Coveo Qubit vs. Salesforce Marketing Cloud

Coveo Qubit is a very helpful platform mainly for organizations that need to provide a solid business model before carrying out any implementation or new functionality. In addition, it is a very good tool to generate changes and show different content to different types of clients, with their personalization and segmentation criteria.It is ideal for simultaneous testing and customization, only one of these activities individually is not recommended.

Incentivized

At least for us, what we noticed is the best use case is that it replaces the use of cloud teams, which has a more complex platform to navigate; since we are already using Salesforce, it was just more straightforward to allow the teams to continue to do that as opposed to giving them a new system. This also works for us because they are both selling the same product in different ways. Any team collaboration is where this product shines.

Incentivized

• The testing platform itself is continually evolving. This means that we are always able to try new ideas as well as quickly and efficiently put others into practice.
• The beta programme and the additional functionality products are both exciting to see as well as ensuring we can cherry pick the functionality we need. This means that we don't end up paying for functionality we don't need

Incentivized

• Filter relevant content so you can priorize those that are more relevant and resolve it first
• Measure the traffic in the different social networks, as well as the response rate, average response time and other relevant metrics
• Configure automation rules to order the work of those who must interact with the customer

Incentivized

• Some of the reporting within Qubit has been overly simplified in the past, a point they are continually addressing.
• At times the syntax of experience (test) creation can be specific to Qubit and so there is a slight learning curve for developers.
• Unless developers have much time to allocate to creating tests in Qubit, marketers may potentially find simple tests limited. I would recommend having someone in-house as we do.

Incentivized

• Automation studio is very hard to use. We need to create a Data extension with all required fields before we can run SQL. So it takes a lot of time.
• Query Studio is much easier to use but it often gives an error while running the same SQL in Automation Studio works fine.
• We were not able to set up SMS messages as SFMC is not supporting MMS which is a big problem.

Incentivized

Qubit helps out immensely and lays out in plain English the profitability of each of our A-B tests. Say Qubit has provided us overall with a 5% profit increase this year (that is a completely arbitrary figure for illustration only), then if we didn't renew it could be seen as us taking a 5% loss as Qubit wouldn't be there. The results of our tests are showing no slowing down and as Qubit and Toast grow to understand each other better we can only see our performance getting better as the years go on.

We are happy with Pardot. It has made our jobs easier and installed some reporting functions that have increased our ROI with the company. We have worked hard to set-up the functions in Pardot and it has taken time, but paid off.

Overall navigation on Qubit is very user friendly and requires a minimal training to be up and running. Be it reviewing existing experiences or setting up new experiences, the process is pretty simple for business user. Add some basic development skills to your kitty, you can do magic with Qubit and make your website do wonders!

Incentivized

You won't find another solution that has as many features as Salesforce Marketing Cloud Interaction Studio. We all know Salesforce, we all know how big they are and it's not for nothing... Their tools do most of the things you want, need and even imagine. Using it is complicated, but the usability is infinite.

Incentivized

I would say that the Qubit account managers are always available for any request. We have a lot of different promotions that could always do with last minute optimizing or changes and Qubit can be relied on to get this changes up and running in an impressive amount of time, so that we don't need to patch live or wait for the next IT sprint. Invaluable to our business.

Upgrades and timing of the upgrades were communicated well and planned during off hours for our work. If we did have a campaign scheduled during that time, it would kick-off after the system was back active. There were a few unplanned system down times, but it was a rare occurrence and those times were also short in duration.

Technology is good for A/B testing and personalisation - allowing any team with a dedicated developer to create test relatively easily and to report/analyse them in a fair amount of details. Some advanced features, especially on the set up of test cells, are dearly missing. Unfortunately, new features are often not free of bugs... Also, support is sub-par, which means new features are realised without proper documentation, example or training (but of our Qubit counterparts and internally).

Incentivized

Though the make up of MA apps is not built this way today, it would be nice to see them become more real-time. The integration between Salesforce and Pardot is not a true real-time integration. If I modify something in Salesforce, those changes are not automatically reflected in Pardot immediately. There is a delay of about 15 minutes before the systems sync. This delay, although not long, is less than ideal We would love the systems to be integrated real time such that changes are propagated from one system to the other immediately.

Qubit are supportive and flexible in providing support. They are happy working out of usual hours, even on weekends and if I have any doubts about the set up of an experience they’re quick to respond and willing to check my work. On particularly big revenue days they monitor our account and they’re quick to identify and problem solve any issues.

Incentivized

They are really responsive and more than not solve the problem or give you insight to how you can manage the solution yourself. I do find however sometimes a long delay on the more complex issues when they need to loop in other departments. but overall a good experience with support

Incentivized

The training was great, but would be great to have a script or PDF with some explanations of the qubit JS layer. Without the script you can just try to learn on your own, so the training is not as powerfull as it could be. On the other hand - would be great to have training related to reading statistics or personalisation.

Incentivized

Training program is not very well established. There is very little documentations. More often than not it's in-person training. I wish there were more video tutorials so that somebody can learn the system quickly. Their documentation is very much like an RFP. Long and very technichal. They should definitly improve on this area.

Incentivized

Pardot's online training touches on all topics briefly and vaguely without much indepth exploration into how a final outcome could look, such as Nurturing Campaigns, Email templates, landing page templates, etc... The only true way to uncover Pardot's full capabilities is to have Front End design and coding experience. Without this key skill set, I would not recommend Pardot to another business.

Implementation couldn't be easier. All we needed to do was insert the tag. (easy) and set up the data layer. (dev required) This was pretty smooth in comparison to some of the other tools we use on our site, and was done in less than a day. Note : Data needs to be collected for a set period of time before you can accurately rely on the data that you are receiving. This is normal though with everyone else that we have used

Incentivized

From an IT perspective, once you set up the Javascript beacon and start collecting data there is a waiting game. During this time you can start labeling your site actions which can be labor intensive for a single person, but you don't really have the final end-users on the platform yet. We did a lot of training so users were experienced, but it wasn't until they had their first tasks to accomplish that they started using the system and had questions. I'd recommend setting up some immediate goals for an end-user to start segmenting for the purpose of displaying message campaigns so you can jump start end-user action.

We're using Qubit as a fully managed testing platform, and their account management and level of service we've received from any other contact (technical, support, sales etc) was above any of their competitors. Integration and on-boarding was well done and we feel confident that the campaigns are developed and tested thoroughly.

Incentivized

We use Salesforce Marketing Cloud for lead management, generating reports, tracking customer and dealer information, inputting orders, and more. I prefer HubSpot for email marketing and automation because it is easier to use and the emails are designed much better. We currently use Salesforce and HubSpot, and we are very happy to have both, as they have different pros/cons.

Incentivized

Our requirements change throughout the year like most E Commerce retailers. At Christmas and Peak we're dealing with around ten times the usual traffic on the site. Qubit had no problems with this at all, tests continued to fire, and stats were still reported accurately. I don't think that it is the most server intensive .js anyway, but we have seen no issues at all.

Incentivized

Salesforce Marketing Cloud does a great job at what it is designed to do. There are several SaaS products in the Marketing Automation arena and SFMC is one of the top providers. There are several things it does well, such as email marketing and automation, leads generation/segmentation/qualification, and reporting/analytics. There are a few areas of improvement when it comes to the product and they surround legacy systems and architecture, outdated UI/UX, as well as targeting data in the activity logs for reporting and segmentation.

Incentivized

• Faster recognition of customer needs - finding out exactly what customers are doing when they come on site.
• Assessment of online assets for effectiveness and improvements - facilitated the analysis of 500 online feedback questionnaires for a campaign.
• Mapping out lead conversion and helping identify opportunities to improve it.

• We have been able to create mature lead generation opportunities using Salesforce Marketing Cloud in conjunction with CRM.
• We have had to spend much more in technical support
• We have been able to save on costs of daily maintenance emails through automation.

Incentivized