Salesforce Marketing Cloud vs Act-On

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Our analysts compared Salesforce Marketing Cloud vs Act-On based on data from our 400+ point analysis of Marketing Automation Software, user reviews and our own crowdsourced data from our free software selection platform.

Salesforce Marketing Cloud Software Tool
Act-On Software Tool

Product Basics

Salesforce Marketing Cloud is a comprehensive software platform designed to empower businesses in managing their marketing campaigns across various channels. It caters to businesses seeking to enhance their marketing efficiency and effectiveness, enabling them to expand their reach, monitor campaign performance, and evaluate return on investment. The platform offers a range of benefits, including streamlined email campaign creation and tracking, effective social media marketing management, and insightful website analytics. Key features encompass tools for multi-channel marketing management, customer communication, and data collection and analysis.

User experiences suggest that Salesforce Marketing Cloud excels in providing robust marketing automation capabilities, facilitating personalized customer journeys and targeted messaging. Pricing for Salesforce Marketing Cloud is based on a per-user model, with a starting price of $125 per user per month. While it may be perceived as a premium option compared to some alternatives, its extensive features and scalability make it a compelling choice for businesses with substantial marketing needs.

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Established in 2008, Act-On is a comprehensive platform that offers marketing professionals all the standard features in an automation tool, alongside several other unique features.

Sophisticated email automation, landing page construction, analytics, automated campaigns, useful templates, and social channels are just some of the features that are available to users. This product is ideal for medium to large enterprises, especially those that have dedicated marketing departments.

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$1,250 Monthly
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$1,000 Monthly
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Product Assistance

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Product Insights

  • Fit to Needs: Create and customize views, page layouts, fields and filters. Personalize mobile apps with custom menus, navigation bars, color schemes, branding and more. 
  • Easily Share Data: Find new audiences and create partnerships using Data Studio. Manage data rights and monetize by exposing audiences to marketers. 
  • Access Anywhere: Get data on the go with native mobile apps for Android and iOS. Visualize, track, and manage customer experiences in real time. 
  • Optimize Mobile Marketing: Create geofenced messages to automatically send coupons or promotions to customers in a targeted area. Deliver closer proximity messages using Bluetooth low-energy beacon devices. 
  • Do More With Apps: Access both free and paid apps with AppExchange to extend and enhance all the features offered. 
  • Streamline Tasks: Execute complex marketing and data management activities with simple or multi-step automation. Automation Studio includes an overview page for automation status and error information to enable quick recovery. 
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  • Make Sense of Digital Breadcrumbs: Better track and score campaigns with this piece of software. This tool helps marketers attain a high-level overview of their campaigns and enterprises.
  • Inbound Marketing: Act-On provides support for inbound marketing techniques, enabling users to organically and dynamically pull in leads from across channels.
  • Outbound Marketing: Automated campaigns, lead scoring and list management are built into the software to support outbound marketing techniques and conversion tracking.
  • Sales Effectiveness: The software helps to unify sales and marketing teams effectively by providing a sales-funnel overview and campaign attribution, assisting users in scoring their leads.
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  • Audience Management: Utilizes data, machine learning and AI to provide deep insights into customer behavior and deliver personalized, relevant messages. 
  • Customer Engagement: Capture, unify, segment and act on customer data across multiple teams, devices and systems. Also, manage dashboards and safe provisioning measures, as well as optimize live campaigns based on data. 
  • Email Marketing: Engage audiences with marketing campaigns using tools such as: 
    •  Drag-and drop segmentation and built-in intelligence. 
    •  Test messages and automated emails with delivery schedules. 
    •  Campaign targeting to reach any number of customers. 
  • Mobile Marketing: Automate and customize mobile campaigns seamlessly. Includes: 
    •  Personalized messaging based on preferences and time-sensitivity. 
    •  Geofenced messages for promotions. 
    •  Mobile reports on the app. 
    •  Alignment of mobile campaigns with other marketing channels. 
  • Social Media Marketing: Manage and monitor content and conversations across social media platforms for insights. Machine learning and photo recognition drive marketing strategies and customizable dashboards help keep up with trends. 
  • Datorama: Use one marketing dashboard of cross-channel analytics and built-in reporting for ROI, speed and growth. Gain insights from advertising efforts, events, email, social media channels, a website and a CRM database. 
  • Pardot: Automates B2B marketing for connections and targeted sales pitches. Segmentation aids marketing tasks and email paths personalize the customer experience. 
  • Google Marketing Platform: Access advanced marketing solutions with powerful tools for identifying insights. Conduct deep analysis of user engagement with content and boost marketing performance. 
  • Advertising Studio: Gain new prospects like current high-value customers and reconnect with old customers. Coordinate advertising with email for more purchase intent and optimize spending by controlling advertising to current customers. 
  • Data Studio: Find new audiences with advanced discovery tools, integrate into over 200 channels and create new partnerships with premium data providers. 
  • Interaction Studio: Drive customer engagement by visualizing, tracking and managing customer experiences in real time. Control message frequency and connect online and offline interactions. 
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  • CRM Integration: Act-On can integrate with SalesForce, Microsoft Dynamics, SugarCRM, NetSuite, Infor and Simpleview. Using any of these integrated CRMs, marketers can engage segmented contacts through targeted account activity.
  • Account-Based Marketing Automation: Account profiles provide an overview of accounts and buyer behaviors, giving users a clear picture of aggregate customer behavior.
  • Progressive Profiling: Collect information without making customers fill out a large number of forms. Adaptive forms, which present and collect information incrementally over time, help users gain valuable insights without being intrusive.
  • Targeted Email Automation: With easy-to-use templates, code-free interfaces and a diverse template catalog, users have access to a variety of content to push out through automated email campaigns. Act-On also integrates its analytics platform into its email outreach, letting users track open rates and measure success.
  • Report Sharing: The solution’s analytics platform can generate robust and interactive reports for users to easily share with decisionmakers.
  • Data Studio: This program comes equipped with an analytical engine called Data Studio, which can pull data from a variety of sources such as CSV, Excel, Amazon, Google and Microsoft Azure.
  • Social Media Engagement: Build brand awareness with automated social posting and metrics aggregation. Act-On’s content curation engine provides insights into content that can generate higher levels of engagement for a user’s business.
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Product Ranking

#14

among all
Marketing Automation Software

#50

among all
Marketing Automation Software

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User Sentiment Summary

Good User Sentiment 1950 reviews
Great User Sentiment 656 reviews
79%
of users recommend this product

Salesforce Marketing Cloud has a 'good' User Satisfaction Rating of 79% when considering 1950 user reviews from 5 recognized software review sites.

84%
of users recommend this product

Act-On has a 'great' User Satisfaction Rating of 84% when considering 656 user reviews from 2 recognized software review sites.

5.0 (33)
n/a
3.9 (1166)
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4.26 (250)
4.1 (258)
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4.4 (102)
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3.8 (391)
4.15 (406)

Synopsis of User Ratings and Reviews

Reporting: All users who mention reports and analytics indicated that the reporting capabilities are a key benefit.
Features: A robust set of features enable cross-channel marketing, according to 75% of users referencing capabilities.
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Intuitive Interface: Act-On's user-friendly interface streamlines campaign creation and management, reducing the learning curve for users.
Robust Reporting: Advanced reporting capabilities provide detailed insights into campaign performance, allowing users to track results and optimize future efforts.
Email Marketing Automation: Automated email sequences nurture leads, deliver targeted content, and improve campaign efficiency.
Social Media Integration: Act-On seamlessly integrates with social media platforms, enabling users to manage campaigns and track engagement across multiple channels.
Excellent Customer Support: Act-On provides responsive and knowledgeable customer support, ensuring users receive assistance when needed.
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Cost: All reviews on this topic noted additional costs as a concern associated with using this product.
Complexity: About 95% of user feedback on this issue suggested that assistance is necessary for understanding of all features and functions.
Customer Support: The customer support is unhelpful and concerns might go unsolved for days, according to 88% of users who mention service.
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Unintuitive Interface: Act-On's user interface is often criticized for being complex and difficult to navigate, leading to a steep learning curve for new users.
Limited Integrations: Act-On lacks integrations with popular third-party applications, making it challenging to connect with other systems used in the marketing ecosystem.
Costly: Act-On's pricing can be prohibitive for small businesses and startups, with limited flexibility in pricing options.
Lack of Reporting Capabilities: Users have reported that Act-On's reporting features are limited, making it difficult to gain insights into campaign performance.
Poor Customer Support: Some users have experienced delays and unsatisfactory responses from Act-On's customer support team.
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Salesforce Marketing Cloud can be leveraged for its powerful set of features for effective cross-channel marketing, according to user feedback. Another common strength is its reporting features to analyze and plan marketing strategies. However, users raise concerns about the system’s complexity, which may require outside assistance at additional costs, especially due to unresponsive customer support. Another major drawback reviews agree on is the lack of cost-effectiveness due to additional costs and charges. Overall, the product can be a good pick for large companies looking to strategize and execute marketing effectively.

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Act-On consistently receives high praise for its intuitive user interface, which allows marketers to quickly create and automate campaigns without extensive training. It is also lauded for its robust reporting capabilities, which provide detailed insights into campaign performance. However, some users have reported occasional bugs and glitches, and its customer support has been criticized for being slow to respond at times. Compared to competitors like HubSpot and Salesforce Marketing Cloud, Act-On is often seen as a more affordable and user-friendly option, particularly for small and mid-sized businesses. Its focus on ease of use and affordability sets it apart from more complex and expensive solutions. Act-On's intuitive drag-and-drop interface makes it easy to create automated workflows, and its pre-built templates help users get started quickly. Overall, Act-On is a solid choice for businesses looking for an affordable and easy-to-use marketing automation solution. Its strengths lie in its user-friendly interface, robust reporting capabilities, and affordability. While it may not have all the bells and whistles of more expensive solutions, it offers a comprehensive suite of features that can meet the needs of most businesses.

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