REVIEWSJust hours ago, Salesforce announced the Pardot name change to Marketing Cloud Account Engagement along with 4 other Marketing Cloud name changes:
- Pardot > Marketing Cloud Account Engagement.
- Salesforce CDP > Marketing Cloud Customer Data Platform.
- Interaction Studio > Marketing Cloud Personalisation.
- Datorama > Marketing Cloud Intelligence.
- Datorama Reports for Marketing Cloud > Intelligence Reports for Engagement.
And so Salesforce is building its Marketing Cloud suite.
Of course, the most noted one is the Pardot name change. When company A acquires company B, there may come a time to let go of the name of B to better integrate it into A. But at times, company B’s brand affinity is so strong, this seems a shame… as is the case of the Pardot.
What does the Pardot name change mean for client companies?
What does it mean? I think quite a few good things, and one … that’s a pity.
Even though today Pardot is deeply integrated with Salesforce CRM, this name change most likely also means that Pardot will now be sold by Marketing Cloud Account Executives.
It’s safe to assume that to be able to sell their products well, Marketing Cloud AE’s will be more skilled in marketing than their Salesforce CRM counterparts. Therefore, I am sure that integrated marketing solutions involving both Marketing Cloud and Pardot will be on the increase. And Pardot will be marketed better.
Essentially Salesforce is now uniting all the Marketing Cloud capabilities so that client companies can more easily connect every moment in their customer relationships.
Under new management?
Hopefully this means that Pardot will no longer be suggested as a ‘quick start’-add-on to Sales Cloud. It is better pitched as a B2B marketing platform in its own right, and/or as part of an even more comprehensive marketing platform solution.
The tremendous wealth of marketing features of Pardot has not always been properly understood. But, in fact, it has capabilities that Marketing Cloud with all the 21 products it embedded, did not include: web tracking being just one of them.
At this point, such changes have not yet been publicly discussed, although I expect them to be imminent.
What the Pardot Name Change means for the industry
For consultants and the Pardot following, the Pardashians, the name change will be more profound. Previously Pardot consultants were paid 2/3 of their marketing cloud counter parts. Not sure how that will evolve, but probably Pardot consultants rates will go up.
Pardot also has its very own unique following! It had a special ‘Ohana’, the Pardashians! This Ohana has its own distinct culture with lots of fun and camaraderie! I’m anticipating that Pardot fan groups will not immediately disintegrate and merge with their Marketing Cloud counterparts. And why would they? The body of knowledge and expertise that his group shares is unique to Pardot. Not Marketing Cloud’s Email Studio. That setup work is different.
I’m not just talking about the official Salesforce User Groups…. Relabel Pardot user groups as Marketing Cloud Account Engagement user groups… ?! Possibly, they will simply rename themselves at first. Then eventually: merge into Marketing Cloud. It all depends on how different they believe Pardot to be…
Maybe, Salesforce should have treated the Pardot brand like it did with Heroku, and left its people, culture and following in tact?
Why a name change – in Salesforce’s own words
Salesforce announced Pardot name change to Marketing Cloud Account Engagement
In Salesforce’s own words: Why the name changes: “the next generation of Marketing Cloud brings together data, teams, and technology to help you know your customers better. Using that knowledge—enhanced by artificial intelligence (AI)—you can personalise and continually improve each interaction at scale and in real time.
Here’s what the next-gen Marketing Cloud includes:
- Customer Data Platform, formerly known as Salesforce CDP, helps you create a single source of truth (SSOT) so you can get to know your customers and engage with relevance.
- Personalization, formerly known as Interaction Studio. This helps you deliver hyper-relevant moments with real-time recommendations, offers, and experiences tailored to each customer and prospect.
- Engagement, made up of our email, mobile, advertising, and journey products. This helps you connect with customers on their own terms and channel of choice with unified data and AI.
- Account Engagement, formerly known as Pardot, helps you align marketing and sales around leads, buyers, and accounts to close deals faster.
- Intelligence, formerly known as Datorama, helps you unify analytics and leverage AI insights to continually optimize outcomes that increase customer value and growth.”
We will see the Pardot name change, and other Marketing Cloud name changes appear everywhere as of today. New names should be fully by end 2022. However….. replacing a short unique product name, i.e. Pardot, with a mouthful of generic words, marketing cloud account engagement, is probably good for SEO. However, for product marketing clarity… I am not so sure. This new name might just be an interim solution.
But no matter what, Salesforce Marketing Cloud is on its way to become an even more comprehensive suite of marketing products that dovetail with one another to develop bespoke digital marketing solutions for clients. That, is what we do best here at CloudAnalsyts.
Learn more what Pardot (aka Marketing Cloud Account Engagement) can do for your business:
Learn how you can benefit from Marketing Cloud
This article now (April 5, ’22) needs an upgrade to include these latest changes, but it nonetheless gives you an awesome overview of marketing cloud and what it can do for your business:
Last Updated on June 29, 2022
