What is the best Salesforce Automation Tool – Pardot vs. Marketing Cloud?
Salesforce has two powerful marketing platforms- Pardot and Marketing Cloud. Both the platforms serve their own benefits and give exceptional results if used properly with full potential. Howbeit, every framework is somewhere distinct. Pardot and Marketing Cloud also distinct from each other, as per their features. It is important to know where they both differentiate. This will help you to decide which one will be decorous for your company.
Pardot- Pardot is a SaaS marketing automation platform driven by Salesforce. It is a lead management tool designed for B2B sales and to manage campaigns of marketing organizations. The main purpose of this tool is used for e-mail marketing tool.
Marketing Cloud- It is a platform for delivering relevant data based on journeys across channels and devices. It enables marketers to deliver the right message at the right time to the right people throughout all phases of the relationship. It includes integrated solutions for client management, mobile, email, social, advertising, web personalization, content development and management, and data analysis.
Now, as you’re familiar with the basic terminology, we can head towards the difference between Pardot and Marketing Cloud. And then which automation tool is best to use for business?
Scenario 1: General Description
Pardot and Marketing Cloud both are market automation software, but the difference is- Pardot is designed to connect with Salesforce CRM to help with marketing and generate leads. On the other hand, Salesforce Marketing Cloud is a one-stop solution for personalized journeys of the customer across devices and channels.
Scenario 2: Marketing Category
Pardot is categorized for Business 2 Business (B2B) marketing; whereas, Salesforce Marketing Cloud is categorized for Business 2 Consumer (B2C) marketing.
Scenario 3: Industry
Pardot does not have any specific requirement of the industry. On the other hand, Salesforce Marketing Cloud serves industries like health & beauty, retail, travel & leisure, etc.
Scenario 4: Medium
The medium of Pardot is Email and Social; and medium of Marketing cloud is email, social, advertisement, SMS, etc.
Scenario 5: Skills
Skills required for Pardot are- Pardot Specialized Certification, lead scoring, lead generation, lead assignment, enablement of sales, email nurture campaigns, content marketing, webinar marketing, etc.
Skills required for Salesforce Marketing Cloud are- Real-time messaging, cross-channel marketing, social media marketing, mobile marketing, e-commerce, advertisements, etc.
Scenario 6: Platform
Pardot is aligned with Salesforce Marketing Cloud to work upon; whereas, Marketing Cloud has its own platform to work upon.
Scenario 7: Pricing
Pardot pricing starts from $1,250; whereas, pricing of Marketing Cloud depends upon the requirement of the customer. A customer is required to give quotation of his requirement and then customized system credentials are assigned to him.
Scenario 8: Languages Supported
Pardot supports only one language, that is, English.
Salesforce Marketing Cloud supports a total of 7 languages – English, French, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch and Swedish
Scenario 9: Operating Systems Supported
Pardot supports the multiple operating systems like- Windows, Linux, Android, iPhone/iPad, Macintosh and, Web-based systems
Marketing Cloud supports the multiple operating systems like- Windows, Android, iPhone/iPad, Macintosh and, Web-based systems
Scenario 10: Company Size
Both the Salesforce automation tools Pardot and marketing cloud supports multiple sized businesses ranging from small size businesses to large scale enterprises.
Scenario 11: Key Features
Pardot has many features-
Salesforce Marketing Cloud has the following features-
The premier debate is which Automation Tool of the Salesforce is the ultimate game changes between the two. Well, you have now known the key differences and must be familiar with what exactly both the tools are offering. What I suggest is- have a glance on the requirement you have for your business. Also, get in check the size of your business and its usage. The scale on which you can check which Salesforce automation tool is useful for your business is- a type of your business. Pardot is preferred by B2B companies which are typically used to send scheduled email campaigns to generate more leads. On the other hand, the marketing cloud is preferred by B2C companies which are also used to schedule email services, such as- triggered emails and transactional emails.
The paramount here is, B2C clients are likely to have a broader presence of social media and marketing cloud customers may also take benefit from the text-based marketing (text messages that are directly sent to customer’s phones). On the other hand, B2B companies prefer to take benefit from Pardot Salesforce Automation Tool, as this requires less admin training and is cost efficient (depending upon the features or package you have chosen).
Let us have a quick review to find out which tool to choose for the marketing automation of your business based on their characteristics:
Cultivation of leads is the phenomenal requirement of business. If you are also looking for the lead cultivation, Pardot is the solution. Pardot is designed to increase the speed of sales cycles by 30 percent. Pardot also focuses on activities like email drip campaigns, search campaigns, landing pages and, forms. On the other hand, Marketing Cloud focuses on marketing related activities and drop-ship of customer engagement activities.
Landing pages are used to capture the information that is required for the marketing channel to escort a lead. Pardot and Marketing Cloud both allow you to start email campaigns from scratch or you can use pre-designed templates. As per the versatility, landing pages created in marketing cloud are mobile optimized; but in the case of Pardot, you have to create your own mobile optimized landing pages using CSS styling.
When you are done with mobile optimization and ready to publish the content, Marketing cloud will help you save and publish your landing page on the mentioned date, which means you can publish the landing page when you’re ready to do so. But Pardot does not provide such functionality. You can hide your landing page from search engines until you are ready to make them public, but ultimately making it on the go is an only option available in Pardot.
Email is said to be the most popular, valuable and reliable innovation in terms of marketing. Email marketing helps in achieving the highest ROI for the company. Both tools grant access to create email campaigns for your business. The functionality of both tools is almost similar. There is no prior requirement of HTML or any other coding language to operate Pardot or Marketing cloud (though it will always be beneficial if you know HTML or any other coding, there is no such mandatory requirement). The difference in both the tools is- Marketing cloud allows you to toggle between web-live and mobile preview; whereas, Pardot uses Litmus for the preview of email campaigns on various mobile devices. Both the tools let you customize the email, say its subject of an email, location, sender’s name, etc.
Both the tools allow to share social sharing; but Pardot offers a basic option like sharing basic posts on Facebook, Twitter and, LinkedIn. On the other hand, Marketing cloud makes use of Social Studio tool to engage, listen and launch updates across different platforms like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Shopify, Workfront, etc. Social Studio tool acts as an overall social media manager.
| Social Studio is an asy-to-use single interface using which you can operate your marketing strategy across any social media platforms. You can schedule and manage your community. For example, get your leads quickly from Facebook to your sales department. Even you can create dynamic content easily with a built-in photo editor. |
When it comes to Salesforce integration, Pardot here is the winner for B2B companies. It depicts that all data is synchronized with no identical records. When a user creates forms, emails and landing pages with Pardot, Salesforce records can be taken to create customized fields.
Instead of piling up your entire burden on yourself even if you master the marketing skills is not worth! Marketing automation tools are designed to make your work easier. There are plenty of key differences between the usages of the above tools. Looking upon the key differences mentioned above can help you choose the right Salesforce Automation tool and also suggest you how you can make maximum utilization from your CRM marketing solution. We understand that sometimes it is difficult to choose one tool when you have more options available. The key takeaway is to consider the requirement of your business and then choose according to your requirement. If you’re still confused or unable to make a decision don’t worry, we, at JanBask, can help you to determine the best fit wise solution for your organization and may guide you to make best of it.
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