The Salesforce Marketing Cloud is the marketing arm of the Salesforce suite. It provides hundreds of pre-built applications that allow marketers to manage and automate almost every aspect of the customer lifecycle, from first touch point through ongoing engagement.
The marketing cloud is built on the same foundation as the core CRM product, ensuring compatibility with all other apps in the Salesforce suite . It consists of six modules: data management, campaign builder, collaboration tools, advertising manager, social hub and mobile.
The Salesforce Marketing Cloud Platform -- Data Management Module
The Salesforce Marketing Cloud Platform -- Collaboration Tools Module
The combination of modularity and integration into an overall cloud platform makes the Salesforce Marketing Cloud truly powerful. It's also versatile, supporting both online and offline campaigns across all digital channels (Display, Video, Mobile, Social Ads).
The Data Management Module is where marketers import customer contact data into the cloud. It extracts contact information from multiple sources with one-click matching algorithms that eliminate manual entry work . This ensures that marketers have access to accurate data when they are planning campaigns or creating marketing lists for targeted mailings.
The module includes email campaigns to keep existing customers engaged with your brand. It can match prospects against a list of opted-in emails to deliver personalized messages . This reduces costs because it allows companies to use their own email lists rather than buying third-party lists. It also increases quality by sending offers to customers who have explicitly agreed to receive them.
The module includes social profiles so companies can target their updates based on specific customer interests or demographics . It has a publishing tool that lets marketers customize content across all digital channels, including social, mobile and rich media ads . Campaign Builder is the core of the marketing cloud platform. Marketers can use it to create campaigns at different levels, from strategic planning for large-scale programs down to daily tactical executions.
Campaign Builder provides pre-built dashboards with immediate access to key metrics. It enables segmentation using any criteria—demographics, geographics, psychographics, purchase history—without requiring IT resources or data-warehousing expertise.
The module comes with an assortment of pre-built reports that marketers can use for insight into specific marketing campaigns (Figure 4) . It includes tools to help them measure the impact of their efforts in terms of revenue or customer satisfaction, without requiring additional customizations or development resources.
The Campaign Builder Module -- Dashboard and Report Views
Collaboration Tools is a suite of apps that allows marketers to share content across the organization so everyone involved in planning and executing customer engagement has immediate access to what they need. It consists of four components: Community Cloud, Chatter, Documents and Feeds.
The Collaboration Tools Module -- Community Cloud and Chatter
The Collaboration Tools Module -- Documents and Feeds
The module is the social network for the Salesforce Marketing Cloud community. Using it, marketers can share content, including rich media assets, with colleagues across the organization . This speeds up execution because teams are no longer hampered by lack of access to key materials. It also allows companies to manage different types of collaboration in separate communities depending on their structure or business needs.
Chatter provides a secure environment for cross-company discussion threads that help marketers create customer engagement plans. This ensures comprehensive strategy development and makes sure everyone is working from—and building upon—the same information base . It also enables real-time collaboration through messaging, posting of updates and uploading of files.
The module is the marketing cloud platform's document storage system. It enables marketers to organize customer-facing assets in libraries accessible to all relevant parties . This speeds up execution because teams are no longer limited by location, access permissions or time zones. It also allows companies to manage different types of content (e.g., PR assets, PDFs) in separate folders, depending on their structure or business needs.
The feed builder lets marketers create targeted feeds that can be inserted into campaigns for immediate distribution across digital channels (Figure 8) . This ensures consistent messaging across platforms while reducing redundancy and streamlining maintenance efforts . Using it requires no technical expertise; you simply select criteria from a preloaded list to define the interests or demographics of your subscribers.
The Collaboration Tools Module -- Feeds Builder
The Marketing Cloud Analytics module is a suite of tools designed to help marketers extract actionable insights from their marketing data . Marketers can use it to monitor campaign performance and measure KPIs, such as lead volume and revenue, at the campaign level down to the individual contact . It includes four key components: Reports & Dashboards, Data Modeling & Management, Sample Size Estimation and Customer View .
The module provides pre-built reports that provide marketers with current and historical snapshots for insight into specific marketing campaigns , including rich media assets like images and videos.
