Marketing Technology Primer: What Is Marketing Cloud?

By Viraj T On Mar 29, 2019

What Is Marketing Cloud?

Marketing Cloud is a collection of Marketing Tools hosted on the cloud class of servers. This collection is a blend of mission-critical marketing tools; CRM, Analytics Software and Services, Social Media, etc. This method of Cloud Marketing enables seamless Marketing Automation for an enterprise helping achieve business objectives.

Statistics Around Marketing Cloud

Since technology is recent, there are only a handful of enterprise software players that develop Marketing Clouds. Early in 2018, Gartner had quoted top brands that develop Marketing Cloud solutions. To understand the scope of Marketing Clouds, here are a few interesting facts about the same:

With beginnings from the dawn of the 21^st century, this industry has been steadily progressing for the last 19 years. Hence, as marketers, it sounds fairly ideal or even de facto for that matter to explore Marketing Cloud capabilities. Mentioned below are definitions of this technology — from sellers and research firms.

Marketing Cloud Defined

Gartner

“There is some evidence that the promise of the cloud — an integrated set of components being more efficient than a self-made stack — can work, sometimes. In one survey, 80% of enterprise marketing respondents said they used components from more than one cloud; the other 20% were more or less loyal to one logo. No one set out to create a Marketing Cloud. Everybody started at a different place and somehow it added up to become a Marketing Cloud.”

Neilsen

“The Nielsen Marketing Cloud empowers brands, agencies and media companies to connect more deeply with customers by combining Nielsen’s world-class data, analytics, media planning, marketing activation, and data management platform capabilities in a single cloud platform. The data synergies facilitate a deeper understanding of consumers and audiences, more effective one-to-one messaging, and superior ROI analysis and campaign optimization.”

SAP

“The SAP Marketing Cloud represents the leading solution for real-time contextual marketing. It enables you to address your customers directly and to inspire them, as well as foster and optimize brand loyalty through personalized and relevant reactions to individual customers. The SAP Marketing Cloud allows you, as a marketing specialist, to gain a better understanding of your customers: what they have done, what they will do, what is most important to them, what they are doing right now. This will create insights into the motivation and requirements that are behind the customers’ actions — in real time. Take advantage of the edge this gives you to address your customers on all channels in a relevant, inspiring, and personalized manner.”

Salesforce

“The Salesforce Marketing Cloud is a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) platform for marketers that allows them to create and manage marketing relationships and campaigns with customers.”

Adobe

“The Adobe Marketing Cloud includes a set of analytics, social, advertising, media optimization, targeting, Web experience management, and content management products aimed at the advertising industry and hosted on Amazon Web Services.”

Read More: 2019’s Content Strategy Primer

Top Vendors in the Marketing Cloud Landscape

Going by Gartner’s findings, here is a list of the top vendors in the Marketing Cloud landscape:

Adobe

Traditionally, Adobe started off with developing software products for multimedia and creative pursuits. Since then, the company is globally renowned and relied upon for churning best-in-class software for:

Creativity and Design
Marketing and Commerce
PDF and E-signatures
Business Solutions

Adobe’s current forte is Digital Marketing Software — more so, due to the billion-dollar acquisitions of Marketo and Magento.

IBM

IBM’s Marketing Cloud Solution is the oldest player in the Digital Marketing landscape. Originally, Silverpop, the product started its operations circa 1999 — dealing primarily with email automation for B2C marketing campaigns. Twenty years later, IBM’s Cloud Marketing Solution has evolved to service B2B brands also.

Oracle

Today’s marketers especially choose Oracle’s Marketing Cloud Solution for purposes pertaining to delivering stellar customer service experiences. Oracle specializes in integrating data from several marketing channels such as content, social media, etc. Marketers process this data and design customized campaigns to acquire and sustain customers.

SAP

SAP is the leading platform for real-time contextual marketing. Perhaps, the only platform that helps businesses cater to their customers directly, SAP helps businesses inspire their customers. This, in turn, is helping brands globally to garner brand loyalty by personalizing business reactions on a one-to-one basis.

Salesforce

Salesforce’s Marketing Cloud mainly provides digital marketing automation and analytics and allied services. Salesforce is the global leader in Customer Relationship Management Systems. The Marketing Cloud division of Salesforce was acquired by the company in 2013. Originally known as ExactTarget, (that acquired Pardot later) Salesforce purchased it for $2.5 billion.

Conclusion

This was MarTech Series scratching the surface of Marketing Clouds. The entire suite essentially contains tools that can help marketers churn out the best-in-class campaigns. As we look at statistics, brand definitions and top vendors of Marketing Cloud, marketers should ensure they are hands-on with the tools available in the Cloud. As business objectives change rapidly, emerging technologies such as Marketing Clouds can be of great help to the modern marketer.