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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
20th
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 (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2026, in the Marketing Automation category, the mindshare of IBM Watson Campaign Automation is 1.6%, up from 1.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Salesforce Marketing Cloud is 11.6%, down from 22.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Marketing Automation Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Salesforce Marketing Cloud11.6%
IBM Watson Campaign Automation1.6%
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."
"The Salesforce ecosystem is more powerful than Siebel.Salesforce is fully integrated."
"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."
"Its licensing is on an annual basis, and customers are okay with its licensing cost, and they don't find it expensive."
"What is most valuable is that you can schedule reports, there are a lot of supporting tools, and you have access to all that information."
"Salesforce is constantly evolving and have a good release cycle."
"Salesforce Marketing Cloud is a fantastic solution, but be aware of its technicalities when installation."
"This is a very powerful and scalable solution."
"The most valuable feature of Salesforce Marketing Cloud is the reporting engine. Reports are very good and easy to build."
 

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."
"The technicality of the solution can be streamlined."
"Salesforce Marketing Cloud could improve by having more graphical options because a lot of tables are now only numbers and percentages and data. I prefer graphs, lines, and pie charts. I know there are ways to receive this from Salesforce Marketing Cloud. It doesn't play a huge role in my daily work to invest the time to figure it out. I feel that it would be time wasted. They could make the graphical options easier to find and use in the future."
"In terms of marketing, I don't think Salesforce invests the same level of intensity in promoting Marketing Cloud...Pricing is a concern and needs improvement, as some customers find the product a bit too expensive."
"This solution could be more user-friendly."
"Salesforce Marketing Cloud should include more point-and-click functionality."
"They can perhaps simplify the dashboards. In my opinion as an end-user, reports could also be simplified, but it also depends on how your company is set up. It depends on how the processes are set up within your company natively. It is linked to the way you do business. So, it varies."
"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."
"An area of Salesforce Marketing Cloud that could be improved is the connectivity between Sales Cloud and Marketing Cloud platforms."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"I don't know if my company pays for Salesforce Marketing Cloud monthly or yearly. It's a SaaS, so it's a recurring cost, but I have no information on its price."
"On a scale where one is the lowest and ten is the most expensive, I rate the solution an eight out of ten."
"Salesforce is an expensive solution."
"The solution is a bit expensive."
"We did a yearly license. We negotiated and got a great deal. I don't think we would have gotten far with the regular price, but they negotiated, so it was worth that."
"The solution is paid for monthly."
"Salesforce Marketing Cloud is affordable, considering the significant improvements it brings to our campaign results."
"This is a low cost solution suited to larger organizations."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Financial Services Firm
18%
Construction Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business20
Midsize Enterprise15
Large Enterprise34
 

Questions from the Community

Ask a question
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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?
Regarding areas for improvement, the realization of value from Salesforce Einstein's predictive AI features is a notable challenge. Although the implementation partner highlighted these capabilitie...
What is your primary use case for Salesforce Marketing Cloud?
As a consultant, I partner with organizations to optimize their use of Salesforce Marketing Cloud (SFMC). My engagement often begins pre-implementation, where I lead the requirements gathering proc...
 

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, HubSpot, MoEngage and others in Marketing Automation. Updated: June 2026.
903,933 professionals have used our research since 2012.