19 Aug Marketing Cloud vs. Pardot – which one to choose? (Part-2)
In our last article, we started comparing Salesforce Marketing Cloud to Pardot.
Developed by ExactTarget, SFMC – Salesforce Marketing Cloud is an advanced marketing automation solution that can serve both B2B and B2C scenarios.
Take insurance companies for example: Insurance companies that are B2C focused – like auto and life, would prefer Marketing Cloud, whereas carriers who work with brokerages might consider Pardot.
Alternatively, they can set up Business Units within Marketing Cloud.
Confused?
Last week we discussed Pardot’s advantages, as a B2B Marketing Automation solution with features adapted to a Sales team – out of the box, including real-time alerts and lead qualification.
Let’s discuss the Marketing Cloud advantages.
B2B vs. B2C Marketing Automation (Continued)
The Marketing Cloud advantage : Multi-channels, Flexible Data Structure and Customer Journeys
Today’s customers have come to expect a 1-to-1 personal experience.
What this means first – is that customers would like to choose which channel of communication suits them best.
“We love subscribers who don’t open our emails“, said no marketer ever.
True, marketers love emails and have mastered tracking of opens and CTR analysis. But some clients would prefer to be contacted by SMS, Messenger, WhatsApp, or keep all messages from a brand in the App. So, if marketers want to get heard – they need to adapt.
With the proper modules from Salesforce and ExactTarget, Marketing Cloud does it all, and in a scalable manner.
Marketing Cloud is modular, so when you need to extend fucntionalities – you add a module, like Social Studio which enables communications and tracking on Social Media, or Mobile Studio for Mobile Apps and SMS integrations.
To complement it, Marketing Cloud offers Journey Builder as another added module, so you can sync between all channels. For the first time, Marketers are not helpless when customers stop opening emails.
For example, you can plan a re-engagement campaign via Messenger or SMS in the holiday season for those who don’t open emails – you’d set it up to trigger with Journey Builder.
“We love abandoned carts!” said no retailer, ever.
Marketing Cloud was conceived with API integrations in it’s core, the data structure is flexible and can easily connect to Salesforce to sync any data.
You can add a behavioral dimension data and associate it to contacts to drive new marketing initiatives, and so, we set up more sophisticated abandoned-carts flows, sent directly from Marketing Cloud.
Conclusion
When we come to know both systems, we see that both solutions are solid Marketing Automation systems that connect to Salesforce – where you can have marketing data available to the sales team, or use Sales and Service data to drive marketing messages.
Nevertheless, the differences are significant. One can say that Marketing Cloud is more adapted to Retail and B2C and Pardot to B2B, but there are certainly use-cases and other considerations that would make a company implement them the other way around:
Pardot wins on simplicity and a more shallow learning curve, which means less implementation costs.
It is also made with Sales team(s) in mind – working to prequalify leads – including Alerts, Scoring and Grading.
Marketing Cloud wins the battle on multiple channels communications, API integrations and personalized customer journeys.
What’s your scenario?
Make sure to adapt the marketing automation tool to the sales process, and not vice versa.