Salesforce Marketing Cloud Vs. Marketo

There is increased competition in the marketing automation industry with more and more companies adopting digital marketing. When the options are analyzed by the marketing team, mostly the Salesforce Marketing Cloud and Marketo get shortlisted. In this article, we will look at what Marketo and Salesforce Marketing Cloud means and how they are different from each other. 

What is Salesforce marketing cloud? 

Salesforce Marketing Cloud has created a remarkable image in the online application market with its features and flexibility.  

It is a specific tool in digital marketing that enables businesses to interact with customers with the right message and proper tone at the right time. It also enables users to personalize online communication with the help of AI-based analysis and forecasting. As a result, businesses are able to create two-way engagement that is enhanced by data-based custom communication. 

Using this platform, Businesses can allow the users to monitor the visibility of their brand, create and keep up a powerful presence on social media, publish and distribute attractive marketing content and advertising campaigns. There is also a large number of marketing products that back various marketing requirements like Journey Builder, Email Studio, and Advertising Studio. 

What is Marketo? 

In addition to the simplicity and ease of use it offers, Marketo is designed in a flexible and innovative way that enables users to do everything and achieve the best results. It is an integrated platform that can strive to heights within your enterprise. Founded in 2006, Marketo has grown into one of the best and leading marketing automation platforms with over 2,300 customers and more than 100,000 users worldwide. Its capability to make the marketing process simple, enhance efficiency, streamline a number of marketing-based tasks, and generate more revenue for users makes Marketo one of the popular options for various B2B players. It also provides live personalization, thereby enabling users to give a customized touch to the system and adapt more to their needs and preferences. 

Marketo V/S Salesforce Marketing Cloud 

Data management  

Salesforce marketing cloud tops Marketo when dealing with data management. It is possible to integrate salesforce with numerous external sources and import data with the help of Application Program Interfaces and Marketing Cloud Connect. On the other hand, Marketo works to control simple data. When Marketo defaults all data in a single database table into a lead, the marketing cloud has a more sophisticated data model, built in a way to provide more flexibility, but requires more data management skills to run more targeted campaigns. 

Campaign orchestration  

When it comes to campaign management, Marketo provides ‘engagement programs’, while the salesforce has a ‘Journey Builder’ which consists of multiple channels such as emails, social media, SMS, and drag & drop interface depending on the ways to communicate with the customers. The ‘engagement programs’ by Marketo pay more attention to emails. Such programs can be utilized as automation tools and work as a customer journey. Since they are not making use of the flowchart UI used by most other platforms, it is difficult to customize and visualize. Without customization, other channels cannot be added to the campaign. The ability to integrate multi-channel communication into a single customer journey and visualize everything in one place is one of the main benefits of Journey Builder over its competitors in Marketo. 

Content Management 

Content is a crucial element that determines the success of your marketing campaigns. With an excellent marketing automation platform, it is quite easy to create, handle, and customize your content. Salesforce Marketing Cloud and Marketo are no different in facilitating easy and smooth content management as both I’ve permission access to WYSIWYG editors to develop content without much difficulty. However, in the salesforce marketing cloud, it is comparatively easy to modify the codes in the content. Marketing cloud provides each content, more accessibility to the codes, making things simpler for those who have experience in HTML, CSS, and AMP script. On the contrary, it is not easy to access HTML / CSS on Marketo and it may result in an extra workload as well. 

Usability and navigation 

Marketing automation platforms should be designed in a way that makes them easy for the members to use. This is because they have only limited time to get trained and familiarized with the system. In the latest model marketing platforms, there should be some requirements like accessibility to key features, smooth functioning, and ease of navigation to use the platform and system effortlessly. Well, if we compare the user interfaces of Marketo and Salesforce cloud marketing, it takes time to get acquainted with both. However, Marketo can be a better option because all the essential features are found in one place to make it easier to work with.  

Though both marketing automation platforms guarantee a number of attributes that meet the requirements of any marketing team, if you are searching for a high level of complex data management or running multi-channel campaigns, a salesforce marketing cloud may be the appropriate choice for the team. At the same time, the experience of the user in the marketing cloud is based on the channels and modules they pay for. This distinction in the functionality indicates that it takes a longer time to get the hang of the marketing cloud which is too much for beginners as well. 

Triggered activities and transactional messaging  

Marketo and the Marketing cloud deal with triggered and transactional messaging in various ways. Triggered actions are usually carried out using a smart campaign in Marketo depending on the rules that are defined according to user criteria. These smart campaigns also offer flexibility and power to set up custom activities. Contrary to this, you can configure “triggered emails” in the salesforce marketing cloud, that prompt you to send a message when called by an external API. This gives flexibility to the salesforce cloud which is similar to that of Marketo.   

Wrap Up 

Both Salesforce and Marketo have a competitive capability and if executed and handled properly, they work well for almost every enterprise marketing team. The main differences lie in the structure of data and the way it is built to meet the requirements of different marketers. for any platform to be successful, you need to organize your data architecture, execution, marketing strategy, and skills in an effective way to actively interact with your customers around the platform.