Why did Salesforce make this change?
In April 2022, Salesforce announced its vision for the next generation of Marketing Cloud—MC Easy. Salesforce believes that by uniting its suite of marketing products under the Marketing Cloud umbrella, it may be easier for organizations to choose the right marketing tool, based on how the tool shines best.
Pardot’s name has been changed to Marketing Cloud Account Engagement
Pardot was founded in 2007, and it’s a recognizable product name—I will miss smiling when I hear a new client pronounce it “Par-dough” instead of “Par-dot.”
What I liked most about the name “Pardot” was that it was un-fussy, much like its workhorse ability to sync data from Salesforce without fail. Want to create a quick list of new donors? Easy! Want to create an Email Preference Center and sync that data to the matching Salesforce contact record? No problem! Ready to send an email to Campaign Members for an upcoming event? That’s a breeze!
Have there been any changes to how the product works?
The good news with the renaming of Pardot to Marketing Cloud Account Engagement is that the product’s functionality has not changed. Currently, it is a name change for product alignment only.
Marketing Cloud Account Engagement (Pardot) will continue to be an excellent workhorse in the suite of Marketing Cloud products. It will continue to remain a premier marketing product that interfaces with Salesforce Lightning seamlessly.
But why “Account Engagement”?
This is a tougher question to answer.
Truth be told, it’s not clear exactly why Salesforce landed on Account Engagement for its rename of Pardot. I would have liked to have seen it renamed to Marketing Cloud Lead Engagement since it already has an excellent built-in Lead Scoring and Grading model that is easily customizable, or for the premium editions to be renamed Einstein Lead Scoring for Pardot (boom!)—both options are exceptional at quantifying engagement scores.
But I believe the name change of Pardot to Marketing Cloud Account Engagement was primarily made to differentiate between Marketing Cloud’s two unique marketing products and how they each handle and transform data.
Marketing Cloud Engagement (which is the new name for Email Studio, Mobile Studio, Ad Studio, and Journey Builder) can leverage data from multiple endpoints, including Salesforce. It is well-known for its ability to handle large volumes of data allowing you to communicate to your subscribers on their own terms using their channel of choice: email, mobile, or advertising.
Marketing Cloud Account Engagement (Pardot) best leverages data directly from Salesforce. It has a read-only relationship with Accounts in Salesforce but shines best in its ability to sync bidirectionally with Lead or Contact records. When a prospect record is updated in Marketing Cloud Account Engagement (Pardot), it can push data back and forth to update its corresponding lead or contact record, ensuring up-to-date data for all your Salesforce users.
So, what’s next?
That’s the exciting part—what IS next? Salesforce is constantly evolving and innovating. It spends an enormous amount of time, energy, and resources on both Marketing Cloud Engagement’s roadmap and Marketing Cloud Account Engagement’s roadmap. They’re committed to the evolution of these marketing tools within the Salesforce ecosystem and I’m confident that this product realignment will bring nothing but excellent new or redesigned features in an easy-to-understand way.
