Item: Salesforce Marketing Cloud
Rating: 8
Author: Verified User

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use SFMC to send emails and push notifications to our customers. We use all the main products Marketing Cloud offers: Email Studio, Mobile Studio, Automation Studio, and Journey Builder. We also use Einstein's Predictive intelligence for product recommendations and analytics builder for reporting. For building emails, we use content builder, and we find it very easy to use the drag-and-drop function to build email templates.

Pros and Cons

SFMC has very good Journey builder functionality.
There some very good built in reports available.
Email studio has a lot of functionality for email personalization.

Automation studio is very hard to use. We need to create a Data extension with all required fields before we can run SQL. So it takes a lot of time.
Query Studio is much easier to use but it often gives an error while running the same SQL in Automation Studio works fine.
We were not able to set up SMS messages as SFMC is not supporting MMS which is a big problem.

Return on Investment

SFMC can personalize content based on subscriber preference. This helped us to improve click-through rates and revenue.
Einstein Predictive Intelligence builds customer profiles, helping us understand each subscriber and tailor our marketing communications accordingly.
Ad Studio connects our email profile to our social media profile, which helps us spend money on social ads more effectively.

Scalability

Salesforce Marketing Cloud helps create profiles for each subscriber. The Contact Builder feature stores information about every subscriber, including whether they're an active customer, their purchase history from the last year, and their email engagement metrics. It also identifies the likelihood of a subscriber churning, aiding in creating personalized campaigns to boost company revenue.

Campaign Performance

We extensively use Journey Builder functionality, which provides various options for creating campaigns like abandoned cart reminders, welcome journeys, and API-triggered campaigns. This saves a lot of time for email specialists since user-friendly drag-and-drop tools are available, including wait activities and decision splits, as well as the assistance of Einstein Intelligence.

Alternatives Considered

Mailchimp

Salesforce Marketing Cloud offers many opportunities for personalization and supports big data integration. It features powerful tools like SQL for data and AMPscript for email creation. If someone wants to master the platform, it might require some initial learning, which I find very important. Email marketing specialists can improve their skills by completing Trailhead courses.

Key Insights

Do you think Salesforce Marketing Cloud delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with Salesforce Marketing Cloud's feature set?

Yes

Did Salesforce Marketing Cloud live up to sales and marketing promises?

Yes

Did implementation of Salesforce Marketing Cloud go as expected?

I wasn't involved with the implementation phase

Would you buy Salesforce Marketing Cloud again?

Yes

Other Software Used

Adobe Dreamweaver, Adobe Analytics

Likelihood to Recommend

Overall, I find SFMC to be a great tool. It's easy to navigate, and there's a helpful community of professionals available to assist with any issues. Trailhead is also a useful resource for beginners looking to learn more about Marketing Cloud. Also, there are so many great tools like Journey Builder and Email studio that help to personalize emails to each subscriber.

Salesforce Marketing Cloud experience.

Modules Used

Overall Satisfaction with Salesforce Marketing Cloud