Pardot vs Marketing Cloud: Which Tool Is The Ultimate Game Changer?

Here’s a question: Which Salesforce marketing automation tool is the right choice for your business? Is it that easy to answer? We bet you, it is.
Once you are clear about the importance of marketing automation and how it can balance your marketing and sales efforts, you are already halfway towards deciding the best marketing automation tool for your business.

Two powerful, dynamic tools offered by Salesforce: Pardot and Marketing Cloud, have various advantages. When utilized to their full potential, these tools can perform exceptionally.

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Here are two scenarios for a better understanding of both the tools and what kind of businesses utilize them, according to their requirements.

Marketing Cloud User vs Pardot User

Scenario 1: A typical user of Marketing Cloud is a B2C organization that rolls out scheduled email campaigns, uses drip automation programs, makes use of advanced email services (triggered emails and transactional emails), etc. This company is more likely to have a huge social media presence, probably benefiting from text-based marketing messages that are directly sent to their customers. This company advances on extensive features of Marketing Cloud website integrations, complex integration with Salesforce, etc. They also get an access to progressive contact management solutions that assist in handling millions of consumers with whom they interact on a regular basis.

Scenario 2: A typical user of Pardot is a B2B organization that rolls out scheduled email campaigns and benefits from automation strategies such as drip campaigns. A company like this does not require text-based marketing campaigns and does not need advanced website integrations and social media marketing plans. This company prefers Pardot over Market Cloud and spends a comparatively lesser amount of admin training. The contact management options are more scattered for them as they have fewer contacts to communicate with.

Let us now see where do Marketing Cloud and Pardot stand:

When making the below-mentioned uses for marketing automation, which marketing automation tool to go forward with? Let’s find out!

1. Landing Pages

Landing pages help you big time in capturing the data and information you require for your marketing funnel to fetch a lead.
Marketing Cloud and Pardot, both allow you to start with email campaigns from scratch or let you create landing pages using templates (Pardot offers fewer template options, though). In terms of flexibility, landing pages created in Marketing Cloud are already mobile optimized. But in Pardot, you will be required to create and maintain landing pages with your own CSS styling to make them mobile optimized.

Then, when you’re ready to publish, Marketing Cloud can help you save and publish your landing page on a future date. This feature comes in handy when you are not ready for opening registrations, launching your white papers, etc. Pardot does not come with this feature. Though, you will be able to hide your landing pages from search engines until you’re ready to make them go public.

2. Lead Nurturing

Want to focus on lead nurturing? Pardot is what you should look for. According to a Salesforce Customer Relationship Study, Pardot is capable of fairly increasing the speed of sales cycles by 30 percent.

On one hand, Marketing Cloud focuses on offering a range of marketing related activities, delivering significant customer engagement. On the other hand, Pardot focuses on activities like search campaigns, email drip campaigns, forms, and landing pages, that are created to usher prospects through the sales cycle.

3. Creating Email Campaigns

Email is one of the most valuable and reliable marketing innovations. Be it any marketing channel, email marketing has the highest ROI. This makes it imperative for Marketing Cloud and Pardot both to grant access for building custom email campaigns.

Both these marketing automation tools work in a similar manner and simplify creating emails. You don’t require the knowledge of HTML or any other coding language for operating either Pardot or Marketing Cloud, though, it can be useful to know some of them when making some custom tweaks.

Now, the difference in both the tools, Pardot and Marketing Cloud, comes when you preview your email campaign. Marketing Cloud allows you to toggle between mobile preview or a live desktop preview as you create your campaign. On the other hand, Pardot requires time to render and uses Litmus for previewing the look of the email on various mobile devices, Outlook, and more. This, of course, will take extra time.

While sending the email campaign, both the marketing automation tools let you customize options like creating custom subject lines based on a lead’s location, sender’s name, etc. Marketing Cloud grants more flexibility, allowing all content residing in Salesforce to be used to create and customize targeted subject lines.

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4. Extensive Integration with Salesforce

Pardot wins it for B2B companies when it comes to Salesforce integration. Its effortless integration with Salesforce depicts that all data is synchronized, with no duplicate records. Any activity accomplished in Pardot is delivered to the user’s Salesforce, building customer and prospect records in detail. Also, when a user creates forms, landing pages, and emails with Pardot, Salesforce records can be taken in use create custom fields.

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5. Social Sharing

Both the tools, Pardot and Marketing Cloud, are known for allowing social sharing at an extent. Pardot offers a few, limited options like sharing basic posts on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn, whereas, Marketing Cloud makes use of its Social Studio tool to listen, engage, and launch updates across different platforms. Pardot can pass as a social media updater, while Social Studio by Marketing Cloud acts as an overall social media manager.

Wrapping up…

Marketing automation tools intend to help. You cannot just set up a tool and forget about it altogether. Marketing automation sure makes life easier for the users but that doesn’t mean one begins cloning email campaigns or using exact messages across social media, emails, and mobile. Knowing exactly what marketing automation is and how to make the best use out of it instead of piling up your entire burden on it is when you can master your marketing skills.

It is wise to understand that there is no ‘one-size-fits-all’ when we talk about marketing automation tools. Opt for the tool that helps you in achieving what you desire as per your requirements. Refrain from following the herd.

Reference: Algoworks