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Marketing automation is critical for businesses looking to streamline marketing campaigns, nurture leads, and ultimately drive revenue growth. Automating repetitive marketing tasks allows for easier campaign creation and the ability to target leads and customers in more personalised ways. This not only results in greater efficiency and cost savings but also leads to better ROI for campaigns.
One of the key benefits of marketing automation is the ability to manage leads more effectively. Marketing automation platforms can track customer behaviour, from website visits to content engagement, to identify potential prospects and initiate automated campaigns that target them. Automated lead nurturing campaigns allow businesses to develop stronger relationships with leads over time, which increases the likelihood of conversion to sales.
Marketing automation also provides greater visibility into campaign performance through detailed metrics and analytics. Advanced analytics allow businesses to measure the success of campaigns with greater accuracy and adjust marketing strategies in real time. With insights into which campaigns and channels perform best, companies can make data-driven decisions that improve their marketing effectiveness and drive better business outcomes.
Being aware of the benefits of marketing automation can lead to the inevitable question. ‘There are so many options; which tool should I purchase?’. This article will compare two of the most popular marketing automation platforms, Salesforce Marketing Cloud and Marketo Engage, to help you decide which tool is best for your organisation.
Salesforce Marketing Cloud and Marketo Engage are cloud-based marketing automation platforms enabling businesses to streamline marketing campaigns and manage leads more efficiently. The platforms offer a range of tools, including email marketing, landing page creation, lead management, account-based marketing, social media management, and analytics. With Marketing Cloud and Marketeo, businesses can create personalised, automated campaigns targeting leads at different sales funnel stages. User behaviour can trigger these campaigns, such as clicks, opens, and form completions. Additionally, Marketing Cloud and Marketo allow businesses to organise and nurture leads based on attributes such as demographics, purchase history, and lead score. This ensures that sales teams are presented with actionable, high-quality leads. Both platforms also provide real-time analytics and dashboards that deliver insights into campaigns’ success and potential customers’ behaviour.
Now we know how the two marketing automation tools are similar, let’s look at how they differ.
B2B (business-to-business) and B2C (business-to-consumer) marketing used to be vastly different, with different approaches and tactics needed to reach the respective target audiences. However, with the rise of digital marketing and the increasing importance of customer experience, the distinction between the two has blurred considerably in recent years. Both B2B and B2C audiences expect personalised, engaging experiences across all channels, from social media to email marketing.
This is one of the ways that the two marketing automation tools differ. Marketo is generally recognised as a B2B solution, while Marketing Cloud is positioned as more of a B2C platform. In the same way that Salesforce sets their Marketing Cloud Account Engagement (previously called Pardot) product as the B2B solution of choice.
But does this matter?
The answer is maybe. While the changing landscape within marketing is making the differences between B2B and B2C marketing less significant, the fact that these platforms were designed for these specific features can tell us a lot about their capabilities. For example, Salesforce’s Marketing Cloud platform focuses more on multi-channel marketing than Marketo Engage, which specialises in email marketing and 1-2-1 engagement.
Picking your marketing automation tool based solely on your customer type is the wrong approach, but it does offer some essential information which can you help you in your buying decision. First, decide what functionality you want from a marketing automation tool and then match the platform which best suits your needs.
Marketo Engage offers a range of features that enable businesses to create automated, personalised campaigns across multiple channels, including email, social media, and webinars. The platform’s advanced tools, such as the engagement program builder, real-time personalisation, and lead nurturing workflows, make it easy for marketers to manage campaigns and customer journeys with a high degree of segmentation and personalisation.
On the other hand, Salesforce Marketing Cloud provides a slightly different focus on Multi-Channel Marketing that includes email, mobile, social media, and web. It offers an intuitive user interface to manage various channels and helps marketers analyse their campaigns’ performance. With Advertising Studio and Social Studio, marketers can make targeted ad campaigns on social media, retarget customers who visit their website and analyse social media responses to their campaigns. Additionally, Salesforce’s Journey Builder provides an automated process that enables marketers to create personalised customer journeys based on their interactions with the company’s brand.
In summary, both Marketo Engage and Salesforce Marketing Cloud provide innovative tools for Multi-Channel Marketing. Still, Marketo Engage offers a more comprehensive set of features geared toward personalised, one-to-one communication with leads. At the same time, Salesforce Marketing Cloud provides a more robust suite of services that helps marketers to integrate their marketing channels and create customer journeys across multiple channels.
One key difference between the two platforms is their approach to data management. Marketo Engage focuses more on lead management and the automation of marketing campaigns based on specific behaviours and customer attributes. Salesforce Marketing Cloud offers a more comprehensive approach to data management, providing businesses with data integration, cleansing, and governance tools.
Another critical difference between Marketo Engage and Salesforce Marketing Cloud is their level of customisation. While both platforms have you covered on granular control over campaigns, from creating custom fields to building personalised emails and landing pages, Salesforce Marketing Cloud provides more out-of-the-box functionality, making it a more user-friendly option for those who are new to marketing automation. Marketo Engage can be trickier to leverage to your business needs and may require additional expertise to help you maximise your investment.
Salesforce Marketing Cloud also provides the ability to customise its platform to a greater extent through the Salesforce AppExchange, which offers a range of third-party apps that can be integrated with the platform. Businesses can find custom-built solutions that meet specific needs and seamlessly integrate them. Additionally, the platform’s intuitive user interface allows businesses to create custom fields, personalise campaigns, and build custom reports with ease. While Marketo Engage offers its own app store, Adobe Exchange, it is smaller than the Salesforce AppExchange, so it has a more limited selection.
Regarding reporting capabilities, both Marketo Engage and Salesforce Marketing Cloud have robust analytics and reporting tools. Marketo Engage offers a variety of built-in reporting features, including real-time analytics on email campaigns, landing pages, and social media activity. The platform also provides customised dashboards and detailed reports for customer engagement, marketing impact, and revenue attribution. Marketo Engage also offers AI-powered attribution models to help businesses understand the effectiveness of their marketing campaigns.
Salesforce Marketing Cloud also provides advanced reporting capabilities with built-in dashboards and reports, including real-time tracking of email campaigns, social media activity, and website analytics. The platform offers customisable reports and actionable insights that help businesses understand customer behaviour, campaign effectiveness, and ROI. Additionally, Salesforce Marketing Cloud’s data-driven insights, including Einstein Discovery and Datorama, provide companies with more in-depth data analysis and predictive insights.
In summary, Marketo Engage and Salesforce Marketing Cloud provide robust reporting capabilities for businesses. Marketo Engage offers more traditional reporting features that are easily customisable and highly visual, while Salesforce Marketing Cloud provides more advanced features and predictive capabilities. Ultimately, choosing between the two platforms will depend on a business’s unique needs and preferences, making it essential to evaluate the reporting features of each platform carefully.
Ultimately, the choice between Marketo Engage and Salesforce Marketing Cloud will depend on the unique needs of each individual business. Both platforms provide powerful tools for lead management and the automation of marketing campaigns, but their differences in terms of data management and customisation options mean that businesses will need to evaluate their needs carefully before choosing which platform is right for them.
At Pracedo, we have over 12 years of experience implementing Salesforce for our customers, including Salesforce Marketing Cloud. Get in touch to get started on your marketing automation journey today and see how Salesforce and Pracedo can help!
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Pracedo is an award-winning Summit (Platinum) Salesforce Consulting Partner that delivers innovative Salesforce implementations to forward-thinking customers.
With over a decade of experience focused on Salesforce, we work with our customers to unlock the platform’s power through tailored implementations that facilitate achieving business goals and ambitions. Our talented team of over 80 Salesforce professionals globally means that Pracedo offers a boutique consultancy experience, delivered locally to you, with the breadth and depth of knowledge earned from delivering over 1000 projects across our locations in London, Melbourne, Brisbane, Amsterdam, and Belgrade.
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