Salesforce has been named a Leader in the Gartner® Magic Quadrant for B2B Marketing Automation Platforms in 2023*. The organisation was evaluated for Salesforce Marketing Cloud Account Engagement and ranked furthest in terms of “Completeness of Vision.” They have achieved this for the sixth consecutive year.
What are B2B marketing automation platforms?
Gartner defines B2B marketing automation platforms (B2B MAPs) as software that supports demand generation processes at scale. This includes generating and nurturing high-quality leads, building awareness, orchestrating multichannel engagement to guide customer journey progression, and using analytics to measure and optimize performance.
Vendors in this Magic Quadrant support the below standard capabilities of B2B marketing automation platforms:
- Contact and/or account record pages display customer-level marketing activity history and other relevant relationship details.
- Ability to enter, sync, and activate first-party data, as well as extend existing contact/account data with third-party data sources.
- Ability to create segmented lists of contacts or accounts using business rules and predictive analytics capabilities. Lead scoring capabilities that support the creation and management of lead qualification processes using business rules and predictive analytics capabilities.
- Lead workflow features that allow businesses to manage the lead-to-revenue lifecycle from generation/collection to conversion. A lead workflow feature that allows businesses to create multi-step journeys for contacts (drip campaigns, customer onboarding applications, etc.) using a graphical user interface suitable for non-technical users.
- Ability to deliver and manage coordinated and tailored customer loyalty programs across multiple channels, including native email and landing page execution.
- Ability to enable personalized customer communications based on account, persona, or journey stage attributes.
- Ability to measure tactical, strategic, and operational KPIs to monitor campaign, channel, and funnel performance using data visualization/dashboard functionality.
Stephen Hammond, EVP and GM of Marketing Cloud said that Salesforce’s perspective is “Delivering connected, personalized experiences to customers across marketing, sales, and service touchpoints is critical for businesses looking to drive efficient growth,”.
Gartner® Magic Quadrant for B2B Marketing Automation Platforms
Salesforce Strength for B2B Marketing Automation Platforms
Salesforce is a leader in this Magic Quadrant. Its Marketing Cloud account engagement focuses on generating and acquiring leads and account engagement that are closely related to its sales and service platform. The company’s operations are geographically diversified, with customers ranging from small to medium-sized businesses to large corporations, primarily in high technology, manufacturing, healthcare, and financial services. Salesforce’s roadmap includes AI account engagement with generation capabilities for some of the most common activities, including support for generation campaigns, segmentation, subject lines, email copy, and landing page content generation.
Strengths
Product strategy beyond AI:
Salesforce’s AI-based generative capabilities and deeper Einstein integration make headlines, but its overall product approach satisfies broader marketing demands. This includes investments in ABM content development to boost interaction with target accounts, as well as tighter connectivity and shared functionality with its CDP solution and Slack.
Community learning and support
Salesforce promotes customer success with self-guided learning on the Trailhead platform, which has over 3 million members in 93 countries and is an on-demand streaming service.
Analytics and measurement
Salesforce’s default reporting focuses on key metrics important to marketers, such as a pipeline with campaign-influenced revenue and an accounts dashboard displaying the most engaged accounts by region, campaign, or organisation size. A/B testing is a basic feature of creating emails and landing pages, and it can be done in a nurturing journey with results in the Engagement Studio visual journey builder.
Cautions
Customer profile management
When compared to other Leaders, Salesforce’s capacity to manage customer profiles does not stand out. Several marketing automation services, such as sophisticated segmentation, need the usage of Salesforce Data Cloud, the company’s CDP solution.
Third-party CRM/SFA integrations:
Marketing Cloud Account Engagement is a B2B MAP that is only available to Salesforce Sales Cloud users and does not interact with other CRM/SFA platforms. Prospective buyers must have already adopted or be considering using the Salesforce platform as part of the B2B MAP implementation process.
Premium edition pricing
The premium edition of Marketing Cloud Account Engagement costs approximately four times as much as the product’s advanced edition. With its predictive analytics, business units, developer sandboxes, more included contacts and more automation rules, this is aimed at the most sophisticated organisations.
Summary
Being a leader of Magic Quadrant for B2B Marketing Automation Platforms, Salesforce for the sixth time is a great achievement. To be on top Salesforce has to focus on cautions areas.
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