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Salesforce Marketing Cloud

Salesforce Marketing Cloud
Formerly Pardot, Evergage, ExactTarget, MyBuys, Datorama, etc.

Overview

What is Salesforce Marketing Cloud?

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.

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Recent Reviews
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Awards

Products that are considered exceptional by their customers based on a variety of criteria win TrustRadius awards. Learn more about the types of TrustRadius awards to make the best purchase decision. More about TrustRadius Awards

Popular Features

View all 27 features
  • A/B testing (139)
    8.4
    84%
  • Email deliverability reporting (119)
    8.3
    83%
  • Dynamic content (140)
    8.1
    81%
  • List management (116)
    7.5
    75%

Reviewer Pros & Cons

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Pricing

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Account Engagement

$1,250

Cloud
per month

Engagement

$1,250

Cloud
per month

Intelligence

$3,000

Cloud
per month

Entry-level set up fee?

  • No setup fee
For the latest information on pricing, visithttps://www.salesforce.com/products/mar…

Offerings

  • Free Trial
  • Free/Freemium Version
  • Premium Consulting/Integration Services

Starting price (does not include set up fee)

  • $1,250 per month per installation
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Product Demos

Pardot Engagement Studio: How-to Demo

YouTube

How to Use Pardot Salesforce Engage

YouTube

Pardot Demo: A Pardot Introduction for Beginners

YouTube

Pardot Marketing Automation Demo

YouTube

Inspire Meaningful Moments Through Salesforce Marketing Cloud | Salesforce Demo

YouTube

Salesforce Marketing Cloud Account Engagement: B2B Marketing Automation Overview Demo

YouTube
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Features

Email & Online Marketing

Using software to manage lists, send emails, automate email campaigns, and track results.

7.9
Avg 7.8

Lead Management

The process of tracking and managing prospective customers from lead generation to conversion.

7.6
Avg 7.7

Campaign Management

Users can schedule campaigns and/or events with reminders, announcements, etc.

7.9
Avg 7.6

Social Media Marketing

Using social media networks to help amplify marketing endeavors.

6.8
Avg 7.5

Reporting & Analytics

Users can report on and analyze usage, performance, ROI, and/or other metrics of success.

7.6
Avg 7.5

Platform & Infrastructure

Features related to platform-wide settings and structure, such as permissions, languages, integrations, customizations, etc.

7.6
Avg 7.6
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Product Details

What is Salesforce Marketing Cloud?

Salesforce Marketing Cloud is a marketing platform that helps companies of all sizes get to know their customers through unified profiles, personalize offers across any channel with AI, and build lasting relationships that drive business growth. Marketing Cloud provides data that is actionable, personalization that scales, and marketing that is connected.

Salesforce Marketing Cloud Features

Email & Online Marketing Features

  • Supported: WYSIWYG email editor
  • Supported: Dynamic content
  • Supported: Ability to test dynamic content
  • Supported: Landing pages
  • Supported: A/B testing
  • Supported: Mobile optimization
  • Supported: Email deliverability reporting
  • Supported: List management
  • Supported: Triggered drip sequences

Lead Management Features

  • Supported: Lead nurturing automation
  • Supported: Lead scoring and grading
  • Supported: Data quality management
  • Supported: Automated sales alerts and tasks

Campaign Management Features

  • Supported: Calendaring
  • Supported: Event/webinar marketing

Social Media Marketing Features

  • Supported: Social sharing and campaigns
  • Supported: Social profile integration

Reporting & Analytics Features

  • Supported: Dashboards
  • Supported: Standard reports
  • Supported: Custom reports

Platform & Infrastructure Features

  • Supported: API
  • Supported: Role-based workflow & approvals
  • Supported: Customizability
  • Supported: Integration with Salesforce.com
  • Supported: Integration with Microsoft Dynamics CRM
  • Supported: Integration with SugarCRM
  • Supported: Third-party software integrations

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.

Salesforce Marketing Cloud Technical Details

Deployment TypesSoftware as a Service (SaaS), Cloud, or Web-Based
Operating SystemsUnspecified
Mobile ApplicationApple iOS, Android, Mobile Web
Supported CountriesAll

Frequently Asked Questions

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.

Salesforce Marketing Cloud starts at $1250.

Adobe Marketo Engage, HubSpot Marketing Hub, and Act-On Software are common alternatives for Salesforce Marketing Cloud.

Reviewers rate Integration with Salesforce.com highest, with a score of 8.7.

The most common users of Salesforce Marketing Cloud are from Mid-sized Companies (51-1,000 employees).
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Comparisons

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Reviews and Ratings

(1350)

Attribute Ratings

Reviews

(126-150 of 316)
Companies can't remove reviews or game the system. Here's why
Sylvia Flores | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
I am using the Salesforce Marketing Cloud Email Studio for multiple clients. It's great for planning and monitoring social network interactions. What it comes down to, is the ability to really get inside the behaviors and heads of your clients. Because you are personalizing interactions, as a brand, you are giving the client what they want, while really learning more about your audience and their wants.
  • Connecting with clients in a personalized fashion
  • Tracking customer behaviors to build better marketing and branding personas
  • Finding new clients in creative ways
  • The contact import feature sucks.
  • Sometimes when updating files on the platform, they have become corrupted and unrecoverable.
  • When trying out the product as a free trial, you don't get the kind of support that you should to seal the deal - for smaller companies with limited time and budgets, that also sucks.
If you are already using Salesforce, everything within the Salesforce universe is exceptional. If you are using it correctly and taking every advantage, it will help you grow your business, by virtue of having robust data at your fingertips. Email Studio lets you get to know your customers and their behaviors while building a one-to-one relationship with them. It's great for small businesses that are looking to build their brand and create that value-add of customer service, while also building out personas. It can be cost prohibitive for some businesses. However, this is an expenditure that is well worth it. I find it to be very intuitive, but if you are a micro startup with limited time and people resources, you may not be able to get the bang for your buck.
Chris Lesner | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
With Salesforce we are able to easily automate all of our customer engagement. One of the cool things that Salesforce Marketing Cloud lets us do with their email marketing software is to create custom channels and workflows and build out extremely detailed drip campaigns. The email templates they give are pretty basic, but also idiot-proof. It's really easy to use and give us all of the data we need to figure out the likeliness of user conversion based on their funnel path.
  • Easy to use funnels.
  • Action based paths that people can go down based on clicks, open-rate, engagement, etc.
  • Easy to use templates for building.
  • Easy to segment lists.
  • It's crazy expensive. Would love if they dropped the price.
  • Could be a cleaner interface, but that is just me. Looks like the rest of the Salesforce backend, which is pretty simple.
  • More A/B testing options would be appreciated.
If you are trying to automate all of your emails by building funnels and paths that consumers can go through that help you feed them better content based on their interests. It's really great if you need to be able to rate a users experience based on their engagement with your organization and create rules that start and stop users from being sent emails.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We used Salesforce Marketing Cloud Email Studio in conjunction with a few other tools to manage our marketing and customer outreach campaigns. Salesforce Marketing Cloud Email Studio was mostly used by a few departments (marketing, UX, customer service and our leadership team), but the effects were felt by the entire company. Salesforce really helped us manage and customize our customer experience via email and other forms of outreach.
  • Salesforce Marketing Cloud Email Studio is great at managing our customer base which happens to be very large. We were able to create detailed segments and handle them all individually
  • The tracking and analytics provided by Salesforce Marketing Cloud Email Studio are great
  • Along the lines of segmentation and tracking, Salesforce is great at allowing us to target customers or segments of customers with the content best suited for them.
  • Salesforce Marketing Cloud Email Studio is quite expensive. This was a real issue for us when evaluating a vendor to use.
  • Because of the amount of control that Salesforce Marketing Cloud Email Studio provides, it follows that learning the tool is fairly complicated. It takes us a good amount of time to train new users.
  • We have had some issues with importing email templates that we have used previously into Salesforce Marketing Cloud Email Studio.
Salesforce Marketing Cloud Email Studio is a great tool for a larger organization that is looking to send targeted emails and other forms of communication to their customer base. You can follow the entire process through the tool and pulling analytics numbers is a breeze. This tool is not for smaller companies. The price alone could rule Salesforce Marketing Cloud Email Studio out for many.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
In my organization, Pardot is the main marketing automation tool. We schedule campaigns with Pardot, automatically sending out emails to prospects and clients. It's mainly used by the marketing team, but as a salesperson, I use Pardot to see when emails are being sent to prospects, who opened emails, who clicked on emails, who downloaded forms, etc. It's helpful to know what activity has happened on a particular prospect prior to reaching out.
  • Creating and sending mass emails is simple, giving time back in the day to the marketing and sales team!
  • Integration with Salesforce contacts - can easily sync and merge.
  • Great way to manage form data from prospects submitting information on your website.
  • UX feels a little bit old and clunky. It is not very intuitive.
  • Reporting is very basic.
I don't think we would use Pardot if we didn't have Salesforce. Great for companies who want to automate email messaging and track interactions with those emails. Pardot can be used for new leads and existing contacts within Salesforce, and that is really helpful. Good for form handling/info gathering from your website into data you can put in front of the sales team. The data you have in Salesforce needs to be clean before integrating this - data nightmares could easily happen and duplicate contacts galore!!
Score 6 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Salesforce Marketing Cloud is used by our marketing team. We use it currently to create broadcast emails and automated messages for the marketing and communication departments, as well as supporting other business units by building out campaigns for them as they have not yet been given access to build these out on their own. We use this as a way of stewarding, cultivating, and soliciting supporters.
  • Visual editor
  • Scheduling campaigns
  • Reporting
  • Integration with Salesforce CRM is clunky and isn't intuitive
  • Inbox placement / deliverability insights
If an organization is using Salesforce CRM, Salesforce Marketing Cloud is a natural extension for email and mobile marketing. It does have a relatively steep learning curve, but once someone understands the integration between CRM and Marketing Cloud, it will generally work for all email applications. It's not suited for users with less technical backgrounds and/or people who have limited experience working in email marketing platforms.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
At our organization, Pardot is used as our main marketing automation tool connecting with Salesforce's campaigns and campaign members. We use it mainly in the Marketing department of our organization, but our Sales representatives also have visibility in Salesforce to the Pardot activities such as emails sent, opens, clicks, downloads, website pages viewed, etc., so they know what marketing activity has happened and how that contact has responded to said activity.
  • The reporting in Pardot has improved since we first implemented it, so the detail on the reports and date range selection is much better.
  • Pardot allows easy merging of records.
  • The creation of engagement studio programs is MUCH improved and super easy, as it has clear steps on how and where to make things happen.
  • I mentioned merging records as a positive, but the negative for this is why we have to merge them in the first place. Pardot unfortunately creates duplicate records when an email address is removed in Salesforce, instead of having Salesforce be the guiding app. So there is duplication effort in Salesforce AND Pardot to make the records align properly.
The creation of an engagement studio program is super easy, using the Salesforce campaigns and member lists for sending and suppressing. Being able to see the results of each step of the program by just clicking on the item is super helpful without having to run a huge separate report. We also use the reporting for website forms results each month, which clearly shows which form was submitted, the contact's name and the date of the action.
Christina Wells | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Our marketing team uses Pardot to automate demand generation programs for our business development unit. At a small scale, Pardot serves the purpose of acting as our email service provider for general newsletter style mailings. From a big picture perspective, Pardot manages automation of all elements of our demand generation programs to ensure valuable data capture, program efficiency and efficacy measures and a positive, modern experience for our digital leads. Prior to Pardot, multiple systems were used to do many manual steps to drive leads. Leads were coming in from one or two channels. Now, we have developed leads from multiple channels in an automated way, keeping our branding and messaging consistent and timely across these channels, while immediately alerting our sales team with marketing qualified leads.
  • Automate demand generation programs across multiple marketing channels, both traditional and digital
  • Provide valuable reporting and tracking to measure program efficiency and efficacy
  • Arm small marketing teams with powerful, easy to use tools to act as modern marketers utilizing the best in current marketing automation technology
  • Training and helpful resources are abundant and the Pardot community is a growing source of support and hub for marketing ideas
  • Although not currently disruptive to our programs, send/action run times across assets and automations can delay campaign execution for those campaigns that come up last minute and need to launch ASAP
  • Although reporting continues to improve, we typically utilize reports in Salesforce as well as Pardot to show results and trends across campaigns
Whether you are a small business or large, Pardot is a great, easy-to-use, user-friendly and powerful marketing automation tool to drive your organization's marketing initiatives. Paired with Salesforce, it drives visibility and accountability across sales and marketing teams and enables both to drive leads and sales with automation.
September 11, 2018

Good For Group Organization

Score 6 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
This is used to for group collaboration and cross channel campaign tracking. Salesforce Marketing Cloud Email Studio helped our team stay on top of deadlines and track upcoming ad buy campaigns.
  • Organization
  • Tracking
  • User friendly
  • I have nothing negative to add.
Any team/company that works with a plethora of buys and has competing deadlines, would benefit from this program.

I would recommend this for teams of 5+ people.
August 14, 2018

Pardot Review

Score 6 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
The Digital Marketing Department uses Pardot to nurture leads and prospects and bring them to conversion.
  • Creating emails is made simple
  • Integration with our Salesforce prospects
  • A/B testing with each email
  • In-depth drip reporting is not readily available - a mostly manual process
  • Unable to copy/past without formatting issues in email copy area
  • There isn't a centralized dashboard without upgrading
It's great for creating one-off emails. But I wish more came with analytics, especially for drip programs.
Jaclyn Parker, MPA | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Pardot is being used across a lot of the organization, but it has been used mostly with some of the marketing and the public relations teams. We use it for things such as email newsletters and web pages/forms. It really helps us to keep a lot of the data that we use in one organized place, and it helps us to manage our lists and contacts as well as keep all of our email templates together.
  • Helps Organize
  • Manage Contacts
  • Manage Form Data
  • User Experience
  • Intuitiveness
Pardot is well suited for someone who knows basic HTML coding and who is working in either a marketing or a public relations function. It is well suited for someone who is willing to learn fast and pick up some new skills. However, it is not good for the person who may not be as technologically savvy or as willing to learn, as there is definitely a giant learning curve with the software.
Score 6 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We do not use Salesforce, but before deciding which CRM to go for, Salesforce was one of the major players in our choices. I, as an analyst had evaluated pros and cons of around 6 different CRM tools and presented them to top management and then we finalized on one. However, those were with respect to our company, what best suits for our needs.
  • Salesforce works well in different browsers
  • No. of apps available
  • Email campaigns feature is a plus
  • Installation seemed a hassle, it is handled by third party
  • Complexity of the CRM system, for our company size
  • And the price of the tool seemed high for our company
Marketing email campaigns are one of the good features of Salesforce. Will be useful for campaigns, to send a message to multiple customers at once, in a single click. However when the message that needs to be sent is customized for one user, and a mass email campaign doesn't work - then this is not a great feature.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Salesforce Marketing Cloud Email Studio is one of several email tools in use, and a couple of different marketing departments use it in different areas of the world. As you might expect, it's primarily used for marketing emails, usually blasts to existing customers and prospective customers, although it's sometimes used for transactional messages, too.
  • It's quite intuitive to use and I'd say it's pretty good as just about everything you might reasonably expect from an all-in-one email tool.
  • There's a lot of flexibility - perhaps too much in some areas, but nothing that some oversight can't contain.
  • The ExactTarget feature is apparently very good - I haven't used it enough to know its full capabilities, but I've heard a lot of good things about it.
  • Not a criticism of the tool itself, but it can be difficult getting everyone to use it in the same way, due to the flexibility offered. This is something for businesses to figure out and get alignment on.
  • I've not had to contact their support, but I've heard people aren't always impressed by the service received. Same with a lot of tools, unfortunately.
  • It is kind of expensive. There are surely cheaper ways to achieve what you need if you don't need anything too sophisticated.
It's good for any business that needs to send a high volume of email on a regular basis, particularly highly targeted campaigns. As I mentioned, it's not cheap and you're paying for a level of sophistication that might be more than you really need, so I recommend carefully weighing up how frequently you think you'll actually use some features.
Tony Messier | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We utilize Pardot for email marketing campaigns with our leads, but mostly for mass emailing our existing customers. We currently use the most basic features of the tool with hopes to use the tool better as our marketing team develops. Pardot makes it easy for us to segment our customers based on a variety of variables, and send them targeted communications. It's used by our Marketing department with support from our Salesforce Admin team.
  • Pardot does a great job of segmenting our customers based on the data we have available in Salesforce.
  • Integrating data with our Salesforce environment. It's also capable of integrating data from many other sources.
  • Easy to use and navigate
  • Support is lacking, but I've seen improvements. Pardot Office Hours has been a great resource.
  • Reporting is pretty basic
Great for a company that already has Salesforce and wants to add marketing automation to utilize the data your company has already gathered and cleaned. However, it's only as good as the data you have, and your plan for the data Pardot collects. It's obviously better for working with leads, as it's intended to nurture prospects, but it can also be used to send communications to your customer base.
Gaurav Gautam | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We have used Salesforce Marketing Cloud Email Studio not only for designing email creatives and templates but also for personalizing, AB testing, Multi-variate testing and customizing onboarding experience for new and prospective customers. It has immensely helped us in improving efficiencies, decreasing CAC, reducing customer churn and improving conversion of visitors to customers and customers to our loyal customers base.
  • Ability to create powerful and feature-rich segments to personalize campaigns.
  • Easy to use tool for data operations as well as for creating email templates and creative.
  • Ability to leverage platform capabilities to do effective AB and multivariate testing.
  • Simplify the creation of multi-variate testing.
  • Simplify role management.
  • Data-driven email marketing for higher conversion and ROI
  • Personalization of email campaigns
  • Data management and usage from cloud ecosystems
  • Very simple UI to create AB tests and review results
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Salesforce marketing cloud for A/B test analysis and CRM enabled digital marketing. Marketing Cloud is a central component of our digital strategy since it contains email, social, triggered and drip marketing. If you are running on a salesforce platform then it is especially robust since it integrates well with the CRM.
  • Salesforce Marketing Cloud connects well with Salesforce Sales Cloud.
  • Journey Builder is incredibly robust and allows customized one to one email marketing.
  • Predictive content from the Einstein engine is extremely useful in customizing emails by segments.
  • Sluggish development of email basics. I feel that competitors are showing Salesforce Marketing Cloud up by having better templates. Content Builder is a move in the right direction.
  • Faster UI. I feel that the Marketing Cloud UI can be a bit dated and slow
  • Better inbox viewing and delivery testing.
Salesforce Marketing Cloud is good for professional, business, and enterprise users. I would not recommend Salesforce Marketing Cloud solely for email marketing - others do it just as well and for cheaper - however, if you work with the Salesforce ecosystem - Service Cloud, Sales Cloud, etc., - then Marketing Cloud is the obvious choice for the digital marketing.
Megan Lemons | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 4 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
My company utilized Pardot for our email marketing campaigns targeted at those people who said they were interested in our services but did not follow through with using it. Just the marketing department used Pardot to integrate with our records in Salesforce. The main problem it addressed was the automation of very repetitive tasks in regards to our marketing campaigns.
  • Pardot is a powerful tool since it is integrated in with Salesforce
  • A lot of opportunity for unique types of marketing campaigns to a wide subset of clients/prospects
  • Excellent for transaction emails.
  • It is hard to get a handle on. While it is powerful, the learning curve to harness that power is very difficult to overcome.
  • The interface feels older than it is. Could use a UI update to make it more user friendly.
  • Not something that I would recommend for beginners. It may have excellent automation but understanding how campaigns work within Pardot and how to be successful with them.
It's an extremely powerful tool with its integration with Salesforce but it takes a long while to become efficient and effective with the product. Someone who has a lot of experience with Salesforce and Pardot itself would be well suited to use this, however, most people would probably find this outdated and be able to find a better option.
Simon Whight | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Pardot is being used for B2B communications by the marketing department - utilising dynamic lists, landing pages, form handlers, drip campaigns etc.

It was brought in as a more integrated solution when compared to Wired Marketing. The lesson here is that not all products that claim to integrate with Salesforce actually integrate to a high standard.
  • Native to Salesforce
  • Good UI
  • Simple to use, not code heavy at all
  • The Pardot Connector can suffer from some issues when working with Salesforce. Part of this is Salesforce's poor conflict management. Often, users are finding that the Connector has visited a record they are editing, and that they have to re-key all their changes again.
  • Your data is a huge factor here. If you have a highly fragmented set of records, multiple duplicates, Pardot will have a good stab at trying to tie things together but fundamentally you can find inconsistent results in terms of matching updates to records.
  • Pardot doesn't like duplicate management tools, ironically considering the above. If it finds the Salesforce record that it is attached to deleted as part of merging, it does not attempt to re-link its own record to the newly formed one.
It is great if you are a B2B business looking to get a well-integrated piece of software for your org. If you have a problematic data universe and are expecting it to magically make things better, you may find that you're just throwing another piece of software into your ecosystem to under-deliver. Get your org in order before you try to build on top of it.
Jack Pennuto | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Pardot is the hub of our digital marketing activity and the method for us to seamlessly connect to CRM for sales intelligence on prospects. With Pardot we are able to execute outbound emails, submission forms, and distributing content on social media. By using Pardot we are able to effectively score and have visibility on prospects activities across all of our digital marketing materials.
  • Connectors: Pardot has several connectors available, for hosting webinars, videos, RSS feeds, social media platforms, among others, for a synthesized view of a business's marketing connections.
  • Scheduling - The scheduling function, for emails or posts, is particularly easy to use.
  • The user interface is sometimes clunky.
  • Not all the activities within Pardot are intuitive. Compared to Act-On and HubSpot, there is more room to improve the user experience and make it easier to figure out where things are.
  • Terminology is sometimes inconsistent with Salesforce. Campaigns are not exactly the same thing. It would help to unify these differences.
Pardot is extremely well suited for an organization that is on Salesforce and wants a seamless method to integrate sales prospecting with their marketing automation. For those not on Salesforce, it does not seem of particular value compared to the other big players in the market, particularly HubSpot and Marketo.
Score 1 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Pardot as our marketing automation platform. We transitioned to Pardot from Hubspot with the goal of gaining better visibility into marketing performance since Pardot is a Salesforce product. We utilize Pardot for email nurture campaigns, lead-gen forms, and reporting. We thought that since Pardot links to Salesforce that we would get a correct and seamless MQL to SQL reporting process and also a multi-touch marketing attribution set up. We also implemented lead-scoring which we had with Hubspot. So far, marketing and sales use the tool.
  • Pardot is cheaper than Hubspot
  • Pardot does not push the persona based marketing
  • Pardot links to the Salesforce CRM
  • It is not very developed yet, so there are a lot of steps to setting anything up. Even simple emails take many steps.
  • The user experience of the tool is very confusing. There are two folder storages and one of them you don't want to use apparently but then you cannot restrict it from others to not use. You will want to provide a lot of user documentation with screen shots and explicit instructions to a team on how to correctly get around the tool and work in it.
  • File hosting is annoying. When you hold a file in Pardot for a download, it automatically download the document from whatever link you have and puts the file into your downloaded documents folder in your computer. If the user doesn't know this, then they might think they never received the file. With Hubspot, the file opens as an online PDF in another tab so that you can read it and then choose to download it if you want. A much better user experience.
  • There is no true integrated reporting to SF. We are still in the same spot as we were in with Hubspot.
  • There are not really any "how-to" articles to make up for their lack of customer support. They rely on some sort of customer community that is a bunch of question feeds from customers with answers from other customers to help you. Terrible experience there.
Well suited for a small company that wants a Salesforce (SF) recommended product. Not suited for anyone who is on Hubspot currently and not suited for anyone who just wants to send marketing emails. I would recommend anyone looking to leave Hubspot or implement any marketing automation platform to look at https://autopilothq.com/ if they are evaluating options. Pardot is underdeveloped and seems like it is just something that SF wanted to sell in order to make more money and not really solve marketers problems.
Tom Lyttleton, PMP, ACP, PBA | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We used the product in a startup to track visitors to our web sites and for qualification. We also used Pardot to track the results of multiple "marketing efforts". Pardot effectively saved the company from a disastrous campaign by identifying the lack of visitors and conversions. Installed and configured correctly this tool will help value your marketing efforts.
  • Web site tracking. Very easy to setup and embed tracker.
  • ROI on marketing investments. Pretty straightforward ROI analytics.
  • Administration is dead easy.
  • Integration with Salesforce is less than perfect.
  • Some terminology in Pardot is used differently than Salesforce. Campaign vs Campaign for example.
  • Login is a little clunky. This should be controlled by a users Salesforce login and permissions.
I think any B2B environment would benefit from Pardot if implemented and configured correctly. It is an "active tool" or garden that needs to be tended to and used daily in a marketing environment. The A/B testing is very helpful when evaluating marketing pieces or journeys. Less appropriate environments are primarily ones where users don't use the tools provided. I think there needs to be a commitment on the part of marketing and sales to embrace the technology.
Sarah Fisher | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Our marketing and product departments used Evergage and I managed it from the Marketing side. On the product side, it allowed them to track user engagement and serve up targeted messaging to users. On the marketing side, we used it for personalization of our website. They were just getting their Marketo integration ironed out, so we struggled with that in the beginning. Once you get Evergage rolling, it's awesome. But be prepared, you really need some dedicated resources to manage it- it requires building a lot of content and campaigns to be effective. But like any software, you have to put the work in and fully utilize it to see real results.
  • Great customer support. Our account manager was very hands on- I even went to their offices for a training day.
  • Many choices for customization- pop-ups, inline, on-exit,etc.
  • Reporting
  • Marketo integration was very clunky when we first launched Evergage.
  • UI isn't the most intuitive
  • The campaign builder was finicky and a little difficult to use.
Evergage is great for any organization that has the resources and commitment to building out personalization campaigns. Once the content is all rolling to website visitors, it's very effective for fueling leads and engaging customers (especially in-app, if you have a software product). But it's not just sign up and go. Be prepared to do the work.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Evergage is primarily used by the marketing department. We use it for onsite messaging, and A/B site testing. It helps us increase conversion rate and with lead generation.
  • Evergage has a great user interface that is easy to use for those of us who do not have a coding background.
  • Evergage has the best support of any tool I have ever used in my 10 years as a marketer.
  • Evergage continually updates their product based on the feedback of its current users.
  • Evergage could have better data exports.
  • Evergage Audience analytics could be in a better format and showcase similarities in a more visual format.
Evergage is a great on-site testing and recommendation tool. Not only does it help with A/B testing on the site, it also helps easily personalize a site for your audiences. I think it works well with smaller marketing teams as their support is like having a personal Evergage analyst to help keep you on track and complete projects that may be above your Evergage knowledge.
December 06, 2017

Pardot Gets it Done Right

Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Pardot is used to manage our online marketing campaigns. It is used by the sales and marketing department. It is used to create and deploy our marketing campaigns so we can create custom marketing material for our customers. It allows us to make each customer feel important.
  • It has great tools to help our sales and marketing team be on the same page and be able to see who we are communicating with customers.
  • Pardot helps prioritize leads in a very effective way so we can assign leads to the best representative for them.
  • Pardot is great at keeping up with your sales funnel so you know where you are in your lead process.
  • I would like to see more financial trackings.
  • I would like to see a place where customers can provide more direct feedback on what they are receiving.
  • Better notes back and forth between who assigns leads and who gets them and when they open it.
Pardot is great if you have a company with a lead generating team. That team can enter leads in and be able to send them marketing material and assign a rep. It works out great to keep track of who has been contacted and where they are at in the funnel.
Ben Alvord | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Evergage on our corporate website. Management of the platform is centralized on my team, but multiple members of the marketing team generate personalization ideas for us to execute on the site. With Evergage, the key business problems that we address are marketing directly to the key industries that we target as well as the key geographic regions that we target.
  • Geographic targeting - we use Evergage to promote regional events to only those users who close enough geographically to attend the event in question.
  • Industry targeting - we place users into industry segments and present those users with demand generation assets targeted to their specific industry.
  • Account based marketing - Evergage allows us to change elements of our website to specifically target users who are from companies on our targeted account list.
  • The platform is pretty complex. For less technical users, there is a somewhat steep learning curve.
  • There are good tools available for testing, but I still struggle with using them.
As stated before, the platform works very well for regional and industry based targeting. Evergage allows you to bubble up CTAs targeted at the specific user, or you can even just modify content on a webpage to better speak to that user. For instance, the content on our pricing page changes slightly for those users who are in the EU, as opposed to US.
Bogdan Enache | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
The SFMC is used as the platform of choice for TELUS Business to:
- Build and deploy communications for Marketing and Sales online initiatives
- Automate various emails based processes
- Generate leads into the SFDC CRM via build and hosted web pages (with lead generating web forms).
- Synch, update and get updates with and from SFDC data (contacts, leads, cases, surveys, etc.)
  • Tight integration with SFDC - easy to create, update and retrieve records information from our CRM of choice (Salesforce).
  • Customization power - through the available AMPScript language you can really take the customization to the next level for all your data capturing, tagging and reporting needs.
  • Intuitive interface - it offers a good user experience for its users whether they are seasoned developers with direct access to code or less technical folks that prefer drag and drop or WYSIWYG editors.
  • (Lack of) Web Tracking - it offers minimal tracking capabilities for web visit(or)s and the ones that are in place don't provide an easy way to allow you to use that data in building reports or automation.
  • No Web Forms - if most of your marketing campaigns include a call to action pointing to a web form submission, the SFMC doesn't have a "web form asset" per se that you can build. You could still achieve the same functionality by deploying cloud pages and/or microsite AMPScript pages that use Data Extensions as tables to hold data but that doesn't come out of the box.
  • Customization brings Complexity - OK, maybe this is not a con but sometimes it feels like one. In order to build your own custom way of segmenting, importing, filtering data, having triggered sends, etc. you need to create a lot of assets on the platform. Think of it like small Lego bricks that you need to build first then combine them in a larger brick that is part of an even larger construction.
The Salesforce Marketing Cloud platform is well suited for companies looking to deploy and automate Marketing and Sales communications in general but where it shines is in the scenarios where you need a cross platform solution between the Sales and Marketing Clouds because your need involves either capturing data in the Salesforce CRM (email metrics, leads, etc.) or using some of the CRM data as part of the campaign itself (i.e. segment your audience, dynamic email content with CRM data fields or logic).

Its weak point is the web tracking capabilities if your web tracking needs go beyond displaying some charts of visits and visitors (aka use web metrics as part of your email automation, lead scoring, etc.)
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