A customer relationship management (CRM) tool called Salesforce Marketing Cloud assists marketers in creating and overseeing relationships with and campaigns for their target audiences.
As we can see from its past, Salesforce did not create the core of it SFMC; rather, they bought it in 2013 together with ExactTarget. This is crucial since Salesforce Marketing Cloud is still often referred to as “ExactTarget.”
As part of the same transaction, Salesforce also bought Pardot, which ExactTarget had previously purchased. In contrast to ExactTarget, which was more geared toward B2C marketing, Pardot was developed as a B2B marketing automation platform for small firms. It is still a part of the Salesforce ecosystem. SFMC/ExactTarget has not yet merged with it or integrated with it.
Additionally, it was not given the moniker “Cloud” Salesforce product.
Salesforce Marketing Cloud is a marketing platform that, among among other things, provides support for the execution of multi-channel campaigns, dynamic customer journeys; pre-and post-campaign analytics, audience development and segmentation, audience engagement and advertising on social media, and a platform for data management. By utilizing the “Studios” and “Builders” components, SFMC does this.
- Communication channels are managed and interacted with in “studios.” SFMC comes with Email Studio, Social Studio, and Mobile Studio.
- “Builders” are employed in the Salesforce Marketing Cloud platform to handle data, content, and customer journeys. Although they are widely used in studios, they are not necessary (e.g., Analytics Builder).
What applications are there for Salesforce Marketing Cloud?
A feature-rich platform with marketing-related functions capabilities is Salesforce Marketing Cloud. Here are some instances of this:
- Real-time interaction with customers
- Email and marketing automation
- Social media interaction, listening, and advertising
- Push notifications and texting on mobile devices (SMS)
- Customer marketing analytics
The Benefits of the Marketing Cloud
These four bullet points from Salesforce show the advantages of its Marketing Cloud platform:
A thorough knowledge of the consumer is achievable thanks to this platform, which connects data from many sources and devices to provide a single, unified perspective of the customer. Data from first, second, and third parties can also be purchased and activated.
Customized AI: Marketing Cloud enables data fusion with the Einstein tool, enabling AI to plan engagements. The platform therefore enables customized customer communication based on their relationship with the brand.
The Salesforce marketing platform builds interest and awareness throughout the process (a two-way real-time engagement), as well as information to provide each customer with the best course of action for them.
Impact evaluation The Google Marketing Cloud tracks customer behavior across several channels and devices using artificial intelligence and the online application Google Analytics 360.
Data extensions (tables) that may be joined together to create a relational database supported by SQL are used in the Marketing Cloud to handle data.
This provides SFMC an advantage over rivals that only support a restricted data model confined by the data they can import and process. It also helps that SFMC allows you to store a range of data types and create your own data model.
This is possible because it enables more intricate audience segmentation and development within SFMC, among other things.
Strengths for integration:
Salesforce Marketing Cloud can pull data from several sources and provides a wide range of integration features.
In addition to the expected link to Salesforce’s Sales Cloud and Service Cloud, SFMC offers a number of APIs, including a REST API and a SOAP API (through Marketing Cloud Connect).
These APIs are frequently used to import material, start triggered sends, and add to your existing contact information in SFMC.
Submissions by Third Parties
There are several third-party apps available for Salesforce Marketing Cloud, including those from the Salesforce AppExchange, that may be utilized to enhance its features and adapt it to your particular business needs. SFMC’s version of the Apple App Store or Google Play Store is the AppExchange (and other Salesforce Clouds).
SFMC may be improved with a range of third-party solutions from Salesforce partners, in addition to the AppExchange.
Actionable Artificial Intelligence
Salesforce’s “Einstein” artificial intelligence technology is used in a variety of innovative ways inside SFMC, including:
- Use engagement scoring to predict who will respond to messages.
- Sent time optimization forecasts when a message should be sent to each recipient in order to guarantee that it gets opened as soon as feasible.
- Look at each person’s engagement frequency to determine how many messages to deliver to them individually.
The Marketing Cloud offers both B2B (where the client is another company) and B2C (when the product or service is sold directly to the consumer) services.
the customer or end consumer).
Does the Marketing Cloud work for all types of businesses?
Despite the fact that Marketing Cloud is generally considered an enterprise-level platform (which it is), its several versions allow it to be utilized by companies of all sizes.
With the a-la-carte style selection of add-on features, you can also tailor SFMC to your particular needs, and it can adjust to your (and your customers’) evolving demands.
As has already been said, Salesforce Marketing Cloud is largely a B2C platform, but that does not mean B2B companies do not utilize it. Consumers, especially decision-makers inside a company, need customer experiences that are comparable to those offered to B2C customers, which is why SFMC’s use in B2B is expanding. Although SFMC is not the most affordable solution in its category, it is an extendable platform that can grow with your company and is a long-lasting tool. This should be considered by all of the technical tools in your stack.
New Cloud Marketing Technologies
Audience Studio: Discover new audiences with (formerly Salesforce DMP), which claims to “collect data from any source and device… analyze trillions of events and billions of profiles to discover new high-value categories for 1-to-1 device ad targeting.”
Data Studio: You may access data lakes via Data Studio, which uses anonymized data for advertising. Note that Audience Studio is required to use Data Studio.
Marketing Cloud Personalization (formerly Interaction Studio): Your web experiences may now be completely customized thanks to . Interaction Studio adapts messages to the kinds of products and services people are interested in by paying attention to the actions they take on your website. Prior to the acquisition, this product was originally known as Evergage. Interaction Studio now includes Data Science Workbench and Data Warehouse (Evergage + Data Science Workbench + Data Warehouse = Interaction Studio).
Google Analytics 360: combines the Sales Cloud and Marketing Cloud of Google Analytics. When paired with Salesforce automation features, Google Analytics provides greater engagement and audience data, allowing Salesforce clients to do more detailed customer journey research.
Distributed marketing: is advertising among franchises, partners, and advisers. Maintain branding, comply with regulations, and monitor partner audience interaction by granting regulated access to your marketing assets.
Marketing Cloud Intelligence (formerly Datorama) is a marketing analytics platform that conducts ETL for various data sources to combine data from all of your marketing tools into a single source of truth. Developers may build unique apps that make use of the platform’s layer of marketing intelligence technologies through the Datorama Marketplace.