FedEx captures +2,000% ROI by turning data into action with Data Cloud.

Disconnected systems limited FedEx's ability to act on valuable customer insights.

FedEx has built their business around what they call the Purple Promise: a simple but powerful commitment to make every FedEx experience outstanding. This promise drives everything from careful handling of fragile shipments to ensuring critical medical supplies reach hospitals exactly when needed and has helped them grow into the world's largest express transportation company.

Having mastered the physical side of precision delivery — getting the exact package to the exact person at the exact time — FedEx faced a new challenge. The company that could track millions of packages in real time couldn't quickly act on customer signals sitting in their own systems. Generating a petabyte of operational data daily through their business operations, the company possessed a treasure trove of customer intelligence including behavioral data, shipping patterns, and engagement signals. Yet their fragmented infrastructure made this wealth of information nearly impossible to act upon. 

For FedEx, the challenge was converting interest into action. Millions of small business customers signed shipping contracts but never followed through with their first shipment. At the same time, countless prospects were researching international shipping services online, yet lacked the personalized guidance to turn questions into confident decisions. Even when customers reached the stage of requesting complex, high-value quotes, many abandoned them at critical decision points, with no systematic way to nurture these opportunities to completion.

Sales teams could see all these revenue opportunities, but needed help from several IT teams to pull information from disconnected systems and turn it into action – a process that sometimes took weeks.

"It's imperative that we deliver the right amount of data and context to each employee at the right time," says Terrell Goldsmith, Manager in Enterprise Customer Data Platform. "Being able to target the right customers for our commercial organizations is going to help us anticipate and adapt to market trends and create high-quality, end-to-end customer journeys.”

Solving this challenge meant turning FedEx’s vast data into immediate business action. By unifying customer intelligence across sales, marketing, and service, teams could respond to signals in real time and convert dormant opportunities into growth.

“The power is in Data Cloud's ability to bring data and AI together and let us funnel it into Marketing Cloud and Sales Cloud in near-real time,” said Carlos Gonzalez, Domain Architect. “Zero copy is very attractive to us because it's easier and less expensive than ingesting the data again and landing it in multiple spots.” 

What once took weeks of manual effort across disconnected systems now happens automatically, turning signed agreements into active shippers. With Data Cloud, FedEx boosted activation rates from 25% to 40% in just five months and delivered over 2,000% ROI by reactivating dormant customers.

High-value quotes no longer disappear into the void — they become sales opportunities.

FedEx solved their quote abandonment challenge by monitoring website activity to identify when customers abandon shipping quotes. When a manufacturer visits FedEx's website and requests quotes for shipping automotive parts to three different international destinations, Marketing Cloud monitors their session. The platform tracks how long they spend reviewing pricing options, which services they compare, and exactly where they exit the quoting process.

When the manufacturer abandons their quote, Marketing Cloud waits a couple days to see if the customer eventually ships something. Data Cloud then matches this web behavior with actual shipment data from Databricks using zero-copy integration. If no shipment occurred, Data Cloud recognizes this as a valuable opportunity and pulls together the customer's complete history from
Sales Cloud along with their historical shipping patterns.

For most customers, Marketing Cloud automatically sends helpful emails within minutes explaining customs services, delivery guarantees, and packaging requirements for their specific destinations. For major accounts, Sales Cloud immediately notifies the assigned rep with all the quote details so they can call right away with relevant information about the customer's shipping needs and how FedEx can help with international regulations.

This timely and contextual response turns abandoned opportunities into recovered revenue, dramatically improving conversion rates for high-margin services while providing sales teams warm leads with detailed customer intent data.

For FedEx to shift from being data-rich to truly data-driven demanded a partner who could help at a global scale. “After more than 16 years of partnership, we know Salesforce has an end-to-end data platform that provides reliability and innovation,” said Tony Kreager, EVP, Commercial Applications and Data. “The unified platform helps us know our customers better, enabling us to partner more effectively to build their businesses while being more efficient through automation.” 

Data Cloud's zero-copy data integration is able to directly access FedEx's complete data ecosystem — Azure data lakes containing four billion rows of shipment records and Databricks analytics platforms – without moving a single record. This approach let FedEx access shipment data without duplicating billions of records into separate systems, a process that would've added massive costs and governance headaches. By connecting directly to the existing FedEx infrastructure, Salesforce instantly made their enormous data assets usable and laid the foundation for smarter, faster decision-making.

This seamless data access fed directly into a platform-first approach that simplified operations across the board. Instead of juggling multiple tools with separate training and integration demands, FedEx expanded within its existing Salesforce ecosystem. Campaign deployment times dropped from weeks to mere minutes, turning a complex process into something fast, predictable, and repeatable.

From there, enterprise-scale marketing capabilities amplified the impact. Marketing Cloud can send over 1 billion personalized emails annually, while the native Data Cloud integration turns insights into meaningful experiences almost instantly. Now FedEx is able to create interactions in real time that feel personal at a massive global scale.
With Salesforce’s Customer Success Management offering ongoing guidance and practical advice to make the most of their tools, FedEx is well equipped to keep innovating and stay ahead. By transforming enormous operational data into personalized, timely customer experiences, FedEx is delivering on their Purple Promise — making every FedEx experience outstanding.