Likelihood to Recommend Braze is likely at its best for companies that engage with customers on both an app-level and web-level. It gets even better if you have the opportunity to leverage some of the additional channels Braze unlocks such as in-app messages and content cards. If you're only using Braze to send SMS and Email and the occasional push, you're likely better off finding a cheaper platform. Braze organizes its analytics in a very odd way in my experience, so I'd also recommend pairing Braze with a secondary reporting tool of your choosing.
Read full review 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.
Read full review Pros Canvases are a straightforward way to dynamically target users We have a lot of control over our email templates- especially compared to the last service we used Built-in reporting is fantastic and offers solid insight Braze integration with our consumer-facing App opened up a lot of options for us when running promos Read full review 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 It offers analytics insights, but this is still not incredibly detailed It takes a while for features on the product roadmap to be implemented The drag-and-drop editors of their marketing channels (Email & IAM) could use some improvement in terms of more functionality and tweaking abilities Read full review 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. Read full review Likelihood to Renew 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 Braze's usability is one of the main things that makes it stand out from its competitors. The UX and UI are excellent, and it ensures it is not overcomplicated where it doesn't need to be. The online documentation is also handy to help support teams in your business.
Read full review 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.
Read full review Reliability and Availability 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.
Read full review Performance 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.
Read full review Support Rating Very responsive and helpful on simple questions, but not great other than that. They do not have a way for the customer/user to escalate a ticket. You have to contact your rep and in some cases, they don't respond within 24 hours so you have no idea if they have escalated it. There is no phone number for an urgent issue - you have to rely on email
Read full review 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.
Bogdan Enache Digital Marketing Lead & SalesForce Marketing Cloud Administrator
Read full review In-Person Training 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.
Read full review Online Training 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.
Read full review Implementation Rating 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.
Read full review Alternatives Considered Compared to
Salesforce Commerce Cloud , Braze is much more user friendly, flexible and provides for easier segmentation and personalization. The reporting in Braze is also much easier to use. Compared to
Marketo , Braze has a better UI and UX, and an easier learning curve for new users. The set up and maintenance of customer journeys is much easier. The only thing I miss from
Marketo is the ability to view the customer log, which allows you to see the automation that happens against each user profile, allowing for easier troubleshooting.
Read full review 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.
Read full review Scalability 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.
Read full review Return on Investment Positive: A growth hacking experiment was proven successful in nudging users who abandoned their cart after checking out with a product/service and leaving their chart or 24 hours. Positive: A growth hacking experiment was proven successful in nudging users whose credit card failed when trying to upgrade to a paid account. Negative: With the plethora of teams (disciplines / business units / markets) with access to braze, it's easy to accidentally over-nurture users. Read full review 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. Read full review ScreenShots Salesforce Marketing Cloud Screenshots