Salesforce Marketing Cloud is a leading one-on-one cloud-based platform for digital marketing. It helps marketers orchestrate email, SMS, push, social, and advertising campaigns from a single interface. Over the years, it has evolved from a simple email solution into a full-featured marketing suite. It spans email campaigns, real-time personalization, analytics, and integration with Salesforce CRM and Data Cloud. Many large enterprises such as Adidas, Royal Enfield, Kotak Mahindra Bank, and Spotify use it today to drive personalized, data-driven marketing, making it an essential skill for modern marketers and developers.

The popularity and worldwide adoption of Salesforce Marketing Cloud make it a trending technology to learn, while professionals in the domain are limited. In this blog, we will explore the platform and its offerings in detail while guiding you on how to start your journey with SFMC.

What Is Salesforce Marketing Cloud?

Salesforce Marketing Cloud is a cloud-based marketing automation platform that helps businesses to engage customers at scale by providing them with tools to create and manage marketing content. 

These tools include automation for emails, mobile messages, social posts, ads, and customer journeys with powerful data analytics. Marketing Cloud gives marketers a single platform to execute digital campaigns across multiple channels while personalizing each customer’s experience. In short, Salesforce Marketing Cloud lets you plan, send, and measure marketing programs end-to-end within the Salesforce ecosystem.

It boasts a variety of products and services to serve the unique needs of every business. 

Salesforce Marketing Cloud Products

Marketing Cloud in Salesforce has a suite of products designed for different marketing needs. Here are all the product offerings:

1. Marketing Cloud Engagement

Formerly known simply as “Marketing Cloud” or ExactTarget, this is the core Marketing Cloud platform. It includes tools like Email Studio, Journey Builder, Mobile Studio, and more (see Studios and Builders below). Engagement lets you design and send targeted emails, SMS/push messages, mobile app messages, and advertising campaigns and automate customer journeys based on real-time data. It also includes Einstein AI features such as send-time optimization, content personalization, engagement scoring, and built-in analytics to optimize campaign performance.

2. Account Engagement (formerly Pardot)

Pardot is Salesforce’s B2B marketing automation solution, which is now called Marketing Cloud Account Engagement. It focuses on lead generation and nurturing, helping sales and marketing teams work together. 

Account Engagement manages prospects, email nurture campaigns, forms, landing pages, and lead scoring and integrates tightly with Salesforce CRM. For instance, it automates sending drip email programs to prospects and syncs lead data with Sales Cloud. 

In short, Pardot helps businesses generate, nurture, and convert B2B leads through targeted campaigns and AI-driven insights. It’s particularly well-suited for B2B sales cycles and high-value leads (see Pardot vs Marketing Cloud below).

3. Marketing Cloud Intelligence (formerly Datorama)

Marketing Cloud Intelligence is a powerful, data-driven analytics platform that normalizes and visualizes marketing data from multiple sources. It was built on the old Datorama engine and is now fully integrated with Salesforce. With Intelligence, you can connect advertising, email, web, social, and sales data through pre-built connectors and then use Einstein AI to harmonize and enrich it automatically. 

The platform provides dashboards and reports that update in near real-time, enabling marketers to see campaign ROI and make data-driven decisions swiftly. It turns fragmented marketing metrics into unified insights so you can optimize spend and performance with minimal manual effort.

4. Marketing Cloud Personalization (formerly Interaction Studio)

This product provides real-time, AI-driven personalization on websites and apps. It builds an ongoing “unified customer profile” from behavioral and transactional data and tailors content or offers for each visitor. It can adjust website banners, product recommendations, or email content for individual users using machine learning in real time. Salesforce describes it as “personalizing every customer interaction with AI and real-time data” – for example, showing product ads to a shopper right when they are browsing or altering an email’s content at the moment of opening based on their profile.

5. Marketing Cloud Growth/Advanced Edition (New)

In 2024, Salesforce introduced Marketing Cloud Growth Edition, a new entry-level tier built on the Salesforce core with embedded AI. Growth Edition is designed to launch marketing campaigns quickly for small and mid-size businesses. It tightly integrates with Salesforce Sales and Service Clouds via Data Cloud, bringing CRM and marketing data together. Growth Edition includes features like AI-assisted audience segmentation using natural language prompts to define segments, automated campaign brief generation, unified profiles across sales/service/marketing, and real-time campaign dashboards.

It uses Salesforce’s Data Cloud and Einstein AI so smaller teams can “connect CRM, AI, and data together” in Marketing Cloud. Salesforce also announced a forthcoming Marketing Cloud Advanced Edition for larger organizations, adding even more AI-based testing and engagement tools.

Those were the products of Marketing Cloud. Now, let’s move on to the various features and benefits these products bring to an organization’s marketing activities. 

Key Features and Benefits of Salesforce Marketing Cloud

Salesforce Marketing Cloud offers many features that help businesses personalize marketing and maximize ROI. Key highlights include:

• Multi-Channel Marketing: Engage customers across email, mobile (SMS/push), social media, advertising, and web from one platform. This broad channel support allows marketers to “deliver campaigns and content quickly” across the customer lifecycle.
• Unified Customer Data & AI: Marketing Cloud can ingest data from Salesforce Sales/Service Clouds or external sources to build a single customer view. This unified profile powers Einstein AI predictions and personalization. You can merge contact data, purchase history, website interactions, and more into one profile to trigger the right content for each customer automatically.
• Journey Automation: Automated customer journeys are a core benefit. Using Journey Builder, marketers design drag-and-drop flows that send messages (email, SMS, etc.) based on triggers or customer behaviors. These automation features save time and ensure consistent and timely outreach.
• Rich Analytics & Reporting: Users can track campaign performance and customer engagement with built-in analytics and Marketing Cloud Intelligence. Standard reports cover email sends, clicks, and conversions, while Datorama/Intelligence provides advanced dashboards with filters across channels.
• AI-Powered Personalization: The Einstein AI suite in Marketing Cloud automates insights and content. It can predict the most engaged customers, identify optimal send times, and even generate smart content blocks. These AI features remove the guesswork and let marketers deliver the right message to the right person at the right time.

Together, these features make Salesforce Marketing Cloud a beneficial marketing services platform and simplifies managing cross-channel campaigns.

What are Salesforce Marketing Cloud Studios?

As we mentioned earlier, several Salesforce Marketing Cloud features make it a popular choice for marketers. The most essential ones are the studios within the platform. These are dedicated spaces to manage content for a specific channel, providing space for a targeted marketing strategy. These studios allow you to tailor your content to each customer and build a one-on-one relationship with them across all channels.

Types of Salesforce Marketing Cloud Studios

Eight major types of Salesforce Marketing Cloud Studios manage customer data and interactions through one channel.

1. Salesforce Marketing Cloud Email Studio

Email marketing is essential for reaching a diverse digital audience. The Email Studio within SFMC is a tool for building and managing personalized email campaigns. It fetches data for every customer from their interaction on the web, social media, and emails to create a customized email for every customer journey stage. The drag-and-drop features allow you to use it effectively without any hassle. You can utilize it to send promotional emails, newsletters, transactional updates, etc.

2. Salesforce Marketing Cloud Mobile Studio

Salesforce Marketing Cloud Mobile Studio is a tool within Salesforce Marketing Cloud that allows you to engage with your customers on mobile devices via SMS, push notifications, and chat. It is beneficial in delivering time-sensitive offers, reminders, and updates directly to mobile users. The MobileConnect feature lets you design personalized texts for quick SMS messaging. On the other hand, GroupConnect increases reach within apps like WhatsApp.

3. Salesforce Marketing Cloud Social Studio

You cannot forget the buzzing social media platform in your marketing strategy. The Marketing Cloud Social Studio drives customer engagement through social media marketing. It can help you schedule and publish content on all your channels and even collect data. It can be your go-to tool for cross-channel customer interaction and community management. Besides uploading content, it tracks brand mentions, trends, and performance. Popular use cases of Social Studio include running social media campaigns and responding to customer queries.

4. Salesforce Marketing Cloud Advertising Studio

There is no marketing technique other than a personal advertisement that speaks directly to your customers. The motive of Marketing Cloud Advertising Studio is to help you reach your audience with impactful Ads. It uses your customers’ information, such as their location, demographics, preferences, and behaviors, to produce relevant ad copies. We cannot emphasize the importance of personalization and its inclusion in every SFMC tool. Advertisement Studio has strong integration capabilities with platforms like Facebook, Google, and LinkedIn to acquire new leads with personalized ads.

5. Salesforce Marketing Cloud Web Studio

Whether you market for e-commerce or IT, you must have a website to feature your products and services. This is where the Marketing Cloud Web Studio comes in handy. It helps to manage the web experience for all your users through landing pages, microsites, etc. The CloudPages feature in Web Studio organizes all web content, such as forms, coupons, and customer data, to tailor web pages accordingly. Using this tool for effective web marketing, you can create interactive website banners and pop-ups  

6. Salesforce Marketing Cloud Automation Studio

Automation Studio is a popular feature of SFMC as it automates marketing workflows and customer journeys. You can build a workflow with a simple drag-and-drop feature to automate everyday tasks. It can also automate campaigns and import or export data via trigger-based actions. It can take over your repetitive marketing activities, from emails to lead nurturing messages. 

The studios of the marketing cloud are powerful but not the only beneficial feature. SFMC has some builders that automate tasks within a campaign or studio. Let’s explore these further.

List of Salesforce Marketing Cloud Builders

Here is a list of the most used Salesforce Marketing Cloud Builders available in all studios and SFMC products. With minimal development needs, these builders help create and automate campaigns across multiple channels.

1. Journey Builder

Journey Builder is commonly known as the Marketing Cloud Engagement platform. As the name suggests, it is a campaign automation tool that maps customer journeys while building the campaign visually. You can control the touchpoints and actions to be taken at each touchpoint as the customers go through the journey. In addition to this, it allows you to segment contacts for a targeted audience.

2. Contact Builder (Audience Builder)

The contact builder is a contact management tool that records the information of your users, leads, and customers. It can give you access to every contact’s demographic and behavioral information and organize them into categories or groups based on their behavior. It also features a data studio for the data collection and management process. The collected data can be utilized to build deeper engagement and drive better business results.

3. Content Builder

A content builder is a simple tool that curates content from marketing activities. You can leverage it to make landing page templates, email content, etc. The interactive content blocks can be saved and reused as per requirement for different campaigns.

4. Brand Builder

It is a simple customization tool to tailor your Marketing Cloud org per the brand identity you want to showcase. You can use it to upload your company logo and change the color schemes. It is beneficial if you manage accounts for various brands and need customization for each.

5. Analytics Builder

Analytics Builder is an insight tool that analyzes data from all sources and gathers it into SFMC to create analytical reports. It consists of the following two kinds:

• Standard Reports: These are built-in Marketing Cloud reports on email campaigns, web and mobile analytics, contact behavior, administrator monitoring, and more.
• Datorama Reports for Marketing Cloud: These Datorama reports are replacing the Discover Reporting Tool, making campaign and journey reporting easier with pre-built dashboards.

Builders and Studios can use the items made by each other. This functionality makes the Marketing Cloud product suite flexible. While each has a use case and accessibility requirement, the collaborative effort of both is required for a successful marketing strategy using SFMC. 

Pardot vs Salesforce Marketing Cloud

Pardot (now called Marketing Cloud Account Engagement) and Marketing Cloud Engagement sit under the Salesforce Marketing Cloud umbrella, but they serve different audiences and use cases. Pardot is primarily about email marketing and lead nurturing. It includes email campaigns, form/landing page builders, and automated drip programs focused on moving leads through a sales funnel. By contrast, Marketing Cloud Engagement offers a broader range of channels for executing end-to-end customer journeys.

Neither platform is strictly “better” instead they complement each other. Pardot is ideal for B2B lead management and seamless Salesforce CRM alignment, while Salesforce Marketing Cloud Engagement is designed for high-volume, personalized consumer marketing across many channels. Organizations often choose based on their primary use case (B2B vs B2C) and budget.

Why Should You Learn Salesforce Marketing Cloud?

Learning Salesforce Marketing Cloud can be a valuable career move for several reasons:

• High Demand & Salary: Marketing Cloud skills are in demand as many companies invest in marketing automation. Roles like Salesforce Marketing Cloud developer, administrator, or consultant often command six-figure salaries. Industry data suggests experienced SFMC developers in the U.S. can earn well over $100k/year. 
• Integration with Salesforce Ecosystem: Marketing Cloud is closely tied to Salesforce’s Sales, Service, and Data Clouds. Learning SFMC means you gain expertise in data models, APIs, and integrations that apply across the Salesforce platform. With Salesforce pushing AI and data unification in every product, SFMC roles often involve cutting-edge tech. Salesforce offers a specialized Marketing Cloud Developer certification for developers who can build personalized, data-driven solutions.
• Versatile Marketing & Tech Skillset: As a developer or admin in Marketing Cloud, you work with various technologies – SQL for data queries, AMPscript/SSJS for email personalization, JavaScript/HTML for custom CloudPages, and marketing APIs. You also learn best practices for digital marketing, such as audience segmentation, A/B testing, and campaign analytics. This hybrid skill set of marketing strategy and technical skills is highly valued.
• Future-Proof Platform: Salesforce continuously invests in the Marketing Cloud. For example, the new Growth and Advanced editions leverage generative AI and Data Cloud, making it a leader in AI-powered marketing.

Expertise in Salesforce Marketing Cloud opens doors to roles in marketing technology, CRM consulting, and data-driven marketing analytics. It’s an investment in a platform widely used by enterprises and continues to grow in capability.

How to Get Started with Salesforce Marketing Cloud

Now that you have learned everything about the Salesforce Marketing Cloud, here are practical steps to begin your learning journey and become an SFMC Specialist

1. Learn the Basics on Trailhead: Salesforce’s Trailhead learning platform offers free modules on Marketing Cloud fundamentals. Start with “Marketing Cloud Engagement Basics” to understand core concepts. There are also developer-focused trails, such as the Marketing Cloud Developer Trailmix, that cover scripting languages and API usage. Completing these interactive lessons will give you hands-on practice and some Trailhead credentials.
2. Explore a Developer Org or Trial: Salesforce doesn’t publicly offer a free Marketing Cloud developer edition like it does for Sales/Service Cloud. However, you can sign up for Marketing Cloud trials often via Salesforce reps or partners or use Trailhead Playgrounds that include Marketing Cloud access. Even without a whole org, you can practice in a limited environment or use Salesforce’s Live Demo and Playground features to explore Email Studio, Journey Builder, etc.
3. Practice Key Skills: Focus on the leading studios and builders by building sample email templates and journeys, importing data, and running queries. Learn scripting languages like AMPscript for email personalization and Server-Side JavaScript for advanced logic. Explore Journey Builder by creating sample automated flows. Also, try out Marketing Cloud Connect with a Sales Cloud dev org to understand CRM integration.
4. Earn a Certification: Once comfortable, consider aiming for Salesforce Marketing Cloud Developer or Administrator certification. The Developer exam prep guide and Trailhead Trailmix will guide you through the necessary topics. Preparing for certification validates your skills and forces you to learn best practices. S2 Labs also offers a specialised Salesforce Marketing Training to prepare you for the certification exam. 
5. Join the Community: Engage with the Salesforce community via forums, StackExchange, and local user groups. Salesforce regularly hosts webinars where new Marketing Cloud features are announced. Staying active helps you learn the latest updates and network with professionals.

Following these steps will build a strong foundation in Salesforce Marketing Cloud. Over time, you can specialize to suit your career path.

Conclusion

Salesforce Marketing Cloud is a powerful suite of builders and studios that helps businesses execute personalised marketing across channels. Its modern features and analytics mean you can run data-driven campaigns and continuously optimize them. As marketing becomes more digital, understanding how to leverage Marketing Cloud will remain a valuable skill. This guide has covered everything about the core products and features of the Marketing Cloud. We have also shared tips on how to get started and harness the full potential of this platform. You can also explore our Salesforce Marketing Cloud Training for an in-depth learning experience.