Salesforce Pardot vs Marketing Cloud: Which Should You Choose?

Salesforce has been a prominent business CRM software platform since it was launched two decades ago. It provides its users with an array of services that are devoted to handling the varied and complicated customer database of any business enterprise.

The primary services provided by Salesforce CRM include the ones regarding the recording, storing, classifying and assessing valuable customer data pertaining to your business organization. Apart from storing and processing your data, Salesforce also keeps a track of the activities performed by your sales team, matches them with the opportunities they were set out to tap and draws productive conclusions out of the same. The platform also helps you in carrying out certain specific activities tailored especially for the customers you cater to.

There are several tools and features that Salesforce has introduced into the market and each of them has specific services to provide. Two of such useful platforms are Pardot and Salesforce Marketing Cloud. Both these platforms are built for the purpose of carrying out effective data analytics and provide high automation for the users. In spite of these similarities between the two platforms, Salesforce Pardot vs Marketing Cloud highlights certain subtle differences.

Salesforce Pardot is a platform that is primarily built to deal with the transactions pertaining to the Business-to-business (B2B) module followed by the concerned client. This platform provides exclusive lead management and email marketing services to a range of businesses that often deal with other business houses.

On the other hand, Salesforce Marketing Cloud is a platform built for the purpose of handling Business-to-customer (B2C) transactions carried out by the concerned client. This platform provides services that revolve around managing social media accounts of the business, creating effective marketing and advertising campaigns, making useful customer behavior predictions and making sure the services provided by the business are tailored specifically for the individual needs of the customers they are catering to.

Don’t forget to check out: Salesforce Pardot Features to Enhance Marketing ROI

Pardot vs Marketing Cloud: Key Differences

Here are some of the key differences highlighting Salesforce Pardot vs Salesforce Marketing Cloud discussed in brief: 

While Salesforce Pardot is a platform that is positioned as one taking care of the businesses that follow the model of B2B communication, Marketing Cloud is positioned as a Salesforce platform that provides its services to businesses that make use of B2C channel of communication. Pardot is best suitable for business houses that may be low on the number of customers being handled by the firm but high on the value of sales conducted by the team. On the other hand, Marketing Cloud is designed specifically for businesses having huge and varied customer database that requires special attention but having a lower value of sales conducted by the team. Primary functions performed by Salesforce Pardot are the ones pertaining to email marketing and effective lead management, while the ones performed by Marketing Cloud majorly deal with the advertising campaigns designed for customers, analyzing customer behavior, assessing social media presence and facilitating personalization of customer services. While the prime focus of Pardot is to drive the sales and allow the sales team to completely take over, the prime focus of the Marketing Cloud is customer personalization and taking a wholesome approach to the marketing activities performed by a business organization.

Lead Management and Nurturing By Salesforce Pardot

As mentioned earlier, Pardot is primarily built for providing services relating to effective management of leads generated by a business organization. Though you are not dealing with the final customers, Pardot takes immense care of the leads you generate, owing to the high sales value of your transactions. The moment you generate a lead, all you have to do it enter the same into the system and the software will take off the remaining process. Pardot would help you score the leads according to their responses, the ones with the most positive responses being at the top of the hierarchy. After scoring the leads, Pardot will also help you in nurturing individual leads in the best way possible.

Nurturing the qualified leads is effectively carried out by Pardot using its enhanced email marketing provisions. Pardot helps you in charting out effective emails by providing you with several effective templates. It also helps you in sending automated emails in response to any specific action carried out by your customers. It would also help you communicate effectively over emails by helping you build productive email campaigns, as the most effective and sophisticated mode of communication between two businesses has always been the channel of emails.

Customer Personalisation and Social Media Management By Marketing Cloud

As mentioned earlier, Salesforce Marketing Cloud is built primarily for the purpose of facilitating a high degree of customer personalization. It makes use of several tools in order to track the activities of your customers, makes a thorough assessment of the same and provides you with a prescriptive as well as predictive analysis letting you know the likelihood of your customers’ behavior in future. This helps you in communicating with them in the best possible manner.

Marketing Cloud also has a wholesome approach to marketing where it takes into consideration aspects such as SMS marketing, social media marketing as well conventional advertising. It makes use of your customer data and helps you coming up with relevant marketing campaigns on multiple platforms your business functions on. In short, Marketing Cloud helps you provide your customers exactly what they asked for.

Which Platform Is More Beneficial?

Now that you have looked into the nature and features of both the platforms in quite some detail, you would have realized that none of the two platforms is better than the other. Both the platforms are equally effective when it comes to providing automated services and making critical analysis. Which platform you choose would entirely depend on the type of business you run and the business model you follow. If you are a sales-driven firm with more B2B transactions, go for Pardot, while Marketing Cloud is the ideal option if customer personalization is what you’re looking for.

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