Salesforce Marketing Cloud: Features, Benefits and Prices at a Glance

Nils Knäpper 7/12/2023

Are you in search of a holistic solution for your marketing needs? Then take a look at the Salesforce Marketing Cloud!

Table of contents
  1. Overview: What is the Salesforce Marketing Cloud?
  2. The individual products
  3. FAQ

In today's digital era, effective marketing tools are essential for businesses looking to expand their customer base and increase their brand awareness. Perhaps you're also on the hunt for a comprehensive solution that covers all your marketing needs? Then the Salesforce Marketing Cloud might be of interest to you. Under this name, Salesforce offers a suite of various tools and software to support you in optimizing your marketing activities - from e-mail marketing to customer retention and data analysis.

This article explores the individual functions and possible uses of these tools and the benefits of the Salesforce Marketing Cloud.

Overview: What is the Salesforce Marketing Cloud?

The Salesforce Marketing Cloud offers a powerful, comprehensive marketing solution aimed at helping companies communicate more effectively and efficiently, attract customers, and build long-term relationships. The suite includes different products and tools for individual customer engagement. In addition, the Marketing Cloud aims to reduce your costs and increase the profitability of your marketing activities with the help of more effective communication.

The Cloud consists of various products focusing on different aspects of marketing:

  • Journey Builder: The Journey Builder is a tool that allows you to plan your target audience's customer journey in detail. This ensures a uniform appearance and consistent messages across all your marketing channels.

  • Customer Data Platform: The Salesforce Data Cloud for Marketing lets you centrally access all your customer data. In addition, you can also trigger different interactions on your channels.

  • Marketing Cloud Intelligence: The Salesforce Marketing Cloud Intelligence (aka Datorama) is essentially the brain of the suite: Because all data from your activities converge here and can be processed in the form of automated reports.

  • Marketing Cloud Account Engagement (aka Pardot): With the tool Salesforce Marketing Cloud Account Engagement (aka Pardot) you can automate many of your customer engagement activities: From intelligent lead nurturing to personalized mail campaigns to perfectly timed contact initiation with real-time notifications.

  • Marketing Cloud Advertising: The solution Marketing Cloud Advertising assists you in placing ads - here too, the Salesforce Marketing Cloud works in a personalized and automated manner thanks to integrated CRM data.

 
 

The individual products

You may already notice: The Salesforce Marketing Cloud focuses mainly on automation, personalized customer experiences, and optimized marketing processes. For this purpose, the suite uses generative AI and automations that are intended to take over a large part of the hard work for you. We'll show you how the products work together, which features they have on board, and what alternatives are available on the market.

Journey Builder

Salesforce Journey Builder Screen.png

An integral part of any successful marketing strategy is a well-thought-out customer journey. This is exactly where the Journey Builder from Salesforce comes in: This tool was specifically designed to manage and optimize customer-specific journeys. The primary goals of Journey Builder are to create consistent customer experiences across different channels, personalize customer interactions, and integrate marketing, sales, and service to ensure a seamless customer experience.

Functions of the Journey Builder

Salesforce's Journey Builder provided numerous functions to help you operate effective and personalized marketing. Key features include:

  • Customer data analysis: The Salesforce Marketing Cloud allows you to collect and analyze customer data from different sources. The Journey Builder uses this data to identify significant moments and behaviors of customers. Whether it's online behavior, past purchases, or real-time events like the download of a mobile app, Journey Builder helps you convert this information into personalized interactions. Furthermore, Journey Builder can continuously monitor and respond to customer preferences and behavior to always deliver the right messages.

  • Networking interactions: With the Journey Builder, you can coordinate customer interactions across different channels and deliver consistent messages. This includes communication via e-mail, SMS, push notifications, ads, and websites or apps. The Customer Journey Mapping tool of Journey Builder allows you to visually represent the customer journey and quickly make optimizations. Additionally, Journey Builder promotes stronger networking between marketing, sales, service, and commerce, leading to improved customer satisfaction.

  • Customizations to individual customers: Another feature of the Journey Builder is its adaptability. With it, you can create tailor-made customer journeys based on specific interactions or decisions. You can also perform split tests to check the effectiveness of different content. Regardless of the complexity of your marketing strategies and the size of your customer base, the Journey Builder enables scalability and efficiency. To further enhance the customer experience, Journey Builder also offers reporting functions that provide valuable insights into the performance of your marketing activities and help you respond quickly to changes.

Alternatives to Journey Builder

Would you like to look beyond the horizon? Then check out OMR Reviews, where you can find numerous alternative customer journey mapping tools like Smaply or Miro.

 
 

Customer Data Platform

For centralized data access, the Salesforce Marketing Cloud offers its own Customer Data Platform (CDP). This gives you a complete and consistent view of all customers, regardless of the data sources. This platform also allows triggering interactions in real time and across channels, supporting seamless collaboration of all your departments. This can save you time and costs by intelligently designing segmentation and automation in real time.

Functions of the Customer Data Platform

The essential features of the Customer Data Platform include:

  • Consolidation of data: The CDP allows you to capture and consolidate data from different sources. This creates a consolidated customer profile and provides a comprehensive view of each individual. This can include data from Salesforce and external data sources, and APIs can be used to collect and consolidate these data from virtually any source.

  • Intelligent segmentation and activation: Thanks to the consolidated data, you can create high-revenue target groups and design each interaction in a personalized and cost-efficient way. The activation takes place across channels, for instance through emails, social media, advertising, on the web, and on mobile devices.

  • Real-time response:  Another essential function of the CDP is the ability to respond to data and insights in real-time. With the use of artificial intelligence (AI) and continuous analytics, the platform allows quicker and more informed decisions.

  • Creating personalizations: With the consolidated and additional data, you can create personalized messages and offer individual customer experiences with each interaction. By tracking consent and preferences when segmenting and activating data, you can create targeted interactions with your customers.

  • Better decision-making through intelligent data: Another interesting feature is the Calculated Insights. With these, you can add modeled data, such as purchase readiness and lifetime value, to expand your target audience segments. This continuously optimizes segmentation and decision-making becomes quicker and more informed.

Alternatives to the Salesforce Customer Data Platform

Are you looking for an alternative to the Salesforce Customer Data Platform? Then visit OMR Reviews to discover a multitude of options.

 
 

Marketing Cloud Intelligence

The Marketing Cloud Intelligence from Salesforce is a centralized data tool for optimizing your marketing spending and maximizing customer benefits. It utilizes automated reports and provides a unified view of your marketing data. This helps you coordinate all marketing channels, campaigns, and platforms and make informed, data-based decisions.

Functions of the Marketing Cloud Intelligence

Key features of the Marketing Cloud Intelligence include:

  • Connection of data from different sources: Using an API library and AI-driven connection tools, you can consolidate all of your data from different channels, campaigns, and platforms.

  • Visualization and analysis of data: Marketing Cloud Intelligence allows you to display data with configurable dashboards, automated AI insights, and collaborative reports. This enables easy visualization, analysis, and sharing of insights.

  • Specialized analysis tools for marketing experts: With specialized analysis tools, you can increase your e-commerce sales, predict and optimize your media advertising spending, and analyze your multi-touch attribution models. This allows more valuable insights and contributes to the growth of your business.

  • Practical templates: The Marketing Cloud Intelligence provides you with pre-configured applications, automated data preparation, and a marketing-friendly dashboard.

  • Use of Artificial Intelligence: With Salesforce's Einstein feature, you can increase productivity, promote insights, and unlock previously inaccessible areas. You can also adjust your expenses according to the ROI achieved.

Alternatives to Salesforce Marketing Cloud Intelligence

Are you looking for alternatives to Salesforce Marketing Cloud Intelligence? Then take a look at OMR Reviews to find a wide range of alternatives.

 
 

Marketing Cloud Account Engagement (aka Pardot)

If you're engaged in the B2B world, then you know that creating and maintaining customer relationships is crucial. This is where Salesforce's Marketing Cloud Account Engagement comes into play. This collection of B2B marketing automation tools offers you various possibilities to network with your customers, generate more high-quality leads, and support sales in realizing more business transactions.

Functions of Marketing Cloud Account Engagement

Key features of Marketing Cloud Account Engagement include:

  • Marketing Automation: With Account Engagement from the Marketing Cloud, you can automate the majority of your manual marketing and sales tasks. One of these automation functions is intelligent lead nurturing, which allows automating e-mail sending and other marketing actions. This is done through triggers that are based on criteria such as time, user interactions, and other custom parameters. In addition, you can send personalized messages with dynamic content to delight your customers with personalized experiences and make custom offers.

  • Generation of leads: The Marketing Cloud Account Engagement contains user-friendly marketing tools that allow you to fill your sales funnel with high-quality leads. For example, you can quickly create appealing landing pages in your branding using templates. In addition, you can create professional and scalable e-mail campaigns.

  • Calculation of marketing ROI: With Salesforce's Account Engagement solution, you can track the influence of your marketing actions on your revenue. You can link your leads that have led to successful business transactions with the respective marketing campaigns and analyze the success of your campaign by channel. Furthermore, you can create and save your own views to get your data presented instantly and clearly, giving you an understanding at a glance of how potential customers interact.

Alternatives to Salesforce Marketing Cloud Account Engagement

Would you like to learn about other tools? On OMR Reviews you can find many alternatives to Salesforce Marketing Cloud Account Engagement.

 
 

Marketing Cloud Advertising

Salesforce Advertising Screen.png

The Marketing Cloud Advertising tool allows you to link online advertising with marketing and CRM data to address customers even more individually and targeted with ads, banners, and other online advertising. With the solution, you can optimize your advertising on various platforms such as Google, Facebook, and other social media based on the data you've already collected.

Functions of Marketing Cloud Advertising

The central features of Marketing Cloud Advertising include:

  • Linking with customer data: With the Marketing Cloud Advertising suite, you can optimize your display advertising and your ads on Google and Facebook by using all available data (for example from the Marketing Cloud). You can synchronize customer data records from each digital channel immediately, ensuring you always have up-to-date information at hand.

  • Networking different channels: Another major advantage of the Marketing Cloud Advertising suite is its ability to connect all your online advertising with your activities from marketing, sales, and customer service. With features like Facebook Lookalike and Google's "Similar Audiences", you can identify new potential customers who behave like your existing high-revenue customers. Moreover, you can coordinate your e-mail and advertising campaigns to reach more recipients of your target group and achieve stronger buying intentions. The tool also lets you identify inactive customers and reconnect with them through their preferred channels.

  • Lead generation: Marketing Cloud Advertising also offers extensive functions for lead generation and customer acquisition. So you can link your data with Pardot and Sales Cloud to optimize your strategies for generating and qualifying leads. Automating lead generation via Facebook is also possible, where your leads are automatically captured in the Marketing Cloud. Furthermore, you can create demand generation campaigns on Facebook and visualize the performance of your marketing activities through customized dashboards.

Alternatives to Marketing Cloud Advertising

Does the tool not fit your needs or do you just want to see what other products are available on the market? In our category Search Engine Advertising Software you'll find many more providers like Channel Pilot Proor Channable.

 
 

FAQ

Does your head already smoke with so many tools and functions? No problem, we've summarized the most important questions (and answers) for you here once again:

What is the Salesforce Marketing Cloud?

The Salesforce Marketing Cloud is a comprehensive marketing platform provided by Salesforce. It allows you to reach and connect with your customers through various channels, including email, social media, mobile, and web. It also offers tools for customer segmentation, campaign management, email marketing, social media management, and data analysis. A major focus is on the data-based personalization of marketing activities for targeted leads and ultimately more revenue.

What features does the Salesforce Marketing Cloud offer?

Listing all features of the Salesforce Marketing Cloud is almost impossible. However, the most important features include managing customer journeys, designing personalized email marketing campaigns, social media management, mobile marketing via the Mobile Studio, comprehensive data analysis and reporting, and managing customer data. Equipped with artificial intelligence, the platform also allows for the detection of patterns and trends to improve customer experience and make informed marketing decisions.

What are the advantages of Salesforce Marketing Cloud for my marketing campaigns?

The Salesforce Marketing Cloud offers numerous advantages for your marketing campaigns. It enables personalized and integrated customer communication across various channels, creates process automation and customer data segmentation, improves analytics and reporting functions, and thus increases the efficiency and effectiveness of your marketing campaigns.

What is the cost of the Salesforce Marketing Cloud?

The Cloud is not available in a total package at a fixed price. You can put together the individual modules and tools according to your individual wishes. In addition, some products are part of a more extensive solution. So the Email Studio, for example, is part of Salesforce's CRM package and has no independent price as such. So if you want to know more about the costs for the Marketing Cloud or for the individual products and solutions, check out the individual product pages on OMR Reviews or on the Salesforce pricing page themselves.

Nils Knäpper
Author
Nils Knäpper

Nils ist SEO-Texter bei OMR Reviews und darüber hinaus ein echter Content-Suchti. Egal, ob Grafik, Foto, Video oder Audio – wenn es um digitale Medien geht, ist Nils immer ganz vorne mit dabei. Vor seinem Wechsel zu OMR war er fast 5 Jahre lang als Content-Manager und -Creator in einem Immobilienunternehmen tätig und hat zudem eine klassische Ausbildung als Werbetexter.

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