Salesforce Sales Cloud vs Salesforce Marketing Cloud: Which is a better fit?

Angel J.: My name is Angel, and I'm the HMIS Operations Manager for a company that is now 60 plus employees large, and I rate Salesforce Sales Cloud five out of five. Prior to Salesforce Sales Cloud, we used a multitude of different softwares, including softwares like Trello. We used Google Office, we used Microsoft Office, Microsoft 365. We used Zendesk. We used a lot of different softwares and tried to use them in a way that was collaborative, but it often left us with too many things to manage in different spaces. We chose Salesforce Sales Cloud because it is one of the top leaders in the industry. We knew that it had its own reputation, and it also brought to it a lot of tools already in-house. One of our top needs is for security and safety of our data. So Salesforce was able to handle some of the HIPAA requirements that we have for our data. We also wanted to make sure that it was a platform that all 60 plus of us could interact with inside of one system instead of having multiple softwares to handle our daily needs. And then we also wanted to use some of its intuition, such as the Einstein, where it helps us to make better decisions, helps us to understand what our activities are, keeps track of what we do in the system, and helps us to grow in using the system. This is one of the reasons why we chose Salesforce Sales Cloud. Getting started with Salesforce Sales Cloud, I would say was not the easiest route. You will definitely need someone that has the knowledge of Salesforce. At the very least, knowledge of database technology. We did have to source out some of the needs to Salesforce consultants, which were very easy to find. Salesforce did help us get these consultants, but it was not a one-stop, set up, everything works automatically. And we do not use it just for sales. We use it for customer management more so than sales. So the bit that we had to have customized was something that was not already in the box. So it wasn't the easiest, but it also wasn't the hardest. The advice that I have for anyone considering using Salesforce Sales Cloud for their business is to make sure that you document all the things that you need from Salesforce. Figure out the reason why you believe that Salesforce is going to serve you, so that you can aim at those specific products and add-ons that Salesforce already has in their system. They are very good at understanding some of the things that their system can do with what you have, but making that documentation and going through that with the employees, going through that with your organization prior to coming to Salesforce is probably going to be key. It does get costly if you don't understand what you're doing with Salesforce and you have to have multiple consultants try to figure it out for you. So if you can get organized and document what your needs are before you come to Salesforce, it'll help you pick the best products that Salesforce has to offer.

Rilwan: Hi, my name is Rilwan. I'm a product designer for ATIV Media Ltd. And on a scale of one to five, I give Salesforce Marketing Cloud, I give them a four out of a five times. So before we started using Salesforce, we were using Google Analytics. We still use Google Analytics, but based on the kind of business we do, we needed to add more in-depth analysis of how our customers actually relates with the platform from the moment they sign up to how they consume content. So using Salesforce, we're able to get in-depth analysis. So that was why we actually made a switch. And right now, we focus mainly on using Salesforce. Sometimes we still use Google Analytics, but the bulk of the CRM for the platform is mainly done on Salesforce. So when you're dealing with platform that's got tens and thousands of platform users, the moment there's an issue, even if it's just 1% that affects thousands of people, so you needed something that actually made sure everything was okay. Using Salesforce, we could get in-depth analysis. We could get updated leads. We can actually have an idea, "Okay, this is how these people are actually interacting with the platform. This is how long they're spending time on this section of the platform," because at the end of the day, we just want them to get to the content without adding to waste time on what they don't need to waste time on. So with Salesforce, unlike other platforms that we were using before, we could actually get a more detailed analysis, so we're able to get more detailed analysis compared to other competitions here. The reason why I gave it 4.5 is actually linked to this, one of the reasons why it's a 4.5 is mainly based on the UI and the UX of the websites. It feels a little bit outdated, so trying to integrate it sometimes can be a little bit stressful compared to using Google Analytics where it's well streamlined. That's one of the issues. But apart from the UX, everything else, once you incorporate it into the platform, once you check up your tutorials and everything is in place, the platform functions well. It does everything you need it to do. The one thing with Salesforce is the fact that it's a little bit pricey, so you need to actually figure out, is this something you actually need? Is it something your business actually needs? If you're spending that much money, what would be the return? So that's something if you've actually asked yourself these questions and you feel like, "Okay, we have the funds to actually get this software to implement into our business, and this can actually scale our business from where we're trying to get to." If you can answer these questions, then I would actually recommend using Salesforce because you would not be disappointed. And before you know what's up, your business is actually... You start seeing differences once you integrate the platform into your business.