Salesforce’s Pardot Now Called Marketing Cloud Account Engagement

In case you missed the news, Salesforce has renamed Pardot, their marketing and sales engagement tool; going forward it will be called Marketing Cloud Account Engagement. This is one of several name changes to Salesforce Marketing Cloud’s suite of products.

First announced in April of 2022, this change will be enacted to the Salesforce website and to things like product-related materials, courses, and certifications throughout the rest of the year.

Why Marketing Cloud Account Engagement?

Salesforce isn’t replacing Pardot. The product will still have the same features, functionality (more on that in the next section), pricing, and packaging. So, why the change?

Easily Recognizable Functionality and Consistency: Salesforce is moving towards product names that are more descriptive so that people can easily recognize what a product does just by looking at the name.
Platform Unification: The idea here, again, goes back to the name; while Marketing Cloud Account Engagement has uses outside of marketing, it belongs to Marketing Cloud’s suite of products.
Flexibility and Staying Power: Technology is changing constantly, so by coming up with a product name that broadly describes what the product does and which suite of products it belongs to, there is less of a need to change that name again in the future.

Pardot to Marketing Cloud Account Engagement is part of a larger transition by Salesforce to move towards easier-to-recognize names, clearly defined by use and functionality. Other names being replaced within the Salesforce Marketing Cloud suite include:

Salesforce CDP will now be called Customer Data Platform
Engagement is the new name for Marketing Cloud’s email, mobile, advertising, and journey products
Datorama will now be called Intelligence
Interaction Studio will now be called Personalization

Marketing Cloud Account Engagement Uses

As the name suggests, Marketing Cloud Account Engagement is great for connecting with accounts or prospects. However, this goes beyond marketing and Marketing Cloud. It joins together sales and marketing efforts, can be used for any industry or vertical, and works independently of Marketing Cloud, with any Salesforce platform.

While it’s primarily marketed by Salesforce as a B2B tool, its functionality also lends itself well to B2C, particularly for industries like Higher Ed or nonprofits.

Marketing Cloud Account Engagement uses include:

Campaign management, hierarchies, and history
Lead or prospect identification, qualification, and management
Functionality for email, social media, and targeted marketing
Process refinement and standards through automation, templates, and segmentation
Forms and landing pages that automatically link data to a prospect’s record
Reporting for marketing assets, connected apps, prospect lifecycle, and campaigns; with tracking things like campaign performance and pipeline influence

Is It the Right Tool for Your Organization?

We’ve done numerous projects that have utilized Marketing Cloud Account Engagement, and are always happy to answer questions you might have about its capabilities or suitability for your own organization’s needs and goals.