Salesforce for marketing teams: what it can do and what it cannot

The Salesforce Marketing Cloud reality gap

Salesforce Marketing Cloud is one of the most capable marketing automation platforms available, and one of the most frequently underutilised. The gap between what SFMC is capable of and what the average client deployment actually uses is substantial: in our experience, most implementations use a small fraction of the platform's functional capability, often at significant ongoing license cost. The pattern holds across martech in general: Gartner's 2023 survey found marketers use only a third of their martech stack's capability (MarTech). Understanding why this gap exists, and how to close it systematically, is the practical challenge for any marketing team working with or considering the platform.

The capability gap comes down to data, people and process, in that order, more than technology. SFMC can do very little of value without clean, connected, current data. It requires specialists to configure and operate features that go beyond basic email sending. And it only produces its full value when the marketing processes it supports are well-defined before the platform is asked to automate them.

What SFMC does reliably well

Email delivery and engagement tracking at scale: SFMC's email infrastructure is enterprise-grade, with delivery optimisation, send-time personalisation, and engagement tracking that goes beyond what mid-market email platforms offer. Journey Builder: the visual journey orchestration tool genuinely enables multi-step, multi-channel marketing sequences that respond to customer behaviour in real time, when configured correctly with good data. Audience segmentation: the SQL-based audience building in Contact Builder and the drag-and-drop segmentation in Journey Builder are both capable tools for building precise audience segments from complex data. AMPscript and dynamic content: SFMC's templating language allows for genuinely sophisticated personalisation within email content, including conditional content blocks, live data pulls, and real-time personalisation that goes well beyond mail-merge.

What requires significant setup investment

Data extensions and data architecture: the value of SFMC is entirely dependent on the quality of the data structures that feed it. Building a data architecture that connects the right customer data to the right marketing triggers requires significant planning and technical work that cannot be shortcut. Einstein features: Salesforce's AI-powered features (Einstein Send Time Optimisation, Einstein Content Recommendations, Einstein Engagement Scoring) produce real value but require substantial data history before their predictions are reliable. Einstein Engagement Scoring, for example, needs at least 1,000 events in the 90 days before activation (Salesforce Help). Cross-channel integration: connecting SFMC to other channels (SMS via MobileConnect, ads via Advertising Studio, push notifications via MobilePush) each require separate configuration and integration work.

The implementation sequence that works

Magic Pulpo has implemented SFMC for Berlitz across multiple international markets, and the sequence that consistently produces value faster is: establish basic email infrastructure and delivery first (get the platform sending reliably and tracking engagement), then build data architecture around the specific journeys you want to run (only the specific tables and relationships the first three journeys require, rather than a full data model), then build those three journeys in order of business value, then expand from there.

The sequence that consistently delays value is: attempting to build a complete data architecture before any journeys are running, trying to implement all platform features simultaneously, or purchasing SFMC licenses before the marketing processes it will automate are clearly defined.

If you are evaluating or implementing Salesforce Marketing Cloud, speak to the Magic Pulpo technology team.