Salesforce Marketing Cloud vs. Pardot … What Should You Pick ?

The answer is that you technically purchase Pardot as part of Salesforce Marketing Cloud. The question is about the difference between the two, and about whether you need all of the features and flexibility that Marketing Cloud offers, or if you can accomplish your marketing needs with only Pardot.

Pardot vs. Marketing Cloud :

Selecting a marketing tool has three factors: marketing team, marketing strategy and then technology

Pardot – targeted email centric solution –

Pardot is unlike Marketing Cloud, is more focused on email. The core use case is all about email marketing, lead generation, and nurturing.

• Email Marketing – create and send email campaign
• Lead Generation – used to build landing pages and forms to convert visitors into known leads

Lead Nurturing – data-driven  nurture email flows and other customer-centric marketing campaigns

• Lead Scoring – includes account-based marketing, sales campaigns and identify key opportunities to send emails and follow up at the right time to the right person
• Sales/Marketing Alignment – CRM engagement, Activity tracking, real-time alerts for sales 

team when any new prospects are on your website or interact with emails

• Marketing Cloud – all in one marketing solution –

Marketing Cloud is a marketing automation tool that has gone through a wave of transformation in recent years.

If your team wants one platform to do it all, Marketing Cloud is the right tool for your team

• Email Studio: It is one of the most powerful platforms on the market and allows you to manage the creation, planning, and sending of emails to large databases from your sender profile and own IP.
• Mobile Studio: It allows you to connect with customers through SMS, push notifications. 
• Social Studio: It connects CRM, customer service, and marketing data to generate personalised experiences and communications through social channels. It offers Social Media Management functionalities to manage publications through the Marketing Cloud.
• Advertising Studio: It allows the generation of campaigns and omnichannel customer journeys by working with the CRM databases with the most powerful digital channels on the market like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Google, LinkedIn, and Youtube.
• Journey Builder: This module is used where the communication flows with the client are created and programmed. Journey Builder uses all the Marketing Cloud modules and could be said to act as the brain of Cloud Marketing to offer the best possible customer experience.

What should you pick?

If you have a larger, B2C company and need the full slate of marketing technology and automation available to you, Marketing Cloud is a great and right choice. But if you’re a smaller team or already have tools in place for social media, advertising, and other marketing channels, Pardot may be a stronger option to specialise in email and demand generation.