REVIEWSIf you’re a marketer who uses MC Account Engagement fka Pardot as your marketing automation tool, you know how important it is to stay up-to-date on the latest features and updates. Fortunately, Pardot makes it easy for you to do just that by regularly publishing release notes that detail all the changes and improvements to the platform. In this article, we’ll take a closer look at Pardot release notes and how they can help you make the most of your marketing efforts.
What are the Pardot Release Notes?
Pardot release notes are documents that provide a detailed overview of the changes made to the platform in each release. These notes cover everything from bug fixes and security updates to new features and enhancements. They’re typically released on a quarterly basis, with each release bringing a host of new capabilities to the platform.
Why are the Pardot Release Notes Important?
There are several reasons why Pardot release notes are important for marketers. First and foremost, they keep you informed about the latest features and improvements to the platform. By staying up-to-date on these changes, you can ensure that you’re making the most of Pardot and taking advantage of all the tools and capabilities it has to offer.
Additionally, Pardot release notes can help you troubleshoot issues and identify potential problems before they become major roadblocks. If you’re experiencing a particular issue, you can check the release notes to see if it’s been addressed in a recent update. This can save you a lot of time and frustration in the long run.
Finally, Pardot release notes can help you plan your marketing campaigns more effectively. By knowing what new features and capabilities are coming to the platform, you can tailor your campaigns to take advantage of these tools and stay ahead of the competition.
How to Access Pardot Release Notes
Accessing Salesforce MC Pardot release notes is easy. You can use the link below today. You can follow our blog here at CloudAnalysts.com to learn more indepth information about specific features in the Salesforce Pardot release notes.
For future reference: you can also simply log in to your Salesforce / Pardot account and navigate to the “Help & Training” (top right of your screen). From there, click on “Release Notes” to see the latest updates. Or follow us or Pardot on Linkedin to stay up-to-date on the latest changes and improvements.
Unlike the marketing cloud release notes for this season, there is quite a bit of preview information for what’s coming up for Pardot. Here are the Pardot release notes summer 23 highlights (preview edition).
Marketing Cloud Account Engagement – Pardot release notes summer 2023 highlights
In my view there is one new, important feature:
- Ability to use external actions as completion actions on Account Engagement assets. Not new, but recent. Super useful as it enhances one of our top reasons why Pardot.
And a nice-to-have feature:
- Ability to convert a dynamic list to a static list. Not new, but recent. Useful.
These are rounded out with half a dozen bug fixes and ‘public service announcements’. Salesforce is particularly excited about you being able monitor critical configuration issues via Account Engagement Optimizer’ and its retroactive first-touch attribution if a visitor consents.
Details of the Pardot release notes summer 23 highlights
Let’s dive in and look at the highlights in some more detail.
Trigger an External Action After Prospect Engagement
You can now trigger an external action on any Account Engagement asset that has a completion action. What are external actions? The ability for you to take an action on prospects outside of Account Engagement (Pardot) was introduced in Spring 23 as an Engagement Studio-only feature. Today, it extends to any completion action.
Here’s an example to make this feature come alive: say, after a prospect completes a sign-up form, you can register the prospect for a webinar. You can send a text message after a prospect clicks a custom redirect link or send an alert to your sales team when a prospect visits a pricing page.
This is, of course, exactly what marketers need. (And it’s great that we have external actions in Engagement Studio too as per the last release.)
How to / Caveat: Setting up external actions is not simple. But that is what CloudAnalysts is here for – to sort that out for you. Basically, before you create an external action, you have to create and choose an invocable action to use. You have a few options: use a supported standard or custom invocable action, or you can install one from AppExchange. Those from the AppExchange allow for minimal customisation. To protect your data, use only invocable actions that are created with Transport Layer Security (TLS). More about this later.
Also note that external actions are only available in the following Pardot editions: Account Engagement Plus, Advanced, and Premium.
Account Engagement Optimizer
Initially we all wondered: what is Account Engagement Optimizer, when it was announced in the last Pardot release notes. Today we consider it having potential with performance information, recommendations, and required steps all on 1 page. Besides the fact that the new Optimizer is now generally available, also includes some new features:
- You can diagnose and treat setup problems that are blocking your access to features with a Configuration Issues – table.
- The Performance Improvement Measures -table now includes good measures so that you can see what’s working well in your Pardot org or BU.
- Check out the Prospect Change Monitor. It shows which features result in the most prospect changes, and we have to do a deeper dive and see it in action, but this has potential!
Better List Management
You can now convert old or unused dynamic lists to static lists. (actually, you could do this for a while, but it’s good to highlight this relatively new feature as I think it’s useful.). What’s particularly good about it, is that it allows you to tidy up your org and save processing power. You can also use it for lists you’d actually like to keep active, but be sure to add and remove prospects to / from these lists as that will have become a manual task!
Data Cloud Account Engagement Connector
When Data Cloud no longer included Marketing Cloud into its pricing a few months ago, you expected this new feature to surface: Pardot can now use Data Cloud Segments. By connecting Pardot with Data Cloud (which can harness much more customer data than Pardot), you can really improve your segmentation and increase personalisation based on all interactions a customer has with your company.
How to: You create the Account Engagement Connector in Data Cloud. And then, in Account Engagement, create dynamic lists based off Data Cloud segments to directly market to your Data Cloud customers.
Caveat: Before you get too excited over this, realise that Data Cloud is £7K/mth minimum. So, while GA, it’s not within everyone’s reach.
Opted-Out field: back to normal
In Spring 23, you had to choose either Salesforce or Account Engagement as the system of record for this field. Today they are reverting back: you can now again use the most recently updated field value as a source of truth for the prospect Opted Out field. This is due to customer feedback that the Spring 23 idea was not suitable in all cases.
One pet peef of working with Pardot BUs is that you had to recreate all your marketing assets for each one of them. No longer. As of now, you can copy assets between Account Engagement Business Units more easily. Share marketing assets, such as email templates, files, Engagement Studio programs, and custom redirects, across business units without manually recreating them!
How to/ Caveat: You’ll have to work with your developer though as it requires the use of the Account Engagement API V5 to query, read, and create assets as needed.
Public service announcement: The Account Engagement status site trust.pardot.com is moving to status.salesforce.com as of May 1, 2023.
What you need to do: Add the new location to your list of Trust Status opt-in subscriptions.
After visitors consent to tracking, get First-Touch attribution
Another public service announcement: with Pardot, you can now be compliant with regulation.
Data Protection and GDPR is getting serious, and in the Pardot release notes it shows Pardot’s keeping up: “Tracking cookies are now added retroactively after a prospect confirms consent. Previously, tracking cookies were added before a prospect clicked the consent banner and then deleted if they didn’t consent.” Excellent.
Litmus removes its Email Report Print Count Field
A third public service announcement. No one I know uses this feature, which is why, Litmus, the third-party vendor that provides print count information, is removing the Print Count and Print Forward fields from all Advanced Email Report metrics. So that means that Pardot or MC Account Engagement won’t have it either. No big deal.
Bug fix: Columns are now evenly spaced in Pardot Enhanced Email Builder
The Enhanced Email Builder now aligns images evenly. Previously, content in the right-most column was wider and taller than columns to the left.
What you need to do: check all your 2 column templates created to date in this drag-drop email builder, and check if your consultant or designer had found some way around resolving this prior abnormality. This workaround may need to be updated because of this bug fix, so check this before sending.
New Features of Pardot API Version 5
You can access more of your data with new and updated objects for Account Engagement API version 5, thanks to new and updated fields.
- Bulk Action API: Get more control over your prospect database. You can manage active prospect database in bulk, and optimise performance by maintaining a clean database.
- Object Folder Mapping: Retrieve all objects in a folder in one call, and get a link to the file.
- Enhanced Prospect Query: Added support for querying by Email and Salesforce ID to simplify retrieving the Prospect ID.
- New Engagement Studio Program Endpoint: As discussed above.
- Import – Assign User ID or Owner ID: Assign your prospects upon import them via the User ID or Owner ID.
- V5 Permanent Deletion: permanently delete prospects from within the recycle bin via the API.
- Copy Account Engagement Business Unit Assets: copy email templates, files, Engagement Studio programs, and other assets from one business unit to another using Salesforce Flow and the API.
Pardot release notes summer 23 highlights
We hope you’re excited about these new features.
The Pardot release notes are an essential resource for any marketer who uses the platform. By staying up-to-date on the latest features and improvements, you can ensure that you’re making the most of Pardot and taking advantage of all the tools and capabilities it has to offer. So be sure to check our blog and the release notes directly and regularly and incorporate new features into your marketing campaigns to stay ahead of the competition.
We will follow up with an article on external actions as that is truly becoming a ‘must have’ for all customers. Since it is much more technical and deeply integrated with Salesforce, not all clients know too much about it. Stay tuned for another article on this topic.
Also note that at the date of this writing, May 2, these Pardot release notes* are still in preview mode, and subject to change. Therefore, this article will be updated over time. (Date latest update: May 4).
(* Salesforce Marketing Cloud Account Engagement Release Notes summer 23 highlights)
Last Updated on May 4, 2023
