Acoustic Campaign vs. Salesforce Marketing Cloud

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Acoustic Campaign
Score 8.6 out of 10
N/A
Acoustic Campaign (formerly IBM Watson Campaign Automation) is a scalable, SaaS-based, cross-channel, digital marketing platform providing digital marketers the ability to implement and manage email, mobile, social, and lead management campaign processes.N/A
Salesforce Marketing Cloud
Score 7.8 out of 10
N/A
Marketing Cloud is an AI-powered, cloud-based digital marketing platform within the Salesforce Customer 360 ecosystem. Marketers can segment their audience, deliver personalized messages, track campaign performance, engage leads and accounts, and optimize strategies based on real-time insights.
$1,250
per month per installation
Pricing
Acoustic CampaignSalesforce Marketing Cloud
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
Account Engagement
$1,250
per month
Engagement
$1,250
per month
Intelligence
$3,000
per month
Loyalty Management
$20,000
per month
Personalization
$100,000
per year
Data Cloud for Marketing
$108,000
per year
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Acoustic CampaignSalesforce Marketing Cloud
Free Trial
NoYes
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoYes
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Acoustic CampaignSalesforce Marketing Cloud
Considered Both Products
Acoustic Campaign
Chose Acoustic Campaign
Reviewed HubSpot, Marketo, Pardot and ActiveCampaign. Chose IBM Watson Campaign Automation due to their workflow capabilities. They can automate a process that requires a series of steps that typically require intervention by a several different users. Administrators can write …
Chose Acoustic Campaign
I wasn't involved in the tool selection process but inherited the system. I think that Pardot and Marketo are the leaders in the marketplace, followed closely by Eloqua. Hubspot is a nice option with good usability but I was concerned it would not scale for the global campaign …
Salesforce Marketing Cloud
Chose Salesforce Marketing Cloud
HubSpot: Pardot wins (by a huger margin) on both product and customer service.

Eloqua/Marketo/Silverpop - have used all three of these. They are solid solutions but integration with Salesforce is not as tight or reliable. In addition I found clients have a longer time to …
Chose Salesforce Marketing Cloud
I have used Marketo and it did not live up to most of its promises and the support was abysmal, Hubspot is good but hard to apply to enterprise systems across all channels, Silverpop was not as thought out and learning curve was a bit steeper, as is my experience with …
Chose Salesforce Marketing Cloud
We also evaluated Marketo and Eloqua. Pardot not only fit our needs the best, but was also priced competitively.
Top Pros
Top Cons
Features
Acoustic CampaignSalesforce Marketing Cloud
Email & Online Marketing
Comparison of Email & Online Marketing features of Product A and Product B
Acoustic Campaign
7.0
10 Ratings
11% below category average
Salesforce Marketing Cloud
7.9
158 Ratings
2% above category average
WYSIWYG email editor4.010 Ratings8.1110 Ratings
Dynamic content8.07 Ratings8.1140 Ratings
Ability to test dynamic content7.58 Ratings7.7100 Ratings
Landing pages5.18 Ratings7.5108 Ratings
A/B testing7.010 Ratings8.4139 Ratings
Mobile optimization6.97 Ratings7.598 Ratings
Email deliverability reporting8.010 Ratings8.3119 Ratings
List management8.09 Ratings7.5116 Ratings
Triggered drip sequences8.08 Ratings8.184 Ratings
Lead Management
Comparison of Lead Management features of Product A and Product B
Acoustic Campaign
7.4
8 Ratings
4% below category average
Salesforce Marketing Cloud
7.6
112 Ratings
1% below category average
Lead nurturing automation6.18 Ratings7.7100 Ratings
Lead scoring and grading7.97 Ratings7.3100 Ratings
Data quality management8.07 Ratings7.6104 Ratings
Automated sales alerts and tasks7.54 Ratings7.792 Ratings
Campaign Management
Comparison of Campaign Management features of Product A and Product B
Acoustic Campaign
7.0
8 Ratings
9% below category average
Salesforce Marketing Cloud
7.9
103 Ratings
4% above category average
Calendaring6.58 Ratings7.993 Ratings
Event/webinar marketing7.44 Ratings7.987 Ratings
Social Media Marketing
Comparison of Social Media Marketing features of Product A and Product B
Acoustic Campaign
6.3
5 Ratings
17% below category average
Salesforce Marketing Cloud
6.8
80 Ratings
10% below category average
Social sharing and campaigns6.54 Ratings7.276 Ratings
Social profile integration6.25 Ratings6.432 Ratings
Reporting & Analytics
Comparison of Reporting & Analytics features of Product A and Product B
Acoustic Campaign
4.5
10 Ratings
50% below category average
Salesforce Marketing Cloud
7.6
112 Ratings
1% above category average
Dashboards4.210 Ratings7.6107 Ratings
Standard reports4.210 Ratings7.8111 Ratings
Custom reports5.18 Ratings7.488 Ratings
Platform & Infrastructure
Comparison of Platform & Infrastructure features of Product A and Product B
Acoustic Campaign
5.7
10 Ratings
28% below category average
Salesforce Marketing Cloud
7.6
112 Ratings
0% above category average
API5.29 Ratings7.681 Ratings
Role-based workflow & approvals6.04 Ratings8.278 Ratings
Customizability5.95 Ratings7.399 Ratings
Integration with Salesforce.com4.38 Ratings8.7101 Ratings
Integration with Microsoft Dynamics CRM5.03 Ratings7.88 Ratings
Integration with SugarCRM8.02 Ratings6.77 Ratings
Third-party software integrations00 Ratings7.314 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Acoustic CampaignSalesforce Marketing Cloud
Small Businesses
Vbout
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Score 9.4 out of 10
Vbout
Vbout
Score 9.4 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
PFL Direct Mail Platform
PFL Direct Mail Platform
Score 9.3 out of 10
PFL Direct Mail Platform
PFL Direct Mail Platform
Score 9.3 out of 10
Enterprises
PFL Direct Mail Platform
PFL Direct Mail Platform
Score 9.3 out of 10
PFL Direct Mail Platform
PFL Direct Mail Platform
Score 9.3 out of 10
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User Ratings
Acoustic CampaignSalesforce Marketing Cloud
Likelihood to Recommend
4.1
(40 ratings)
8.0
(316 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
5.5
(30 ratings)
9.6
(112 ratings)
Usability
8.0
(6 ratings)
6.2
(35 ratings)
Availability
10.0
(2 ratings)
10.0
(11 ratings)
Performance
7.0
(2 ratings)
9.6
(9 ratings)
Support Rating
5.9
(5 ratings)
4.0
(35 ratings)
In-Person Training
-
(0 ratings)
5.0
(4 ratings)
Online Training
9.0
(2 ratings)
8.1
(7 ratings)
Implementation Rating
7.4
(4 ratings)
3.0
(17 ratings)
Ease of integration
-
(0 ratings)
7.0
(2 ratings)
Product Scalability
-
(0 ratings)
7.9
(24 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
-
(0 ratings)
8.0
(2 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(2 ratings)
User Testimonials
Acoustic CampaignSalesforce Marketing Cloud
Likelihood to Recommend
Acoustic
Silverpop is a powerful and comprehensive tool for digital marketers, and is apprprioate for companies of varying sizes, as well as both B2B and B2C models. It's particularly well-suited for companies with large, accurate customer databases and the ability to track customer actions on their websites to use as marketing automation triggers.
Read full review
Salesforce
Salesforce Marketing Cloud does an excellent job at collecting and storing leads. Once the leads are qualified by workflows and automations established against your qualifiers, you can begin to segment, target, send communication, and track the efficacy of your campaigns. Being that Salesforce Marketing Cloud is an extension of Salesforce CRM, there is little work that needs to be done to ensure that your SQL are migrated to your CRM once they are ready to do so. The seamlessness between the two systems is paramount to the success of our organization.
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Pros
Acoustic
  • Automated Messages - we currently have over 70 automated messages going out on any particular day through feeds and API calls that we pass to Silverpop. We rely on these automated messages to communicate to our customers and can rely on Silverpop to always be up and running to get these messages out.
  • Robust query building - We can target customers easily based on a combination of demographic profile data, as well as email and site behavior and purchase behavior, allowing us to finely segment our audience
  • Deep dive reporting - the UI reporting, as well as the available reports to download through the API give us tremendous insight into how our subscribers are responding to email.
Read full review
Salesforce
  • 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
Read full review
Cons
Acoustic
  • Data syncing and errors - Silverpop does not do a great job of getting data to sync regularly with our CRM (Salesforce.com). The data had to flow back and forth several times before being added to campaigns and in some instances, it took days to update leads! Also, failed lead syncs get stuck in an alert list but it does not notify you otherwise that a lead failed the sync.
  • Design issues - we use custom HTML to build emails and landing pages, and we were unable to render background images on our campaigns. Also, once you toggle between design and source (code) view to make edits, it often broke the code and threw off the design.
  • Administrator alerts - when sync fails altogether between systems, there is no email alert sent to the system admin (me/my team) so we at times have found that we have gone 18 hours until we stumble across the fact that the system sync has failed.
  • Reporting - it is not very comprehensive and we had difficulty generating the level of reporting that we need to have.
  • Support - there are a few gems in the support team who know what they're doing, but largely calling support is a lesson in frustration.
  • Product bug fixes - in two instances, my open support tickets were identified as product bugs. One related to incorrect cookie tracking which was causing our leads not to be scoring properly. They determined that this wasn't critical enough to build into their product fix road map. This is core to an automation system working properly.
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Salesforce
  • The email builder does not offer any way to catch/check bugs across different email service providers
  • Creating SQL is not as easy as drag-and-drop; a lot of technical knowledge is required
  • Salesforce Marketing Cloud is sold as a marketing tool, but to be honest, you need a LOT of technical IT support to run the tool
  • Einstein metrics are across the board; if you have multiple audiences in one instance of Salesforce Marketing Cloud you can't segment the data.
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Likelihood to Renew
Acoustic
SilverPop is a great marketing tool that integrates with Salesforce to provide customers and employees a great buying and selling experience. The software takes some very difficult tasks and makes them easy to accomplish. With proper setup and management, Silverpop gives you the tools to gain insight into the productiveness of campaigns.
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Salesforce
As of right now we have not seen any other program that integrates as seamlessly into our Salesforce platform. We have barely scratched the surface of all the features and use cases. It would be irresponsible to make a move to another platform in the near future. We have not come up against any limitations that would prompt a need to switch
Read full review
Usability
Acoustic
This is a little bit difficult to rate because Silverpop is gradually updating its interface to improve usability all around. I know users are able to do their job with minimal assistance. However, some of the interface is dated, and the Programs interface, while functional, has a bit of a learning curve.
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Salesforce
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.
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Reliability and Availability
Acoustic
While several of the other reviews have mentioned poor performance in this department, we have only had one situation where the system was down (although it was down for several hours). Silverpop segments its clients on different servers, and I know that the problem we experienced only occurred on our specific server (maybe other servers have had their own problems?) but our service has been reliable otherwise.
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Salesforce
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.
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Performance
Acoustic
The throttle time for sending emails would vary depending on how many other campaigns were going out that day, which I found inconsistent
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Salesforce
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.
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Support Rating
Acoustic
The Salesforce Integration support team is fantastic. I'd give them greater than a 10 if possible. The rest of the support team can be extremely frustrating to work with. Too often they try to blame something obscure and refuse to escalate or look into the issue. And on occasion when you find system glitches they don't seem to care about fixing them
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Salesforce
They're fast and knowledgeable. You will always know what's the status of your request and they usually follow up with phone calls to ask you questions or provide updates. Sometimes it takes them a couple of days to investigate, especially if you have custom "situations" like my company usually does but at least they are very good at managing time expectations.
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In-Person Training
Acoustic
No answers on this topic
Salesforce
The trainers at the Pardot user conference (Elevate and Connections) were very knowledgeable and presented the material well. Again, the content was targeted to more of a new user audience, and was not really relevant for folks who had been using the product for 2+ years.
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Online Training
Acoustic
The online trainings are very detailed (for the most part) and really walk through the entire system. They are a little dry, but they are usually broken up into segments to allow you to skip to the parts you need.
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Salesforce
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.
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Implementation Rating
Acoustic
Based on recommendations from Silverpop we made some implementation decisions that we later regretted pretty substantially. In hindsight we should have started a pilot implementation earlier so we could learn and then start over. The big issue for us was that Silverpop recommended a non-keyed database, or at least a database that doesn't use email address as primary key. This is resulted in a large number of duplicate email addresses so that the end user is forced to unsubscribe multiple times to stop receiving emails.
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Salesforce
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.
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Alternatives Considered
Acoustic
We evaluated alternate providers less than a year into our IBM Watson Campaign contract because the system was so clunky to use (and we wanted a system that would include or better integrate with our SMS provider). Bluecore and Klaviyo were the front runners at the time, and we came close to moving forward with Bluecore. The pricing model and overall the cost of Bluecore was much higher than IBM for us though, and the timing of this was right when the IBM to Acoustic changes took place. We decided to give Acoustic a shot and are optimistic it will be enough to keep us on board once all the dust settles, though I find it unlikely we will renew with Acoustic when our contract is up again. My main email specialist is a Klaviyo expert and finds that platform very easy to use in comparison-- it might be a better fit for a team of our size.
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Salesforce
Salesforce Marketing Cloud stands out for its comprehensive features, scalability, and seamless integration capabilities. Compared to other platforms, its unified suite of tools for email, social media, mobile, and advertising enables streamlined cross-channel campaign management and personalized marketing at scale. We chose Marketing Cloud for its industry leadership, robust ecosystem, and tight integration with Salesforce CRM, allowing us to deliver exceptional marketing solutions and drive measurable results for our clients efficiently.
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Scalability
Acoustic
No answers on this topic
Salesforce
Salesforce Marketing Cloud helps create profiles for each subscriber. The Contact Builder feature stores information about every subscriber, including whether they're an active customer, their purchase history from the last year, and their email engagement metrics. It also identifies the likelihood of a subscriber churning, aiding in creating personalized campaigns to boost company revenue.
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Return on Investment
Acoustic
  • we have not experienced any currently but moving to lead automation and lead scoring could change that.
  • i'm not sure how increased employee efficiency would ever be a benefit b/c lead importing and visibility, along with setting up email templates is quite cumbersome.
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Salesforce
  • Salesforce Marketing Cloud allows us to more efficiently reach out to a higher number of prospects.
  • Salesforce Marketing Cloud allows us to nimbly communicate important messages in a timely fashion to facilitate conversion.
  • Salesforce Marketing Cloud allows us to track who is opening our messages so that we can stop sending to those not interested and focus on the most engaged audiences.
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ScreenShots

Acoustic Campaign Screenshots

Screenshot of Digital marketingScreenshot of Journey design

Salesforce Marketing Cloud Screenshots

Screenshot of Pardot Analytics - Pardot's reporting and analytics can be used to perform true revenue impact analysis and closed-loop reporting.Screenshot of Pardot Email Analytics - The reach and impact of  email marketing efforts are displayed in real-time with advanced reporting and analytics by device, and email client.Screenshot of Pardot Forms and Landing Pages - Pardot's form and landing page builders are used to turn online traffic to leads with targeted offers and content marketing.Screenshot of Pardot Email Marketing - Lead nurturing flows are defined via an interface that enables definition of the simplest or most complex segmented and targeted campaigns.