It's a little overwhelming with the amount of marketing tools that salesforce has. I currently use Marketing Cloud Account Engagement but just learn that their is also Marketing Cloud Engagement and Marketing Cloud Growth. What is the purpose of all 3 and do any of them encompass all features?
Hi A Dav! Great question - the Salesforce marketing portfolio can be confusing. Here's a clear side-by-side breakdown:
1. Marketing Cloud Account Engagement (MCAE, formerly Pardot): Best for B2B marketing. Focuses on lead nurturing, scoring, grading, email automation, and aligning sales and marketing. Designed for longer B2B sales cycles where leads need to be nurtured over time. Integrates tightly with Sales Cloud CRM. Use this if your customers are businesses (B2B) and you need lead scoring and drip campaigns.
2. Marketing Cloud Engagement (formerly ExactTarget): Best for B2C high-volume marketing. Full enterprise-grade multi-channel platform covering email, SMS (MobileConnect), push notifications, advertising (Advertising Studio), and complex customer journeys (Journey Builder). It is the most powerful and feature-rich of the three but also the most complex and expensive. Use this if you are doing large-scale B2C campaigns across multiple channels.
3. Marketing Cloud Growth & Advanced Editions (New - launched 2024): The newest addition, designed for SMB and mid-market customers. It lives natively inside the core Salesforce platform (CRM), powered by Data Cloud for unified customer profiles. It offers essential B2C marketing features like email campaigns, segments, and journeys at a lower price point than full Marketing Cloud Engagement. Use this if you want marketing automation built directly into your Salesforce CRM without the complexity of the full SFMC platform.
Simple Decision Guide: B2B + sales alignment = MCAE. B2C + large volume + multi-channel = Marketing Cloud Engagement. B2C + smaller scale + native CRM integration = Marketing Cloud Growth. None of them fully encompasses all features of the others - they are separate products targeting different needs.
