Salesforce Marketing Cloud is a comprehensive digital marketing platform that enables businesses to create and manage targeted, personalized marketing campaigns across multiple channels. These include email, mobile, social media, websites, SMS, mobile apps, and more. In essence, it allows a company to reach the user with a tailored message at the right time, via the right channel.

Salesforce Marketing Cloud can, therefore, be an extremely good investment, but in order to get the most out of the platform, it’s vital to understand the cost structure. In this article we’re going to provide an in-depth breakdown of costs and cost components, including licenses, implementation, training, as well as other features and potential additional costs. This insight should help you see whether Marketing Cloud is an appropriate solution for your business, and it should help you budget appropriately.

So, how much does Salesforce Marketing Cloud cost?

Salesforce Marketing Cloud License Costs

Salesforce Marketing Cloud is made up of a number of separate platforms, each with their own pricing plans and features.

The two most commonly used platforms are Marketing Cloud Engagement and Marketing Cloud Account Engagement. The main difference between these two platforms is that Marketing Cloud Engagement is intended for B2C organizations, while Marketing Cloud Account Engagement is used by B2B companies. If you look more closely into these two platforms you’ll see that the latter has a smaller contact allowance. Typically, B2B businesses don’t need a huge store of customer data.

What does each platform cost?

Marketing Cloud Engagement Costs

There are three plans for this platform. Prices and top-line features are as follows:

Professional

$1,250 per month (billed annually)

Professional is the most basic plan available here, which means it lacks many of the features offered by the Corporate and Enterprise licenses. The features that it does offer are:

• Email marketing - craft, target, and deliver personalized email messages throughout each phase of the customer journey
• Content builder - build and manage personalized content with little effort, using intuitive tools
• Integration with Salesforce Sales Cloud - bring sales, service and marketing efforts together using shared data and cross-departmental event triggers
• Contact limit: 15,000

Corporate

$4,200 per month (billed annually)

One level up, Corporate offers (as well as the other features in Professional):

• Journey builder - create customer journeys that trigger responses throughout the lifecycle, build stronger customer relationships and analyze the effectiveness of your interactions
• Mobile messaging - send targeted messages across SMS, MMS, group messages and push messages, via Mobile Studio
• Powered by Einstein - this allows you to use the power of AI-driven insights to inform and improve your marketing efforts
• Contact limit: 45,000

Enterprise

Request a quote

According to Salesforce the price of their Enterprise plan is dependent on your volume of contacts and messages, which is why you need to get a bespoke quote to become an Enterprise user. The additional feature available at this higher license level is:

• Manage customer journeys across multiple businesses and geographies
• Contact limit: 500,000

Marketing Cloud Account Engagement Costs

This platform has four different plans available. Learn more about the prices and features below:

Growth

$1,250 per month (billed annually)

• Lead generation, qualification and management with forms, landing pages, social connections and search tools
• Personalized email campaigns to target the right user with the right information
• Contact limit: 10,000

Plus

$2,750 per month (billed annually)

In addition to the features above, Plus also offers:

• An advanced level of automation, personalization and qualification using dynamic content that can be tailored using information from the Salesforce CRM
• Advanced analytics and reporting to help maximize marketing and sales efforts
• Contact limit: 10,000

Advanced

$4,400 per month (billed annually)

Advanced includes all the features listed above, plus:

• Business units and developer sandboxes, which allow you to further tailor your automation and messaging for each target audience
• AI for marketing and sales - making use of Einstein AI to help reach out to the right user at precisely the right time
• Contact limit: 10,000

Premium

$15,000 per month (billed annually)

As well as all the features above, a Premium plan offers:

• Analytics Plus for predictive analytics and a premium level of product support to help you continually improve what you do
• Contact limit: 75,000

These different plans are useful for deciding whether firstly, Salesforce Marketing Cloud offers everything you need, and secondly, whether your budget is adequate to subscribe for the level of support you need.

If you do need additional features, Marketing Cloud offers an array of add-ons, but here of course, extra cost is involved.

Cost per user

While Salesforce - like most CRM platforms - does charge a cost per user for platforms such as Sales Cloud, Marketing Cloud is different. There is not a charge per user on Marketing Cloud - instead cost is based on the number of marketing contacts, as detailed above.

Add-ons and extensions

If you find you need more functionality than is offered in the features above, there are plenty of options to be had.

There are literally hundreds of pre-built apps that integrate with Salesforce to help you scale and grow your business. Some - such as Marketing Cloud Engagement Journeys for Salesforce - originate from Salesforce Labs themselves. Others come from third-party companies such as Pardot LLC. The huge number of integrations available means you can tailor Marketing Cloud to work as well as it possibly can for the specific needs of your business.

And there are other add-ons such as sales planning, billing growth, Einstein conversation insights and so much more. It’s great news that you can customize your marketing platform to work as well as it can for you, but of course for every add-on, there is a cost involved. This can range from $25 per month to $46,000 per month, so it can have a real impact on overall cost.

Implementation Costs

As with the cost of add-ons and extensions, implementation costs for Salesforce Marketing Cloud and associated Salesforce platforms can vary significantly. Implementation for fairly simple projects may cost you around $10,000. However, for complex, comprehensive projects with a lot of customization and integrations, you could be looking closer to $200,000. An implementation usually covers elements such as your license, a consultant, CRM customization, integration with other systems, user training, CRM adoption, data migration and further support.

Data migration is a key part of Salesforce implementation. It involves data being checked for accuracy, errors being removed and data being mapped to Salesforce.org. Migration costs can come in anywhere between $10,000 and $60,000.

The cost of customizing Marketing Cloud with integrations and add-ons is hard to pin down, because of the countless customization options available. But, you’re probably looking at a range between $10,000 to $85,000. It’s also worth noting that if you do need a significant amount of customization, you’ll need a Salesforce developer, whose services can range from $25 to $300 per hour.

Training and Support

To be able to utilize Salesforce Marketing Cloud effectively your team needs to know exactly what they’re doing. The cost of training depends on whether it’s remote or in-person, self-led or instructor-led. It also depends on the number of users and their roles (admins, end users or both). This could cost up to $15,000 for a medium-sized business.

After-launch support is also vital to make sure your company is getting the most out of your investment, perhaps for up to three months or even ongoing. This cost is likely to range between $10,000 and $45,000.

Maintenance and Upgrades

In terms of maintenance, Salesforce has four different Success Plans. They offer support, resources and expert guidance to help your team make the most of the platform you’re using. You can find out a bit more about them below:

Standard

Included with all licenses

This plan gives you and your team access to a range of self-guided resources at no extra cost.

• Technical support 24/7
• Salesforce help via Knowledge Articles, notes and more
• Trailblazer Community - connect with a network of Salesforce pros and access self-guided resources wherever, whenever
• Adoption guidance - high-level recommendations that match your company’s priorities
• Expert guidance on organizational best practices and planning for change

Premier

30% of net license fees

On top of the features available with Standard, a Premier plan offers:

• Real-time Q&A sessions
• Bulk certification and discounts on instructor-led classes
• Setup and configuration best practices
• Admin Fundamentals series
• Onboarding sessions
• Getting started programs
• Health checks and recommendations

Signature

Contact your Account Executive

The Signature Success Plan includes the features above, as well as:

• Key event management
• Salesforce architect reviews
• 24/7 proactive monitoring
• Customer Success Scores
• A designated Customer Success Manager
• Success reviews
• Success Path

Professional Services

Contact your Account Executive

While the above Success Plans are there to make sure you have the right level of guidance and support, Professional Services helps you actually realize your implementation, innovate and reach for your goals, providing faster time to value on Salesforce.

Scalability Considerations

It’s key to consider scalability when implementing Marketing Cloud in your organization. Growth is, after all, what you’re trying to achieve by investing in this platform. So your budget needs to be designed around increasing needs and an expectation of growth.

The prices of licenses and add-ons above should give you a good idea of what’s available in terms of functionality, so think about what you might need at various levels of growth, and build that into your budget. If you’d like help scaling your business, take a look at our Marketing Cloud Services.

Return on Investment (ROI)

If you’re considering investing in Marketing Cloud, and having read this guide so far, you’re probably well aware of the benefits of this platform. But what about ROI? Economic uncertainty puts even more pressure on marketers to deliver a return on investment. Thankfully, Salesforce Marketing Cloud has been proved to do just this. In fact, a 2023 report by Forrester Consulting found that organizations using the platform saw a return on investment of 299% over a three-year period. Measuring and reporting on performance is simple with Marketing Cloud, which means you can see which campaigns are doing best and focus your resources in those areas to maximize returns.

According to the report mentioned, Marketing Cloud also:

• Increased conversion rates by 60% in year 3
• Drove over $5 million in increased incremental revenue
• Reduced time required for creating and managing campaigns by 60%
• Cut post-campaign reporting efforts by 90%

Conclusion

As we’ve seen, the cost of investing in Salesforce Marketing Cloud is not insubstantial. You need to consider licenses and which one is right for you, add-ons and extensions, the cost of implementation, training, support, maintenance and upgrades. You also need to factor in scalability if your plans come to fruition and your organization starts to grow.

However, Salesforce Marketing Cloud offers an array of benefits and features that really could be the secret to you achieving your business goals. And while ROI is never guaranteed, other organizations in the market have seen very impressive numbers. So, all that’s left is to decide whether Marketing Cloud is the right platform for you and your needs - oh, and the task of building a budget around the functionality you need so that you can get to work.

FAQs

1. What are the main cost components of Salesforce Marketing Cloud?

   Salesforce is used by financial services companies for customer relationship management, sales management, and marketing automation. Financial companies use it to manage their sales pipelines, track leads and referrals, and provide personalized service to their customers.

2. How can I estimate the cost for my business?

   Look at the main cost components above and explore the different licenses, plans and add-ons available to zero in on a cost estimate for your business.

3. What are the main components of implementation costs?

   The main components of implementation costs are your license, consultant, CRM customization, integration with other systems, user training, CRM adoption, data migration and any further support.

4. Does MagicFuse provide Marketing Cloud implementation services?

   Yes, we do! We’re experts in deploying Salesforce Marketing Cloud services, from custom strategies to training, ongoing enhancements and much more.