Needed Software to Help Simplify

Salesforce is Still King of the Hill, even in Marketing

Salesforce is the central repository for our business. All of our user activities like signups, payment history, the apps they have used and when, our marketing communications, our presentation collateral, and our customer support....all lie within the Salesforce cloud. It is the key to our customer facing business, and the Marketing Cloud is just one more piece to the puzzle.

Pros

Marketing Automation is hugely important to any business looking to scale their user base. SFDC's Marketing Cloud allows all communications that go to customers to be tracked, seamlessly within your overall SFDC instance. Campaigns to different groups are a cinch to setup. They have a nice, graphic UI for overall management, much better than the core SFDC stuff, for sure. Overall, this is a great tool to add to your company toolkit.

Cons

Maybe I am in the minority, but just about anything in Salesforce takes a little bit more time to learn than it seems like it should. Their UI is a touch clunky, and it certainly could use more design.

Amazing Automation with Salesforce Marketing Cloud

We've been using Salesforce Marketing Cloud for over a year now, and it has been an invaluable resource for our automated marketing campaigns. The platform is highly customizable and allows us to easily create personalized campaigns to meet our specific needs. The only downside is the cost, but it's well worth it for the time and money it saves us.

Pros

Salesforce Marketing Cloud offers amazing automation features that help to reduce manual labor and increase efficiency. The platform is highly customizable and allows us to easily create personalized marketing campaigns to meet our specific needs.

Cons

Salesforce Marketing Cloud can be expensive, so it might not be an option for small businesses with limited budgets. Additionally, the platform can be complex and overwhelming to learn, which can be a barrier for new users.

Streer clear of Marketing Cloud if you're a small company

It's 2020 and this product has the UX of the 2000's and a backlog of tech debt and bugs for a premium price. For a small business I'd HIGHLY recommend going with something else. Not only do you pay a PREMIUM price for Marketing Cloud, but you'll also end up spending more time than you should trying to figure out this product. There are "features" that exist, like data conversion on automations, but you'll have to spend time figuring out that they exist so you can e-mail support and request they turn them on, when they should have just been there in the first place.

Pros

I like that Send Time Optimization was included, this was extra with the previous e-mail marketing product we used.

Cons

First, we ended up in Google's black hole even when following the plan laid out by our integration partner. That you need an integration partner to get a small business setup should have been a huge red flag, but we thought we were stepping up to a more powerful e-mail product. There are bugs everywhere. Our integration partner had many tips like making sure to unselect an e-mail reselect it and stop and start a trigger to make sure the new e-mail is used, these are things that should be handled by the UX and not tribal knowledge. We used alias in our e-mails to aid in reporting, but sometimes they show up in the report and sometimes it shows the original URL. We opened a ticket and months later it was closed with no resolution, because there's a back end bug in their system that they believed was causing the issue. There's a lot of duplicated functionality that has different features. Want to manage your data extension you can do it in Email Studio or Contact Builder, BUT the features are different between the two. You can only easily add records in one of them so you have to remember which one you can do a specific action in. Their reporting is limited on Journey's and you'll need to extract all the data to do any deep dives. You'll need to use Journey's if you want to use send time optimization or any of the AI logic, so you're guaranteed to have to build your own reporting in your own tools. We needed this to realize we were in the Google black hole.

If you're a Salesforce user, it's a no brainer

Overall, i'm very satisfied with Salesforce Marketing Cloud and cannot imagine having to rely on multiple tools to execute the same functionalities like I used to

Pros

Salesforce Marketing Cloud has been a great all-in-one solution for my team as we previously relied on multiple tools for customer journey management, email campaigns, and analytics, not to mention updating the CRM after. The UX was pretty easy to understand and the platform and the list feature has made pipeline management so much more efficient

Cons

One of our campaigns bugged and contacts received duplicate emails. When I tried to contact customer service, it was almost impossible to get in touch so we had to figure out the solution internally which took a while. The price is also pretty high if your company is not paying for it

Excellent CRM tool

My overall experience with Salesforce has been very good. It generates more efficiency in our daily work and increases our companies sales and marketing activities.

Pros

Salesforce offers a comprehensive CRM solution with a lot of really good features. The analytics and reporting capabilities are excellent and the amount of customizable features is ridiculous. It is also easy to integrate with other apps which is one of it's most important features.

Cons

Salesforce can be complex and the price is also quite high. But if you want the best, you have to pay for it. In my opinion, Salesforce it the best CRM solution that i have used.

Most easy-to-use email content builder

SFMC is an application that makes life easy.

Pros

was really simple to use, comprehend, and navigate, and it offered helpful automated marketing capabilities that made reaching a big audience straightforward. The email builder is absolutely great with its drag and drop functions and the ability to preview and send a test email to yourself to view how the email looks like before sending it out to a larger audience makes it an absolutely wonderful application.

Cons

The only con i can think of is not being able to add video content to your email and not being able to add more than a 5MB file (image).

Utilitarian but outdated UI

Easy email marketing and list/preference center management.

Pros

Once users get up to speed, it's a very easy UI to master and accomplish email marketing tasks quickly. Good list management and customizability, along with reporting.

Cons

The UI is quite outdated, and the workflows are very intuitive -easy to get up to speed on, but it does require an "expert" on the team to help you onboard to how the business uses the software, as it's pretty free-form.

Worth buying for the tight integration with Sales Cloud

Pros

Originally we purchased a solution from a boutique third party vendor but ended up requiring a fair amount of custom development in order to get a workable solution. We moved to Marketing Cloud after a fair amount of pain. The integration was immediate and we were able to quickly move most of our marketing campaigns onto Marketing Cloud. The primary use case is to solicit leads from our landing page and setup the appropriate objects in SFDC. The sales team was very accommodating when it comes to working with our budget and providing initial support and configuration.

Cons

Our Marketing Cloud has a restriction on the number of contacts that can be in our mailable database. We constantly get reminders to either remove contacts or upgrading to a higher limit plan. We ran into an issue as one feature required access to specific Google APIs. We submitted a feature request but it's been months and they only provided a workaround that involved developer resources on our end.

Daily user of Salesforce Marketing Cloud

As a daily user I benefit a lot from using Marketing Cloud (formerly known as Exact Target) as a marketing campaign tool.

Pros

What Salesforce contributes to our strategy and our company overall is unmatched. We're using it daily with lots of success rate.

Cons

The platform can be buggy sometimes and loading times are below average.

Expensive but not worth it

Disappointing. Don't waste your money, there are better tools out there.

Pros

This product poses itself as top of class, but that's only in pricing. It is complicated and not marketing friendly. The interface is not userfriendly and the tool does not support multiple brands without a heavy pricetag.

Cons

The price, the user experience, the lack of multibrand use. When I threatened to take my business elsewhere we had one call with the VP but then he stopped responding to calls and emails.

Marketing Cloud is the optimal integration for our Salesforce-powered website

We love the integration with our current Salesforce Commerce Cloud website and the ability to track everything within and not worry about dozens of different integrations to accomplish the same thing. Because Salesforce is a larger company, you can expect great support, knowledgeable account managers, and constant improvements. As with any platform, there are things we'd like for it to be able to do, I'm confident that in time, many of those things will become available. And anything that doesn't, we'll continue to use 3rd party integrations.

Pros

As with all things SalesForce you can expect nothing but the top level of customer support and options. We currently run a Salesforce website, so the integration is flawless and easy. There's not much additional setup or any big learning curve to start using it. The Marketing Cloud is a great way to easily manage our social media accounts, facebook posting, and email automation solutions. Because this platform is integrated with our website, it's still very easy to have outside vendors and software solutions that integrate with it. An example of that is that we still use Mailchimp to help manage our email channel even though the Marketing Cloud offers an email solution as part of their software.

Cons

The main disadvantages of using this software are pretty much the same disadvantages of any of the Salesforce platforms and/or integrations. For the uninitiated those are: - Some of the most costly software that accomplishes the same tasks as other platforms - Can be a bit complicated to navigate due to the sheer possibilities + abilities you have using the Salesforce platform. If you understand both the expenses associated with using Salesforce and have people who can either learn it, or teach it, then i'd say there's no other real disadvantages to using it!

A heavy hitter, but work to be done in UX

Despite being somewhat clumsy in real-world use, Marketing Cloud is a powerful, high quality suite for those looking to pursue robust, personalized digital campaigns.

Pros

This is an outstanding product for 1:1 engagement with an existing audience. We're still somewhat new to it, but are quickly coming up to speed. Best modules are open APIs, Journey Builder (basically pulls the entire suite together to build repeatable workflows), Audience builder (works hand/glove with Journey Builder), and Mobile Studio. It will take time for us to gather enough behavior and other attribute values to really put this to work. But it has plenty of horsepower and data tools and really get us to advanced personalization and performance analysis.

Cons

The suite is a set of modules cobbled together via the original product (ExactTarget) and new apps purchased by SFDC (e.g., Social Studio, which as Radian 6). This makes it cumbersome to assemble an entire campaign because you're constantly pinging back and forth through different modules (via a tabbed interface) to get things done. It's probably too late now for a truly unified, campaign-based UI, so it will have to do.

Salesforce,

Overall, Salesforce is an EXCELLENT choice for small and medium size organizations. No matter what your company is engaged in, nor the workflow you utilize, this is a CRM that has got you covered! Impetus Global Technology provides our clients with a LARGE assortment of products and services, which has always been a source of problems when searching for line-of-business software stacks. Salesforce is the first application that we have employed as a CRM, which has addressed our need for a very flexible solution, while maintaining the ease of use and affordability of deployment and maintenance.

Pros

The pros that come inherently, with Salesforce, number far in excess of the amount of reading, anyone wants to give some review from the typical CEO. Therefor I will provide a direct, concise, list of the benefits we attained at Impetus Global Technology when we adopted this software. * Effective Cost * Time-Saving Ability * Support * Ease of Use and Training Availability * Extensible by Nature * Incentives to Sales Employees

Cons

Honestly, the task of espousing a list of Cons, towards this business tool has proven quite the challenging endeavor. Not only am I CEO, but also I hold the position of Director of Software Development. Speaking now as a developer, I would encourage introducing more direct compatibility with Visual Studio and/or the JetBrains stack. By the previous statement, I mostly refer to some sort of Extension or Framework that can be utilized through something such as a Xamarin or WPF application to source business data. From the view of an Executive, I cannot honestly provide any criticism that would merit the publishing of a review.

One of the best CRM ever

Salesforce helped us a lot in our work tasks, you can say that he can do all your work tasks, especially if you work in a team in the field of marketing, customer follow-up, advertising campaigns, customer targeting, data collection, real estate and others In summary, this program can accomplish large and heavy tasks for your company with many advantages that will make it easier for you to use the program

Pros

Salesforce offers a tons of flexibility. Salesforce allows you to build anything you can imagine. The CRM can perform some serious heavy lifting and integrates with practically all programs on the market. Tasks let you keep track of ongoing discussions or tasks with clients and prospects, whilst reporting lets you monitor how your team is performing.

Cons

Sometimes it is slow to use However, that is just how CRMs are, I've looked at many different CRMs available, and Salesforce has so far proven to be the finest.

Salesforce Marketing Cloud Review

I love Salesforce products. I think investing in the cloud solutions was one of the best decisions my team has made. We are able to manage our social channels with ease.

Pros

If you are using other Salesforce Cloud solutions this easily integrates into your overall marketing strategy. The support team is very helpful and answers question in a timely fashion. They are great to work with!

Cons

If you don't use other Salesforce Cloud solutions you won't get all the benefits of this tool. It really helps to use all Saleforce products if you want synergy among all of your initiatives. It is a costly investment, but if you are willing to spend the money the cloud solutions can really help grow your business and make your team more efficient.