Enter Into The World Of Salesforce Marketing Cloud

In this era of intelligent marketing, engagement with customer is not all about marketing, Salesforce Marketing Cloud (SFMC) helps you to manage customer engagement through their entire journey (Sales, Service, Marketing & Commerce). Come, let's learn about what is SFMC and how to get started with Marketing cloud.

SFMC is a provider of digital marketing automation and analytics software and services. Salesforce for Marketing is built on the world's #1 CRM platform. It enables you to know your customer, personalize with intelligence, and engage across the entire journey. It’s the only integrated customer engagement platform that enables you to deliver personalized customer engagement at scale on every channel, from email to web, mobile, social, and digital advertising. Marketing Cloud covers it all.

Back In Time:

Salesforce Marketing Cloud was founded under the name ExactTarget in late 2000 by Scott Dorsey, Chris Baggott, and Peter McCormick with $200,000 in financing. In late 2012, it acquired a marketing automation vendor, Pardot, for $96 million, and the developers of a product recommendation engine, iGoDigital, for $21 million. The following June, ExactTarget was acquired by Salesforce for $2.5 billion. In September, salesforce.com said it was integrating ExactTarget into a new division called Salesforce ExactTarget Marketing Cloud. In May 2014, Scott Dorsey stepped down as CEO of ExactTarget and was replaced by Scott McCorkle. The company was renamed in October 2014 to "Salesforce Marketing Cloud", removing "ExactTarget" from its name, as part of its integration with Salesforce.

SFMC develops marketing automation and analytics software for email, mobile, social and online marketing. It also offers consulting and implementation services. The software is sold primarily on a multi-year subscription basis. SFMC was founded as an email marketing vendor. Its email management software maintains mailing lists and schedules and modifies email messages based on what recipients read, click-on or forward. Later expanding and improving to mobile and social media communications.

Power Up Business With Marketing Cloud:

• Connect known and unknown profiles to gain a unified view of the customer.

• Leverage data and Einstein artificial intelligence to make every interaction relevant.

• Create two-way, real-time engagement when and where the customer wants.( Real-time customer engagement)

• Measure, report, and optimize on marketing performance, impact, and customer loyalty.(Marketing and Analytics)

• Automation of marketing and email

• Mobile messaging(SMS) and Push notifications

• Social media engagement

Why SFMC is so special? It stands out among other marketing cloud platforms because of below reasons:

• It is a platform for planning, personalizing, and optimizing a customer’s journey.

• It maps a software customer journey across several devices, channels, and customer life cycle stages.

• It integrates with other software such as Sales Cloud, Salesforce CRM, etc.

• It provides better and deeper insights for customers.

Editions and Pricing:

Salesforce Marketing Cloud (SFMC) is a software as a service (SaaS) platform made up of three editions (Pro, Corporate, and Enterprise) each with different levels of functionality and additional add-on features for users to further increase their capabilities. Some countries offer Basic edition as well. (Let's discuss this as a separate topic, Refer here. But, the details for quick reference for those of you checking this post alone.)

Salesforce offers a diverse range of pricing options for its Marketing Cloud based on specific purposes and features: (varies with requirement and license)

1) Essentials – $25/user/month

2) Professional – $75/user/month

3) Enterprise – $150/user/month

4) Unlimited – $300/user/month PDF for edition details. Contact for Pricing 1.866.558.9834 Let's learn about Building Blocks of SFMC in upcoming post. Stay tuned...