Salesforce Marketing Cloud Review: Mobile, Automation, Analytics, Social, And More

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Salesforce Marketing Cloud ReviewDoes your company already use Salesforce? If so, their email marketing solution could be a good fit. Salesforce Email Studio is just one component of a suite of sophisticated marketing tools, called Salesforce Marketing Cloud.

Salesforce Marketing Cloud’s approach to email marketing is innovative and differs a great deal from what other providers offer. Its products are designed to help you drive customer engagement, increase sales and increase the return on marketing investment. But will it help increase your bottom line?

Article Overview

Salesforce Marketing Cloud

7.9
Customer Service & Reputation 8.0
Pricing Template Selection 7.5
Social Media Marketing 8.0
Autoresponder 8.0
List Segmentation 7.0
Spam Score 9.0

Pros

  • Live chat customer service allows for access to customer service without long phone wait times
  • Comprehensive marketing integration across email, mobile, social media, web, data and analytics make cross-platform marketing simpler
  • WYSIWYG email editor as well as an HTML email editor
  • Individually based pricing – Pricing for the Salesforce email marketing solution is based on an individual basis which is catered to each company’s unique needs
  • A/B testing, inbox preview
  • Coupon and barcode management
  • Automation, triggered messaging, drip campaigns
  • RSS feeds can easily and quickly be integrated into email sending
  • Hundreds of integrations with third-party apps like Google Analytics
  • Online database of step-by-step tutorials, videos, webinars and more

Cons

  • No listed customer service hours
  • No immediately available pricing information
  • Difficult learning curve – you need to be pretty tech savvy to best utilize their services
  • Only 20+ pre-built email templates
  • You must have knowledge of AMPScript to use email attachments

Key Features

Salesforce Marketing Cloud offers the most sophisticated and technologically advanced email marketing (and more) services. While this takes away a simple, easy-to-use interface, you could gain a better ability to draw customers in and keep them engaged. Here’s a brief run-through of how this software suite can help your company’s marketing efforts.

Email

Salesforce’s email marketing solutions allow you to build direct relationships with your customers. You can create personalized content for each customer and keep track of your customers’ profiles with unlimited data storage. Use the drag and drop tools to create emails and then use segmented lists to target each message to specific types of customers. Track your campaign results to accomplish the goals you have set.

Marketing Automation

Journey Builder allows you to personalize the experience for each of your customers. This interface lets you plan, personalize and optimize each interaction you have with your customer. You can even set goals to determine which content has the best return on investment. You can also choose which channel to deliver the campaign, perform split data testing to see where your campaigns perform best and make adjustments accordingly.

Mobile

Mobile Studio allows you to send text messages with promotions, updates, surveys and more. Individuals have numerous mobile devices at their hands so optimizing your mobile marketing plans is important.

Social

Social Studio allows you to make stronger connections with your customers through social media platforms, create different posts for different social channels and then look at how each is performing through the Social Studio. Salesforce also has a mobile app that allows you to view progress across all social channels, schedule posts with Buddy Media, and create engaging content to interact with your customers.

Ads

Advertising Studio helps you manage all of your social media advertising needs. You can manage hundreds of campaigns at once to reach your audience at the right time. This helps you drive conversions and obtain more revenue. You can keep track of your highest performing ads and runs them more often to make the most of your budget.

Data & Analytics

Data & Analytics helps you grow customer engagement. Find out what your customers like and use this info to build your audience and outreach. You can also save time and money by taking a deep look at your Data & Analytics to create more effective campaigns.

Pardot

Pardot is B2B marketing automation by Salesforce that can help you increase leads, boost sales, be more productive — and transform your business. You can automatically send emails and perform marketing tasks based on triggers including time, user interactions and other custom parameters.

Pricing

Call or complete their online email form. Unlike other email marketing service providers, Salesforce Marketing Cloud provides no pricing information online. They offer a number of different packages beginning with their Basic plan, and each step-up plan includes all of the features of lower tiered plans.

They indicate on their website that you can customize bundles based on your business needs, but it’s not clear how many specific features can be purchased a la carte.

Customer Reviews

We can tell you all about Salesforce’s email marketing services but in the end you want to know how real customers feel about the company. So here are some testimonials from its users.

Positive Reviews

Salesforce is not only a pioneer in the CRM space, it’s also managed to maintain its leadership position for more than a decade with a constantly expanding feature set, excellent customization, and a large third-party, value-add partner ecosystem. – Rob M., PC Mag 3/28/2018

I really enjoy the interface – it is easy to use and has a lot of features that aid you in finding the help you need. It also helps out business in more than one ways – on the marketing side for sure but also with communicating with our sales teams. – User in Financial Services, G2 Crowd 1/30/2018

Negative Reviews

The premade templates cannot be edited. There are little quirks when in the design studio that are annoying. like if you a box over too far your whole email gets shifted. There are built-in quirks when using the design studio that is not difficult to get over just annoying and time-consuming. I’ve learned a lot more about HTML coding because that is an option and sometimes easier to use when the design studio is being difficult about bullet point size or color. – Administrator, G2 Crowd 1/31/2018

When we signed up with Sales Force for our CRM we were told it would do specific things. We found out 3 months later after getting the run around on trying to get the system up that it will not to the things we wanted it to do. We tried calling many times with no luck. No one is willing to help/ We have since purchased another CRM that does do what we needed it to do. We fill this was bait and switch on their part. Anonymous, Better Business Bureau 5/22/2018

Need-To-Know Email Trends

Research by Hubspot found that personalizing emails improves open rates by 6.2%. Below is a video from Salesforce about five email trends to help your emails’ success rates increase.

Is Salesforce The Right Marketing Solution For You?

When choosing a comprehensive online marketing solution, there are a number of factors to take into consideration. Dig in deep to truly understand your company’s unique needs, budget and technical skill level.

This will help you to determine not only whether Salesforce is the best fit for you, but also which elements of their service are right for you. For a rundown of the industry leaders in email marketing, check out our full comparison of email marketing software.

Thinking of trying Salesforce Marketing Cloud, or leaning towards an alternative? Let us know in the comments!

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