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IBM Watson Campaign Automation vs Salesforce Marketing Cloud comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

IBM Watson Campaign Automation
Ranking in Marketing Automation
21st
Average Rating
7.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Salesforce Marketing Cloud
Ranking in Marketing Automation
1st
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
63
Ranking in other categories
Social CRM (4th), Marketing Management (1st), Social Media Management Solutions (4th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2026, in the Marketing Automation category, the mindshare of IBM Watson Campaign Automation is 1.5%, up from 1.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Salesforce Marketing Cloud is 11.7%, down from 23.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Marketing Automation Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Salesforce Marketing Cloud11.7%
IBM Watson Campaign Automation1.5%
Other86.8%
Marketing Automation
 

Featured Reviews

it_user701487 - PeerSpot reviewer
Marketing Administrator and Member Web Support at a financial services firm with 201-500 employees
Valuable features include creating and using defined templates. I would like to see reporting capabilities and graphing reports.
We are currently planning to switch at the end of this year to a different ESP. One reason was that, with IBM's takeover of SilverPop, we did discover that customer care and our relationship/sales manager were no longer responsive or as caring as they had been in the past seven or eight years. The feeling is very different. We had never felt ignored because we are not super-users, but now, we do feel that way.
GauravSingh2 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Consultant at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Targeted email journeys have boosted campaign insight and now need better data access and support
I feel that Salesforce Marketing Cloud can be improved in how the data views are accessed; it would be better to have something more physical. With data extensions, you can view them directly, but for data views, it is very difficult as you can only send it out or load it into data extensions. Improvements can also be made in the connections to different external tools such as Azure or AWS. Customer support can be improved in Salesforce Marketing Cloud, as sometimes it is not clear what the issue is or how to approach solving it, and it also takes time to resolve issues.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"I love their tech support; they have not been needed frequently, but when needed, they are quick and very knowledgeable."
"We use Marketing Cloud for marketing campaigns and engaging customers, and it is a business-focused application for a specific area of business, which is acquiring customers."
"Salesforce is an excellent choice."
"The feature of Salesforce Marketing Cloud that has had the largest impact on improving my campaign outcomes is the recent WhatsApp integration, which allows Salesforce to connect with subscribers through different channels such as SMS, email, or WhatsApp."
"We have found the solution to be scalable."
"The solution is completely scalable, the sky really is the limit, and if a company needs to expand it, it can do so as much as it wants."
"This solution has improved organization brand awareness with prospects and clients."
"It is easy to send emails and SMS's."
"Salesforce Marketing Cloud's journey builder is very easy to handle and quickly sets up a journey for clients who use a lot of communication."
 

Cons

"One reason was that, with IBM's takeover of SilverPop, we did discover that customer care and our relationship/sales manager were no longer responsive or as caring as they had been in the past seven or eight years."
"In the SMS area, it is not up to the mark, compared to what has been developed for email."
"Marketing Cloud should change the script language that it uses because it's not good. It's tricky and difficult to develop."
"Improvements can be made in the processing speed, how information displays, and options for scrolling."
"Salesforce Marketing Cloud should provide some debugging facilities for every user."
"The performance is sometimes sluggish, but I think that's to be expected with a heavy CRM tool because they're running reports in real-time on the data that you have entered."
"Salesforce Marketing Cloud is expensive. The email functionality should be more modern and user-friendly."
"Customer support could be improved, especially for new features where I do not always receive proper solutions from the platform provider."
"There could be easier tools to configure the product and to create landing pages to better handle large data sets."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"The solution is paid for monthly."
"We have two types of licensing. We have a yearly license for end users and we have a concurrent login for selling."
"The licensing cost for the solution is on a yearly basis."
"The solution's pricing is very high and should be more flexible for smaller companies."
"This solution is priced in the medium to high price range."
"Salesforce has different versions of the solution and some are more suitable for smaller clients. However, Salesforce is expensive."
"On a scale where one is the lowest and ten is the most expensive, I rate the solution an eight out of ten."
"The price is expensive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Financial Services Firm
14%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Construction Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business20
Midsize Enterprise14
Large Enterprise31
 

Questions from the Community

Ask a question
Earn 20 points
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Salesforce Marketing Cloud?
I did not work on any pricing or implementation aspects but learned on my own when dealing with Revenue Cloud products.
What needs improvement with Salesforce Marketing Cloud?
I feel that Salesforce Marketing Cloud can be improved in how the data views are accessed; it would be better to have something more physical. With data extensions, you can view them directly, but ...
What is your primary use case for Salesforce Marketing Cloud?
The main use case for Salesforce Marketing Cloud is email marketing through Salesforce for the B2B segment on a day-to-day basis.For B2B email marketing using Salesforce Marketing Cloud, I can prov...
 

Also Known As

IBM Marketing Cloud, IBM SilverPop
ExactTarget
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

The King Arthur Flour, Stonyfield, InsideOut Development, Moosejaw, Big Scary Cranium, Paper Style
American Express, Financial Conduct Authority, KPN, Merck KGaA, Peterborough City Council, The Chapar, ADP, Financial Times, Stanley Black & Decker, SureFlap, Western Union, Philips
Find out what your peers are saying about Salesforce, Adobe, HubSpot and others in Marketing Automation. Updated: March 2026.
892,287 professionals have used our research since 2012.