Salesforce Marketing Cloud Growth Edition is the new offering in 2024 from Salesforce designed for medium-sized businesses. You may wonder: Is it better than SFMC Engagement or Pardot? Can we afford it? Let us demystify what it is, how Marketing Cloud Growth Edition compares to Pardot, how much Growth Edition costs, and then we'll help you with your marketing cloud implementation it, if it's for you.

The marketing cloud product family

We now have kid in the Marketing family:

1. Marketing Cloud Growth (this new platform)
2. Marketing Cloud Account Engagement (aka Pardot)
3. Marketing Cloud Engagement (aka Marketing Cloud)
4. Marketing Cloud Personalization (aka Interaction Studio)
5. Marketing Cloud Intelligence (aka Datorama).

Growth Edition or Pardot Account Engagement?

Pardot remains the unique marketing platform suited ideally for ABM implementation (learn more: How many Account-based Marketing companies to target), and is the only platform with a pixel for 1st party website data generation within the platform that links a prospect website, social and ebook download behaviour with the Salesforce lead or contact . So, Pardot remains the best platform to support the marketing of 'considered, high value purchases', or B2B, in my view.

In contrast, the new Marketing Cloud Growth edition is the first native Salesforce marketing platform. As it includes data cloud, can handle the amount of data that AI brings, and as such can leverage data from the entire customer journey, i.e. include also commerce, sales and service data and touch points, via data sets. Great for larger clients who also have such data.

Let me compare the two packages side by side, based on some industry examples:

Industry Examples	SFMC Account Engagement (Pardot)	SFMC Growth Edition
Hospitality industry	Ideal for B2B hospitality facility providers, e.g. conference centres; business hotels. Focused on enhancing engagement with corporate accounts and B2B event management.	Crafted for medium-sized hospitality businesses. Focused on better engagement with individual hotel guests. Imagine a boutique hotel chain aiming to boost occupancy rates and enhance guest satisfaction.
Healthcare industry	Focused on high value private care, such as IVF.	Private surgeries for lower value care with repeat services, e.g. chiropractor offices
Financial Services	Wealth management providers	Niche or corporate insurance providers
Travel industry	Boutique luxury hotels	Tour operators
SAAS	Corporate clients and partners	End-user training

Why Marketing Cloud Growth?

"Was the Marketing Cloud Product Team jealous of Pardot's popularity? And also wanted better integration with the Salesforce CRM?" Just kidding. The official purpose of the Marketing Cloud Growth edition is to help medium/larger businesses grow faster using Trusted AI. With Marketing Cloud Growth, you can integrate multiple data sources with Data Cloud, leverage AI to build content with Digital Experiences, power complex customer journeys with Flow Builder, and optimise with Einstein along the way.

Overview of Marketing Cloud Growth features

What's included in this edition of Marketing Cloud?

A lot!

Data Cloud
AI-Powered Campaigns
AI-Based Segmentation
Send Time Optimisation
Real-Time Sales Alerts
Performance Metrics
AI-Powered Emails
Multi-Channel Journeys
Web & Multi-channel Send Consent Management
Identity Resolution
Flows for Everything

5 Key Use Cases

There are several specific ways you can use Marketing Cloud Growth Edition:

1. Segment audiences faster, with simple-to-use Generative AI prompts.

2. Delivering campaigns faster, assets and segments can added to campaigns automatically. Gen AI are helpful in both creating and associating assets to campaigns. Bonus benefit: less prone to human error.

3. Make customer relationships more personalised.

4. Capture new leads with forms and landing pages.

5. Optimising marketing performance through engagement dashboards around marketing assets.

Salesforce is truly responding to reality and needs of marketers today:

" 51% of marketers use generative AI to save time on everyday tasks like creating basic content (76%), writing copy (76%), and analysing market data (63%). But without high-quality first-party data, AI-generated content lacks the accuracy companies need to trust and use it responsibly. AI could be a massive boon to small businesses, where employees spent almost 11 hours per week drafting emails — time that could be saved by automating content creation, personalisation, and optimising the best time to send customer communications with AI." -- Salesforce.

Highlights of Marketing Cloud Growth's Features

EINSTEIN AI FOR Productivity

In Marketing Cloud Growth, you will have access to Salesforce's predictive and generative AI tools (Einstein) to help you improve work outcomes and day-to-day productivity.

SALESFORCE CMS FOR EMAIL CONTENT MGT

Marketing Cloud Growth gives you the tools you need to make and store a range of content for your marketing initiatives. You'll see a 'Content'- tab which will leverage Salesforce CMS (See the similarities with Pardot?)

Your 'Content'-tab is where you can organise your content in workspaces and folders. Ready to create something new? Easy. Just create and edit a variety of marketing-specific content types in a consistent editing environment.

CONSENT MANAGEMENT FEATURES FOR Privacy Regulation

With Marketing Cloud Growth consent management tools you will be able to stay in compliance with the privacy and consent regulations that apply to your business. You can use the default marketing communication subscription to collect and track consent data. Or, you can create your own custom subscriptions. There is a built-in email preference page makes it easy for email subscribers to manage their own communication preferences.

Creating target Audiences with Marketing Cloud Growth

The strongest campaigns target the right audience. After you determine your ideal audience member, you can reach them by filtering Data Cloud data into a segment. Before you start using segments, make sure a Data Cloud admin or data analyst has configured incoming data streams and defined the reconciliation rules that manage harmonization across records.

Easy, organised centralised Campaign management

Kickstart your marketing efforts with a centralised campaign hub where you can design and automate your content. In Marketing Cloud Growth, templated campaign options simplify creating a single piece of content or a multistep customer experience.

Measure Success in Marketing Cloud Growth

Monitoring performance and reporting on your successes are a significant part of a marketer’s job. Use Data Cloud reports in the Analytics tab to check in on your email and SMS campaign performance.

Add-ons

Note that you can even have an SMS messaging add-on. You can purchase additional marketing profiles, additional email sends and data cloud services.

Marketing Cloud Growth Edition for Hospitality Business

For a business in the Hospitality industry this could mean:

1. Einstein AI for Personalized Guest Interactions: Harness predictive and generative AI to personalize guest interactions, from pre-arrival communication to post-stay follow-ups. Example: Auto-generate personalized welcome emails based on guest preferences.
2. Salesforce CMS for Streamlined Content Management: Simplify content creation for promotional materials, event announcements, or special offers. Example: Easily create and edit visually appealing content for weekend getaway promotions.
3. Consent Management for Guest Privacy: Ensure compliance with privacy regulations by managing guest consents seamlessly. Example: Allow guests to customize their communication preferences, enhancing trust and loyalty.
4. Targeted Audience Creation for Events and Promotions: Use Data Cloud to identify and create targeted segments for specific events or promotions. Example: Create a segment for guests interested in culinary experiences and send targeted promotions for upcoming food festivals.
5. Centralized Campaign Management for Seamless Events: Streamline event marketing by managing campaigns in a centralized hub. Example: Plan and automate campaigns for seasonal events, ensuring a cohesive and engaging guest experience.
6. Performance Monitoring for Data-Driven Insights: Utilize Data Cloud reports to monitor the performance of email campaigns, promotions, and event communications. Example: Analyze the success of a recent spa promotion through detailed performance metrics.
7. SMS: Enhance communication by using SMS for event reminders or exclusive offers and personalised event invitations via SMS.

Marketing Cloud Growth Admin Roles

There are 3 types of roles to in configuring and managing Marketing Cloud Growth: Salesforce admins, Data Cloud admins, and marketing admins. Smaller companies may combine these roles for a single users, or create an admin team.

Salesforce Edition Requirements

Marketing Cloud Growth requires you to have a Salesforce Enterprise Edition or higher as your CRM. Just like most products.

Salesforce Marketing Cloud Growth Pricing

Wonder "How much is marketing cloud growth edition?" Marketing Cloud Growth pricing starts at US$1,500/org/month, if paid annually. Then, you can extend it with these 4 paid add-ons:

• Additional Marketing Profiles: $250/org/year
• SMS: $10 per 1,000 sends
• Additional Email Sends: $10 per 1,000 sends
• Data Cloud Services Card: $10 per 1,000 sends.

Plus, make no mistake, marketing cloud growth edition is not a DIY.

What is the hourly rate for marketing cloud? We charge by the day based on an hourly rate of £100-150/hr.

How much does it cost to implement Salesforce Marketing Cloud? This varies greatly. If you get a Mason Frank consultant, you're typically locked in a month, every hour paid, and that consultant will not hurry you up, so consider that 2 months minimum, .... or way more.

If you work with CloudAnalysts, we help you stick to a budget, we leverage and train your inhouse resources and you only pay for the days that we work for you. So, if your team needs a week of lead time to sort out data, you won't pay a dime. While our charge out rate per hour is 1.3-2x that of a consultant of the street, you'll find that we are by far the cheaper, and much better marketing cloud consultants to go with.

With CloudAnalysts,

• you'll get a team of very experienced SFMC consultants for your project, who
• Have a 5/5 Customer Satisfaction score.
• Are Salesforce certified 'to the max' in Marketing cloud, Data Cloud, and other clouds.
• Know what they are doing!

So, you'll end up spending a lot less than you would with a Mason Frank random person. And your org will be set up correctly, so you can scale with your solution.

Regional Availability & Rollout

The product was first made available in the United States and Canada last Spring. It is becoming available now in Summer/Fall 2024 in EMEA. Other regions are following.

Interested to learn more about this new software?

Marketing Cloud Growth Implementation Guide

Stay tuned for our next article with tips on how to prepare for marketing cloud growth implementation. In the meantime, you can take advantage of our monthly recurring webinar 'Marketing Cloud Preparation Checklist' which is quite applicable to Growth Edition as well. We'll help you be prepared for marketing magic!

Update 2025: Marketing Cloud Growth is part of the AI - powered Salesforce Marketing Cloud Next - portfolio for agentic marketing.