforce.com