In 2022, Salesforce announced they would be retiring Marketing Cloud Social Studio on November 18, 2024 or at the end of the customer’s contract, whichever comes sooner. Once this happens, Social Studio subscribers will no longer be able to access the Social Studio application and all associated customer data will be deleted in accordance with Salesforce’s Trust and Compliance Documentation.
For those with Social Studio contracts, Salesforce recommends retrieving Social Studio data at least 90 days prior to the Order End Date of the contract or November 18, 2024, whichever is sooner. Check out the Social Studio Data Extracts help page for detailed instructions on how to extract data in preparation for migration to a new platform after the off-boarding of Social Studio is completed.
Whether you are evaluating replacements for Social Studio or did not use Social Studio and are considering a social media management platform, we’ve outlined a top option below with tons of capabilities, a wide variety of integrations, and much more.
Sprout Social – A good replacement for Marketing Cloud Social Studio?
In March 2022, Salesforce and Sprout Social announced they were partnering to make it easy for Salesforce customers to manage their social media presence through Sprout’s social suite. This partnership means that Salesforce constituents are now able to make an enhanced transition to manage their full social media presence and constituent care operations through Sprout Social. Three core reasons Salesforce would want to partner with Sprout include:
- Constituent care at scale: With Sprout’s streamlined single code base, the platform is scalable and able to deliver innovations more quickly. Additionally, constituent care reps can respond from either Sprout or Service Cloud, with real-time synchronization between the two.
- Innovation – 100+ new features each year: Integrations with top social platforms help Sprout keep up with the changing landscape of social, adding new functionality to Sprout as each social platform evolves.
- Leading social media suite: Sprout was recognized by G2’s 2022 Fall Reports as a leader in social media suites across segments, ranking #1 for enterprise.
Integration with Salesforce Products
Sprout Social integrates with several Salesforce solutions, namely Service Cloud, Sales Cloud, Tableau, Slack, and Marketing Cloud Intelligence. These integrations, built in partnership with Salesforce, allow you to easily build a single 360-degree view of your constituents and build closer connections.
Additional Sprout Integrations
Sprout also integrates with a myriad of other platforms that help to streamline your social media processes, from concept to post analytics, and produce actionable data, all in one place. A few platform integrations we feel are worth mentioning are:
- TikTok: Add this social platform to the list of social networks you can connect to Sprout; this connection is not available in Social Studio.
- Canva: Use the Canva design editor directly in Sprout to help streamline the creative process.
- Google Analytics: Pull traffic data from GA into Sprout to gain an understanding of how your social content impacts your website traffic.
- Shopify: Include direct links to your product catalog in social posts or replies to customers. Link Shopify customers to their social profiles in Sprout so you can easily view their order history and provide updates.
A full listing of all integrations can be found here. Suffice it to say, Sprout Social has put a lot of thought and effort into the integrations they offer, making your social media management a much more efficient, constituent-focused, and data-rich process. It’s important to note, however, that not all integrations are available across all plans; some require a higher plan level while others come as a premium add-on at an additional cost.
In addition to its robust list of integrations, Sprout adds many other features to your marketing toolbelt, such as:
- Connections with WhatsApp, Yelp, and Google’s Business Messages provide additional opportunities for social customer care and messaging that you don’t have with Social Studio.
- ViralPost® uses audience engagement data – engagement patterns, velocity data, etc. – to calculate the best time to post to each network and surfaces those times for either automated or manual publishing.
- Sprout Listening helps you uncover trends and actionable insights from social conversations that can bolster your marketing efforts.
- With Bot Builder, you can create automated Chatbots to quickly respond to incoming messages, resolve support issues, and share information – all while freeing up your constituent care reps for more urgent requests.
One additional newsworthy item announced recently – Sprout Social’s acquisition of Repustate – will elevate Sprout Social’s offering with added sentiment analysis, natural language processing (NLP) and artificial intelligence (AI). Because of Repustate’s focus in these areas, the Sprout team will be able to accelerate their roadmap and bring customers deeper capabilities across social listening, messaging, and constituent care.
Next Steps and Wrap-Up
Whether you’re planning a migration from Social Studio or looking for a social media management platform, Sprout Social is a robust option that puts data at your fingertips in one central location. To discuss your organization’s options for social strategy and implementation, contact Cloud for Good today.
