Unless you have been living under a rock, you have heard of Salesforce. This company is a global leader in CRM (Customer Relationship Management) solutions. But what many don't know is that they also have other cloud-based products that are just as good. One of them is Marketing Cloud Intelligence, a marketing measurement, reporting, and optimization tool.
In case you have never heard of it, don't worry. We are doing a thorough review - going over a quick introduction, features, limitations, pricing, and all. So, are you ready? Then, let's get into it.
What is Salesforce Marketing Cloud Intelligence?
Marketing Cloud Intelligence is a component of Salesforce Marketing Cloud that has been designed for businesses or marketers to integrate and analyze their marketing data on the go. The tool allows you to discover AI-powered insights in real-time and then use them to optimize the performance of your marketing campaigns.
There are plenty of tasks you can do within the Marketing Cloud Intelligence platform. Let's take a brief look at them, one by one.
Data Integration
Marketing Cloud Intelligence collects data from diverse sources featuring various data types, each characterized by its distinct set of dimensions and measurements. These dimensions consist of entities that exhibit specific relationships or hierarchies among them. Preserving these relationships within Marketing Cloud Intelligence's database is essential to ensure accurate data aggregation.
One of the pivotal steps when starting with Marketing Cloud Intelligence is data uploading. Considering this tool's compatibility with various data formats, you have the flexibility to select from a variety of methods for data ingestion. While uploading data, you have the option to configure data mapping to specify which fields will be visible in Marketing Cloud Intelligence.
Also, you can create customized calculated fields to maximize the utility of your data. All of these tasks are accomplished within the Connect & Mix section.
Data Harmonization
Alright. You can upload data to Marketing Cloud Intelligence from a number of sources. But now, you need all of this data merged together so that you can get a full picture of your marketing efforts. This is where Marketing Cloud Intelligence's Harmonization Center comes into play. It gives you a set of tools to unify your data.
Most of the time, no single data source contains all the relevant data you need for a campaign. When doing things like promoting your campaign on multiple platforms/channels, the data is shared by those platforms. If you start analyzing each source separately, it will be a challenge to pull those key insights. So, the only option left is to harmonize your data.
Marketing Cloud Intelligence works on a marketing-focused data model. Although it has built-in harmonization for marketing data, you always have the option to use the Harmonization Center. Within this tool, you can create and manage your naming convention patterns, classifications, and harmonized dimensions.
Data Visualization
To help you visualize the data, Marketing Cloud Intelligence has three key elements you must know about - collections, widgets, and pages. Within collections, you can visualize all the data in one place, regardless of whether the data is coming from an app or a data stream. You can organize and personalize it however you like.
All the graphics elements used in data visualization, for example, pie charts, bar graphs, tables, scatterplot charts, or tree maps, are called widgets within Marketing Cloud Intelligence. You can add and edit widgets within pages (yes, this is where visualization happens). Pages are contained within collections ( a collection can have multiple pages inside).
There are three types of pages available. You can start with a dashboard template which creates pages with a predefined design. If you know what you are looking to do specifically, it is best to start with a blank page. Lastly, there are app pages that visualize data generated from an installed application.
All the visualization within Marketing Cloud Intelligence happens on the Visualize tab. The beauty of this tab is that it is dynamic in nature and changes based on the elements you have selected.
AI Insights
Being AI-powered, Marketing Cloud Intelligence pulls deeper insights for you to act on quickly and efficiently. The tool employs automated regression modeling and statistical analysis so that you don't have to spend much time and effort on analyzing your marketing data.
On the Analyze and Act tab, there are tons of analysis tools including monitoring tools to help you track KPIs. You can use pivot tables to look at your data from different perspectives, for example, to discover patterns, trends, and comparisons. What is even more interesting is the Einstein Marketing Insights (EMI). It is an Insights Discovery tool that does an analysis of your marketing data and then shows you key factors affecting the performance of your marketing campaigns. You can create an EMI bot and get deeper insights into selected KPIs.
Also, you can run multiple bots at a time and group them together by KPI, ensuring you are viewing bots with matching KPIs and not getting distracted by a cluttered view.
Marketplace
This is the perfect place to discover apps and tools that can extend the functionality of Marketing Cloud Intelligence for you. The Marketplace is open to access for anyone, however, it may be limited based on your user role. It allows you to download and install applications, widgets, connectors, and add-ons with no learning curve or coding skills.
When you install an app, necessary components like dashboards and data streams are automatically added to your Marketing Cloud Intelligence workplace. If you'd like, there is a ton of customization available to you, allowing you to configure how you want the app to run and what to view.
Installing custom widgets gives you access to additional visualization and navigation options. You can edit them and change the look and behavior of your dashboard to your taste. Similarly, by enabling add-ons from the Marketplace, you can extend the capability of the Marketing Cloud Intelligence platform.
Collaboration
When working towards a collective marketing goal, seamless collaboration makes a huge difference. Another commendable thing about Marketing Cloud Intelligence is its real-time collaboration capabilities. You can connect chat or collaboration platforms like Slack into your dashboards so that your team can collaborate in real-time on tasks like analysis, marketing insights, and decision-making.
Besides, all your Marketing Cloud Intelligence dashboards, insights, and reports can be shared as a secure link, a PDF document, or even a presentation deck over email. You have the option to either share them instantly or schedule a delivery.
Reporting
Marketing Cloud Intelligence delivers an automatic reporting experience that is available round the clock. You can view and share a detailed analysis of your marketing data via interactive and customizable reports.
These reports can be saved locally or on the cloud. You can run them either in real-time or as per a schedule, your call. Interestingly, there are two types of reports that you can create - data and visual. Data reports use formats like CSV or TXT. Visual reports, on the other hand, are dashboard screenshots exported as a PNG or PDF.
Pricing
You will find three pricing plans for Marketing Cloud Intelligence on the Salesforce website - Starter ($3k/month), Growth ($10k/month), and Plus (quote available upon request).
All three plans give you access to all the features but only differ in how much marketing data you can analyze and how many users you can have.
Final Thoughts
Marketing Cloud Intelligence, like most Salesforce products, is an impressive tool with plenty of features and AI support. What might surprise you is its ability to connect with Tableau, which is a powerful analytics platform and you can check out its in-depth review on our blog.
There is almost nothing that disappoints about Marketing Cloud Intelligence except the price. It would hurt to pay the price that should be able to buy you the entire Marketing Cloud suite, let alone a part of it. Also, a free trial would have been nice but you can only request a demo. The pricing does not seem to have much customization.
At the end of the day, it comes down to whether you can afford it. If you can, it is a perfect marketing analytics solution for you. If you can't, you always have more affordable options like Mixpanel Analytics.