Winter ’23 Release Notes have arrived. Here’s a quick rundown of what to expect in Pardot (Marketing Cloud Accountment Engagement.)
Regarding Pardot (MCAE) Marketing Features or Changes
1. Automate Tasks with Extensibility Enhancements
Engagement Studio will no longer be limited to actions within Pardot. Finally, you’ll be able to automate things like webinar registration, SMS text sends, and the creation of a new lead in Salesforce (among others). Of course, bear in mind that you’ll need to be using the appropriate connectors to do this.
2. Simplify Prospect Opt-Out Status Between Account Engagement and Salesforce
Many of our clients have been frustrated with the prospect Opted Out field in the past, as it’s always been a bit confusing which system (Pardot or Salesforce) has been the true system of record. You will now be required to choose a system of record, which will overwrite the record in the other system.
3. Review Prospects with Bot-Like Activity
Prospects with unusual or excessive activity (signaling potential bot prospects) can have their tracking paused. It’s unclear whether users will be able to control this on their end, or if it will be entirely automated. When the process is automated, it will only be enacted when a prospect’s activity level is affecting Pardot’s performance.
4. Form Security Features Now Mandatory
A security update that better protects your forms and marketing content will be available, but forms served over the default go.pardot.com domain will not be affected. In order to take advantage of this new security update, ensure that your forms and landing pages are being served through a custom domain.
5. Update WordPress Plug-In After the Security Update
While not technically a new feature, the Winter ’23 Release Notes have advised that the 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.
6. Quickly Locate Unused Files
While we still won’t get usage tables on files, you will be able to see a “Last Viewed” field on your files list view that will show you the last time that someone accessed the file online or viewed it in an email or landing page, making it much easier to audit and clean up your content storage.
Regarding Pardot (MCAE) Admin Features or Changes
7. Give Users Access to Account Engagement with a Dedicated Permission Set License and Permission Set
Pardot users without full access to Salesforce will now be able to access most of the marketing tools available in the Account Engagement Lightning app (minus campaigns) through the application of a new Account Engagement permission set license and Account Engagement User permission set.
8. Sync All Prospect Records with One Click
You no longer have to update a prospect field to trigger a full database sync—the Winter ’23 Release will give you the option to resync your database separately (though please note that databases with fewer than 500,000 prospects will only be able to trigger a full sync every 7 days).
9. Pardot Classic App Is Being Retired
Yes, you will still be able to access Pardot through pi.pardot.com (though at this point, you really shouldn’t be). To (properly) access Account Engagement in Salesforce and access the latest features and updates, use the Account Engagement Lightning app (formerly the Pardot Lightning app).
10. Account Engagement API: New and Changed Items
Access more of your data with new and updated objects for version 5 of Account Engagement API.
Questions about any of these features, including how you can leverage them or if they will impact your org? Reach out and let us know.
