Salesforce Marketers Average Salary Guide 2019 – Marketing Cloud/Pardot Specialists + Consultants
Salesforce Marketing Average Salaries are a hot topic, and for good reason! The Salesforce Economy is growing at such an insane rate, salaries can be higher than similar roles elsewhere – or “a bit all over the place” as Ben phrased it in the average Admin salaries guide!
There’s no doubt that Salesforce professionals deserving of their compensation – they carry out a core function that allows businesses to reach prospects more efficiently, measure the return on marketing efforts, and in turn, optimise budget spend. How much do Salesforce Marketing Professionals earn, and how do you find this out?
At SalesforceBen.com, we have been enabling Admins with these statistics for a number of years. Our latest Salary Infographic gives insight into the salaries for US & UK professionals across the core Salesforce job titles – but this is the first time we have focused on Marketers.
I hope to bring context to what your salary should be. This information will back it up – so that you can be armed with ammo when asking for a raise, or applying for a new role.
Who are Salesforce Marketers?
Salesforce Marketing Job Titles
Marketing is a multifaceted discipline and is not as clear cut as some of the other functions in the Salesforce Ecosystem.
One region may have different conventions and organisational structures than others, which has resulted in job title variations when the data was collated and grouped into roles.
There were 15 different roles identified, with each region having professionals in 2-4 of these; for example, the US has 4 defined roles, whereas the French sample would include 2 different roles. I split the 15 roles into 2 categories for easier comparison:
1. Salesforce-specific roles, tightly aligned with the Salesforce certifications – listed below:
- Marketing Cloud Administrator
- Marketing Cloud Architect
- Marketing Cloud Consultant
- Marketing Cloud Developer
- Marketing Cloud Specialist
- Pardot Specialist
2. Hybrid roles, where generalist marketers have split responsibilities between Pardot/Marketing Cloud administration and other sub-disciplines, such as field marketing, content strategy – the list is endless!
As I mentioned above, the data that Mason Frank were able to collect and verify, means that some regions have salaries for Salesforce-specific roles, others stronger on hybrid roles.
| AUS | BEN | CAN | FR | DE | IT | JP | SGP | ES | UK | US | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Campaign Manager | X | X | X | ||||||||
| CRM Manager | X | ||||||||||
| Email Marketing Manager | X | ||||||||||
| Email Marketing Specialist | X* | X | |||||||||
| Marketing Automation Consultant | X | X | |||||||||
| Marketing Automation Solution Architect | X | X | X | ||||||||
| Marketing Automation Specialist | |||||||||||
| Marketing Cloud Administrator | X | X | |||||||||
| Marketing Cloud Architect | X | ||||||||||
| Marketing Cloud Consultant | X | X | X* | X | X | X | X | X | |||
| Marketing Cloud Developer | X | ||||||||||
| Marketing Cloud Specialist | X | X* | X | X | X | ||||||
| Marketing Operations Specialist | X | ||||||||||
| Pardot Specialist | X | ||||||||||
| Performance Marketing Manager | X |
Note: X marks where role specific salaries are available in the data, by region.
*= contract only
AUS = Australia, BEN = Benelux, CAN = Canada, FR = France, DE = Germany, IT = Italy, JP = Japan, SGP = Singapore, ES = Spain.
To summarise the table above:
- Salesforce-specific roles: Benelux, Canada, France, Italy, Spain, UK
- Hybrid role: Germany, US
- Some of both: Australia, Japan, Singapore
Level of Experience
Let’s talk about experience. One single figure without context can be misleading: there will be a significant difference in the salaries of a Pardot Specialist with 1 certification and 1 year’s experience vs. a Pardot Specialist with 1 certification and 5 year’s experience. The results attempt to factor this in also.
Why am I telling you this?
Marketing is a multifaceted discipline and is not as clear cut as some of the other functions in the Salesforce Ecosystem; it’s a fact that marketing roles, generally, are harder to categorise and quantify.
Before we can start drawing conclusions from the data, we need to understand what is comparable behind the numbers. I hope this has framed the data we will now dive into.
Salesforce Marketers Average Salaries
So let’s dive into the average salaries for a few locations based on the largest Salesforce survey, the Mason Frank Salary Survey.
The factors that will affect your average salary are:
- Seniority
- Location
- Market Demand, Skill Supply
There are other minor factors, such as the type of company you work for, the type of role, and certifications (which I will come on to later on).
United States
All figures in ($)
| Marketing Automation Consultant | Email Marketing Specialist | Marketing Operations Specialist | Marketing Automation Specialist | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Permanent Junior | 87,250 75,500-99,000 | 68,500 57,500-79,500 | 89,000 79,000-99,000 | 79,750 74,000-85,500 |
| Senior (Permanent) | 106,500 99,000-114,000 | 84,000 79,500-88,500 | 103,750 99,000-108,500 | 95,500 85,500-105,500 |
| Contract Range (per hour) | 90-130 | 60-90 | 65-95 | N/A |
United Kingdom
All figures in (£)
| Marketing Cloud Consultant | Marketing Cloud Specialist | Pardot Specialist | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Junior (Permanent) | 50,500 43,500-57,500 | 37,000 33,000-41,000 | 41,500 38,000-45,000 |
| Senior (Permanent) | 64,750 57,500-72,000 | 46,750 41,000-52,500 | 49,500 45,000-54,000 |
| Contract Range (per day) | 637.50 510-765 | 487.50 410-565 | 487.50 410-565 |
Western Europe: Benelux, Italy, Spain, France
Note: excludes UK & Germany.
All figures in (€)
| Marketing Cloud Consultant | Marketing Cloud Specialist | |
|---|---|---|
| Junior (Permanent) | BEN: 38,500+ IT: 30,000-35,000 ES: 30,500-38,500 FR: 42,000-53,500 | BEN: 45,500+ IT: 30,000-37,000 ES: 30,500-38,500 |
| Senior (Permanent) | IT: 35,000-45,000 ES: 38,500-48,000 FR: 53,500-63,000 | IT: 37,000-48,000 ES: 38,500-55,500 |
| Contract Range (per day) | FR: 705-945 |
Germany
All figures in (€)
| Marketing Automation Consultant | Email Marketing Manager | Performance Marketing Manager | Marketing Automation Solution Architect | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Permanent Junior | 57,500-83,000 | 36,500-47,500 | 52,500-68,000 | N/A |
| Senior (Permanent) | 83,000-93,500 | 47,500-65,000 | 68,000-82,500 | 83,000-103,500 |
Australia
All figures in (AU$)
| CRM Manager | Campaign Manager | Marketing Cloud Consultant | Marketing Cloud Developer | Marketing Cloud Architect | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Junior (Permanent) | 120,000-135,000 | 70,000-95,000 | 100,000-115,000 | 100,000-120,000 | 125,000-142,500 |
| Senior (Permanent) | 135,000-150,000 | 95,000-120,000 | 115,000-130,000 | 120,000-140,000 | 142,500-160,000 |
| Contract Range (per day) | 950-1,200 | 800-1,100 | 900-1,200 | 1,000-1,350 | 1,200-1,400 |
Asia: Japan & Singapore
Figures in (￥), (S$) respectively.
| Campaign Manager | Marketing Cloud Administrator | Marketing Cloud Consultant | Marketing Cloud Architect | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Junior (Permanent) | JP: 6,530,000 - 8,515,000 SGP: 72,000 - 96,000 | JP: 3,600,000 - 4,250,000 SGP: 54,000 - 75,000 | JP: 5,800,000 - 10,900,000 SGP: 72,000 - 90,000 | JP: 6,500,000 - 10,350,000 SGP: 96,000 - 138,000 |
| Senior (Permanent) | JP: 8,515,000 - 10,500,000 SGP: 96,000-120,000 | JP: 4,250,000 - 4,900,000 SGP: 75,000-96,000 | JP: 10,900,000 - 16,000,000 SGP: 90,000-108,000 | JP: 10,350,000 - 14,200,000 SGP: 138,000-180,000 |
The Small Print
Salaries are correct at the time of printing, but for up to date information please contact Mason Frank directly.
Certain markets will exhibit 10-15% variance due to differences in costs of living.
The above salaries do not include bonuses and incentives. Additionally, multiple factors, including years of experience, specialized skills required and the complexity of the role, affect where the salary for a particular role falls within the range.
Salary Considerations
One single figure without context can be misleading: there will be a significant difference in the salaries based on factors – a couple of which I’ve already mentioned, that I promised to come back to.
Seniority
Once I mastered the fundamentals of Pardot and Marketing Automation, I thought I was set – not so fast! There was one thing missing: experience.
I believe there are three traits you need to become a successful Salesforce marketer – you need the operational know-how, communication skills, and experience. You may know Salesforce inside out, and be the most charismatic communicator out there – but unfortunately, experience is linear. If you have 1 year experience, you have 1 year experience.
Experience is vital. It’s not just knowing how to configure automation, build that campaign in rapid-speed, or implement something just because a stakeholder asked you to; the job of a Salesforce Marketing Specialist is to advise based on specific marketing operations set up, best way to achieve a certain marketing objective, all the while ensuring what you’re building is scalable and structurally sound. The art of Salesforce comes from witnessing the masters at work, and learning from our mistakes.
That’s where the Junior, Mid, Senior groupings come in – so, where does your experience fall?
Junior
At a Junior level, marketers would have 0-2 years of experience. The experience can be gained working as part of a team, or an “Accidental Admin” at an end-user when their organisation purchased Pardot/Marketing Cloud without deliberately filling the skills gap. Operational duties would include: the creation of marketing assets (emails, forms, landing pages), building simple automation, and social posting, too.
It’s likely they had a hybrid role, not solely focused on Pardot/Marketing Cloud (eg. with content marketing/email strategy/field marketing responsibilities) – but these individuals will soar to the next level faster with their transferable knowledge of campaign execution.
Mid
In the mid-level, marketers would have 0-2 years of experience. They will proficiently be able to administer a fairly complex Pardot/Marketing Cloud account on their own, using best practice. There’s the elements that surround the operational/technical duties, such as exposure to requirements gathering, understanding commercial KPIs, as well as some level of project management. Typically, they would have a solid understanding of their Salesforce setup also, and how Pardot/Marketing Cloud can/must work in tandem.
Senior
A Senior level Marketing Specialist, has 4+ years of experience. You will find most at larger Enterprise companies, where managing campaigns and operations for different business units requires someone who has worked in several different scenarios previously (each may even feel like an organisation in their own right!). Staying on top of releases is one thing, but prioritising which enhancements to take live, and deploying without any disruption to business continuity, is a skill set only a trained eye will possess.
Market Demand, Skill Supply
You may have noticed that one category of Salesforce Marketing professional stands out above the rest: Marketing Cloud professionals.
We can begin reflecting on this trend using basic economics. Cost is determined by supply relative to the demand; if there is less supply to fulfil the greater demand, then the cost goes up.
What market forces are setting Marketing Cloud rates higher? Here’s my speculation:
- It typically takes longer to master the product, leading to less supply.
- Salesforce sales team commission structure differs quarter to quarter, changing which products have a greater commission yield. This can create fluctuations, a greater demand for skills when many new customers are being onboarded.
- The Marketing Cloud customer base is spreading to new regions, a greater demand in geographies with less supply.
Certifications
Pardot and Marketing Cloud Certifications are another factor that have the potential to influence your salary; having said that, I stick to seniority and location as greater influencing factors.
Salesforce professionals love getting Certifications – they are a milestone in your career, that prove that you know what you are talking about, and are leverage if you are looking for a more senior position internally, or looking for job in another company.
However, Certifications in most cases won’t directly affect the salary you will achieve, your experience will. Let’s take two marketers: Rob and Alice. Rob is a Pardot Admin with 2 years experience, and has achieved 5 certifications. He is interviewing against Alice, a Pardot Specialist with 5 years experience (some Pardot Administration and marketing ops, combined campaign execution), and has 1 single certification. Assuming they are both good candidates with no major flaws, I would expect the hiring manager to hire Alice. I would also expect Alice to demand a higher salary based on her 5 years of experience.
As I said, Certifications prove that you know what you are talking about – hiring managers can safely assume you have a certain degree of knowledge. Moreover, they aren’t exactly a walk in the park, that shows you are motivated, driven, and committed to progressing your career!
There is one exception – applying to implementation partners (AKA consultancies/SIs). Certifications help these partners achieve new tiers and recognition in their Salesforce partnership (this post goes into the details why); therefore, Certifications become a currency they value, more than an end-user would.
Type of Role
Permanent vs. Contract
In addition to seniority, results from the survey were split into two distinct types of roles: Permanent and Contract.
Permanent roles are the typical job where you are employed for an indefinite period, paid on an annual salary. As a contractor, you are brought onboard to utilise your expertise in one particular area, and your work is defined by terms, such as the period of work (often extendable), paid on a daily rate.
There are pros and cons to each side of the fence. Although contractors do get compensated handsomely, there are perks that they miss out on, mainly stability, benefits, and promotion. Plus, generally having income directly tied to the number of hours worked does not appeal to many (I would know, talking as a contractor myself!).
Here’s a great article on the topic: Contract vs. Permanent Roles: Which Is a Good Fit for Your Salesforce Career?
Specialist vs. Consultant
Marketing Specialists are employees of one company, where they will work on orgs owned by that organisation, whereas Consultants work for a Consultancy, and their knowledge and time is sold as a service to the consultancy’s client base. A Consultant would work with many different accounts on a short term basis, which could include implementing new Pardot/Marketing Cloud accounts, setting up a complex marketing campaign, optimising and integrating multi-channel marketing, or performing a system audit.
Who would make a good consultant? Certain skills and qualities are a better fit for the consulting life:
- Communication: “having the ability to verbally communicate complex functional and technical requirements across a wide spectrum of job roles and hierarchies makes for a powerful consultant” (Matt Wade)
- Requirements gathering: diligently capture clients wants and needs, and document systematically for the client to accept; without sign off, project scope is likely to cascade, commonly known as “scope creep”.
- Stress tolerance: be able to stay cool, calm and collected, even when the technology may not be going to plan.
- Imagination: to bring inventive ideas to the table for planning solutions to make campaign execution smoother, or get around product limitations.
Power-up Pardot Admin, More Muscle Marketing Cloud
Increasing your Salary requires you do some research (reading resources like this post). Particularly if you are an ‘accidental admin’, you may not have even realised you were being underpaid relative to the skills market – I will stress again, the Salesforce Ecosystem is an exceptional tech job market where demand is outstripping supply.
Versatile Marketers
Career progression, in our field, also requires some digging into how you, as an individual, want to spend your days. MarTech skills landscape is rapidly evolving, meaning the number of avenues you could go down is endless – many marketers (myself included) are guilty of trying to pursue too many paths, instead of focusing on 1 or 2 specialisations, or a group of skills that foster one another. An example of skill sets that complement one another would be persuasive copywriting, good design and personalisation (data, execution), campaign set up and automation, and of course, email analytics.
Doubling Down on Salesforce
Doubling down on Salesforce-specific skills is an admirable route to go, of course (once you have let go trying to become a ‘jack-of-all-trades’)! We wrote a post at the start of the year titled: “6 Salesforce MarTech Trends for 2019 – and the Skills they’ll Demand”, pooling together our predictions on the hottest skills the ecosystem will demand. These will add a sharp competitive edge to your person:
- CX & Data Unification: with talk of ‘CX Software’ being the heir to CRM.
- Google Analytics 360 + Marketing Cloud: following Salesforce announcing a strategic partnership with Google back at Dreamforce ‘17.
- Predictive Analytics: Einstein sweeping throughout the Salesforce platform has to democratised both analytics and predictive intelligence.
- Unified Marketing Interface: eg. Pardot Lightning means Pardot Admins should no longer isolate themselves in Pardot.
- Data Protection / Preference Management: in the aftermath of GDPR, handling data in accordance with the legislation and company policies is sought after – and let’s not forget CCPA is coming.
- Hyper-personalisation: requires data manipulation and formatting before it can be deployed in campaigns (think AMPScript)!
Throughout the year we’ve seen these demands arise, but I still consider these skill sets as niche; I believe these skill demands will ring true into 2020 also.
Specialist → Consultant or Contractor
Our Admin2Consultant series was wildly popular, where Ben and Matt spoke about their career move from being full-time in-house Admins, to Consultants. Check out the series, all listed in this blog pack.
MarTech Mastery
As Matt Hill, a well-known recruiter on the UK MarTech market, said so well: “Marketing technologies are like the Olympic rings. Each aspect overlaps with another; together well integrated marketing technologies are certainly greater than the sum of their parts”. Whilst Pardot & Salesforce Marketing Cloud will form the backbone marketing automation, he points out the importance of knowing how they interact with third party technologies that contribute to success; he references popular tools Movable Ink, Uberflip, Buzzsumo, Wistia as extra ammo to your resume.
Summary
Thanks to results from the Mason Frank Salary Survey, we have been able to start painting a picture of the state of Salesforce Marketing salaries – and why that may be the case. Plus, I’ve shared some insight into the multiple directions you could potentially take your Salesforce marketing career, for an exciting and fulfilling role.
Stay on the lookout for more results from the latest Mason Frank Salary Survey, the largest Salesforce survey, that uncovers the average salaries for Salesforce roles right across the industry.
