Salesforce Marketing Cloud. What it is and differences with Pardot

Marketing Cloud is a term used by various providers to refer to a set of cloud-based marketing tools .

These tools are used to manage marketing activities and campaigns across different channels, allowing businesses to target potential customers more effectively.

There is a lot of expectation about the digital transformation that companies are experiencing. In fact, few aspects of our lives have been left out of digitization. This has meant important changes in consumer habits, and tools such as marketing clouds or marketing clouds are allowing companies to adapt to them.

What is MarketingCloud

Marketing clouds or marketing clouds incorporate a collection of marketing tools, all delivered through the cloud, which allow marketers to manage customer relationships and marketing campaigns more efficiently.

As part of the broader trend toward marketing automation , cloud marketing platforms are designed to make it easy to monitor, plan, and make decisions in real time.

Unsurprisingly, a marketing cloud offers a comprehensive digital marketing platform that covers a wide range of capabilities and solutions. These include social media, content creation, web personalization, data analysis, content management, and advertising. The goal of a marketing cloud is to manage marketing activities more efficiently.

With cloud marketing, you can also use event-based triggers to trigger specific responses to customer actions. For example, if customers sign up for a loyalty program, marketing clouds can send each of them automated thank you messages via push notifications.

The general objective of the marketing cloud is to empower marketers to create cohesive multi-channel experiences , reaching customers through the appropriate channels, such as SMS, social networks, email… at the appropriate moments, thus driving sales and income.

We can define a cloud marketing platform as one that can be used to optimize the entire customer journey from start to finish , rather than just certain areas of it. They should also cover areas including content management, analytics, marketing automation, and acquisition.

In the next section, we introduce you to one of the most popular cloud marketing solutions on the market: Salesforce Marketing Cloud . Salesforce was the first company to adopt the term "Marketing Cloud", and it is probably the most complete in the market.

Salesforce Marketing Cloud

Salesforce Marketing Cloud comes with tools including Journey Builder. This allows marketers to design tailored campaigns based on a variety of factors including customer demographics, communication channel needs and habits.

Additionally, Salesforce Marketing Cloud uses artificial intelligence and machine learning to help companies tailor each customer interaction to the needs of the individual consumer . Einstein, Salesforce's AI-powered tool for Marketing Cloud, analyzes customer language and behavior to deliver more personalized content to customers.

Salesforce Marketing Cloud Tools

In addition to being integrated into the Salesforce ecosystem (the number one CRM in the world), Salesforce Marketing Cloud includes all of the following tools:

Journey Builder

This Salesforce marketing automation solution is used to create personalized customer journeys across multiple channels.

Email Studio

Oriented to carry out personalized email marketing campaigns.

Social Studio

This tool is aimed at creating personalized campaigns on social networks, turning our followers into potential leads.

Mobile Studio

It helps us make the leap to mobile devices and enables marketing interactions through SMS, push notifications, and group messaging.

Audience Studio

With this tool we can capture data from any source and unify all that data in one place. Audience Studio meets the goal of "social listening" to enable the creation of content that is more engaging for our audience.

Advertising Studio

Now we are taking the step towards digital advertising and this is where we find the Salesforce solution to manage acquisition and remarketing campaigns.

Computable

This is the hub where all data can be accessed through one dashboard, where you can monitor return on investment ( ROI ) and bolster business growth.

Interaction Studio

A tool to visualize the customer experience in real time and connect with them through any interaction.

Data Studio

Salesforce says that Data Studio is the best solution for audience discovery, data acquisition, and "taking control of that data." This is the best tool to increase revenue using valuable data.  

Google Analytics 360

The Marketing Cloud platform includes this tool developed by the technology giant Google, which allows users to use all customer insights to better understand them and get more out of marketing actions.

Differences Between Pardot and Salesforce Marketing Cloud

Although they are often confused, or do not understand their differences, the reality is that Salesforce Marketing Cloud and Pardot have different functionalities and objectives. Some of them are:

• B2B vs B2C – Pardot positions itself as a B2B platform while Salesforce Marketing Cloud is more B2C (although this is not always the case and some companies may use both)
• Buying Cycle: Smaller databases with higher value sales would be better targeted through Pardot and larger databases with lower value sales would work better with Marketing Cloud.
• Tools: Pardot is primarily an email marketing platform, while Marketing Cloud has other features and tools like the ones mentioned above
• Pardot B2B: Pardot enables greater marketing and sales alignment for B2B teams
• SFMC B2C : Salesforce Marketing Cloud is ideal for 1:1 customer journey communications with mixed communication channels

What are the benefits of Salesforce Marketing Cloud?

Although you are already getting an idea of ​​all the advantages that Salesforce Marketing Cloud offers to companies, we are going to summarize some of the most important ones.

Data management

Data management in Marketing Cloud is done using data extensions (a table) that can be associated to form a relational database, which is supported by SQL .

This, along with SFMC's ability to store various types of data and create your specific data model, is an advantage compared to some competing platforms that support a limited data model restricted by the data they can import and manage.

One of the reasons this is important is that it allows for more complex audience creation and segmentation within SFMC.

Integration Capabilities

Salesforce Marketing Cloud has extensive integration capabilities that can serve up data from multiple sources—another factor why data management features are so valuable.

In addition to the expected connection to Salesforce's Sales Cloud and Service Cloud (via Marketing Cloud Connect), SFMC also has several APIs, including a REST API and a SOAP API.

Common use cases for these APIs include: augmenting your existing contact information in SFMC, importing content, and initiating triggered shipments.

third party applications

Salesforce Marketing Cloud has a rich set of third-party apps available, including those from the Salesforce App Exchange , to augment its capabilities and customize it for your specific business goals. Think of the AppExchange like the Apple App Store or the Google Play Store for SFMC (and other Salesforce clouds).

Beyond the AppExchange, there are numerous other third-party products from Salesforce partners th