The Salesforce Marketing Cloud stack: what companies run alongside Marketing Cloud

About three in four companies using Salesforce Marketing Cloud in these interviews also name at least one other Salesforce product, against about one in three companies of similar size that do not use it. Salesforce Data Cloud appears nearly ten times as often, Service Cloud about six and a half times as often and Commerce Cloud about three and a half times as often. Buyers describe choosing Marketing Cloud, or adding other Salesforce products, partly because they expect easier integration within the suite. Some report straightforward connections, while others describe unexpected connector requirements, additional costs and substantial implementation work. Other email platforms are less common than at size-matched companies, though some run beside Marketing Cloud for SMS, in-app messaging or triggered email.

What tools do companies commonly run alongside Salesforce Marketing Cloud?

Salesforce CRM is the most commonly named companion product in these interviews, appearing at about half of Marketing Cloud companies. Other Salesforce products, including Service Cloud, Commerce Cloud and Data Cloud, are several times more common than at similarly sized companies without Marketing Cloud. Adobe experience tools such as Adobe Analytics, Adobe Experience Manager and Adobe Target, along with Tableau, Snowflake and LiveRamp, are also more common. Specialist platforms such as Attentive, Braze and Bluecore appear in some stacks. Buyers describe different relationships: some retain Marketing Cloud while using another platform for SMS, triggered messaging or in-app communication, while others are evaluating or pursuing a migration away from Marketing Cloud.

Do Marketing Cloud companies run the rest of the Salesforce suite?

Most do, and buyers often describe the suite as the reason. One company is moving its email onto Marketing Cloud “so that we can take advantage of all integrations between the Salesforce platforms,” and another chose Salesforce's loyalty product because “we're already on Marketing Cloud. It only made sense to have one hub.” A third describes the same preference across every purchase: “Preference was always given towards, are you part of one of those big ecosystems already so that I don't have to set up a lot of new integrations or workflows.” Others resist it, buying only the Salesforce products they need for specific jobs.

How well do Salesforce's clouds connect to each other?

Buyers split. Some describe a close fit — “I really like the fact that it is so closely integrated with Marketing Cloud. It makes it really easy for writing back information back to Health Cloud,” one says. Others describe connecting Salesforce's own products as harder than expected. One firm says “it took us almost the last six years to get to a point where we were actually scaled up on integrating Marketing Cloud and Sales Cloud together.” Another describes building around a gap between clouds: “We had to have a third party build a special solution just to be able to expose our Marketing Cloud emails inside of the Service Cloud.” A third puts it plainly: “There is actually a fallacy that only two Salesforce products integrate with each other well without any additional cost. That is not the case.” Several buyers connect this to Marketing Cloud's origins in acquisitions — “it's multiple companies that they've bought and parceled together under one banner.”

How does Data Cloud fit with Marketing Cloud?

In the buyer accounts that describe how Salesforce Data Cloud and Marketing Cloud work together, Data Cloud often supports audience creation and segmentation, while Marketing Cloud handles message delivery. One retailer says “our ability to go into segment customers and get data out into marketing cloud works great,” and a bank uses it “to build audiences and then deploy them through Salesforce Marketing Cloud.” Experiences are mixed. Some buyers describe Data Cloud as the solution offered for problems they expected Marketing Cloud and their CRM to solve directly; others find it difficult to incorporate data from outside Salesforce: “it's a little bit rigid to bring the data outside of the Salesforce ecosystem to the Data Cloud.” Other CDPs, including Tealium, Adobe Real-Time CDP, Segment and mParticle, also feed Marketing Cloud in these stacks.

Do companies run another email or SMS platform beside Marketing Cloud?

Some do, either to handle a specific messaging channel or workflow alongside Marketing Cloud, or as part of a planned transition to another platform. Other email platforms are less common than at size-matched companies — Klaviyo about half as common — but specialists appear beside Marketing Cloud for SMS, triggered email and in-app messaging. One retailer keeps Attentive for SMS: “Obviously, Salesforce would love us to use Salesforce SMS, and they have some really attractive pricing, but they don't do everything that Attentive does.” Another routes triggered email through Wunderkind: “So cart abandon, browse abandon is all run through Wunderkind, but Wunderkind is plugged into Salesforce Marketing Cloud.” A few are moving off Marketing Cloud altogether, with Braze the destination named most often; one company is migrating to Iterable because “the predominant reason for that is the in-app communication.”

How do companies run Salesforce and Adobe together?

Adobe Analytics, Adobe Experience Manager and Adobe Target are each roughly twice as common at Marketing Cloud companies, and Adobe Journey Optimizer about three and a half times as common. Among buyers who explain how the two ecosystems coexist, some describe Adobe handling website experiences or analytics while Salesforce manages CRM and messaging — “we're mostly Salesforce across the board until you get to the website, which the website's more Adobe,” one says. Where the two must share data, some report friction: “Adobe and Salesforce say they play well together, but they don't.” Some are consolidating, in both directions. One company's push “to unify that under a single stack” has gone to Adobe for now; at another, the buyer asks “why would you have one and the other?” and is moving marketing automation onto Marketing Cloud.

The Marketing Cloud stack, layer by layer

How often Marketing Cloud companies name a tool in each layer, against size-matched companies, which tools they name, and how buyers describe the connection to Marketing Cloud. How often tools appear together is separate from how well they connect, which is what the last column reports.

Who runs Marketing Cloud day to day?

In many of these companies, specialists. Buyers describe SQL-based segmentation, AMPscript and hand-coded email, and several pay outside help to cover it — one buyer says that “because of their complex AMPscript requirements, a company is guaranteed to need third-party support with Marketing Cloud,” and another has “literally two contracts that exist only because Salesforce is complicated.” Others describe the effort as mostly up front: “I've been able to pull all those technical resources off because we've done the foundational work there and now they're able to work on their own.”

The stories behind the stack

What this means for your stack

Companies using Salesforce Marketing Cloud frequently also name Salesforce CRM and other Salesforce products, including Service Cloud, Commerce Cloud and Data Cloud. Adobe experience and analytics tools and specialist messaging platforms also appear in some stacks. Buyers describe both functioning connections and substantial integration work, even between Salesforce products. Our recommendation, not a practice buyers describe: before adding a Salesforce cloud on integration grounds, ask the vendor to show the specific connection working with your own records — leads, contacts and subscriber keys included — and to list any additional products, connectors or services it depends on.

What this page does not show

It shows which tools Marketing Cloud companies run, not which ones they should. How often tools appear together says nothing about satisfaction, and a Salesforce product appearing beside Marketing Cloud does not mean the two are connected or configured to share data. Marketing Cloud companies are compared with companies of similar size, but they skew toward large enterprises with existing Salesforce and Adobe relationships, so part of the difference reflects the kind of company rather than the choice of Marketing Cloud. And integration experiences depend on each company's setup, so a difficulty one buyer reports may not apply to another.

Common questions