Introduction
Anyone that uses Salesforce knows that expectation builds up as regular release dates and information about the release in shared by Salesforce.
Well, on the 17th of August our summer was spiced up with the publication by Salesforce of the Winter 23 Release notes that describe expected functionalities and changes coming up on the new release.
We recall the disclaimer by Salesforce that you should make your purchase decisions only on the basis of generally available products and features. Also remember some of the mentioned functionalities will be released on Beta version, and also might be or not available depending on the licenses subscribed.
Account Engagement new features
Traversing through the documentation we can find new and exiting features on a wide range of topics.
In this document we focus on Account Engagement topics (formerly known as Pardot – yes the word is still spread out widely), here follows a summary as stated on the release notes, with some of our comments:
Marketer Experience
Use External Actions to automate tasks and work with prospects outside of Account Engagement. Keep tabs on prospects with problematic amounts of activity and simplify consent tracking with a system of record.
Automate Tasks with Extensibility Enhancements
As part of extensibility enhancements, you can now take actions on prospects outside of Account Engagement. Supercharge Engagement Studio programs by automatically registering prospects for a webinar, sending them an SMS text, creating a new lead Salesforce, and more. External actions are built on invocable actions, so you can customize them to fit your business needs. Use external actions independently or in combination with external activities to close automation gaps across platforms.
This is such a promising feature for customers. The ability to add Extensions to our marketing app can enhance tremendously the customer journeys and open up a new range of possibilities and integration.
Documentation mentions both the creation of Marketing App Extensions and it’s usage on the Engagement Studio programs. Be ware of the licensing as it will not available for the professional licensing.
Simplify Prospect Opt-Out Status Between Account Engagement and Salesforce
The Prospect Opted Out field now requires a designated system of record, giving you one place to check for a record’s opt-out status. Choose between Account Engagement or Salesforce as the primary value for the prospect Opted Out field. Previously, the Opted Out field inherited the value from the most recently updated record.
Any marketer using Account Engagement has in the past faced the topic where Opt-Out info gets crashed either directly by Salesforce info on synched prospects, or indirectly by external systems integrating against Salesforce. This will be a nice to have to clear out who is the master!
Review Prospects with Bot-Like Activity
To protect the health of your business unit, Account Engagement can pause activity tracking for prospects with an excessive amount of activity. When a prospect’s activity tracking is paused, an icon appears on the prospect list view and an error appears on the prospect record. A prospect’s activity tracking is paused only if it impacts Account Engagement’s performance. Paused prospects who are opted in can still receive marketing emails.
With more and more bots reacting automatically, this functionality will allow for better and reliable data for our marketers.
Form Security Features Now Mandatory
A security update that better protects your forms and marketing content can affect forms served over the default go.pardot.com domain. For continuous form support, we recommend that you use a custom domain with forms or use them with Pardot landing pages. To find out where affected forms are being used, refer to the Content Served Using the Default Domain report in Pardot Settings.
Security enhancements are extremely important and Salesforce is always on the edge, giving customers confidence and better tools to keep up with security. Using go.pardot.com domain is handy, but we are better off with custom domains.
Update WordPress Plug-In After the Security Update
The August 2022 security update that better protects your forms and marketing content affects the WordPress plug-in for Account Engagement. To get the latest updates, clear the cache in the WordPress plug-in settings.
For those who integrate forms and use the WordPress plugin it’s important to get the update that complies with the form security update.
Manage and Extend Account Engagement
You now have the option to trigger a full prospect sync. Plus, you get new and updated fields for Version 5 of Account Engagement API and a new option for licensing Account Engagement users.
Give Users Access to Account Engagement with a Dedicated Permission Set License and Permission Set
To accommodate Account Engagement users who don’t require full access to Salesforce, you can now assign them the Account Engagement permission set license and Account Engagement User permission set. This permission set grants users access to most of the marketing tools available in the Account Engagement Lightning app. It doesn’t include full access to campaigns in Salesforce.
As Salesforce mentions, it was not possible to give access to the Pardot lighting App without some access to Salesforce. With the introduction of the dedicated permission set and permission set license this topic is overcome (important also since the pardot classic app will soon be retired)
Sync All Prospect Records with One Click
Use the Sync All Prospects option to sync prospect records with Salesforce. Previously, you needed to update a prospect field to trigger a full sync. Business units with fewer than 500,000 prospects can trigger a full sync every 7 days.
We lost count of how many updates we had to do to force full synchs on prospects. Yahoo, let this functionally arrive!
Pardot Classic App Is Being Retired
The Pardot Classic App is scheduled for retirement in all Salesforce orgs by October 17, 2022. To access Account Engagement in Salesforce and get access to the latest features, use the Account Engagement Lightning app (formerly the Pardot Lightning app). You can also continue to access the standalone legacy application at pi.pardot.com.
Not much to say here… RIP Pardot Classic App.
Account Engagement API: New and Changed Items
Access more of your data with new and updated objects for version 5 of Account Engagement API.
This will be a very nice update for those more sophisticated integrations out there!
Conclusion
These are just some of the novelties shared by Salesforce for the Winter 23 release and dedicated to the Account Engagement topic. As more news come up we will be glad to share our thoughts with you! Keep tuned!
#PardotWinterRelease2023 #Salesforce #AccountEngagement
More updated information HERE