Salesforce Marketing Cloud vs. Pardot

Salesforce Marketing Cloud and Pardot are both automation tools that streamline marketing and sales activities across all possible digital channels. Choose the right one for your business.

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Pardot has been officially renamed to Marketing Cloud Account Engagement

Marketing Cloud versus Pardot: What’s right for your business?

In an era of unprecedented competition, optimizing marketing operations so you get to the top and stay there can be a complicated, daunting process. But marketing automation can make it a whole lot easier. As a trusted Salesforce Consulting Partner, iTechArt can help you choose the best-fit marketing automation platform that boosts sales, powers your personalization strategies, and drives customer loyalty.

Salesforce marketing automation tools: Marketing Cloud and Pardot

Let’s face it: "One size fits all" marketing solutions don’t fit the bill in an increasingly saturated market. When capturing and retaining audience attention is a do-or-die proposition, marketing automation is a surefire strategy for making your mark.

With in-depth specialization in more than 30 industries and eight years of Salesforce expertise, we build custom Jira integrations that help companies consolidate all data in one place; with those integrations in place, they spend less time managing minutiae and more time growing their business.

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Marketing Cloud: A powerful personalization engine

Salesforce Marketing Cloud offers powerful B2C marketing automation tools for creating personalized customer journeys across email, social media, and mobile. Marketing Cloud is ideal for retail and FMCG (fast-moving consumer goods) industries, as well as customer-facing businesses in fintech and healthcare. It’s also a great choice for nonprofits.

Key features

Email marketing

One-to-one customer journey builder

Built-in web and mobile analytics

AI-powered insights into prospect activity

Real-time tracking of customer interactions

Social media marketing

Display advertising

Account engagement

Loyalty management

Why use Salesforce Marketing Cloud

Highly targeted marketing campaigns

Real-time customer engagement strategies

Cross-channel marketing

Extensive integration options

Multi-channel data collection

Advanced campaign performance analytics

Seamless integration with Salesforce CRM through Marketing Cloud Connect

Pardot: A full suite of B2B marketing automation tools

Pardot is a powerful email marketing tool that enables marketers and sales managers to automate customer segmentation and send targeted messages. Pardot gives your company a widespread efficiency boost across all major metrics and improves revenue quickly, provides a more accurate view of marketing performance, and helps internal teams maintain alignment.

Own a B2B business that implies a longer sales cycle and a high-touch approach to prospects? Give Pardot a shot.

Key features

Email template editor

Lead generation

Landing page builder

Lead nurturing

Lead scoring and grading

Prospect activity tracking

ROI reporting

Account-based marketing

Why use Pardot

Sales and marketing teams alignment

Enhanced lead management

Sales enablement

Automation of lead assignment

Personalized marketing campaigns with dynamic content

Campaign performance tracking

Integration with Salesforce CRM through Salesforce connector

Pardot

Native integration with Sales Cloud (built on the core Salesforce platform)

Marketing Cloud

Transform unique business challenges into opportunities with Salesforce marketing tools

Although there is no universal rule that explains which marketing automation platform is best under particular circumstances, ask yourself a few key questions to understand the critical differences between Marketing Cloud and Pardot. Then you’re well-prepared to choose the one that’s best for you.

How long is your sales cycle?

Pardot is a go-to tool for companies with longer sales cycles and multiple decision-makers. Marketing Cloud is generally used by organizations that solicit purchases across multiple marketing channels.

What’s the value of your deals?

Marketing Cloud is more suited to companies engaged in transactional sales with lower value, while Pardot is more beneficial for smaller prospect databases boasting higher value sales.

Who are your customers?

Marketing Cloud is commonly used by B2C businesses with an extensive customer base. Pardot positions itself as a B2B marketing tool for lead nurturing and generating high-value deals.

What does your sales process look like?

Salesforce Marketing Cloud offers Journey Builder, a tool that allows marketers to create highly targeted one-to-one marketing campaigns and guides customers throughout the entire decision journey. The Pardot platform comes in handy if you’re seeking to nurture prospects over time and involve your sales team in tracking and managing leads.

What marketing channels do you use?

Go for Marketing Cloud if you use multiple digital channels, including SMS, social media, and digital advertising. The platform is built upon dedicated modules that help create custom assets for any marketing channel in place. Pardot is primarily an email marketing tool to build personalized drip marketing campaigns and track lead generation and conversion KPIs.

How much time can you spend on mastering a new solution?

Pardot is more intuitive and easier to use, but it might require a specialist with some technical knowledge to create more sophisticated marketing campaigns.

Marketing Cloud often requires a technical specialist with coding skills to fine-tune the system. However, despite the complexity and a steep learning curve, it opens up infinite possibilities for ramping up your sales and marketing once set up.

What’s your budget?

Compared to Marketing Cloud, Pardot has a lower license price. But remember that if you plan to implement advanced add-ons and customizations in the future, Marketing Cloud is likely the way to go: It contains various modules that can be purchased separately depending on the functionality you need. Also, note that Pardot is technically part of Marketing Cloud and is sold as one of its components.

Why automate your marketing with iTechArt

Today’s customers are fickle. Their tastes and preferences can change quickly, so responding and adapting to customer expectations is particularly challenging for marketers. Drawing on the strength of our 8+ years' worth of marketing automation expertise, our Salesforce-certified consultants can help you catch up with — and then outpace — the competition in your industry.
Here’s how two of our clients leveraged these products to optimize their marketing:

Gaming Innovation Group

While working in partnership with Gaming Innovation Group, iTechArt implemented a Pardot-powered marketing automation solution that enabled the company to reduce manual mistakes and increase average speed to lead by 50%.

NKA

iTechArt implemented Pardot rule-based dynamic lists for the prospects segmentation, which allowed the client to streamline email marketing and prioritize engagement programs.

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