Airship vs. Salesforce Marketing Cloud

Well-Suited for: 1. Mobile App Notifications: Ideal for targeted push notifications in apps. 2. Customer Segmentation: Effective for personalized marketing campaigns based on user data. 3. Event-Triggered Automation: Great for automated messaging based on user actions. 4. A/B Testing: Useful for optimizing campaign messages and strategies. Less Appropriate for: 1. Non-Mobile Channels: Less effective if the primary focus is on non-mobile communications like email or direct mail. 2. Basic Email Marketing: Other platforms might be better suited for simple, broad email campaigns without complex segmentation or personalization needs.

Incentivized

At least for us, what we noticed is the best use case is that it replaces the use of cloud teams, which has a more complex platform to navigate; since we are already using Salesforce, it was just more straightforward to allow the teams to continue to do that as opposed to giving them a new system. This also works for us because they are both selling the same product in different ways. Any team collaboration is where this product shines.

Incentivized

• Setting up the target audience within Airship using attributes is one of my favorites.
• Airship has a very user-friendly interface with detailed documentation for self-help. I also enjoy the training sessions, articles and reports Airship organized as those are very insightful and useful.

Incentivized

• Filter relevant content so you can priorize those that are more relevant and resolve it first
• Measure the traffic in the different social networks, as well as the response rate, average response time and other relevant metrics
• Configure automation rules to order the work of those who must interact with the customer

Incentivized

• The automated A/B testing winner selection and application should be added
• The flexibility of message shape, specifically incorporating transparency so messages do not need to be a rectangular shape
• Faster and more reliable servers around the globe
• Making more detailed use cases and tutorials to be followed can simplify things for users

Incentivized

• Automation studio is very hard to use. We need to create a Data extension with all required fields before we can run SQL. So it takes a lot of time.
• Query Studio is much easier to use but it often gives an error while running the same SQL in Automation Studio works fine.
• We were not able to set up SMS messages as SFMC is not supporting MMS which is a big problem.

Incentivized

We are happy with Pardot. It has made our jobs easier and installed some reporting functions that have increased our ROI with the company. We have worked hard to set-up the functions in Pardot and it has taken time, but paid off.

The interface takes a bit getting used to in order to know how to take advantage of everything. Some of the analytics that are available are particularly hard to find, so it's important to pay attention when customer support reviews everything, but everything I'd want and need in terms of Push and In-App messaging is all there.

You won't find another solution that has as many features as Salesforce Marketing Cloud Interaction Studio. We all know Salesforce, we all know how big they are and it's not for nothing... Their tools do most of the things you want, need and even imagine. Using it is complicated, but the usability is infinite.

Incentivized

Upgrades and timing of the upgrades were communicated well and planned during off hours for our work. If we did have a campaign scheduled during that time, it would kick-off after the system was back active. There were a few unplanned system down times, but it was a rare occurrence and those times were also short in duration.

Though the make up of MA apps is not built this way today, it would be nice to see them become more real-time. The integration between Salesforce and Pardot is not a true real-time integration. If I modify something in Salesforce, those changes are not automatically reflected in Pardot immediately. There is a delay of about 15 minutes before the systems sync. This delay, although not long, is less than ideal We would love the systems to be integrated real time such that changes are propagated from one system to the other immediately.

I have not had to interact much with customer support as I have been able to find the vast majority of the answers I'm looking for within their documentation, which I very much appreciate because it saves me a lot of time. Customer support has been responsive and helpful for the most part during the couple of interactions I've had.

They are really responsive and more than not solve the problem or give you insight to how you can manage the solution yourself. I do find however sometimes a long delay on the more complex issues when they need to loop in other departments. but overall a good experience with support

Incentivized

Training program is not very well established. There is very little documentations. More often than not it's in-person training. I wish there were more video tutorials so that somebody can learn the system quickly. Their documentation is very much like an RFP. Long and very technichal. They should definitly improve on this area.

Incentivized

Pardot's online training touches on all topics briefly and vaguely without much indepth exploration into how a final outcome could look, such as Nurturing Campaigns, Email templates, landing page templates, etc... The only true way to uncover Pardot's full capabilities is to have Front End design and coding experience. Without this key skill set, I would not recommend Pardot to another business.

From an IT perspective, once you set up the Javascript beacon and start collecting data there is a waiting game. During this time you can start labeling your site actions which can be labor intensive for a single person, but you don't really have the final end-users on the platform yet. We did a lot of training so users were experienced, but it wasn't until they had their first tasks to accomplish that they started using the system and had questions. I'd recommend setting up some immediate goals for an end-user to start segmenting for the purpose of displaying message campaigns so you can jump start end-user action.

I have also worked with Vibes, Salesforce, Pendo, and Swrve for mobile app marketing efforts, and I always come back to airship as delivering the best Push and In-App messaging capabilities. If you want a full service platform for Push and In-App messaging rather than configuring these channels through something that is no cost such as Firebase, then i would recommend Airship.

We use Salesforce Marketing Cloud for lead management, generating reports, tracking customer and dealer information, inputting orders, and more. I prefer HubSpot for email marketing and automation because it is easier to use and the emails are designed much better. We currently use Salesforce and HubSpot, and we are very happy to have both, as they have different pros/cons.

Incentivized

Salesforce Marketing Cloud does a great job at what it is designed to do. There are several SaaS products in the Marketing Automation arena and SFMC is one of the top providers. There are several things it does well, such as email marketing and automation, leads generation/segmentation/qualification, and reporting/analytics. There are a few areas of improvement when it comes to the product and they surround legacy systems and architecture, outdated UI/UX, as well as targeting data in the activity logs for reporting and segmentation.

Incentivized

• The ROI has increased more than approx. 50% (exact details to be confirmed) based on cross-channel orchestration
• Using push notifications alone, we have seen a huge increase in app engagement which was a challenge before to nudge users to get back to the App after initial download

Incentivized

• We have been able to create mature lead generation opportunities using Salesforce Marketing Cloud in conjunction with CRM.
• We have had to spend much more in technical support
• We have been able to save on costs of daily maintenance emails through automation.

Incentivized