Salesforce Marketing Cloud vs. Salesforce Service Cloud

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

This cloud is a good option for attracting large numbers of customers for mid-scale and large-scale organizations. However, it’s not suitable for small companies or startups due to its high cost. For use cases where real-time input from customers is taken and then processed on the cloud to give them output, this platform is a must.

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

• Super fast set-up of the service from design through to production.
• Robust method of release management from sandbox, to test, to production.
• User access controls can be fine grain, which is great for GDPR requirements, limiting access to only necessary data.
• Simple api integrations with other third party systems
• Broad range of features and functionality
• Einstein search features provides faster information mining for our agents as they help to resolve customer requests.

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

• A free trial would be extremely valuable to customers who are not able to commit to a full plan.
• The pricing of this program is not priced competitively with other similar services.
• Can be quite time consuming to maintain.
• Not user friendly if you aren’t tech savvy/familiar with software.

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.

Professional edition works best for a small company with lower call volumes and is very useful but as you grow exponetially I think it has limited ability to do all the things we want to - SLA management, defect, release management to name a few. Reports and dashboards being available in real time.

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

I love that the Salesforce Service cloud provides all of the functionality that I need when implementing business processes for our customer support representatives. It even has enough functions and features that allow us to customize and expand upon our current processes, giving us the ability to go above and beyond what we've thought we could ever do. Using cases coupled with Salesforce's automation tools help ease the workload and keeps our data integrity intact.

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.

Salesforce's Trust Center clearly communicates occasional issues to anyone who subscribes, down to an organization's cloud instance. Bundled sandboxes ease updates, and seasonal upgrades are seamless, scheduled well in advance with plenty of information about what's coming. Support agents have noticed intermittent Omni-Channel disconnects due to internet connections, and these are clearly notified.

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.

Load times can be slow, but this is also based on how much customization you have done. We added a lot of custom fields which could cause additional slowness in loading. This was never anything that affected our overall efficiency. I did not notice that Service Cloud slowed down any of the systems we had it integrated with

Incentivized

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

Salesforce offers support, although it generally gets routed to overseas support teams first, and once they are unable to help, it gets escalated up the chain to higher tiers. Frequently, the answer back from support is that there is no native solution, and we either have to turn to the AppExchange for some solution provided by another developer, or custom build our own solution.

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

Our in-person training was provided by our implementation partner and it was quite good. This was in part because we were already working with them and so it naturally leant itself to a good training relationship. And because they were building our customizations and configuring things, they could then provide training on those things naturally.

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.

Trailheads are great but it was often unclear what actually applied to our organization. This made it difficult to get a whole lot out of it. Part of it is that because the basic Salesforce features didn't quite work for us, we had to add customizations, which then nullified a lot of the training.

Incentivized

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 would go through an implementation very differently knowing what I know now. It was difficult coming from systems we liked in post-sales service and having to adapt to the clunky and underwhelming feature set in Salesforce. I would trim back our expectations

Incentivized

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

I honestly prefer Zendesk to Salesforce Service Cloud. I find that Zendesk is easier to manage both on the support ticket side, as well as the knowledge center side. It looks and feels easier to use than Salesforce Service Cloud. Salesforce Service Cloud is fine, but it is expensive as well.

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 product has scaled up with our company growth just fine. No issues here other than slowness in clicking around and running reports

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

• We have cut our service team in half over the past 5 years due to the efficiency of the tool
• The amount of direct inquiries to our technical team is less than 10% compared to the number support tickets that get entered in the system for them to work in a more organized manner
• Responses are 100% more timely because tickets can be responded to by any individual in the queue or on the team, as opposed to direct emails to just one person

Incentivized