Salesforce Marketing Cloud Account Engagement Erfahrungen

Vorteile

The number one thing that I love about Pardot is how easy it is to use. If you're on a small marketing team, one person can easily handle the system. If you have a larger team, the functionality scales extremely well - and you can bring in as many users as you need into the system without needing to pay for any additional seats.

The software is extremely consistent and reliable. Pages load quickly and properly. The WYSIWYG editor for emails is awesome! The amount of automation you can do in Pardot is fantastic - especially with their more recent addition of repeating automations and drip programs.

Awesome update releases thanks to being a Salesforce product.

Nachteile

The positioning of all of the various functionality can be a little confusing at times. There are a LOT of menu items that lead to the various different features. Some cleanup/re-organization of these might help new users.

The out-of-the-box Marketing templates, while serviceable, could use a reboot. For a startup they're likely sufficient, but if you're running a lot of email campaigns you might want to invest in having a developer custom-build a modular email template for your ongoing use.

The built-in mail testing using Litmus is terrible. Often half of the renderings fail to load, and a number of the renderings included are not super relevant any more. I actually never use this feature any more as I prefer to send test emails to an actual mail client rather than trust the renderings.

Vorteile

We love engagement studio and how easy it is to build out automated campaigns and dynamic lists. The ease of automation has meant less time spent uploading csv’s and more time developing great content.

Nachteile

We wish it had a drag and drop editor. Not everyone on our team can code and it makes it difficult when we have a heavy season for deploys. The good news is, they’ve announced a beautiful drag and drop editor for the 20 winter release.

In Betracht gezogene Alternativen

Campaign Monitor, Mailchimp und Marketo Engage

Warum Salesforce Marketing Cloud Account Engagement gewählt wurde

The direct integration with Salesforce and wanting more ability with automation responding to individuals engagement with us online.

Zuvor genutzte Software

Campaign Monitor

Gründe für den Wechsel zu Salesforce Marketing Cloud Account Engagement

The direct integration with Salesforce and the sheer quantity of things that Pardot can do in making a unique experience for each of our donors.

Vorteile

There's some good features like email drip campaigns, landing pages and forms but they all have their drawbacks. The drip campaigns we found were never getting delivered and going to spam, no one ever opened the emails. The landing pages only provide 4 or 5 designs and only one of them is even possibly usable. You'll need to code your own. The forms are extremely complicated, I've been using for a few years and I still have no idea how to customize them to improve the designs. Basically just too complicated all around. I don't have any pros really, anything good I can find a con for. Don't get fooled into buying this software.

Nachteile

We purchased Pardot on a three year contract expecting much more than we were given. We are a news publication that sends out daily alerts that our customers pay for and were told by their sales team this was the best email delivery software out there - obviously we know they all say that but this software isn't even close. Pardot purchased Exact Target and sends out of their email. Exact Target is one of the most filtered spam filters no so it's almost impossible to get emails sent through to any customers if they have even a shred of spam filtering set up. We have had to work with hundreds of subscribers to mark our emails as a safe sender through IP and Domain whitelisting and sometimes that doesn't even work. That and they fact that the reporting and features in many ways have no flexibility make this software very frustrating for us. In the beginning we were provided a chat function to contact support and found that there wasn't really much they could do for us other than redirect us to links that did not fix our problems - this would end up turning into a ticket that would rarely be resolved. After about a year they did away with the chat function altogether and told us if we want it back we need to pay an extra per month. This is already an EXTREMELY expensive software so for them to turn their back on us for another money grab was a spit in the face. We're done with them and looking forward to the contract expiring early next year.

Vorteile

Pardot is unmatched in its ability to automate your marketing activities. The Engagement Program features it offers is probably the best in the market and allows you to design Customer journeys with customization based on the customer attributes as well as engagement. The WYSIWYG builder allows you to build beautiful email templates and Landing pages for Lead generation and Lead nurturing. It also integrates seamlessly with Salesforce CRM and a wide variety of 3rd party applications.

Nachteile

Pardot allows you to create multiple leads with the same email address. This is a compulsory feature and causes issues with duplicate and bad data. You need to make sure the data is cleansed regularly.

In Betracht gezogene Alternativen

HubSpot Marketing Hub und Mailchimp

Gründe für den Wechsel zu Salesforce Marketing Cloud Account Engagement

We were already using Salesforce CRM so it made sense to use Pardot as it would be easier to integrate with our CRM. Also, Pardot had many features that Mailchimp and Hubspot lacked (Engagement Studio, Grading etc.)

Vorteile

It's a perfect 'marketing output' tool for Salesforce, which has been adapted to natively fit without having to use 3rd party marketplace plugins for marketing output. Pardot has been a gamechanger for outputting Marketing directly from Salesforce.

Nachteile

It doesnt integrate Social Media management (scheduling, Ads, etc.) - so you still need to use a Social Media tool such as hootsuite. So, while it's the most 'integrated marketing tool' for Salesforce, it's not a complete integrated marketing solution.

In Betracht gezogene Alternativen

HubSpot Marketing Hub

Gründe für den Wechsel zu Salesforce Marketing Cloud Account Engagement

The environment we deployed Pardot was a Salesforce client, thus it didn't make sense to use any other 'marketing tool', as it would have meant lots of integration patches / glue.

Vorteile

Form handlers, automation/workflow builder, not much else.

Nachteile

The need to pay extra for detailed add-ons, particularly a dedicated IP (a basic need for email marketing), is really annoying (only available in their higher tiers). We didn't like not being able to relate marketing email activity to einstein activity sync. User interface could use some work as well; just not there yet overall.

In Betracht gezogene Alternativen

HubSpot Marketing Hub

Gründe für den Wechsel zu Salesforce Marketing Cloud Account Engagement

Because we were sold on the premise that Salesforce and Pardot are essentially one system, which would be easier for a small startup like us to implement and maintain.

Vorteile

Pardot makes automating marketing activities simple, whether you're setting up lead gen forms and responder emails or just creating email campaigns. It connects with Salesforce and helps keep lead owners and other information updated that prior to had been a pain.

Nachteile

Its campaign tracking really only tracks . It can only track social if the posts are scheduled in Pardot. Email and landing page editors aren't as full-featured for simple design edits.

In Betracht gezogene Alternativen

Salesforce Marketing Cloud und Marketo Engage

Warum Salesforce Marketing Cloud Account Engagement gewählt wurde

Strategy shift, cost and contact list size

Gründe für den Wechsel zu Salesforce Marketing Cloud Account Engagement

Using Salesforce CRM in conjunction with Pardot was the main reason we went with Pardot

Vorteile

We use pardot primarily for our email marketing, but also for inbound lead gen as well. I love how well pardot integrates into salesforce. That is key for our business. You can change anything at the field level using pardot based on activity etc, and segment based on any field.

Nachteile

There are features such as advanced analytics that are more advanced on the higher levels of pardot, however the cost increase is significant.

Vorteile

The fact that it integrates natively with Salesforce is Pardot's best feature. The engagement studio automation product is great as well, making it really easy to create drip campaigns and other conditional flows.

Nachteile

The email builder is 10 years behind competitor's builders. To get things to behave, you have to code emails in html. The WYSIWG builder is poor, but asset management of images and files is even worse. Competitors like MailChimp and ActiveCampaign have much better platforms for designing beautiful, responsive emails.

Vorteile

I like that you can create renderings and very interactively build emails.

Nachteile

It can be very complex to do little tasks, like adding in a photo. Not to mention if you want to change the template, you need to have CSS/HTML background.

Vorteile

The software is pretty intuitive and easy to use. There is a huge community that's eager to collaborate and assist (local user groups, blogs, the Dreamforce conference, the connections conference, twitter, slack groups, linkedin groups, etc). We utilized the product for List Emails ( about 30 each month), Automated Nurture Campaigns, Segmentation, Email Preference Center, and so much more. It is very powerful and played a key role in our marketing efforts.

Nachteile

The trade off to ease-of-use is lack of complexity. After working with the platform for 5 years, I have concluded that it is a great fit for smaller companies that want to use their features in a straightforward, uncomplicated way. We are a medium sized company with multiple target audiences, some that overlap, some that don't, territories with multiple languages and a vast and diverse product line. I am regularly (daily if not weekly) frustrated by the platform's limitations. The saving grace is that there is usually a work around. We are always able to figure out how to solve a problem, but each time it requires more steps, more time, then more "overhead" to manage in the future.

While, Salesforce is regularly rolling out enhancements and features, the list of wants and needs created by users is long. There are features that seem completely basic and have been in demand by the users for years that have yet to be delivered. Things that are sometimes minor but quite surprising to learn aren't included.

One of Pardot's biggest weaknesses is reporting. We do all our reporting in Sales Cloud dashboards or in Excel.

Vorteile

Pardot allows us to get insight at a per-contact level into their activity, interests, and profile. We've made it even more useful by adding on additional integrations like Clearbit and Zoom. We track more than 12k new incoming leads annually and we automate outreach to those leads every single day.

Nachteile

Many decisions that you make at the beginning of the implementation will dog you after you've made them (how do we organize our campaigns? what tags should we use? when automations do we want to build off of those tags? how do we segment our lists). Pardot/Salesforce has offered strategic support and even configuration services, however, we find that these often lack the depth of knowledge to tell us if we're making the right call/they are too expensive for a small firm like ours.

In Betracht gezogene Alternativen

Marketo Engage und HubSpot CRM

Gründe für den Wechsel zu Salesforce Marketing Cloud Account Engagement

Salesforce alignment.

Vorteile

One of the things I liked most about Salesforce Marketing Cloud Account Engagement was its comprehensive set of tools and features for managing customer engagement and marketing campaigns. The platform provided robust customer segmentation capabilities, allowing me to target specific audiences with personalized messaging. The automation features, such as email workflows and journey builders, made it easy to create and automate multi-channel marketing campaigns. The real-time tracking and reporting functionality provided valuable insights into campaign performance, allowing me to optimize my marketing efforts effectively.

Nachteile

While Salesforce Marketing Cloud Account Engagement had many positive aspects, one thing I liked least was the complexity of the platform. As a beginner, it took some time to familiarize myself with the various features and functionalities. The learning curve was steep, and I would have appreciated more comprehensive onboarding resources and tutorials to help me navigate and utilize the platform more efficiently. Additionally, the pricing structure of Salesforce Marketing Cloud Account Engagement could be quite expensive, especially for small businesses or startups with limited budgets.

Vorteile

Creating emails and landing pages are easy once you have templates that are built out. If you are not familiar with how to build templates, it may be difficult for you to use Pardot, as there is no drag and drop feature. The automation rules make it really easy for us to integrate into Salesforce, which we love. It's also very simple to create custom fields, which was important for us.

Nachteile

The reporting feature in Pardot is subpar. It is extremely difficult to report on our marketing activities with their current reporting structure. There is no way to create a custom report, making it very difficult for our team to track ROI. Probably the biggest downside to using this platform.

In Betracht gezogene Alternativen

HubSpot Marketing Hub und Marketo Engage

Vorteile

We have fully implemented Pardot into our sales and marketing teams. We use everything from landing pages, forms, custom redirects, email templates, email automation, and their gmail plugin. It does't meet our sales and marketing requirements.

Nachteile

In less than one year we have opened 42 support tickets with Pardot. Many with no resolution. After determining that the product simply doesn't work we are transitioning to their competitors. Pardot is still forcing us to pay licensing fees even though their product failed to function. Do not use.

Stand Out Issues:
- The Gmail plugin simply doesn't work. Activity is not consistently logged in SalesForce. We have reported the technical issue many times to their support.
- They cap uploaded assets (Ex: images) at 100 MB storage. This is ridiculous. When we hit the cap they wanted to charge us 4K to increase storage.
- Poor reporting on emails:
* Missing data on 1:1 emails. Direct emails sent via the Gmail plug-in.
* CTR doesn't show for under 1% in engagement studio > Requires us to click down into each email template to pull report and export details to do a side by side comparison
* There are no reports generated for engagement studio (only drip programs - old feature now retired)
- Can't track replies on emails > can't gauge performance
- Recurring issues with Engage in Gmail and Engage Alerts (holds up the sales team from their day-to-day tasks)
- Poor UX in Engage via gmail for sales team (cannot organize 1:1 templates by folder)
- Limited on engage logic, can only use prospect fields. We can't use opportunity or account data in automation.

Vorteile

Pardot is great for companies whose sales teams also use Salesforce due to the tight integration between the two products. Prospect and campaign tracking data can sync easily between the two systems and keep track of all campaign touch points across sales and marketing teams. Engagement studios are super easy to set up and allow for easy engagement-driven campaigns that help avoid "spammy" campaigns that help you stay off the blacklists of ISPs.

Nachteile

My major complaint with Pardot really has been with the UI/UX. The user experience is not great. It's not intuitive AT ALL. There are many instances where the interface breaks standard functionality conventions, leaving you in the dark trying to figure out how to do even simple tasks. That being said, the Engagement Studio has completely different UI than the rest of the app, and is actually quite a good experience. I guess Salseforce is taking their time redoing the rest of the app, but I'm sure they'll get around to it soon enough.

Vorteile

Powerful marketing automation tool that integrates extremely well with the Salesforce platform. Easy to learn, hard to master.

Nachteile

Things have improved, but considering it's under the same roof as Salesforce, the integration is clearly an afterthought. I think it does it better than other tools, but not as well as it could have been.

Vorteile

Once you understand the areas of Pardot and how affective they are throughout the areas of your marketing efforts and establish a synergy it's a great tool that's used frequently to solve and offload processes from other, potentially costly systems.

Nachteile

My con is a con that anyone would have, it's a different UI, capabilities are different in some contexts, and it really just takes a matter of time to feel it out and get comfortable with. If time is that bad of a con, than we'd all have a bad wrap. I do with their integrations were a bit long but with most things going to Salesforce and Pardot having a bond with it, we can solve things through that channel.

Vorteile

Pardot is perfect for companies that use Salesforce and also have a multiple person sales team. It has advanced automation features, and allows you to send emails from sales reps and insert dynamic content to make that email from the rep seem personalized. Dyamic content can be anything from the typical first name, company name, to custom dynamic content that's unique to whatever your needs are. Because Pardot syncs with Salesforce it also allows you to assign sales members tasks based on behaviors the recipients of the emails are taking which is great for strategic and timely sales follow up.

Nachteile

The email editor could be better and easier to use. There isn't an undo button which is very frustrating. If you need to undo something you pretty much have to start over.

Vorteile

One aspect I liked most about Salesforce Marketing Cloud Account Engagement was its comprehensive set of tools and features for managing and engaging with customer accounts. The platform's ability to create personalized and targeted marketing campaigns, along with its robust analytics capabilities, allowed for effective customer segmentation and improved campaign performance.

Nachteile

One drawback I experienced with Salesforce Marketing Cloud Account Engagement was the complexity of the platform, which required a significant learning curve to fully utilize its features and functionalities. Additionally, the cost associated with using the platform could be a limiting factor for smaller businesses or organizations with limited marketing budgets.

Vorteile

I love its integrations with Salesforce, the ability to access from the Salesforce interface, and the ease of use!

Nachteile

I don't really have any cons at the moment.

In Betracht gezogene Alternativen

HubSpot Marketing Hub, Mailchimp und Marketo Engage

Vorteile

Pardot and Salesforce work well together. It includes the ability to customize the look and feel of email, landing pages and sign up forms. Lead scoring is another powerful and helpful feature for huge sales insights.

Nachteile

Improve the email editor. Exorbitantly priced- not suitable for the small businesses. There is a room to improve in terms of reporting.

Vorteile

The lead deck feature provides us with real-time information on the activities of our prospects. Customer service is excellent. It's simple to use, and it's quite customizable. As a Salesforce product, it's really easy to integrate with the CRM.

Nachteile

Pardot does not have a very educational welcome to learn how to use the program and you have to see tutorials and training on other platforms to learn how to use it. Once you learn it is excellent Pardot

Vorteile

Parrot has all the necessary features and functionality to serve SMBs in a marketing automation capacity. The ease of use is simpler compared to some of the other highly complex and customizable options out there, plus the integration with Salesforce is seamless.

Nachteile

We had issues with syncing to Salesforce previously but that has since been resolved. The features and interface have not changed much in the last 10 years so don’t expect a lot of new enhancements or improvements to come.

Vorteile

Creating customized email templates and nurture campaigns. Easily setup A/B testing for any email send. The ability to slice and dice your segments so you can get more granular with contact lists. Integrated well with many of the other platforms (GoToWebinar) and social media accounts (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn) we used. Obviously with Salesforce too.

Nachteile

Compared to other email management tools, Pardot is expensive and the UI feels outdated. Unless you spend a lot of time reading their resources and tutorials, it isn't intuitive. The Pardot forms is also confusing. They have forms and form handlers and there should be a better way of combining the two to make things simple.