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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)
    8.2
    82%
  • 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

(1351)

Attribute Ratings

Reviews

(1-4 of 4)
Companies can't remove reviews or game the system. Here's why
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use evergage to personalize customer experience and show them contextual ads or products they can use. We also use it to build customer profiles and make recommendations to them so they have better experience with our products.
  • Building Customer profile e.g. also customer about there business needs
  • Contextual Ads
  • Banners & interstitials
  • It is not very easy to use for a marketer. You need a dedicated technical guy to use it
  • UI/UX can be improved
  • Support response can be improved
If you have a technical dedicated user then I would recommend it. It's a personalization tool, but the user cannot be just any marketer.
  • Improved customer engagement
  • Reduced time to execute caimpaigns
Monetate. We are using both Monetate and evergage. Evergage is being used more on the control panel side.
Marketing
You need to be lil technical. You need to know basic HTML
  • Contextual ADs
  • Customer profiler
  • Banners
  • Reduce support calls
  • Improve personaliztion
  • Cross selling products
  • Improve customer engagement
  • Improve NPS
  • Customer help me modals
  • Improve sales
  • Reduce churn & customer support
We use it often to improve customer engagement
No
  • Price
  • Product Features
  • Product Usability
How quickly somebody can use the product to improve customer personalization and engagement.
I 'll probably look for a product that is more easy to use and more intuitive.
Yes
Change management was a small part of the implementation and was well-handled
It took descent amount of time to get it implement but it was done correctly.
  • In-person training
  • Self-taught
Training program is not very well established. There is very little documentations. More often than not it's in-person training. I wish there were more video tutorials so that somebody can learn the system quickly. Their documentation is very much like an RFP. Long and very technichal. They should definitly improve on this area.
It's is very complex without inperson training. It is not intuitive at all.
Response time is slow. Have to repeat requirements multiple times.
Yes
We have premium support
No
We wanted to build a customer profile tool. System was not built for that find of functionality but they helped us build a profiler.
It is not easy to use.
  • Marketing
  • Support
  • Marketing
We are using it for millions of visitors every months
I never had any reliability issues. It was always up
Performance of evergage system is pretty good.
  • Google Analytics
  • Exact Target
  • Billing systems
  • BI System
Data import export every day.
  • File import/export
  • API (e.g. SOAP or REST)
  • Javascript widgets
Integration with evergage can be time consuming depending of the systems you are trying to integerate
Plan ahead and do it in phases
They were in constant communication with all key stakeholders.
Easy to work but slow to respond
NA
No
Pam Risch | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
  • Simple and straightforward set-up and implementation.
  • Easy to use interface.
  • Excellent support and very easy to do business with.
  • Reporting is still a challenge, even with the OEM from GoodData. There are some nice default reports built-in, but you need to be a DBA to edit those default reports or build anything on your own in GoodData.
  • Email creation is still a little kludgy. If you want to reuse or edit an email, you need to first create an email template then create an email to send. I understand Pardot is doing some work here to simplify.
  • Drip logic is less granular than competing solutions like Marketo, i.e. shortest wait time in Pardot is 1 day. In Marketo, I could trigger workflow in an drip program by the minute.
  • Sync time with SFDC is every 10 minutes. It would be really great to have real-time sync with the CRM.
Pardot's sweet spot right now is small to mid-sized enterprises. If you're part of this demographic and are looking for marketing automation, they should definitely be on your short list. Pardot provides comparable marketing automation functionality to its competitors (lead nurturing, visitor behavior tracking, lead scoring, etc.) in a much more user friendly interface, and with a level of customer service that is sorely lacking at some of these other vendors.
  • We did not need a dedicated person to manage the system. All members of the marketing team were able to use Pardot to do their jobs with pretty minimal training.
  • We were able to end a subscription to Spredfast to manage our social posting once that functionality was built in to Pardot.
At the time, Pardot was the only other marketing automation system that supported SugarCRM.
10,000 to 25,000
B2B
20
The Marketing team uses the product as well as the sales team to review prospect activity.
  • Email marketing.
  • Lead management (scoring, routing, follow-up, prioritization, nurturing).
  • Visitor/prospect behavior tracking.
  • Social media message delivery/engagement.
For a SugarCRM user, you don't have many options for marketing automation. Pardot is definitely the way to go for those users. If you're using Salesforce.com, I think there are still unanswered questions as to what happens to Pardot since Salesforce.com acquired ExactTarget/Pardot in June 2013. Product roadmap details are being worked out, so we'll see.
We switched from Loopfuse as we were completely dissatisfied with Loopfuse's functionality.
  • Implemented in-house
We were able to implement ourselves in 30 days, which included a migration from Loopfuse. The process was very straightforward and Pardot provides good documentation using Basecamp during the implementation phase. Your Pardot implementation specialist is a resource available during your 60 day implementation phase and you can ask any and all questions.
  • Online training
  • In-person training
  • Self-taught
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.
This is one area where I think Pardot could improve. They do a good job of providing online training on the basics. I think power users could benefit from more advanced training topics.
Yes, the product was easy to learn if you're the type of person who likes to jump in ang play with a product. The Knowledge Base is very thorough and covers the basics well. However, I think one of the key reasons folks select Pardot is that they do not have a lot of marketing automation expertise. For those users, training is a must.
No
This is where Pardot really shines. From your initial sales experience to the implementation specialists and technical support, Pardot delivers. I have dealt with a number of Pardashians through my consulting work and every one of them was extremely friendly, knowledgeable and easy to work with.
Overall, the product is very easy to use with a modern, intuitive user interface. There are still a couple of areas where they could improve usability, i.e. email templates/sends (previously mentioned), and the layout templates can be a bit confusing to work with, particularly if you do not code HTML.
There have been a couple of service incidents over the past few months. I'm not sure if it has to do with Pardot integrating their infrastructure with ExactTarget. However, they responded well with proactive communication and a debrief as to what happened.
From my experience, Pardot performed much better here compared to other marketing automation vendors.
  • Pardot provides pre-built connectors that we used for Webex, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Google AdWords. They also offer connectors for other web event platforms, EventBrite, Wistia, etc.
  • I also worked on consulting projects where we were able to use the Pardot API to connect to an organization's product and send data bi-directionally.
The custom integrations were very challenging, but we received excellent support from Pardot during the process.
September 27, 2013

Pardot is a Head Above

Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
  • The UI is extremely easy to understand and operate. I can quickly view statistics on all of my emails, web-to-lead forms, landing pages, etc.
  • Easy integration with our CRM and the ability to assign leads and tasks to reps based on customer actions is a huge advantage.
  • Easily map out your marketing automation and customer/prospect tracking is a great tool for our sales team.
  • Keep track of your search engine rankings with auto generated reports based on keywords you choose. Tracks Google, Yahoo, and Bing results.
  • Their technical support and support community are very good. They actually take customer feedback and suggestions and implement them!
  • It could use a little more work with social marketing integration. Need to add integration with more social networks, although big improvements have been made to this feature in the last 6 months.
  • The benefits are big!
They have met or surpassed all of our major needs/desires in terms of operation and efficiency. It is a great product and competitively priced.
This is a great program that I would recommend to anyone looking to solve their enterprise email marketing, marketing automation, and lead management needs.
  • Marketing Automation.
  • Email Marketing.
  • Lead Management, Generation, Segmentation, and Nurturing.
  • Analytics.
Silverpop (Engage B2B)
We also evaluated Marketo and Eloqua. Pardot not only fit our needs the best, but was also priced competitively.
  • Vendor implemented
  • Implemented in-house
Implementation was extremely easy and quick.
  • Online training
  • In-person training
  • Self-taught
Their in-person training was very helpful and the trainer was an expert on all of the functions and features.
Their online training is extensive and detailed, but it is still online training. Training done live with an expert showing you is always better.
Yes, the product is very easy to learn even without training. It didn't take us much time to learn the software just by perusing it and playing around. We really only needed the training for very specific questions on features and setup.
No
I don't believe they offer this, and if so, we have never needed it. There is rarely an issue that ever comes up with the program, and they contact us regularly to check in just to be sure. Yes, they actually contact us on a regular basis to ensure everything is going smoothly! Their customer support is excellent!
They contact us on a regular basis to ensure everything is going well, they keep us updated on new enhancements to the program and also offer weekly webinars to learn more about the program and features. When we do have an issue come up, which is extremely rare, they answer our requests promptly.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
  • Marketing Automation in general can sometimes feel a little overwhelming. Meaning that these applications do so much, so where do you start first. Here is a quick glimpse into what Pardot does well for Advantix:
  • Integration with CRM's. As I shared earlier Salesforce is one of Advantix' main operating platforms and with the use of this system over the last 10 years has become highly customized. Integration for us was important as we wanted to be able to drive specific account/contact records into Pardot. With the support of some minor code, Pardot + Salesforce met our need to be able to automatically send any new contacts created in Salesforce to Pardot.
  • Identifying Implicit Behavior - Out of the 4 MA's apps we researched, Pardot was one of the applications that included Prospects Activities CRM integration as part of the monthly subscription fee. There is something to be said about the analytical data you receive from Google which is quite high-level (quantitative data about interaction with a corporate website), it's a whole different thing to get in-depth feedback as to your prospects 5 W's (who, what, when, where, why) and be able to build out marketing campaigns, dynamic content, etc tailored to prospect segments based on their behavior. Pardot allows us to do that. The possibilities to connect become endless.
  • Supporting Sales & Operations marketing efforts - Building brand awareness is important for any business and while you have sales reps prospecting, operations staff supporting, Pardot's engine provides businesses with a way for us to duplicate our efforts to support marketing initiatives across multiple depts.
  • Not sure if it is on Pardot's road map; however, the only downfall I see with this application currently is the ability to specify mutiple url's within an email (drip program or list email) that if clicked will allow the action to send that prospect to another drip program. For example, you have created an email that contains 3 urls for three different products you sell. If the prospect clicks on Widget A link and Widget C link I would like to send a follow-on email or send that prospect to both a drip on Widget A and a drip on Widget C.
  • Today, Pardot only allows you to specify a single url to add a completion action.
  • Marketing Automation as a whole instantly brings quantifiable benefits to any business. Initially, Pardot provided something that Advantix was lacking, more visibility and insight. The follow-on to that was the growth of knowledge, better communication, lead identification and development, etc...
  • With the business won from utilizing this application it has more than paid for itself.
The old saying: If it ain't broke, why fix it.
Marketing Automation is a healthy choice for any growing business. It is important when evaluating that you define your core goals and objectives of what your business wants to gain from such a technology. From there you will be able to better understand which application best fits your needs. For us our core goals and objectives were met by selecting Pardot and as Pardot develops and grows in their applications capabilities so do we.
10
Marketing, Sales, IT, Executive
3
Marketing, IT/Development
  • Pardot is used to accomplish a plethora of items not visible to Advantix prior to our two year engagement including, but not limited to:
  • Lead Scoring
  • Lead Capture
  • Implicit and Explicit Activities
  • Email Marketing
  • Social Data
  • Detailed reporting and Analytics
  • Connectors to 3rd party apps such as Facebook, Twitter, Online Meeting Apps
Not applicable
For over 10 years, we have been utilizing Salesforce as our core businesses operating system, so when evaluating Marketing Automation apps we went to the App Exchange to search for the best. Our search included Marekto, Eloqua, Manticore, and Pardot.
  • Vendor implemented
  • Implemented in-house
When implementing any new application I would recommend that you have folks that understand your business processes, tools and systems and IT/Development represented.
  • Online training
  • In-person training
  • Self-taught
When we implemented Pardot I was impressed to see that they used Project Path (Basecamp.com) to on-board new clients (training was part of on-boarding process). On-going, I have been extremely impressed by our Client Advocate.
The topics and content are well thought out, but Pardot I have to be honest the last webinar I attended the guy sounded drunk. My team and I continue to attend the webinars as knowledge is key and who best to put on a clinic than that of the folks working within the company!
Yes and No. As I have shared already this application is very intuitive; however, due to the sophistication of our CRM environment I have found myself needing to work with online support and/or our client advocate specifically on complicated scenarios.
Advantix has 60K+ account/contact records within our CRM and we did not want to load all of that data in Pardot. So custom code was built so that accounts/contacts associated with a specific record type would automatically load in Pardot.
No
As a Pardot customer I have experienced support via online to live chat and have been very happy with the SLA's.
Pardot built an intuitive application.
Over the past two years, I have experienced high availability of this application.
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.
  • Not applicable
On a scale of 1-10, 9 for during and post sales.
There was really no need to negotiate as the pricing offered was extremely competitive and comparable to the other 4 MA apps we evaluated (Marketo, Pardot, Manticore, and Eloqua). Advantix leadership likes month to month contracts and Pardot was on the only one offering such a term so that resulted in Pardot receiving a slightly higher evaluation score.
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