Skip to main content
TrustRadius
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.

Read more
Recent Reviews
Read all reviews

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)
    8.2
    82%
  • List management (116)
    7.5
    75%

Reviewer Pros & Cons

View all pros & cons
Return to navigation

Pricing

View all pricing

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
Return to navigation

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
Return to navigation

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
Return to navigation

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).
Return to navigation

Comparisons

View all alternatives
Return to navigation

Reviews and Ratings

(1351)

Attribute Ratings

Reviews

(26-50 of 169)
Companies can't remove reviews or game the system. Here's why
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Radian6 has been our social media monitoring platform of choice for more than 10 years across the whole digital communications business unit. It is used to monitor social conversation, for crisis detection and management. It allows us to cut through the noise very efficiently, discover the most meaningful conversations and interactions for the brand, detect endorsers and trolls, and manage the brand reputation online.
  • Depth of results.
  • Fast indexing.
  • Real-time detection.
  • Automatic sentiment tagging is not always accurate.
  • Complex setup, requires training.
  • Some of the user permissions lack flexibility. More options would be appreciated.
If you have to manage a great volume of mentions and you don't require a specific model of dashboard, or if you don't have the budget for a AI based platform, this is a very good option that could cover your needs. Also great if you have to manage a great volume of users and projects, to have the flexibility and agility to setup your own monitoring.
March 14, 2021

Top tier solution

Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Datorama was used primarily within the marketing strategy department for internal use only at the time. Quick access dashboards for monitoring media performance were the primary focus rather than external, client-facing dashboards for reporting. The goal was to use Datorama as a nexus of information to better monitor our marketing efforts so we would efficiently be moving consumers down the purchase funnel.
  • Data integration
  • Data visualization
  • Product support
  • Easier display testing
  • More emphasis on real-time push notifications
  • Data stream connection wizard for newer users
Datorama is a well balanced data visualization or business intelligence tool. If your organization has the budget and is just establishing such a tool then I would suggest this over others in the marketplace especially if the analyst isn't a senior as they have an excellent support team. Datorama should be able to meet the needs of most companies as their visualizations can be used out of the box or customized with css/html/js code. Additionally, if a data stream connector is not readily available then there are options to create a custom stream.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Marketing Cloud by Salesforce is the best email marketing platform to send customized emails. The triggers, notifications, and real-time personalizations work very well. It helps you analyze the prospect and the touchpoints. The machine learning capabilities from Interaction Studio are amazing. It helps in analyzing the customer journey and outbound orchestration. The visualization and reporting with the Marketing Cloud are really simple and cool. With this platform, we have created a lot of leads and positive responses. This is an extremely useful platform for all size businesses.
  • Analyzing the customer journey is really a good help; it helps in revisiting the strategy.
  • Outbound orchestration across all the touchpoints; these are really helpful insights
  • Real-time personalization and machine learning capabilities from Interaction Studio add on value in Marketing Cloud.
  • Too much input from ML distracts you from the existing strategy.
  • Tool expertise is required, not very easy to operate.
With hundreds of features, interaction across email, mobile, advertising, and the web is very smooth. It really helps in analyzing customer touchpoints. It helped us in generating a lot of leads with a timely change in strategy and personalization.
Jonathan Sandoval | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Simply the best CRM platform in existence, every company should make a contract with Salesforce Audience Studio in order to keep track of their audience processes, developers just like me tend to be constantly learning new ways to improve our techniques using the platform, so most of us are really committed. The way my organization uses it commonly is to accomplish some tasks required by external companies requiring solutions for their CRM platforms, most of the times it's all about improving their employees' tasks, creating apps to help them register new information quicker and more efficiently, also designing a comfortable environment.
  • Audience in an ordered way.
  • Well prepared documentation.
  • Simplicity.
  • Flexibility.
  • Open-source.
It is less appropiate to build a contract with Salesforce if your company is too small, the price/functionality belongs as is, so your company must be large enough to fit the size of a Salesforce environment adaptation, make sure also that you have contact with different companies available for accepting outsourcing.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
It is used by one department. It is basically used to strengthen customer and client relationships by helping us to understand what the customer seeks and based on analysis provide him with the best product. It helps to segment the customer based on their needs in order to provide better customer satisfaction.
  • Captures all customer data efficiently
  • Helps with better understanding and what the customer exactly wants
  • Adapts to changes very quickly, helps us proving the best our customers need
  • The look infield is great, it helps to capture data with great precision and the best part is that it is very efficient in segmenting customers
  • Restricted number of fields
  • Information loss on updates
  • Sometimes take alot of time to load the dashboard
It is well suited for data integration capabilities. It has a good interface to showcase business, and is good for segmentation analytics.
It is less appropriate where API integration is required; analytical packages are very limited in order to do analytics we can't completely rely on it; and need other tools to do the analytics and also custom analytics can't be deployed on the platform.
Dérick St-Hilaire | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Salesforce Marketing Cloud Interaction Studio is mostly being used by our marketing department to increase our nurturing, sales respond, trials knowledge and to monitor users actions. We are only starting with the solution and are planning many more applications towards mutliple channels and department in the organization. This tool has a lot to offer for multiple department across the organization.
  • Offers multiple features
  • Has something for every department
  • Automation
  • A/B testing and targeted content
  • The reporting isn't clear
  • Difficult to implement
  • Has so many features you can get lost easily
Salesforce Marketing Cloud Interaction Studio has something to offer to every organization. It has features to help your marketing department, your support team, your sales, finance, etc. This solution covers everything and can be used by every companies. The fact that they scale the pricing to your needs and desire makes it personalized to your organization and makes it easier to purchase.
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
We primarily use Pardot as our core marketing automation platform in the Marketing department. Marketing is the administrator and primary user, but other departments like sales and customer success receive benefits as well through the connected alerts.
  • The UI is pretty intuitive. I've used other enterprise platforms for marketing automation like Marketo and this is much cleaner.
  • The integration with CRMs (particularly Salesforce) is a big part of the value.
  • For an enterprise-level B2B MAP, they're probably the most competitively priced in this space. (Eloqua, Marketo, HubSpot and the like are more pricey).
  • The way they manage sender reputation by automatically cleaning your lists is important, and Pardot does that well. For example, any hard bounced emails, automatically become unmailable and are quarantined by Pardot automatically. They also prevent role emails at import and flag certain email patterns as spam traps. All these things are well-managed and help protect your sender reputation (critical especially since most clients are on a shared IP). Not all MAP do this as seamlessly as they do.
  • Some of the features like the email builder and landing page builder seem like they've been neglected. They aren't as drag-and-drop friendly for marketers who don't know how to code. In fact, non-enterprise platforms like MailChimp do a far better job in this area.
  • The limitations of automation can be a bit frustrating. As good as the integration with Salesforce is, you cannot do something as basic as trigger a rule based on a field change. (e.g. when the date for this field gets populated or updated, add to list or do this). This is not possible as an automation rule or even in their engagement studio. With other platforms, this functionality seems pretty standard.
  • Engagement studio has come a long way, and while it's far more eloquent with its drag and drop UI, functionality-wise, it's still behind some of the others.
  • This feature also seems like it's been neglected. The reporting leaves a lot to be desired unless you pay for B2B analytics, which is an upcharge. You can't even do something as simple as download the report in PDF format, which is a shame because there are some graphics and callouts in list email reports that would be better if they were shareable. They still record metrics like printed email, which seems a bit dated.
Pardot is a great tool for B2B companies that want an email marketing automation platform and don't have the budget for Marketo or HubSpot. It also makes a lot of sense if your CRM is Salesforce. There's good integration between the two (although worth noting that Pardot was not a native Salesforce tool, which explains some of the weirdness).

If basic HTML/CSS are not in your wheelhouse, I wouldn't select Pardot because their templates are not great out of the box and their builder leaves are basically a WYSIWYG. But if you're looking for an email automation platform that does email fairly well at a reasonable cost, Pardot might be a good choice.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We used Pardot primarily for email and marketing campaigns. It provides an extremely intuitive and friendly user interface for creating custom and automated campaigns.
  • Integrate with Salesforce
  • Visual Email Workflows
  • Customer Insights
  • Time-consuming to teach new users.
  • Only one type of attribution.
  • Pricey!
While some aspects are lacking for the price point, Pardot's tracking features for campaigns are extremely comprehensive and provided us with thorough data that enabled us to pivot directions within campaigns if necessary.
William Reese | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Salesforce Marketing Cloud is primarily used by our Marketing Department. However, employees across the organization will benefit from it. Our organization has not had any formal email marketing solutions during my tenure. Employees tends to implement their own solutions - mainly mass emails from their address books - and then they need to "log" Opens, Clicks, Responses into our CRM system (if at all). Additionally, this method is not CAN-SPAM compliant, so we run a risk of FTC complaints.
  • Salesforce.com integration including a connector app, bundled permission sets, user profile permissions
  • Customizable Data Extensions that use either Campaigns or Reports from Salesforce.com
  • Customizable Subscription Center for mailing list recipients to manage emails they do and do not want to receive.
  • Administrative interface is quite a bit different than Salesforce.com Likely a legacy holdover from it's roots in ExactTarget
  • Security configuration is confusing again a holdover from ExtactTarget
  • Knowledge articles lag behind each release
As the number of nonprofits and the options available to fundraise increases exponentially, it is important to distinguish our nonprofit from the others. One way of doing that is with email marketing in order to maintain engagement with our donors and volunteers. We have multiple "Giving Societies" based on contribution levels. A lot of our donors are members of more than one Giving Society. Marketing Cloud enables us to target our emails efficiently and accurately so that we do not overwhelm donor inboxes and that the messages they do receive are relevant and easy to understand in the context in which that message addresses for that donor.
Sebastian Bergendorf | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 3 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
It was used by a client, and as the client's media agency, we supported them in their usage.
  • Nice interface - can even browse data segments quite easily without being overwhelmed by loads of information.
  • Integrates well with other parts of the Salesforce stack.
  • Reporting section is very insightful and produces granular pieces of information which can easily become actionable.
  • Takes several days to create advanced segments (3rd party data), populate them and actually synchronise them with other platforms (in my case, DSP). Makes it very difficult to act with swiftness when market trends demand it.
  • Krux media pixels aren't accepted in GDPR-heavy regions, making them absolutely redundant. Clearly, Salesforce hasn't done a proper outreach in all regions to make publishers white-list their tech.
  • Rather poor match rate with DV360.
For e-commerces that are heavy on CRM and loyalty strategies Salesforce DMP can prove to be useful.
If the programmatic setup is somewhat advanced I wouldn't use Salesforce DMP, since its main strengths lies within building 1st party audience segments.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Pardot is being used across the whole organization. We use it for web forms, all email marketing efforts, and as a database. Our company uses Salesforce, and we chose Pardot because it is built into Salesforce and syncs instantly. Also, we really wanted a platform that has a visual email workflow.
  • My favorite feature of Pardot is the visual email workflows. It's very easy to see how leads will flow down the sales funnel.
  • Forms are very easy to create and manage. We have completely switched over all of our form to Pardot.
  • Pardot is built into Salesforce, making syncs instantaneous.
  • You have to pay extra if you want good customer support.
  • Sometimes the platform can be a little sluggish when trying to upload or download data lists.
  • Expensive. They are one of the more expensive platforms out there.
Pardot is great if you are using it to manage forms, emails, and all of your lead flows. Pardot works extremely well if you are using Salesforce. They are owned by the same company and the sync is fantastic.
I wouldn't use Pardot if you are a small company. They are very expensive. I also wouldn't use Pardot to build landing pages, as the builder is not that great.
February 05, 2020

Technical Consultant

SENTHILKUMAR VSK | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Salesforce Marketing Cloud Email Studio is especially useful for custom ad campaigns. It eases the whole exercise by providing handy templates, forms, buttons, text and ensures it reaches the intended recipient on time, with a trace.
  • Personalized campaigns
  • Bulk and tailored messages
  • Data collection while entering the web forms
  • UI issues with respect to template based emails
  • Small business who are particular about the one on one relationship to stay focussed and monetize the business relationship through behavior analysis.
  • Business units that are keen to leverage on omnichannel through Salesforce Marketing Cloud Email Studio.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Organizationally, we are using Salesforce Marketing Cloud Email Studio for consistency. Our brand is a huge priority for us, so by using the tools in the Studio, we're able to maintain a consistent brand feel over thousands of emails.
  • Brand Consistency
  • Scalability
  • Drag and drop functionality
  • Overlap with other Marketing Automation tools
  • Lack of customized fields
  • Tough mobile experience
It is vital if your organization is crafting tons of emails across a large employee base and target base. This allows some control within the messaging to keep Brand compliancy at an all-time high even in a 1-to-many email setting.

It is less important if you are using other Automation tools that better connect into other Marketing streams. It does not allow for dynamic capabilities of Account Based Marketing objectives.
Score 4 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Pardot as part of our Salesforce CRM to handle all of the marketing automation needs we have (like email marketing, social, and web forms) and our pipeline tracking as well as the lead qualification process our business development team needs to ensure the right people are being sent to our sales teams to unearth opportunities and close deals.
  • Integrates wonderfully with Salesforce.
  • Adds important insights to your existing CRM data.
  • Can customize easily to fit your needs.
  • Strong customer support.
  • Doesn't integrate too well with other data third-party apps.
  • Too many features are only available at higher levels.
  • Doesn't have as robust an email integration tool like HubSpot.
Pardot is likely your first choice—if you are working with Salesforce— for your CRM needs. The two are built to coexist so many Salesforce clients are steered to Pardot. As far as cost and functionality, it remains very close to competitors like HubSpot where marketing automation is the main focus.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Bepress uses a Pardot integration with Salesforce CRM to manage email campaigns and measure impact. With marketing campaigns spanning dozens of market segments, and with the task of managing each falling on one coordinator, it's essential to have software that tracks the efficacy of messages to specific segments. It's just not possible for the human memory alone to do this, but with Pardot we could track opens and links within specific campaigns, allowing us to hone our message to specific audiences based on past results.
  • Market segmentation.
  • Impact analysis.
  • UI can be somewhat complex.
  • Requires careful attention to naming syntax when creating new campaigns etc.
Any business entity using Salesforce to manage email campaigns to more than a half dozen market segments would benefit from Pardot, assuming there is buy-in from stakeholders to implement insights derived from impact analysis. We were able to attenuate our subject lines, hyperlinks, message text, and so forth based on numbers from previous messages and saw improvement across the board by acting on these insights!
November 18, 2019

Radian6 Delivers

Alexis Ramsey | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Currently, Radian6 is used across our military recruitment department to identify opportunities where our brand can become a part of the larger conversation. Using broad keywords, we’re looking for conversations surrounding enlistment, thinking about joining, and stories of extraordinary Soldiers. We have a team of six, in the system at multiple points during the day between 8 am - 12 am EST.
  • First time setup is easy to do. Keyword and dashboard creation are walked through, and results flow in quickly tell you if your set is working or not.
  • Technical support is responsive. If technical support is not fast enough for an emergency issue, our rep is quick at getting things escalated.
  • Dashboard widget options are simple to implement and easy to drill down into.
  • If you open multiple widgets and drill down, each one has to be closed separately. It would be nice to have a “reset” button.
  • The look of Radian6 has not changed in years. I think there’s room to introduced a new aesthetic, create new features, etc.
  • Choosing what columns to export for listening results would be helpful. There are unnecessary columns that need to be deleted each time an export occurs.
Radian6 is well suited to retrieve public listening topics from all major sources, including Reddit. The system also makes reporting easy with ready to go topic trend charts, medium breakdowns, and more. The system could use a facelift in terms of the looks of graphs, color scheme for the system, and general functionality. However, the system does responsive technical support and training setup.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
It's currently being used across the whole organization. We use Salesforce Marketing Cloud for our Marketing Dept to assist the sales organization in connecting with prospects and existing clients. To keep them all up to date with info on the product roadmap, product updates, and future releases and up and coming new features. Also used by Marketing to communicate events and allow registrations. A great feature is the analytics and reporting enabling us to track open rates. It addresses issues such as traditionally not being able to track communications i.e. open rates etc.
  • Reporting, analytics.
  • Automation - scheduling messaging at various times i.e. for events.
  • Lovely UI, easy to use.
  • Limited with mobile - needs development.
  • Contact import functionality can be annoying.
  • Better integration with SF components.
Email marketing campaigns for annual events can be using the scheduler tool - automation. Great way to save time and resources and plan ahead. Also Product, Sales and Marketing Campaigns for brand awareness and lead generation.

Less appropriate when working with external tools such as Outlook - requires better integration to Outlook as emails do not display properly.
Steven Wilson | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Alert Logic is currently using Evergage to provide a personalized user experience on our website. We are also utilizing the tool for A/B testing and overall user experience enhancements.
  • Easy to implement A/B tests
  • Tracking a visitors browsing history
  • The ability to create user segments based various criteria (Location, date, time, visits etc...)
  • Build complex front-end campaigns with HTML, Javascript/JQuery and API.
  • The reporting can be confusing at times.
  • More 3rd party integrations would be great.
Evergage is great for A/B testing, web personalization and overall user tracking. I feel like it still needs some help in the reporting and analytics department if this is your only tool for that.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
ResellerIncentivized
I use Salesforce Marketing Cloud Email Studio in my own role to learn more about Salesforce as an entire universe and system. I use it to learn about how the products complement each other so that I can create more effective marketing content to pass along to our clients and prospects. Our consultants implement products like Salesforce Marketing Cloud Email Studio after conducting thorough business analysis to determine whether or not it's the best fit for the client.
  • A comprehensive email marketing suite.
  • Provides a good segue into other Salesforce Marketing Products.
  • It's important for marketers today to use and implement with clients to create more effective outcomes.
  • None that I can think of -- this platform is comprehensive in terms of functionality, integration, and ease of use.
Salesforce Marketing Cloud Email Studio, I believe, accommodates a variety of technological experience and comfort. I think it's easy for new users to break into, but then again, I'm a marketer! If you have a sense of social media or other marketing tools, this will be second-nature. It makes even more sense, of course, if it's tied to your Salesforce Org so that you can leverage data and analytics to send more successful email marketing campaigns out to your contact lists. The design ability is also exciting.
Nicolas Costa Ossa | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Pardot as our main marketing automation tool. All our online marketing activities are connected to Pardot, that way we funnel all data through the application. Pardot is only used by the Marketing and Sales teams. The main problem is solving for us is that we used to have zero visibility into our Marketing big picture. Since we started using Pardot, we channel everything through there so we have complete date about our marketing campaigns, leads, ad performance, etc.
  • Lead scoring. We associate prospects actions with a score. That way we have a system to know which prospects are more likely to close when.
  • Email campaigns. You can set up not a single email campaign, but a set of them, all interconnected, so you can design (and control) your customer journey.
  • Lead management. By having Pardot as a part of our Salesforce instance, you have a complete integration between Marketing and Sales. You know where the lead is sitting all the team, and you can take action on the real-time data you see. The marketing team will nurture leads up until they are ready for a sales representative to jump in.
  • The implementation can be a little rough. Unlike other modern systems, like HubSpot, Pardot will require more attention, in both implementation and configuration. Your team will have to study and learn how to use it. It will take time to get it right. I highly recommend you do this process with an implementer.
If your business needs an intensive online content strategy and you are at least a three-person Marketing team, you can probably benefit greatly from Pardot. Especially if you are in a B2B model.

If you are putting a lot of content out there, in multiple places (online), you'll need something to help you automate and work smarter. Because is not only the tough work of developing the content and do proper distribution but the data gathering from those efforts and understanding that data to act upon it. Pardot helps you throughout the whole customer journey.
Justin Wiebe | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 6 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We are using Pardot as a way of engaging with prospective students. This is being used across the entire college and university system as a way of engaging with prospective students at all levels. This addresses a number of issues but mostly in regards to email and communications with said student body.
  • Email broadcasts are professional and clean
  • Email templates are well thought out and provide a number of good b2b solutions
  • SMS is involved and functional.
  • SMS could be more thought out and engaging.
  • Email is not as sophisticated as in Marketing Cloud.
  • Users are not as easily up to speed as they are with Marketing Cloud.
  • The whole experience seems a bit piece meal.
Pardot is a solution that is ultimately more of a B2B product rather than a B2C solution. This provides some limitations as it relates to the higher education ecosystem in which I work. It still can function as well as Marketing Cloud but ultimately it is not as robust and "clean" interface as that with Marketing Cloud. It is a solution that can work from a grad school perspective. The market segment is somewhat more in line with this realm.
May 14, 2019

Pardot Review

Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Pardot is used across various departments in my organization, specifically in marketing. It's extremely useful for quick data consumption and provides solid interaction history that we use to help target specific users for campaigns as we plan and revise them.
  • Extremely clean and user-friendly dashboard
  • Unlimited automation branching
  • Strong customer service team
  • Extremely pricey - not good for small companies
  • Solution only B2B focus
  • Not many integration options
Pardot is the leader in the marketing automation space that is specifically made for large organizations that have large email distribution lists and diverse customer bases. Due to the high price tag, it is less appropriate for smaller organizations who are looking to just increase traffic to their sites. There are better platforms for that.
May 09, 2019

Pardot

Richard Massey | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Pardot was initially implemented for external marketing purposes - to send company updates to our customers. More recently we have extended the use to include more targeted updates on existing projects as well as all company-wide internal updates. I would estimate that we send out at least 2-3 targeted emails per week and a similar number of internal company announcements.
  • Ease of creating emails based on templates
  • seamless integration with salesforce
  • little ongoing maintenance required from an administration perspective.
  • The interface looks a little dated
  • File storage capacity is low and needs constant management
We use it in a very simplistic implementation so we do not push the boundaries of the system. It suits our needs perfectly. We have, in the past, suffered through a lack of internal support for the system - just to help with the little questions that pop up from time to time.
Jacqueline Fassett | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Our Marketing and Sales teams rely on Pardot to help them build, track, and report on our sales pipeline. Marketing is able to build content, such as emails or landing pages, and generate then nurture leads. Once they are engaged enough or qualified our Sales team is able to reach out to those leads to understand their needs and build a relationship. We get a full view of our pipeline and lifecycle- helping us market and sell better/deeper.
  • Lead nurturing
  • Automation
  • Sales-marketing alignment
  • Campaign reporting
  • Social media listening
  • Social media management
  • Social media monitoring
  • B2C marketing automation
Pardot is great for midsized B2B organizations who have at least 2 people on their Marketing and Sales teams and are looking to streamline their efforts and fill their pipeline. If your teams regularly use digital marketing tactics to find and nurture leads, this is a great platform to consider.
May 08, 2019

Pardot is King

Jordan Linford | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
It is our Marketing engine. We run every lead through it to be scored, graded, communicated to, measured, routed and analyzed. We also host all of our content and forms there as well.
  • Automation rules are a life saver.
  • Email campaigns are super easy to create and launch.
  • Database management is a cinch with global search, easy tag management systems and automated list builds.
  • Forms and content all come with vanity URLs and trackable links.
  • Email nurture campaigns get really hairy really fast.
  • To this day cannot find a good use for folders.
  • They need more nuanced roles.
  • The form customization is a bit limited.
Perfect for large scale marketing management. It is on the higher price end. It's great for lead scoring and grading combo. It's the best database management system there is.
Return to navigation