Welcome to your Masterclass in Account Scoring – where we take your Salesforce skills from good to guru-level! With the Spring ‘25 release, Salesforce introduces Account Scoring, a smart, customizable, and easy-to-manage scoring solution within Marketing Cloud Growth and Advanced Editions (aka “Marketing Cloud on Core” or just “Marketing Cloud”). So, grab your virtual whiteboard, and let’s dive in!

Account Scoring 101: The Fundamentals

Account Scoring is a brand-new feature in Marketing Cloud on Core, designed to give businesses deeper insights into which accounts are most likely to convert. Unlike People Scoring, which evaluates individual leads and contacts based on engagement and fit, Account Scoring takes a broader approach, analyzing entire organizations. This is especially valuable for Account-Based Marketing (ABM) strategies, where sales and marketing teams focus on targeting high-value accounts rather than individual leads.

How Does Account Scoring Differ from People Scoring?

• People Scoring is focused on individual engagement and fit. Individuals are scored based on how well they fit your ideal persona and how often they engage with your Marketing initiatives.
• Account Scoring aggregates data from all contacts within an organization, providing a more holistic view of an account’s likelihood to convert.
• Intent Scoring (optional in Account Scoring) identifies buying signals, making it easier to target accounts actively considering a purchase.

Account Scoring is a game-changer for ABM-focused campaigns, where teams need to evaluate an entire company rather than just a single decision-maker. With this new feature, marketing and sales teams can prioritize high-value accounts, personalize outreach at the account level, and drive stronger conversion rates.

Let’s break down the core curriculum of Account Scoring in Marketing Cloud on Core:

1. Engagement Scoring – Think of this like a participation grade. The more someone interacts (emails, website visits, messages), the higher the score.
2. Fit Scoring: This is your compatibility test. Does the account match your ideal customer profile? If so, your points will increase.
3. Intent Scoring – This one’s all about purchase signals. If an account drops hints they are ready to buy, the score reflects that.

Now let’s discuss how to elevate your Account Scoring skills to an expert level.

Take Control of Calculated Insights

Previously, once you published scoring rules, the system would auto-refresh Calculated Insights every six hours – whether you wanted it or not. With Spring ‘25, Salesforce has introduced the power to unschedule or reschedule Calculated Insights. Now, you control when and how often your scores refresh, ensuring you’re optimizing Data Cloud service credits and keeping your system running efficiently.

Customize Your Scoring Model Like a Pro

Say goodbye to one-size-fits-all scoring. Account Scoring allows you to adjust the weighting of Engagement, Fit, and Intent Scores to align with your business strategy and ensure the scoring model fits your unique needs. 

• Need Engagement to weigh 70% instead of 50%? You got it.
• Want Intent to be the biggest factor? Done.
• Would you prefer Fit to lead the charge? No problem.

Activating Account Scoring

To start using Account Scoring:

1. Create a Unified Account Identity ruleset
   1. Account Identity rulesets allow you to target contacts related to accounts as well as segments based on Account attributes.
2. Enable Account Scoring
   • You can also enable Intent Scoring at this stage if you wish to use this feature.

3. Customize your scoring rules and your score ratio. Don’t forget to republish your rules once your changes are saved.

Smarter Rule Management and Publishing

No more accidental rule mishaps! Now, when you tweak your scoring rules, you’ll need to publish them again for the changes to take effect. Here’s your checklist for success:

• Customize Fit and Engagement Scoring under Setup > Scoring Rules.
• Fine-tune Account Scoring under the Account tab.
• Republish once all your changes are set.
• Remember, once published, rules cannot be unpublished – only modified.
• Keep case sensitivity in mind (“Example” ≄ “example”)

Time to Put Your Skills to the Test

Congratulations, you’ve just completed your Spring ‘25 Account Scoring Masterclass! Now, it’s time to put your knowledge to work. Whether refining your scoring model or just getting started, these updates give you everything you need to optimize and win more deals. 

Want expert guidance? The Sercante team is here to help. Contact us, and let’s make your scoring strategy a success!

Original article: Masterclass in Marketing Cloud Account Scoring: Spring ’25 Edition

©2025 The Spot. All Rights Reserved.

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Marketing Cloud on Core (also known as Marketing Cloud Growth or Advanced Edition) can now track how marketing efforts contribute to revenue! With the Spring ‘25 release, Salesforce introduced Opportunity Influence, helping businesses connect marketing engagement to pipeline and revenue. But how does it work, and what’s the difference between Opportunity Influence and Campaign Influence? Let’s dive in!

Opportunity Influence vs. Campaign Influence: What’s the Real Deal?

Before we break down how to customize and report on Opportunity Influence, let’s clarify how it differs from Marketing Cloud Account Engagement’s Customizable Campaign Influence. While both models aim to connect marketing efforts to revenue, they function in distinct ways and serve different use cases. 

Important Note for Account Engagement Users

You cannot use Opportunity Influence alongside Customizable Campaign Influence. If your team already relies on Account Engagement’s Campaign Influence Models, keep this in mind when deciding which model to use.

Additionally, Account Engagement users cannot activate Opportunity Influence as it does not currently integrate with Account Engagement’s Campaign Influence model. If your organization currently tracks marketing-driven revenue using Campaign Influence reports, you’ll need to continue using that model. However, if you’re considering a shift to Marketing Cloud on Core, Opportunity Influence could offer enhanced multi-touch attribution and engagement tracking.

Battle of Influences: Campaign vs. Opportunity – Which One Wins?

Let’s say you’re running a B2B software company and you’ve executed multiple marketing campaigns using a variety of platforms, including ads, email, an e-book, and a webinar, to engage your prospects.

• Campaign Influence: A prospect attends the webinar, clicks on an email, and downloads the e-book before being transitioned to sales as a marketing-qualified lead. These interactions are recorded under a Salesforce Campaign and can be manually associated with the Opportunity when created based on the Opportunity Contact Role and Campaign Member. You can assign influence weight based on your customized rules.
• Opportunity Influence: Marketing Cloud on Core automatically tracks all marketing engagement, including the ad view and click, webinar attendance, and e-book download. These touchpoints are automatically associated to attribute influence based on the predefined model and associated to the Opportunity upon creation.

If Campaign Influence were a fine-dining experience, it would be a chef-curated meal—meticulously crafted with manual customization to fit your exact taste. You decide which interactions get the most credit, but it requires hands-on effort. On the other hand, Opportunity Influence is like an all-you-can-eat buffet with an expert chef behind the scenes. It automatically dishes out credit across touchpoints, giving you a full spread of marketing influence with minimal effort. If you love precision and control, Campaign Influence is for you. But if you want a seamless, automated view of your entire marketing impact, Opportunity Influence takes the crown.

How to Set Up Opportunity Influence

Setting up Opportunity Influence requires configuration in Sales Cloud to ensure marketing engagement is properly attributed to revenue-generating activities. To fully connect marketing efforts with sales outcomes, ensure that contacts engaging with marketing campaigns are linked to Opportunities. This allows for accurate tracking of marketing interactions that influence deals.

Enabling Opportunity Influence

1. Navigate to Salesforce Setup > Opportunity Influence
2. Enable Opportunity Influence
3. Select an Attribution Model
   1. First-Touch: Gives full credit to the first marketing engagement that led to the opportunity. It’s ideal for understanding which top-of-funnel efforts drive initial interest.
   2. Last-Touch: Assigns full credit to the last marketing interaction before the opportunity was created. It helps measure the final push that converted a lead into an opportunity.
   3. Even-Distribution: Spreads credit evenly across all marketing interactions that occurred before opportunity creation, giving a balanced view of multi-touch engagement. This approach is ideal for businesses with long sales cycles and/or multiple high-value touchpoints.

Going Beyond Activation

Customization is key to maximizing Opportunity Influence. Marketers should align influence models with their sales cycle, ensuring critical marketing touchpoints, such as email engagements, paid ads, and automation journeys, are correctly captured. Because Opportunity Influence consumes Data Credits, it’s essential to be strategic when enabling multiple models to avoid unnecessary credit usage.

Making Sense of Your Data: Reporting on Opportunity Influence

Once Opportunity Influence is enabled and tracking data, you can start reporting on marketing’s impact. The key to unlocking valuable insights is leveraging Salesforce’s Reports & Dashboards to tell a clear story about how marketing drives revenue.

Your Treasure Map to Salesforce Reports & Dashboards

• Head over to Salesforce Reports and search for Opportunity Influence Reports. This is your go-to hub for seeing which marketing touchpoints are helping close deals.
• Get specific with your insights! Use filters to refine reports by timeframe, campaign, or opportunity. Want to know which emails led to the most revenue? Adjust your filters to see the impact.
• Create Salesforce Dashboards to visualize Opportunity Influence. Need a quick snapshot for your leadership team? Build an easy-to-read chart that shows exactly how marketing is fueling revenue.

The Ultimate Guide to Opportunity Influence Report Types

Salesforce provides several built-in report types to help you analyze how marketing efforts contribute to revenue. Here are the key report types you can use:

• Opportunity Influence Summary Report – This high-level report shows how marketing engagements are influencing revenue across all opportunities. Use it to track overall marketing impact.
• Opportunity Influence Detail Report – A more granular report that breaks down individual touchpoints per opportunity, allowing you to analyze which specific marketing interactions played a role in closing deals.
• Influence Attribution Model Comparison Chart – Compare first-touch, last-touch, and even-distribution models side by side to see which one provides the best insights for your marketing strategy.
• Marketing Touchpoint Analysis Report – Identifies which marketing channels (email, ads, website visits, etc.) are contributing the most to opportunity creation and pipeline growth.

By setting up and analyzing Opportunity Influence reports, marketing teams can gain deeper insights into which touchpoints matter most, optimize their strategies accordingly, and confidently demonstrate their return on investment.

Why Opportunity Influence is a Game-Changer

Opportunity Influence is a must-have tool for any marketing team looking to measure true revenue impact. No more guessing which emails, ads, or landing pages are driving pipeline – Opportunity Influence connects the dots, giving you a clear picture of how marketing fuels business growth. With built-in attribution models, you can customize insights based on what matters most to your strategy.

Whether you’re aiming to prove marketing ROI, optimize your campaigns, or align better with sales, Opportunity Influence provides automated, data-driven attribution that simplifies reporting and enhances decision-making. If you want better visibility into marketing’s role in revenue generation, this feature is your new best friend!

Next Steps:

1. Check your org to see if the new update is available.
2. Test Opportunity Influence tracking before rolling it out company-wide.
3. Monitor data service credit usage if you’re using multiple attribution models.

Want to learn more? Check out the full Spring ‘25 release highlights or dive into the official release notes.

What are your thoughts on Opportunity Influence? Drop a comment below, and let’s discuss!

Original article: Cracking the Code: How Opportunity Influence Connects Marketing to Revenue

©2025 The Spot. All Rights Reserved.

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While we were all preparing for the New Year, Salesforce was busy getting the Spring ‘25 release notes posted! Let’s dive into what this release has in store for Marketing Cloud Account Engagement (f.k.a Pardot) users. 

Support for the Enhanced Email Builder is Being Phased Out

Support for the Enhanced Email Experience, aka the Account Engagement Lightning Email Builder or the Drag-and-drop builder, is being phased out—meaning that Salesforce is only committed to fixing significant issues going forward, the builder will still be available for use. 

If you saw the release notes right after they were published, they did say that the Enhanced Email Builder was going to be fully retired, but this retirement has since been put on hold.

Again, users of the Enhanced Email Experience can continue to use this builder, but users also have the option to use the New Email Experience (aka the Marketing Cloud Builder). Salesforce has provided a comparison of the three builders here. Keep in mind that the New Email Experience will continue to get updates every release. 

Once this new release is available I will do a deeper dive into using the New Email Experience as an Account Engagement User, so keep an eye out for more info!

Einstein Generative AI supports additional languages

Einstein Gen AI, aka Einstein Assistant, has been expanded to support five new languages: French, German, Japanese, Portuguese (Brazil), and Spanish. Einstein Assistant helps users create landing pages, forms, and email copy and is available to users with Advanced or Premium Editions of Account Engagement.

Easily Enable Marketing Cloud from within the Account Engagement Optimizer

During Dreamforce ‘24, Salesforce announced that all Account Engagement orgs with a current edition (Growth, Plus, Advanced, or Premium) can get access to Marketing Cloud Growth or Advanced Edition at no additional cost. This new platform runs on Data Cloud and can be used alongside Account Engagement to bring more features and functionalities to the Marketing tech stack. The Spring ‘25 release introduces a streamlined setup process for Account Engagement orgs, enabling them to deploy Marketing Cloud Growth or Advanced Edition via the Account Engagement Optimizer. 

Additional Visibility into Email Send Issues

It’s always frustrating when an Account Engagement email fails to send to a prospect and the error message is vague at best. With the Spring release, List Email will provide more reasons on why a send fails and will help point you to configuration issues that can help prevent additional failures. The new Failed Email Sends table will be available in the Account Engagement Optimizer and will display the Prospect’s name, company, failure reason, and other details. 

Additional Updates

• It’s now even easier to connect Account Engagement to Data Cloud with new automatically created Data Streams.
• Copying Assets to Salesforce’s CMS now includes Landing Pages and inline CSS for Forms. Also, orgs can now use V5 of the Account Engagement API to expedite copying Email, Forms, Files, and Landing Pages to CMS. 

Which Spring’ 25 Account Engagement features are you most excited about? Which features do you want to know more about? Let us know in the comments!

Original article: Salesforce Spring ‘25 Highlights: Marketing Cloud Account Engagement

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Spring has sprung at Salesforce, and it comes in the form of the Salesforce Spring ‘25 Release Notes! Whether you’re a seasoned pro or a budding marketer, this release is packed with goodies that will make your campaigns bloom brighter than ever. Let’s dive into the highlights for Marketing Cloud Growth and Advanced Edition!

Take Your Marketing Global 

Marketing Cloud is getting a boost with a WhatsApp integration, making it easier to incorporate this channel into your marketing strategy. Whether you share updates, promotions, or ongoing support, WhatsApp helps you connect with your customers worldwide. The integration includes a campaign template, communication subscription support, and a default Email Preference Center. In addition, it supports 2-way conversations, and the message builder supports audio, video, and file sharing.

AI: Your Marketing Superpower

Salesforce is supercharging your marketing strategy with expanded AI capabilities, bringing unparalleled efficiency and creativity to your campaigns. With Agentforce, you can generate landing pages and email content in seconds, freeing time for more strategic tasks. Need to plan a campaign? Agentforce also crafts detailed campaign briefs, ensuring you start with a strong foundation. For Marketing Cloud Advanced Edition users, the Agentforce Campaign Designer (Beta) takes it even further, providing a single interface to edit and refine your campaign strategies, multi-channel flows, and content. These tools empower you to create more innovative, impactful campaigns.

Spring into Smarter Campaigns and Content

Marketing Cloud’s Spring ‘25 Release is focused on making campaigns smarter and your content work harder. From reusable personalization tools to seamless flows, Salesforce has designed the release to help marketers craft successful campaigns from start to finish.

Personalization That Packs a Punch

Stop spinning your wheels! Simplify your workflow and create tailored campaigns effortlessly with reusable content and personalization points. These features save you time and help you connect more deeply with your audience. Reusing merge fields with Expressions across campaigns will keep your messaging sharp, consistent, and right on target—making every interaction count.

Smarter Segmentation for Better Results

Segmentation is getting a makeover! The Spring ‘25 release features new tools that filter attributes—like new leads—right from the Campaign record, saving you time and speeding up your campaign’s delivery. Plus, you can preview up to 1,000 segment members before activating your campaign flow, giving you confidence in your targeting strategy.

Meet the CRM Prospect Object

Say hello to your new best friend: the CRM Prospect Object. It’s here to help you manage prospects like a pro. Create prospects with forms, nurture them automatically, and convert them into loyal customers. With account scoring based on engagement, fit, and intent, you can prioritize the leads most likely to convert.

Forms That Go Where Your Customers Are

Why make your customers come to you when you can bring the form to them? With the new ability to embed forms on external sites, you can deliver them to your hosted web page. After a quick setup in Salesforce and your external site, grab the form’s code block from its detail page and drop it into your site’s HTML. It’s as simple as copy-paste! (Just make sure your site supports iframes, is secure, and uses HTTPS.)

Flow Like a Pro

Managing Flows is easier and more intuitive than ever. You can handle more of the process directly from the Campaign record, track flow statuses in the new Marketing Calendar (fully integrated with the Sales Calendar), and view flow versions and failures to provide quicker, seamless resolutions. The new Campaign Stage field offers insight into the current campaign and keeps your team updated. Need a little extra customization? Add custom fields to your campaign briefs to make them truly yours.

Content Updates That Shine

Marketing Cloud is releasing new content creation features. With a new “Processing” content status, you’ll always know when landing pages, forms, and branding updates are pending publication. While changes can’t be made during this time, you can relax knowing your updates are locked in. Need to duplicate content? Cloned content is easier to manage by saving it in a shared workspace, keeping your team aligned. Consistent branding has never been more straightforward—assign default branding to your workspace to ensure emails, landing pages, and forms all have the same polished look. Ensure brand consistency across all your forms by assigning a brand, with forms automatically adapting to reflect your workspace, landing page, or external site branding.

And More!

• Connect External Web Tracking to a Campaign allows existing customers to install new data kits and deploy new data streams.
• Tracking and Source Information for Consent helps you comply with global laws and regulations to review the source and consent status change via the Consent Audit Trail in Data Explorer.
• Setup Enhancements aim to save users time. They include tracking setup progress, installing or updating the Sales Data Kit, a guided experience for authenticating domains, and the ability to autogenerate an Identity Resolution Ruleset.

Original article: Salesforce Spring ‘25 Highlights: Marketing Cloud Edition

©2025 The Spot. All Rights Reserved.

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The Salesforce Winter ’25 Release Notes are out, and they include important features for trailblazers who are on the Salesforce platform. 

We get three major releases from Salesforce each year — Spring, Summer and Winter. Each Salesforce release includes upgrades and enhancements that affect Salesforce orgs in different ways. 

Each release contains a substantial amount of information on a variety of products so it can often be daunting for admins or other trailblazers to find the features that are important to them and their organization.  Our team reviewed the notes for you and highlighted the following platform features as those for you to keep your eyes on the lookout when the release hits your Salesforce environments in the coming months.

Platform Highlights from the Salesforce Winter ‘25 Release

Those who use the Salesforce platform are getting lots of attention from the Salesforce Winter ‘25 Release. 

Some updates are changing the way we work to meet evolving technology demands. Others are saving us time by connecting the dots in a logical way.  Our team will guide you through these features so you will know how to take action on them before the release hits your Production org.

Highlight #1: Verifications Needed to Continue Sending Emails From Salesforce

The Winter ‘25 release will require customers to Create and Verify Your Default No-Reply Organization-Wide Email Address to Send Email and Verify Your Return Email Address for Sender Verification in order to continue allowing Users and/or automations to send emails from Salesforce.

If you Users do utilize any email functionality within Salesforce it will be important to instruct them to visit their ‘My Email Settings’ so they can verify the email address associated with their User account.  Similarly, overall as an organization, you will need to ensure there is a customer-defined Default No-Reply Organization-Wide Email Address moving forward.

Although the Default No-Reply Organization-Wide Email Address feature will be enforced this release, the individual Return Email Address verification will not be enforced until Spring ‘25.

Highlight #2: Salesforce Archive (Pilot)

Salesforce recently announced their acquisition of Own Company, currently known as the most credible Salesforce archive and backup third-party tool, however, they have also announced a pilot of their own Archive product.  If your team needs assistance with archival management of your data but either cannot afford a third-party tool or do not have time/resources to implement one of those tools, Salesforce Archive might be a solution to consider.

When Salesforce Archive becomes generally available, you can use it in production and sandbox environments, however the product is available in sandboxes as a pilot right now and can be requested to be enabled by your AE.  The product will become available to production orgs on a rolling basis starting in November 2024, but when it’s released for production use, it will need to be purchased as an add-on license.

Highlight #3: New Salesforce Platform Login License

The Salesforce Platform Login license allows you to assign access to custom apps built on Platform for internal users without the requirement to buy a seat-based license. With the Salesforce Platform Login license, you can pay per daily unique login for users who need infrequent or occasional access. 

This new license will become available starting October 15th for customers on Enterprise, Performance, Unlimited, and Developer editions.  Contact your AE to learn more about pricing details for these new licenses and to determine if they’re a right fit for your organization.

Highlight #4: User Permissions Updates

Improvement #1: See How Object Access Is Granted in Object Manager

The Winter ‘25 release continues with updates to ensure Salesforce Administrators are able to troubleshoot their User’s access and permission issues easier. One of these new features is the ability to use the Object Access Summary in Object Manager to quickly check object permissions when troubleshooting, completing reviews, or determining how to grant user access.

Improvement #2: Get Insight into How a User’s Permissions Are Granted

Last release we were able to access a Summary of an individual’s access and permissions directly from the user details record.  This enabled you to see what a user had access to without having to spend multiple clicks checking each profile, permission set, public group, or queue.

The Winter ‘25 release expands on that feature by including an additional feature to allow you to see what grants the User that particular permissions (i.e. via Profile or Permission Set) in case you need to revoke those permissions.

Highlight #5: Salesforce Flow Updates

You may have heard the phrase “Flow is the future” in Salesforce messaging over the past few years. This is because Salesforce is consistently releasing new Flow features to support the retirement of Process Builder and Workflow Rules in recent years. 

Here are some of our favorites from this release.

Improvement #1: New Errors and Warnings Pane in Flow Builder

The new Errors and Warnings pane lists issues that prevent you from saving and activating your flow as you work in an easy to scan format. This feature will be automatically available when trying to activate a Flow with errors following the release.

Improvement #2: Flow Design Tips

Another new feature within the Winter ‘25 release is the inclusion of new tips in Flow Builder to help you identify designs that can slow down your flows and increase the risk of reaching Apex governor limits.  This may not seem like much to some of us that have been building Flows for a couple years now, but this is a game changer for new Flow builders who are uncomfortable with the tool at first.

Improvement #3: Create or Update Records Efficiently with the Create Records Element

Last release we saw the beginning of an upsert feature within Flow Builder through the release of a new way to check against duplicates for a single record.  Well the Winter ‘25 releases further enhances this feature by enabling the upsert functionality against multiple records at once.  You’re able to compare against existing records with a Salesforce Id, External Id, or other field on the object.  

The Create Records element makes the process of saving records easier and faster, as you no longer check separately for existing records because the create and update elements are now merged into one element.  Admins can now configure and maintain flows more easily while reducing potential errors from separate operations.

Improvement #4: Send Email Action Expanded

Two new enhancements have come to the ‘Send Email’ Action within Flow Builder. First, you are now able to include email addresses to include as cc or bcc on the email that is sent via the Flow. Any address entered in the CC field receives a copy of the email, and those in the BCC field also receive a copy, but their email addresses are hidden from all recipients. Secondly, there is an increase of the number of recipients you can include from originally 5 to now 150 recipients.

Highlight #6: Conditional Formatting on Record Pages

As Salesforce continues to push customers from Page Layouts to Lightning Record Pages, they continue to release new features in the Lightning App Builder to excite customers into the move.  Now customers will be able to give fields on Dynamic Forms-enabled pages custom icons and colors that can appear, disappear, and change color based on the criteria and rules that you define.  This can be a game changer for those of us who have previously created formula fields to manage or provide this functionality in the past.

Highlight #7: Account Plans

This feature is one our team is very interested in learning more about as new information is released as it can be a huge game changer for Sales teams.  The Account Plans feature provides a new UX providing a complete picture of the account with information such as metrics, objectives with actionable metrics, and tabs on growth and development, all from one repository within Salesforce.  

This feature will become available in Production on a rolling basis after the Winter ’25 release is complete and available to all customers in mid- to late November 2024.  Customers available to receive this feature are those with Enterprise, Performance, or Unlimited editions.

Once the feature becomes available in your Production org, go to the new Account Plans page in Setup and turn on Account Plans. Then, configure the Account Plans object in the Object Manager, add the Account Plans related list to the Account object, and optionally set up Relationship Maps.

Highlight #8: Marketing Cloud Account Engagement (Pardot) Updates

Please check out my colleague Erin Duncan’s blog post on all things Pardot from the Winter ’25 release.

Additional Highlight: Marketing Cloud Growth Updates

Erin Duncan has also written posted on some exciting announcements coming to Salesforce’s newest marketing product:

• Salesforce Winter ‘25 Highlights: Marketing Cloud Growth Edition
• Announcing Marketing Cloud Advanced Edition

Salesforce is getting bigger and better all the time

Trailblazers who come to Salesforce are usually looking to scale their efforts and grow in a way that makes sense. These latest enhancements from the Salesforce Winter ‘25 Release get everyone closer to those goals by saving them time and resources.

Contact the team at Sercante to get help implementing these enhancements in your Salesforce org. And leave us a comment below to let us know what you think about the Winter ‘25 Release.

Original article: Salesforce Winter ‘25 Release: Platform Highlights

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The Salesforce Winter ‘25 release notes are out! Let’s dive into Winter ’25 highlights and what Account Engagement (f.k.a. Pardot) users can expect to see come October. 

Duplicate Management!

Back in 2021 we got the Email Uniqueness field that told us whether or not a Prospect’s email address was unique to the prospect. Although this field is super handy, you can’t export its data and it only tells you if there is a duplicate email somewhere in the system. 

Now, All Account Engagement editions are getting bonafide duplicate management capabilities. 

As part of the Winter ‘25 release, Account Engagement Optimizer will help users keep their database squeaky clean by enabling them to view and merge duplicate prospect records.

Default System Emails to Lightning App Links

If you receive system notification emails from Account Engagement, for instance the Daily Prospect Activity report, then you know these emails typically include pi.pardot.com (a.k.a. Pardot Classic) links rather than the, now standard, Account Engagement Lightning App links. 

Fortunately, with the Salesforce Winter ‘25 release, all orgs will be updated to have their Account Engagement system emails to use Lightning App links, directing users to the right app or prospect without having to log into pi.pardot.com.  

Now the only link this update won’t fix is the “Account Engagement URL” field on Salesforce Leads and Contacts. This field will continue to have a pi.pardot.com link. However, you can create a Formula field on the Lead and Contact objects to display the Lightning link instead.

Use the formula: 

SUBSTITUTE( pi__url__c, “http://pi.pardot.com/prospect/read?id=”, “https://company.lightning.force.com/lightning/page/pardot/home?pardot__path=/prospect/read/id/” )

Making sure you update the section in red with your own Salesforce URL. While the Pardot Classic App will forever hold a piece of my heart. I’m excited to see this last remaining vestige of the Classic interface go away. 

Do More with Data Cloud

Account Engagement and Data Cloud’s integration continues to grow with each release. Orgs will now be able to connect form, landing page, and tracked website engagement data to Data Cloud for personalized marketing efforts, calculated insights, and improved segmentation. 

Speaking of Data Cloud Segments, Account Engagement can now have 25 Data Cloud segments per business unit (an increase from 5)! Currently the segment increase only applies to Account Engagement users with Growth or Plus edition. 

Copy Forms and Emails to CMS 

Building on the “Copy Images from Account Engagement to CMS” feature of Summer ‘24, All Account Engagement orgs can now also copy forms and emails to their CMS.

PDF, MP4, and Zip file types are also now supported as part of this release. 

Pause or Cancel Permanent Prospect Deletions

One of the worst feelings as an admin of any system is accidentally deleting something you shouldn’t have. Even worse is when it is a permanent deletion. 

Thankfully, Salesforce is helping you avoid that feeling of dread and doom but allowing for these table actions to be paused or outright canceled. Deletion requests can be paused/canceled in the Table Action Manager found within Account Engagement Optimizer. 

Get help understanding the Salesforce Winter ‘25 release and how it affects Account Engagement orgs

What questions do you have about the new features coming to Account Engagement? Let us know in the comments or reach out to the team at Sercante to start a conversation.

Original article: Salesforce Winter ‘25 Highlights: Marketing Cloud Account Engagement

©2025 The Spot. All Rights Reserved.

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In February 2024, Salesforce released Marketing Cloud Growth Edition, its first marketing automation platform built fully on the Einstein 1 Platform (a.k.a. “On Core”). Marketing Cloud Growth Edition has been rapidly evolving and expanding the features of this new solution ever since, and Account Engagement (f.k.a. Pardot) users are about to get a taste of it.

Update! In the Dreamforce ‘24 Marketing Keynote, Salesforce announced that all Account Engagement orgs can get Marketing Cloud Growth provisioned at no additional cost. Previously, this offer was only for orgs with Growth Edition Account Engagement, but it now includes all orgs with a current edition of Account Engagement. A banner notifying all Account Engagement orgs that they can now get access to Marketing Cloud Growth Edition was published on October 15th. This blog has been updated to reflect the most recent news around this offering.

In this post, we’ll cover how to take advantage of the offer and use Marketing Cloud Growth alongside Account Engagement.

A Note on Naming

Now the naming of this new tool has caused quite a bit of confusion in the Salesforce community as it seems to change on a weekly basis. When launched, this new solution was referred to as “Marketing Cloud Growth Edition” or “Marketing Cloud on the Einstein 1 Platform”. During Dreamforce, Advanced Edition was announced, so this solution became “Marketing Cloud Growth or Advanced Edition” or “Marketing Cloud built on Data Cloud”. Finally, during the Winter ‘25 release, this tool started showing up in Salesforce documentation as just “Marketing Cloud” or the “Marketing Cloud App”, much to the chagrin of Marketing Cloud Engagement users. Now, if you are using Marketing Cloud Growth with Account Engagement, it is being referred to as “Account Engagement on Marketing Cloud” but also “Account Engagement powered by Data Cloud”.

Confused? Yes, me too. But all this is to say there is one new Salesforce Marketing tool that is built on core to bring users a truly unified marketing experience. For simplicity, we will continue to refer to this tool as “Marketing Cloud Growth” for this blog post.

What Account Engagement Users Need to Access Marketing Cloud Growth Edition

1. A current instance of a Marketing Cloud Account Engagement
   This includes Growth, Plus, Advanced, and Premium editions of Marketing Cloud Account Engagement (MCAE). Your MCAE Admins can view your Edition by going to the Account Engagement Settings tab.

2. Data Cloud
   Data Cloud not only unifies customer data for use within Marketing Cloud Growth, but also ensures data continuity between Account Engagement and Marketing Cloud Growth. Free Data Cloud is available for orgs with Enterprise and Unlimited Edition Salesforce customers. If you have a lower edition of Salesforce, check out more information on provisioning and access here.
   
   If you are brand new to Data Cloud or don’t have a Data Cloud Architect at your disposal, don’t fret! Marketing Cloud Growth comes with Data Kits that help map your Marketing and CRM Data to Data Cloud. The free Data Cloud SKU + Marketing Cloud Growth’s out of the box data kits will cover everything most orgs need to get started, but if you’d like assistance with additional Data Cloud Data Streams or want to dive into more advanced Data Cloud use cases, we’re happy to help!

Data Cloud Credits

Marketing Cloud Growth uses Data Cloud’s credits to fuel its activities. So, although MCAE users will get Marketing Cloud Growth at no additional charge, orgs still need to purchase credits to fuel Marketing Cloud Growth. Think of it like you’re being given a car, but you still have to purchase the gas to make it run.

If you’re new to Data Cloud’s consumption model, our previous blog post and this Trailhead module will help give you an idea of how this works and the different types of credits available. If you’re using the Free Data Cloud SKU to get started, note that this does include some credits to fuel data ingestion and unification. However, orgs will need to reach out to their AE to purchase the credits that fuel sending emails, sending SMS, compiling Segments, and using Einstein.

You don’t necessarily have to purchase these credits before implementing Marketing Cloud Growth for testing purposes, but you may be limited in the features you can play around with without them.

Getting Started

Here are a few things to keep in mind as you start using Account Engagement and Marketing Cloud Growth side by side.

Understanding Consent and Subscriptions

Consent works a little differently between the two systems. 

Account Engagement has a permission-based marketing policy, meaning that although there is no default “Opt-in” field, users must certify that they only contact prospects who have expressly consented to receive marketing communications. 

In Marketing Cloud Growth Edition, consent is a bit more rigid. To send marketing communications, each prospect must have a Consent Record comprising of:

• The Contact Point (email or phone number)
• The Marketing Channel (Email, SMS, etc.)
• The Communication Subscription (Webinars, Events, Product updates, etc.)
• The Date and Time the prospect opted in

More considerations for Consent and Subscriptions are available in this Salesforce Help article. 

Import Consent Data

Before you import consent data, make sure the contact point exists in Marketing Cloud Growth Edition. A consent import can update consent information for existing contact points, but it can’t create new leads or contacts or update other fields (at least as of the Winter ‘25 release).

First, export your list from Account Engagement:

1. In Account Engagement, navigate to Prospects > Segmentation > Segmentation Lists
2. Locate and open the preference list you would like to import into Growth
3. Select Tools
4. Select CSV Export

You’ll need to format your export before importing it into Growth, see this help article for guidance. 

Start Your Import

1. Within Marketing Cloud Growth, navigate to the Consent tab
2. Ensure you are on the Consent Imports tab, then select + Import

3. Select your Channel, Communication Subscription, and whether this list is opted in or opted out

4. Select Next
5. Upload your CSV, select Next
6. Review the import preview and select Import
7. Select Done

Send Account Engagement Images to CMS

Use images in both Account Engagement and Marketing Cloud Growth by enabling “Copy to CMS”.

1. In Salesforce, navigate to Marketing Setup > Copy to CMS
2. Use the dropdown menu next to your Account Engagement business unit to select Enable
3. Repeat for additional Account Engagement business units

This will create a CMS Workspace named, “Content Workspace for Marketing Cloud Account Engagement – Copied Content – [business unit name]”. To avoid issues, do not change the workspace name or remove the B2BMA Integration user as a contributor. 

Copy Images from Account Engagement to the Growth Edition CMS Workspace

Next, you’ll need to copy the images from Account Engagement to your new CMS Workspace. 

1. In Account Engagement, navigate to Content > Files
2. Use the checkboxes on the left-hand side to select the files you would like to move. Once selected, use the dropdown menu at the bottom of the table to select Copy to CMS 
3. Select Go

Use the New Growth Edition Email Editing Experience

Now you can build emails that are available in both Account Engagement and Growth Edition. When creating or editing Email Content in the Lightning Email Builder, select New Email Experience to use Marketing Cloud Growth Edition’s editor.

Account Engagement Campaign Considerations 

Account Engagement and Marketing Cloud Growth Edition cannot currently share campaigns, so you’ll want to have distinct naming conventions to easily identify which campaigns belong to each platform. You can also keep Marketing Cloud Growth’s campaigns from syncing to Account Engagement by creating a new campaign record type for Growth. 

Read more about Campaigns for Marketing Cloud Growth in this help article. 

Using Account Engagement & Growth Edition Together

Current users of Account Engagement probably have long-standing engagement studio programs that are set up to run on a recurring basis. Account Engagement thrives in this situation and provides flexibility for enrolling prospects and ensuring that the marketing journey you want to happen actually happens. Let’s look at instances where you can use this existing functionality with all the bells and whistles Growth offers.

Use cases for combining the two platforms

1. SMS functionality. In Account Engagement, You may have a pre-existing engagement studio program set up for every event your company puts on, thanking attendees for joining and sharing pertinent details. If you want to send a reminder text message to people who have registered for the event, you can now take advantage of native Marketing Cloud Growth functionality to do so.

2. Using cross-object personalization. Say you have a recurring monthly email sent out to your customers letting them know their account status, YTD savings with your company, and other information pertinent to the customer on an ongoing basis. If this information is stored within custom objects, it’s difficult to populate an Account Engagement email with those details. With Marketing Cloud Growth Edition, users can create Data Graphs for cross-object personalization, allowing marketers to personalize emails with data from any object. 

3. Custom processes for post-form-fill actions. Another great example of how you can use Marketing Cloud Growth Edition alongside Account Engagement is when you want to implement a custom process when someone submits a form.

Since Growth uses Flow for automation, the actions taken after a form is completed can be customized to each unique need. For instance, you can standardize field values or send data to several objects within Salesforce before the Lead/Contact record is updated. 

There you have it

You are now ready to start experiencing Marketing Cloud Growth Edition. The future of Salesforce marketing is bright and evolving every day.

Stay tuned for Growth’s next iterations. In the meantime, use these resources to get started:

• Prepare for a New Campaign Experience with Marketing Cloud Growth
• Marketing Cloud Growth Edition: Landing Page and Form Builder
• Marketing Cloud Growth Edition: Creating Brand Guidelines
• All the FAQs on Marketing Cloud Growth Edition

If you need help implementing or learning how to use Marketing Cloud Growth Edition, send us a message!

Original article: Big News! Account Engagement Users Can Access Marketing Cloud Growth Edition

©2025 The Spot. All Rights Reserved.

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The Salesforce Summer ’24 release notes have arrived, and with them, the delivery of one of the most highly sought-after Marketing Cloud Account Engagement (MCAE/Pardot) features ever requested. In fact, sending operational emails in Engagement Studio functionality has garnered the fifth most points in the Account Engagement category on the IdeaExchange.

What is an Operational Email?

An operational email is informational and is distinct from a marketing email. Erin Duncan has written a great article that goes in-depth about the differences between the two and when it is appropriate to use each.

When an email is marked as “operational,” it bypasses the recipient’s opt-in status and will send the message even if the subscriber has opted out. You must only use operational emails for their intended purpose, as this can affect your sending reputation and put you on the wrong side of the CAN-SPAM Act.

How Do I Enable Operational Emails in MCAE?

1. Navigate to Account Engagement Settings 
2. Click Enable Operational Emails
3. Review the restrictions associated with sending operational emails and confirm your selection 

Keep in mind that only Account Engagement Admin users and custom user roles can send operational emails.

Sending Operational Emails with Engagement Studio

Previously, operational emails could only be sent from list sends. This required selecting an audience, building email content, and manually sending at a single point in time. Now, users can send operational emails directly from Engagement Studio, where recipients are enrolled based on user-defined criteria and emails are automatically sent based on your parameters.

Let’s put this into practice. Imagine you are a SaaS company and need to deliver communications regarding your product’s planned system outages. Instead of setting up multiple operational list sends, you could create an Engagement Studio program to automate the outage and issue-resolved notifications to your selected audience.

Another example could be letting your customers know that their product’s license is about to expire. You could create an Engagement Studio program that could send notifications to let them renew their product on a more time-based cadence. Once the Engagement Studio is set and running, you do not need to reconfigure manual email list sends.

Other use cases could include:

• Renewal or expiration reminders
• Order updates
• Event registration reminders
• Internal employee onboarding

As with all effective communications, using operational emails in engagement studios will take planning. You will need content to create your emails, data to ensure that the right emails are being sent to the right person, and, most importantly, compliance with the Marketing Cloud Account Engagement Permission Based Marketing Policy.

What are the limitations?

Salesforce has provided a list of limitations for using operational emails in Engagement Studio:

• If a program is running and the Operational Email setting is disabled, operational emails aren’t sent. Prospects skip those steps and proceed to the next one.
• If a program with a Send Operational Email card is paused and the account setting is disabled. To restart the program, remove the steps or re-enable the Operational Email setting.
• If a program with a Send Operational Email card isn’t running and the account setting is disabled, the program can’t be started or resumed. To start or resume the program, you must re-enable the setting or remove the step.

One Small Step for Email Marketing, One Giant Leap Forward for Efficiency

This is a huge improvement in saving marketers time and improving customers’ experiences with your brand. It ensures that customers can receive mission-critical information at the right time without having to manually and tediously configure the email sends.

How do you plan on using Engagement Studio to send operational emails? Let us know in the comments.

Original article: The Wait is Over: Send Operational Emails from Engagement Studio

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The Salesforce Summer ‘24 Release is on its way! Let’s dive into the top declarative features and updates for admins.

In line with messaging from Salesforce, the Summer ‘24 Release includes new and enhanced features that all center on the relationships between CRM, data, AI, and trust.

Salesforce Summer ’24 Highlights

Security & Access

Get a Summary of a User’s Permissions and Access

Viewing what access a user has will be easier with the User Access Summary. Accessible directly from the user details record, you can see what a user has access to without having to spend multiple clicks checking each profile, permission set, public group, or queue.

Other great Security & Access Updates:

• See Where a Public Group Is Used
• View Summary on Permission Sets and Permission Set Groups now GA
• User Access Policies now GA

Customization

Set Conditional Visibility for Individual Tabs in Lightning App Builder

Now you can control visibility to tabs and their contents in the Lightning App Builder, based on specific criteria, giving you another tool to customize the user experience, and what users can see and when. 

View Field History Tracking from Setup

Admins can now view and control field history tracking across objects in on place, from the Setup menu. From here you can view and control the objects that have tracking en tracked, and enable, view and update the fields. 

Other Customization updates worth mentioning:

• Use Blank Spaces to Align Fields on Dynamic Forms-Enabled Pages
• Add New Custom Fields to Dynamic Forms-Enabled Pages on creation
• See Dynamic Forms-Enabled Lightning Page Usage for Custom Fields (via Where is this Used?)

Sales Productivity

Do More in the Intelligence Views

More functionality is coming to Account, Contact, Lead and Pipeline Intelligence views to help users do more in one place. Now it’s possible to perform mass actions like Add to Campaign or Send Email, and inline editing of the same field, from these Intelligence views.

Organize and Find Records Easily with Personal Labels

Users can apply their own private labels to records to help them organize, track, and find the records they need quickly and easily. Labels work on several objects including:

• Account
• Campaign
• Contact
• Case
• Email Template
• Lead
• Opportunity
• Task
• …and more

The once added to the page layout, a Labels related list will appear on the record page, allowing users to add their labels. Then the Labels tab provide a view to all of the records that have that Label applied.

Note: Users will need access to the Labels object. This is enabled by default in standard profiles but will need to be granted in custom profiles or permission sets.

Flows

Flow Management 

Automation Lightning App

The Automation Lighning App includes a Home page showing recently modified flows, and flow errors, as well as quick links to flow topics on Trailhead and to the Flow Community. 

The app also includes a Flows tab where list views to access standard and custom list views of existing flows. From here you can open a flow, open the latest version, change the owner, or delete the flow.

Note you may have to enable this features from Setup > Process Automation Settings, and checking the Enable the Automation Lighting App checkbox.

View Flow Details from a Lighting Page

When using the Automation App and list views, you’ll notice that clicking on a flow shows the details on a Lightning record page. This lets you take advantage of customizing your page layout as I’ve done in the screenshot below. 

Organize Your Flows Based on Categories and Subcategories That You Define

Another new flow admin feature, new Category & Subcategory text fields are now available on the Flow object, and accessible when creating custom list views, which can be a handy tool for organizing long lists of flows. 

Control User Access to Specific Flow Elements

Use new permissions to enable users who don’t have the Manage Flows permission, to use specific flow elements when building segment-triggered and form-triggered flows. Elements supported include:  Assignment, Collection Filter, Collection Sort, Delete Records, Get Records, Loop, and Subflow. 

Keep in mind that these permissions are available for Enterprise and Unlimited Edition with Marketing Cloud Growth. 

Flow Builder

Check for Duplicates Before Creating Records in a Flow

The Create Records element in flow just got more intelligent for preventing duplicates. Now you can first check to see if another record with specific criteria exists before creating a new record.  If an existing record is found, the field values are applied to the existing record, otherwise a new record is created. 

Before you would have to use a Get element to search for an existing record and a decision to check if anything was found before creating a new record. Having this all rolled into one element makes the flow build and maintenance much simpler and more efficient.

Required fields automatically added for Create elements

Another cool feature spotted in the pre-release org is that Create elements also automatically include required fields.

I didn’t see this feature mentioned in the Release Notes, but as this could be a super helpful I’m hoping it will turn up in the Release. Admins can probably relate to the headache of building a flow that creates a record, hitting error when a required fields are not included, then having to go back the flow to make sure that field is populated… maybe more than once!

A couple of notes to consider for this to be useful: 

• Only fields that are marked required at the field level are included. Fields that are flagged as required on the page layout are not included. 
• Also, the element may include other non-required fields. For example when creating a Lead, the IsConverted and IsReadbyOwner fields were also added to the element automatically.  This may be something only seen in the pre-release org, so it may look a bit different in the actual release.

Other cool Flow Builder Updates:

• Changes to ‘New Flow’ modal
• Transform Your Data in Flows (GA)
• ‘Is Blank’ and ‘Is Empty’ Operators in Conditions
• Debug Scheduled Flows More Successfully
• Lock and Unlock Records with an Action
• Use Threading Tokens in Emails

Screen flows

New Action Button Component (Beta)

Now you can Add an Action Button to a flow screen to run and retrieve information from an active autolaunched flow, without leaving the screen. This is a huge win for creating a better user experience. Before you’d have to use one screen to collect some information, then click next to do the necessary actions and display the output on a second screen. 

Other Updates

• Repeater Component (now GA)
• Restrict User Input on Screen Components with the Disabled and Read Only Fields
• Update Records Using the State and Country Codes Selected in Address Screen Components

Other Notable Updates

A few other updates in this release that are worth noting.

Default No-Reply Email Required

To stay in line with increased email security standards, orgs are required to create and verify a Default No-reply address in their Organization-Wide Email Address settings (replacing noreply@salesforce.com). This will affect any orgs that send emails from Salesforce. Think automated emails like Lead or Case assignment, or even emails sent from a flow. This is will be enforced starting in Winter’25, meaning that some emails may not send, so its a good idea to set up a default no-reply email address sooner rather than later.

Get Ready for the Salesforce Summer ’24 Release

This is just a handful of platform features planned for the Salesforce Summer ‘24 Release. If you’re interested in diving in to learn more about the updates in this release, I highly recommend reading through the full release notes. 

You can also check out our post on the Salesforce Summer ’24 Release for Marketing Cloud Account Engagement (Pardot) here.

Which Salesforce Summer ‘24 features have you the most excited? Let us know in the comments!

Original article: Salesforce Summer ‘24 Release Highlights: Platform Updates

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Salesforce Summer ‘24 release notes are out! Let’s dive into the latest features Account Engagement marketers need to know about. 

Send Operational Emails with Engagement Studio

Marketers can now send Operational (aka Transactional) emails via Engagement Studio Programs! This is a game changer for any orgs that need to send renewal reminders, shipping notices, invoices etc. through Account Engagement. To use this new feature, ensure Operational emails are enabled in your Account Engagement Business Unit and make sure you’re familiar with what does, and does not, count as Operational. 

Copy Images from Account Engagement to CMS

Salesforce CMS workspaces rolled out for Account Engagement users with the Lightning Builders. However, if you are using both the Classic and Lightning builders, you’ve likely struggled with your content being in two places. With this new feature, you can easily copy images from your Account Engagement Business Unit over to CMS to help ensure everything is in one easily accessible place. 

View in Account Engagement Optimizer

If you’re not yet using the Account Engagement Optimizer, I highly recommend checking it out. This feature provides critical insights into the performance of your Account Engagement Business Unit and highlights actionable measures to keep your org running smoothly. With the Summer ‘24 release, a new messaging section is being added to Optimizer to make it even easier to view alerts and feature recommendations.

Misc Updates

• Engage for Gmail Extension is being retired as of June 2024. Users can continue to send emails directly through Sales Emails & Alerts. 
• Forms can now be moved between Business Units with the Bulk Asset Copy Flow.

Which Salesforce Summer ‘24 update are you most excited about? Let us know in the comments!

Original article: Salesforce Summer ‘24 Highlights: Marketing Cloud Account Engagement

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