Salesforce Marketing Cloud Account Engagement Reviews

Pros

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.

Cons

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.

Pros

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.

Cons

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.

Alternatives Considered

Campaign Monitor, Mailchimp and Marketo Engage

Reasons for Choosing Salesforce Marketing Cloud Account Engagement

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

Switched From

Campaign Monitor

Reasons for Switching to 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.

Pros

Perhaps "simplicity" is one way to put a positive spin on this review. For any Marketing Ops professional who wants to build anything above and beyond Pardot's pre-built functionality -- Good luck. Maybe the simplicity is good for a very small organization, but in that same vein the price point would be nowhere near worth it.

Cons

Filter logic is absolutely miserable. There is no Boolean logic in the tool (going back to my point on "simplicity"), which is horrific for building out any type of complex filters for segments. There are even character limits on how much you can enter in one argument field. So, think about if you have to build out a segment to compile all leads from Europe and write out each country.... you would need to split the arguments into 15 or more "or" statements to account for each value. Also, everything is a drop down -- no free text entries for search -- so good luck sifting through 400 different values for a single Salesforce field. This is one seemingly minor example but is a great representation of how overly limited the tool is as a whole. Also their proclaimed "one-to-one" sync with Salesforce is a joke. There is always mismatched or missing data that doesn't align when boiled down into a report.

Pros

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.

Cons

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.

Alternatives Considered

HubSpot Marketing Hub and Mailchimp

Reasons for Switching to 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.)

Pros

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.

Cons

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.

Alternatives Considered

HubSpot Marketing Hub

Reasons for Switching to 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.

Pros

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

Cons

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.

Alternatives Considered

HubSpot Marketing Hub

Reasons for Switching to 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.

Pros

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.

Cons

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.

Alternatives Considered

Salesforce Marketing Cloud and Marketo Engage

Reasons for Choosing Salesforce Marketing Cloud Account Engagement

Strategy shift, cost and contact list size

Reasons for Switching to Salesforce Marketing Cloud Account Engagement

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

Pros

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.

Cons

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

Alternatives Considered

VBOUT

Reasons for Choosing Salesforce Marketing Cloud Account Engagement

Better salesforce connectivity, better platform, better for inbound lead gen

Pros

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.

Cons

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.

Pros

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

Cons

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.

Pros

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.

Cons

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.

Pros

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.

Cons

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.

Alternatives Considered

Marketo Engage and HubSpot CRM

Reasons for Switching to Salesforce Marketing Cloud Account Engagement

Salesforce alignment.

Pros

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.

Cons

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.

Pros

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.

Cons

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.

Alternatives Considered

HubSpot Marketing Hub and Marketo Engage

Pros

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.

Cons

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.

Pros

I loved the demo given to me by an expert who sold me on the ease of the technical set up and use of Pardot.

Cons

The technical setup was far too technical for me. The cost was over SENSITIVE CONTENT HIDDEN a month and we never got it up and running after 7 months of trying. They later recommended using a third party company for technical implementation as it was too technical for a somewhat technical person. Our developer and technical team members did not have the time to implement themselves as it was a full time position to setup technically.

Alternatives Considered

HubSpot Marketing Hub

Pros

As a small non profit, being able to have a tool with a lot of automation enables us to be a lot more efficient in terms of marketing campaigns, news letter management, and integrated forms with our CRM and analytics. Our productivity would not be as high as an organization without Pardot as a tool.

Cons

The Salesforce - Pardot integration can be very finicky and requires a lot of maintenance to ensure it's working properly. For instance, we are having issues reading opportunities and have been back and forth with the customer support team to figure out to resolve the issue for 2 weeks now

Pros

There are different characteristics that make Pardot a very interesting product, for example the different drip campaigns that you can carry out from this product triggers and in sales funnel actions and they are generating very good profits in our profit. in turn, the product has an excellent return on investment thanks to the good management of the campaigns it allows.

Cons

Not everything is perfect within the product and has failures that reduce efficiency and the new star usually creates a lot of disagreement and even leads to exasperation, due to the lack of a simple and efficient user interface and that navigation through the platform It tends to be time consuming and make small errors that delay product use.

Pros

This can be a good tool to use for automation as you can import contacts and add them to lists and drips fairly easily. It's also good for integrating with custom forms and landing pages and you can create custom campaigns, links etc. High level, it really helps connect everything together from the first visit (including the pages they viewed) and every subsequent touchpoint from then on (but reporting on this falls into the "Cons").

Cons

Pardot is a difficult tool to set up and manage and their support through the process is quite limited. Their chat seems to fill up by 9 am, and although they offer courses to train you how to use their product, they charge for it. Although it is a powerful tool, their reporting capabilities are very behind, and while they capture every touchpoint, there is no way to roll up that data to gather insights or report on it.

Pros

Wonderful tracking for leads and creation of drip campaigns. Any company who’s expanding their lead generation efforts and looking to hasten the velocity of closing prospects will definitely find this useful, especially since it is connected to Salesforce.

Cons

Interface and usability needs a lot of improvement. Functionalities for creatives and marketers can become too time-consuming and limiting, especially in terms of customisation of drip emails.

Alternatives Considered

Intercom

Reasons for Choosing Salesforce Marketing Cloud Account Engagement

Administrative decision.

Switched From

Mailchimp

Reasons for Switching to Salesforce Marketing Cloud Account Engagement

Administrative decision.

Pros

I love the ability to have insight into customer activity and to create marketing campaigns. From a marketing perspective Pardot is an amazing tool. However my role is in more of a sales role so I tend to lean on the features of Salesforce much more. I appreciate the tie into sales force and how I am able to create reports and customer lists very easily in Pardot. It has greatly expanded the communication that I am able to have with customers. I work closely with the marketing team to delivery targeted messages which we were unable to do in the past.

Cons

My biggest frustration comes from the Salesforce/Pardot relationship. I wish that the terms in salesforce were the same used in Pardot, it is a bit of a learning curve especially when you are getting up to speed and working within two different departments. For example campaigns in salesforce are completely different than campaigns in Pardot.

Pros

I really liked how the leads were sorted into ones that were immediately "hot" and with Salesforce mobile, I could even do it on my long train commute home. It was also a good indicator of which leads to focus on. Since our sales cycle can also be really long, it also was helpful to see how long the prospect has been in the system and how knowledgeable they might be about us. As a newer salesperson it was helpful.

Cons

I wish some of the pro features were available at the standard price. If we could see the Google Adwords that led our prospects directly to the site easier, it would be much helpful. It is available, so it's not too bad of a downside, however, it is if that feature is too expensive for your budget at the moment.

Pros

Easy to Use
Easy to Train On
Pardot makes it easy to measure a return on investing in marketing automation. The tool is reliable and performant, and the Pardot team's customer service is outstanding.

Cons

The Client Advocate email domain was terrific -quick and helpful customer support for usage-related questions. I'll be very sad to see this deprecated and replaced with the success community.

Pros

I liked that it was an all-in-one tool and building workflows was very easy.

Cons

The customer service was subpar. We had a fairly substantial $25k contract and still did not have access to any telephone support. We could only use chat support and their chat was often unavailable. This was the primary reason we ended up transitioning to a new product.

Alternatives Considered

Marketo Engage

Pros

Pardots UI is clean and updated, making it easy to use. At first glance, the simplified interface makes it seem like the product is limited, but once you become proficient with automation rules, dynamic lists, and completion actions you'll find that its very configurable and can suit a variety of processes and workflows. It's just a different mindset from a Marketo or Hubspot in terms of approaching some of the workflows, nurtures, drips, etc.

Cons

Really lacking in reporting across the board and no visibility into accounts for organizations using account-based marketing and/or sales processes, everything is organized by prospect only.