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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 (2nd), Marketing Management (1st), Social Media Management Solutions (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2026, in the Marketing Automation category, the mindshare of IBM Watson Campaign Automation is 1.6%, up from 1.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Salesforce Marketing Cloud is 12.3%, down from 23.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Marketing Automation Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Salesforce Marketing Cloud12.3%
IBM Watson Campaign Automation1.6%
Other86.1%
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 it to communicate with our customers, look at the reports to see the communication engagement, and then do sequencing to make sure that there are continuous touchpoints with the client."
"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."
"Salesforce Marketing Cloud has helped the organization by having centralized management capabilities."
"Allows organisations to engage customers with one integrated platform to unify sales, service, and marketing."
"The most valuable features of Salesforce Marketing Cloud are that it performs well and gives me what I need, it's the most friendly interface system for CRM I've worked with, and it integrates fairly well with different kinds of AI and ML to allow you to receive more out of your application."
"Salesforce Marketing Cloud provides an edge for my organization by tracking the budget, how it is spent, where we stand, and how many cold calls or nurtured calls have been converted into sales."
"Salesforce is an excellent choice."
"If you want to be able to communicate with your client using email, WhatsApp, and push notifications, know if the client opened the communication or not, and create and automate their journey, Marketing Cloud is very good."
 

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."
"A few of our clients found using Salesforce Marketing Cloud challenging after they upgraded, they were finding it difficult to just move to the newer version of Salesforce and they were complaining about the customer support because they did not help them out."
"Salesforce Marketing Cloud should provide some debugging facilities for every user."
"The query building's a bit weak if you want to build something new. It's a bit complicated."
"There could be easier tools to configure the product and to create landing pages to better handle large data sets."
"The main action I want to do in Salesforce Marketing Cloud is to export data into Excel and use it. My company may have that feature locked down, or if the Excel data exporting function still isn't available in Salesforce Marketing Cloud, that's the feature I want."
"The product takes too long to manage a large volume of data, it lacks that capacity."
"The solution can have a better UI. Salesforce Marketing Cloud should consider making its solution more robust for error handling."
"In a future release it would be great to have the ability to connect the data from social media and email marketing and have it in one dashboard."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"Salesforce is an expensive solution."
"Salesforce Marketing Cloud is a highly expensive solution, it needs to be less expensive. We are on an annual license to use the solution."
"The solution is paid for monthly."
"The solution's pricing is very high and should be more flexible for smaller companies."
"The price is expensive."
"Salesforce Marketing Cloud is affordable, considering the significant improvements it brings to our campaign results."
"The solution is a bit expensive."
"It's not cheap, which is why I recommend that you use Marketing Cloud to create automated journeys. If you plan to use Marketing Cloud just to send emails, use another tool."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Financial Services Firm
16%
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 Business19
Midsize Enterprise15
Large Enterprise34
 

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: May 2026.
893,311 professionals have used our research since 2012.