It’s that time of the year again — when marketing, sales, and service professionals from around the globe gear up to reunite in Chicago, IL for the highly anticipated Salesforce Connections 2024 conference!

What is Salesforce Connections and why you should attend?

If you’re new to the ecosystem or never heard of this conference, here’s the lowdown.

This year Salesforce Connections 2024 is happening on May 22 – 23, at the McCormick Center in Chicago, Illinois. This annual two-day conference, hosted by Salesforce, is a must-attend event for anyone who delivers exceptional customer experiences, specifically digital marketers and commerce professionals who use the Salesforce platform. The 270+ sessions at this conference cover topics trending in the general marketing and Salesforce ecosystem like AI, CRM, and data strategies.

Who should attend?

If you’re a Salesforce user or a marketers who use Sales Cloud, Marketing Cloud, and Commerce Cloud, then this event is made just for you. The real magic lies not just in the sessions, but also in the immersive networking opportunities you will find throughout the week that can transform your career.

Be sure to read up on the benefits of attending these events to help you get even more inspired. 

Our Salesforce Connections 2024 must-see agenda

This is a filtered view of our team’s top picks for the upcoming conference, be sure to add them to your agenda. 

Marketing Keynote

Marketing Keynote: Reimagine Personalization with Einstein 1

Description: The AI revolution is here to stay. Keep up by learning how Einstein 1 unlocks new ways for marketers to use trusted data and AI to fuel better personalization, business outcomes, and relationships.
Add to your agenda >

AI & Data Cloud

Prep Your Small Business for Using AI in Marketing
Description: In this roundtable, we will discuss three ways small businesses can prepare to successfully use AI in their marketing. Be sure to say hi to our VP of Technology, Kirsten Schlau, after the session.
Add to your agenda >

How to Elevate Your B2B Marketing with Data and AI (Account Engagement)

Description: Hear how Einstein functionality in account engagement helps marketers save time and scale customer engagement. Plus, learn how to prepare your data and marketing team to realize the full value of AI.
Add to your agenda >

Marketing Cloud

Create Connected Journeys for Your Small Business Customers (Growth)

Description: Learn how small businesses can leverage Salesforce flows and data from marketing, sales, and service touchpoints to create connected customer journeys.
Add to your agenda >

Unlock B2B Marketing Innovation with Data and AI (Account Engagement)
Description: Learn how Account Engagement and Data Cloud can help B2B marketers unlock data outside of the CRM for more personalized journeys. Plus, learn how data and AI are accelerating B2B marketing innovation.
Add to your agenda >

Align Sales and Marketing with Account Engagement in Slack (Account Engagement)

Description: Learn how to accelerate lead conversion, enable sales efficiently, and deepen customer relationships with stronger sales and marketing teamwork through Slack and Marketing Cloud Account Engagement.
Add to your agenda >

Unlock Data to Power Personalization and Ignite Engagement (Engagement)

Description: Join us to see how we’re helping financial services marketers to make data their competitive advantage in powering relevant engagement journeys at each stage of the customer lifecycle.
Add to your agenda >

How to Connect Customer Journeys from Doorsteps to Digital (Engagement)

Description: Learn how top communications service providers are increasing both physical and digital conversion rates with a unified data strategy that enhances their targeting and journey personalization.
Add to your agenda >

Marketing Operation Fundamentals

Learn How to Improve Your Email Sender Reputation

Description: Deliverability can seem like a puzzle, but together we’ll break it down so you can set your email program up for success. You’ll develop a strategy to manage, monitor, and understand deliverability.
Add to your agenda >

The Three P’s of Migration — Platform, People, and Process

Description: Join Women in Tech Leadership to discuss the importance of a healthy relationship between marketing and IT, associate training, an MVP mentality, building a platform foundation, and value stories.
Add to your agenda >

Beyond the sessions: What else should I expect?

Life is more than just work, after all, no Salesforce conference is complete without a little celebration. Last year, we brought you a Wildly Epic Night (check out the gallery), and we are back at it again this year. Come celebrate your achievement and forge new connections with us!

A happy hour to match digital experiences that delight

Join us this year for the Roof Rhythms & Refreshments Happy Hour hosted by Sercante, Stensul, and SalesWings at ROOF.  We’re teaming up with Stensul and SalesWings to create an evening as meaningful as the digital experiences we deliver to our clients.

Form real connections with people who get it and dance to a live band playing your favorite hits so you can feel radical impact on the first night of Connections. It’s at the iconic ROOF on theWIT and space is limited, so be sure to RSVP to secure your spot! 

Wednesday, May 22, 2024
Time: 7:00 – 10:00 PM
Roof Gallery at ROOF on theWIT
Register now >

Stay tuned to more celebrations popping up closer to the event.

How to connect with Sercante at Connections

Still undecided? Be sure to follow Salesforce’s social media accounts and website for updates (you may even score a discount). Below are a few opportunities to connect with our team during the conference to explore new opportunities and industry insights.

Schedule a meeting with our team
Book a meeting >

Join our session “Prep Your Small Business for Using AI in Marketing” with Kirsten Schlau (Sercante) and Charlotte King (Salesforce)
Add to agenda > 

Let’s chat about career growth – check out new roles at Sercante
Browse roles >

See you at Salesforce Connections 2024

Regardless of whether you attend in person or virtually (through Salesforce+), tag us on LinkedIn with your best moments. We’d love to be part of your conference experience.

We can’t wait to see you there!

Original article: Conference Preview: Get Ready for Salesforce Connections 2024

©2025 The Spot. All Rights Reserved.

The post Conference Preview: Get Ready for Salesforce Connections 2024 appeared first on The Spot.

Welcome to the marketing side of Salesforce! As a Salesforce admin, you may occasionally need to assist your marketing team in developing processes or generating reports from data in Salesforce and Marketing Cloud Account Engagement (Pardot). Understanding Account Engagement and how it affects your Salesforce org can enhance your ability to contribute to those initiatives. 

7 Account Engagement Facts Salesforce Admins Must Know

In this blog, we will review several fundamental concepts in Account Engagement and how they relate to your role as a Salesforce Administrator. This guide is designed to provide you with insights from a Salesforce perspective about Account Engagement so that you can best support marketing and other teams using the platform. While these features are available to all organizations, access to the features can vary based on your org configuration and tier.

Tip 1: We call people “prospects”

In Salesforce, you are accustomed to working with Leads and Contacts. While this does carry over, the platform labels “people-records” as Prospects. Prospects can exist solely in Account Engagement or be synced with existing Salesforce records.

Verifying Prospects are linked to Salesforce records

To verify that a Prospect is linked to a Salesforce record, you can click on an individual record and look for the Salesforce cloud icon listed on the right of their name (see above) or by the CRM ID listed at the bottom of the record. Clicking on this cloud icon will take you to the connected Salesforce record. In Salesforce, you can click the Account Engagement URL to bring you into the platform. This is particularly helpful when you are trying to diagnose data sync issues. 

Key reminders:

• Records are matched using 18-digit IDs and email (if no matching record is found)
• You can navigate from Salesforce to Account Engagement records and vice versa
• Managing deleted records and duplicates may require additional effort across both platforms
  

Tip 2: Add visibility for sales and marketing teams in Salesforce

Enabling Account Engagement introduces several new fields, components, and features exclusive to the integration. You should review the implementation guide and work with your team to align on what information is valuable for sales and marketing to deliver on their respective functions.

The package includes fields like engagement score, fit (grading), what “object” they converted on, and a log of their latest activity in Account Engagement, to name a few. Additionally, depending on your tier, you may also find additional components you can take advantage of, such as B2B Marketing Analytics.

When mapping fields, not all Salesforce field types transfer seamlessly to Account Engagement. To avoid data loss, review your fields (including matching API names) and ensure they are mapped across objects in Salesforce before attempting to sync any data into Account Engagement.

Key reminders:

• Field types may affect your ability to map fields into Account Engagement
• Beware that Formula fields do not trigger sync updates in Account Engagement
• Field level permissions and user profile access on the integration user can affect dataflow

Tip 3: Security matters but looks and works differently

Security is the #1 pillar of any Salesforce Admin role.

There are different levels of access you can give to Salesforce users via permission sets. Those levels include:

• No access to Account Engagement data – on either platform: This is usually for operations teams who don’t need access
• Access to Account Engagement data on a page layout in Salesforce: This is usually for sales/SDR teams
• Access to the Account Engagement app: This is usually for marketing and creative teams

To enter the Account Engagement app, the user’s record must be mapped into Account Engagement. No user in Account Engagement, no access to it regardless of permissions in Salesforce.

Secondly. while you may be familiar with profiles and roles in Salesforce, well Account Engagement adds another layer of complexity to the mix. Account Engagement has its own “roles” and they do completely different things. These roles only apply within Account Engagement and allow you to see and do specific activities (build segments, forms, etc) on the platform. 

Default Account Engagement user roles include Administrators, Marketing, Sales Manager, and Sales. You can configure these roles under the account settings section and connect profiles to roles within the Salesforce connector section in Account Engagement.



To conclude, you can personalize the levels of access to different Users. You’ll ultimately need two “keys” to get into Account Engagement (a Salesforce permission set and an Account Engagement role assigned to a synced User). It is important to work with marketing to outline the level of access needed to perform daily tasks.

Key reminders:

• You can create custom roles in Account Engagement (may require an add-on)
• All the users with the same role, have the same access in Account Engagement, regardless of their permissions in Salesforce

Tip 4: The Salesforce Integration is flexible

This integration (or connector) is the key to aligning your data between two systems. Through the connector, we can sync everything from Users, objects, fields, and campaigns. You can deep dive into the individual components here.



In these settings, you can choose if you want to allow a bi-directional sync or not. This is your on/off switch. Most customers want this feature enabled. 

Additionally, you can control data flow on a field-to-field level. It is important to discuss how data will be used and by what team. 

You can allow data to be managed by:

• Salesforce only
• Account Engagement only
• Whichever system makes the most recent update

As data comes circulates between the platforms we can be met with conflicts between the two systems. For most teams, these conflicts can be attributed to their use of validation rules or restricted field values and dependencies. The conflicts are called sync errors in Account Engagement. 

These conflicts can be found under the Salesforce connector gear icon (under Connectors) and can range from:

• Access issues – Connector user lacks access to read/write to an object
• Data formatting issues – Issues with field types or values
• Process alignment issues – dependencies between fields or steps in a process

As an admin, is important to support your team in resolving these issues as quickly as possible to restore data sync on those records. These sync errors offer opportunities to improve communication between teams and for process improvements. Our team at Sercante often uses ProspectUpdater to help customers fix data formatting issues at a scale.

Key reminders:

• Enabling a bi-directional sync of data is recommended but optional
• Large imports can cause bottlenecks – if you notice this becoming an issue you may want to check daily processes as well

Tip 5: Account settings are the key to understanding your org

This section can help you identify important information about your account such as the Business Unit ID, when the account was enabled, admin alerts, and account limits. On the right side of the screenshot below, you will find the ability to personalize who gets alerts about these items. To ensure these alerts are taken seriously, ensure these are received by team members who are active in the org.



The most common way that admins discover this page is when they have to increase the number of prospects that can be kept in the account or run out of storage.

Key reminders:

• You can always reduce the number of files/prospects to make room for more before you buy more space
• The recycle bin in Account Engagement doesn’t autodelete after 30 days, feel free to use it to free up space (exclusions may apply)
• Your account ID, account tier, and API key can all be found here and may be useful for certain integrations
  

Tip 6: Leverage Account Engagement forms

You’re probably familiar with web-to-lead forms. While these mechanisms can help do more with Salesforce they do not cookie leads or contacts upon completion. Why does that matter? Cookies help us identify prospects and avoid duplicates.

With Account Engagement you can simplify the form creation and management (say goodbye to your external tools) or form handlers (similar to webhooks) to streamline your inbound marketing and processes. The forms can be embedded as Iframes on your website, Account Engagements’ landing pages, or stand-alone.

Upon completing a form, you can set a cookie on the Prospect. You can still do notifications (email and Slack), send emails, add to segments, and so much more without complex flows or other Salesforce automation. 

Key reminders:

• Testing forms incognito mode is strongly recommended
• Cookie length can be adjusted under your account settings or by individual user browser settings
  

Tip 7: Encourage campaign collaboration

First thing is first, Account Engagement has campaigns too! However, these are exclusively used in Account Engagement for capturing the 1st touch interactions (all time). This makes it challenging to see the life of the lead across time and also makes reporting difficult.

Luckily, we can create and sync Salesforce campaigns into Account Engagement for the same purposes AND to capture the multiple touches on their journey to conversion and beyond.

By leveraging Account Engagement’s automation to add prospects to Salesforce campaigns, we avoid doing multiple imports to update the Campaign member records. This functionality also allows us to take advantage of standard Campaign reports in Salesforce that can help us see ROI and campaign influence across our initiatives. To help find the latter, we created a Campaign Influence Started Pack, go check it out. 

Key reminders:

• When creating campaigns, leverage campaign member statuses and make sure to check the “active” checkbox to sync over into Account Engagement
• Keep an eye on campaign members and campaign influence records, which can eat up your Salesforce storage if created in large volumes over time

Learn the essential Account Engagement concepts for Salesforce admins

While Account Engagement predominately serves marketing functions, Salesforce Admins play a crucial role in understanding and supporting its broader impact. By acting as the bridge between IT and marketing, admins can help facilitate more collaboration and more effective project rollouts on projects affecting users across the organization.

If you are struggling with any of these tasks/concepts, please reach out for assistance. Together, we can foster more seamless experiences that drive transformative outcomes!

Original article: 7 Fundamental Account Engagement Concepts for Salesforce Admins

©2025 The Spot. All Rights Reserved.

The post 7 Fundamental Account Engagement Concepts for Salesforce Admins appeared first on The Spot.

The majority of Salesforce training you’ll find in the world is conducted in English. But things are changing as the platform grows in other parts of the world. We’ve seen a few self-guided Salesforce courses and Trailhead content in other languages, including Spanish. But the options are limited when it comes to getting hands-on and instructor-led Salesforce training in Spanish or other languages.

In this post, we’ll cover the lessons learned while delivering a Marketing Cloud Account Engagement (Pardot) bootcamp in Spanish so more organizations can offer training in languages beyond English.

How did the Spanish Account Engagement bootcamp come to fruition?

My name is Marcos Duran and I am a Marketing Manager at Sercante. In my role, I support our team with the development and delivering of Salesforce training to our customers. I have been a Salesforce user for almost a decade and Salesforce consultant for the past 7 years. 

Part of being a #MomentMarketer is that you need to not only stay ahead of the latest trends and hot topics but also bring your tribe with you. My old Spanish professor used to use the term “Compartir la riqueza” or “share the wealth” in English.

This year I decided that I wanted to challenge myself with creating and delivering an Account Engagement (Pardot) bootcamp 100% in Spanish. My goal is to support Spanish speakers in earning their Pardot Specialist certification. 

For a little bit of background, this platform gave me my “real” start in the ecosystem years ago. Although I am a native Spanish speaker, this is still a challenging feat since all the content has to be dubbed into Spanish and has to be tweaked to make sense technically and also culturally.

Here’s a hot take: Google Translate can get you 70% there, but that last 30% is what differentiates a speaker versus just dropping it into a translator. Before you say anyone can do that, I’ll ask why do you think more people haven’t?

This course lasted five weeks for a total of 8 one-hour classes. During three of those five weeks, we met twice.

Six big takeaways from developing a Salesforce training course in Spanish

Here’s a few lessons I learned along the way of doing this bootcamp. I hope they will help you plan better if you are interested in offering virtual webinars/programs as a user group leader or in your own organization.

1. Lean heavily on pre-promotion

A rule of thumb for webinars is that at least 50% of your signups won’t show. 

In my case, this was close to my final numbers. I ended up with a 30% signup rate between announcing the bootcamp on LinkedIn and getting people to actually sign up. 

Lesson Learned: My mistake here was that I didn’t have the form ready when I was gauging interest. As a result, I lost on that initial wave of hype. If you do this internally, get people to register once you gauge interest.

LinkedIn post I shared to see if people in my network have interest in Salesforce training in Spanish

And the poll I posted…

2. Reach out to your community

From promotion to content creation, I reached out to people in my network who had been through this experience, looking for advice. 

I received a lot of positive advice — special shout out to Lara Black, Daniela Galmes, Victor Alberto Pantoja, and Ben LaMothe for all their support. 

Thanks to their encouragement, I was able to support 30 students from 13 countries around the world in their native language with Account Engagement content.

Lesson Learned: Message the people you know who can offer advice, introduce you to people in their network, or help you to promote your efforts.

3. Optimize your course content

This particular bootcamp was focused on getting ready for the Pardot Specialist certification. 

We used the study guide material from Trailhead to guide the format of our bootcamp and essentially focus on the goal of passing the exam. In addition, I provided our students live demos of the essential parts of Account Engagement (for the visuals), presentation decks, and links to documentation from the Salesforce Help Center for additional guidance.

Lesson Learned: Build your training course using resources from Salesforce. That’s who designed the exam you’re attempting to pass and the tools you’re using. So, that’s definitely the best place to start.

4. Encourage student engagement

This was my favorite part. To get our course going, I engaged our students with questions about their own experiences. For many, this meant comparing features with Marketing Cloud Engagement to help create the bridge between their experience with that platform and this new platform material. 

We had several long conversations throughout the course that really showed the real-life business challenges they were facing. Thank you to everyone who shared with us!

Lesson Learned: Have a sense of humor when things go wrong. Having to say automations in Spanish 30 times in one hour is not fun — it is definitely a tongue twister. Thanks to everyone for putting up with me as I searched for the correct words to illustrate my point. 

5. Send plenty of reminders

This is a tip from Google Calendars: send reminders close to the webinar start time. I would send out a message a few hours before class to remind students, “Hey – class is today, make sure you show up.” 

This was the hardest for me because through this course I would see our attendance numbers fluctuate. At the end of the day, I understand we all have lives outside of work. So it’s best to be patient and as helpful as we can with others. 

Lesson Learned: Keep on sending those course reminders. Your students appreciate them!

6. On-Demand

Finally, at the end of each week, I would send everyone the slides and recordings. I would suggest you do this once at the end of the course.

Lesson Learned: Offering the course recordings on demand is essential. Life happens, students may miss a session or two. This content is also a lot to take in, so giving the option to revisit is going to help your students to be more successful.

Changes I would make to future Salesforce training in Spanish

Now that you read a little about how this course went for me, you may be wondering what’s next?

Well, here’s a few things I would do differently:

1. I would love to be able to do this in person to really give the students the most support I can.
2. I would continue to team up with other Account Engagement rock stars and divide the work to ensure we bring in different experiences to the classroom.
3. I would probably promote this a little longer than I did (initially we had just north of 100 people interested in Spanish Pardot training).

Other than that, I feel it always pays to help others power up. I look forward to continuing to support Spanish and English speakers on the Salesforce platform and continue to make the most out of their investment. 

If you are interested in watching the Spanish Bootcamp series please click here.

Sign up for marketing-focused Salesforce training courses

If you’re ready to take your strategy, technical, and creative skills to the next level, we have the marketing-focused Salesforce training courses you need.

You can join our regularly scheduled courses or ask us about private training options — like this one that was offered to Spanish speakers in the Salesforce community.
Check out our training options here.

Original article: Lessons Learned While Delivering Salesforce Training in Spanish

©2025 The Spot. All Rights Reserved.

The post Lessons Learned While Delivering Salesforce Training in Spanish appeared first on The Spot.

Salesforce gave lots of love to marketers at Dreamforce 2022. From the unveiling of a real-life Brandy to the massive Marketing Lodge with daily events, marketers had lots to do at the conference.

There was so much going on at Dreamforce, in fact, that you may feel like you missed something important. And that’s totally okay. We’ve got you covered.

Six memorable Dreamforce 2022 moments for marketers

Here’s your snapshot of all the important marketing things that happened at Dreamforce 2022. This is what you REALLY need to know about Dreamforce as a marketer so you can put the FOMO to rest.

Moment 1. Salesforce Genie Announcement

Genie is a powerful tool that takes all your data from multiple sources and allows you to organize it and leverage it real time across multiple clouds, apps, and automations in Salesforce. 

This product announcement is essentially a Salesforce Customer Data Platform (CDP) rebrand with added functionality.

Learn more about the announcement here.

Image credit: Salesforce

Moment 2. Salesforce and WhatsApp Integration

Marketers will be able to leverage the power of WhatsApp to create and send customized messaging and offers with their brand customers through customized experiences. 

This integration is compatible with Journey Builder within Marketing Cloud and slated to be available by the end of the year.

Get all the partnership details here.

Image Credit: Salesforce

Moment 3. Marketing Keynote: Deliver Moments That Count

This marketing keynote session took us through many of the changes that are happening on the marketing front for Salesforce users. It served as a deep-dive into the Salesforce Genie and WhatsApp partnership announcements. 

Two special moments the team at Sercante had a close eye on include:

• Our client, Grammarly, shared how they use the power of the Salesforce platform to hyper-personalize their customer journey (Start at 27 minutes).

• Our friend, Shibu Abraham, Marketing Cloud User Group Leader in Malaysia, received the famous Salesforce Golden Hoodie during the Marketing Keynote for his contributions to the greater Salesforce community (Start at 39 minutes).

Watch the full marketing keynote replay here.

Moment 4. Slack Canvas For Marketing Announcement 

Teams across your organization can take advantage of Slack Canvas to create “canvases” where you can share assets, access important information and collaborate real time via video. From there, you can integrate with other apps found in the Slack marketplace to create automations to increase productivity and trigger additional actions. 

Your team can leverage your Salesforce data in multiple ways as you discuss your next campaign straight from Slack.

Get all the details about the Slack Canvas announcement here.

Moment 5. Marketing Cloud Innovation and Roadmap: Wow Every Customer

This keynote continues to hammer away at how Genie can supercharge your Marketing Strategy regardless of what Salesforce Marketing solution you prefer: Marketing Cloud Engagement or Account Engagement (Pardot). 

One of the key things around these workshops is the different applications of Genie and how it can collaborate with Einstein to help specific teams using the Salesforce platform get the most from their data. Additionally, several of the Einstein use cases traditionally used within Marketing Cloud Engagement have begun to make their way into Account Engagement.

Watch the full roadmap replay here.

Moment 6. Creating a Home for Marketers at Dreamforce

You probably saw us at Dreamforce (or at the Home for Marketers) and wondered what is Sercante?

Or maybe you saw pink elephant footprints on the sidewalks and wondered what that was all about.

Well, that was us! 

What was the Home for Marketers at Dreamforce?

Team Sercante hosted a space for marketers (and allies) to hang out, grab a drink, and escape the hecticness of Dreamforce. And our friends from DESelect, Stensul, and Appinium came along for the ride!

The Home for Marketers took place at The Pink Elephant Alibi on Minna Street. We had many repeat visitors and many one-time friends stop by, effectively connecting with over 2,000 marketers and Salesforce Users! 

View the photo gallery and look for your friends here. 

Night of Enchantment: A Dreamforce Party for the Ages

Thank you to everyone who partied with us at the Night of Enchantment party at Dreamforce!

You experienced limitless magical elixirs from the enchanted champagne wall pushed. And you danced with enchanted forest fairies over 15 feet tall. With Dreamforce now behind us, we hope you walked away with fond memories and new friends that evening.

While the escape transported you into a living forest only found in fairy tales, fear not. You didn’t dream all of it. The energy you brought to the dance floor was magical. And thankfully unlike Cinderella’s slippers, the magic of this party didn’t end at midnight. 

The enchanted forest included 3 dance floors across the building, and over 1,000 people tore it up throughout the night. As we all go back to our IRL tasks, we invite you to check out the party photo gallery. 

What else were the Sercante dragons up to at Dreamforce?

Sercante accepts two awards at DF22

Salesforce Partner Innovation Award: Retail

Sercante received a Salesforce Partner Innovation Award for our work in the retail space and for creating positive impacts in our customers organizations. We are fortunate to have tons of awesome customers and humbled to receive this award. Read about the winners here.

Merivis Partner of the Year Award

Merivis Executive Director Kate Perez took the IRL opportunity at Dreamforce to present Sercante Founder and CEO Andrea Tarrell with the 2022 Merivis Partner of the Year Award. The honor was given to the team for providing technical support to Merivis to help them reach their mission and goals as an organization. Merivis supports #veterans and #milspouses preparing for new careers in the Salesforce ecosystem. 

Dragons lead three Dreamforce speaker sessions

Sercante had the opportunity to run 3 sessions at Dreamforce this year. Here’s a quick recap:

• Blog About Salesforce – Our content manager, Ambre Juryea-Amole, led a session describing how we tackle our content strategy for The Spot (for Pardot). She provided a series of helpful tips on how to make the most out of your content when targeting the Salesforce ecosystem. Get the blog version of her presentation here. 
• Turn Marketing into a Recession-Proof Competitive Advantage – Three of our CRM and Marketing Automation Strategists (Angelica Cabral, Marcos Duran, and Richard Feist) provided the audience with pillar tactics and strategies to ensure that Marketers are prepared for any changes in their organizations.

• Discover How CDP Unifies All Customer Data in One Place – Sercante Founder and CEO Andrea Tarell, and Director, Marketing Cloud Practice, Kirsten Schlau, tackled how CDP can help you create a true profile of your customers and unify your data across multiple datasets.

See you at the next Salesforce event

We hope you had a great time with us during Dreamforce. We’ll catch you at the next Salesforce community event.

If you are looking for support on your next Salesforce project or just want to brainstorm with one of us, feel free to reach out!

Original article: 6 Memorable Marketing Moments from Dreamforce 2022

©2025 The Spot. All Rights Reserved.

The post 6 Memorable Marketing Moments from Dreamforce 2022 appeared first on The Spot.

We’ve all seen email personalization mishaps. 

The power of Marketing Cloud Account Engagement (Pardot) is really in its capacity to leverage data coming in from Salesforce and Pardot to create tailored experiences of all types for the end audience. 

But what happens when this automation doesn’t work how we intend to use it? This is particularly concerning when it comes to email.

Follow along with this blog to learn a few tricks you can use to test your Pardot org for possible email mishaps and prevent them before they happen.

Solution #1: Validate your Salesforce & Pardot User Mappings

The first solution for avoiding email sending fails is to validate your user mappings. Doing so will help you avoid awkward email segmentation and user notification issues.

It is important to know that if Salesforce Users are not mapped into Pardot, then you will not be able to leverage their relationship with Leads/Contacts in Pardot. 

Mapping a User to Pardot DOES NOT give them access — you need permission sets and other configurations for that to happen. This is often the main reason why Users are not mapped.

The remainder of this blog will reference the User object. If this does not 100% line up with your process within Pardot, neither will the rest of what we will cover.

How to validate Salesforce and Pardot user mappings

Here are some ways to validate if all your users are mapped:

1. In Salesforce, create a report of active Users.
2. In Salesforce, compare which Users actually manage Leads/Contacts and review their profiles.
3. In Pardot, go to the Pardot settings tab in your navigation, then head over to the Pardot Connector Settings tab and review your Salesforce profile to Pardot role mappings.
   • If you have any missing, this is the time to add them.
4. In Pardot, go to the Prospects tab in your navigation, and select the Unassigned Prospects filter on the filter dropdown.
   • If you see any with blue Salesforce clouds, that means the Prospect may be assigned in Salesforce but the mapping is not clear in Pardot.
   • Click on any records you found and open the record up in Salesforce. Then, make a list of who the owner is.
   • Compare this list to the report of Active Users. If there are any missing, they may be deactivated.
5. In Salesforce, update any records that reference deactivated Users to the appropriate User. This would trigger a sync event and update the record.
6. In Salesforce, go to Marketing Setup and for your business unit/account, click on the Manage Users button and add any missing users to the appropriate section to sync over to Pardot.
7. In Pardot, update the Prospect database view to include Assign User and keep the Unassigned Prospect filter to see if you are missing any.
   • You may need to click the Sync With CRM button on the Prospect page to get it to sync.

The result of mapping all your Users is having Pardot and Salesforce be in sync in addition to being able to leverage this datapoint for segmentation. It also allows you to provide the appropriate person with email or Slack notifications.

Solution #2: Create an identity user for your Pardot email sender backup

Previously we covered how to use and experiment with email sender types for emails that are sent from Pardot. If you are not familiar with email sender types, then go read that post and come back after you do. We’ll wait.

Dynamic versus static email user sender types

We would like to put these User sender options into two buckets: Dynamic and static.

Dynamic are options such as Assigned User, Account Owner, or any custom options for the sender information that changed based on the relationship the User has to the Prospect.

Static are options such as General or Specific User options for the sender information that is the same for all Prospects who get the email. No relationship needed between User and Prospect

All the options “pull” data from the User information setup in Salesforce that is then pulled into Pardot.



One of the biggest pitfalls that can happen here is when you use dynamic sender options. If a Prospect does not have an assigned user or account owner, then you have to have a backup sender. Pardot enforces this by making you add an alternative sender.



Many times you will have a default general User you manually add over and over again — such as marketing@company.com or sales@company.com. This leaves room for error and cannot be used in automations, like completion actions, to notify this email address from form submissions, for example.

How to create a Salesforce Identity License User for your Pardot email sender backup

Did you know you can save yourself from headaches caused by human error by turning this email into an Identity User?

The result is an Identity User that can be used as a backup specific User and also for notifications in completion actions throughout the system. 

Identity Users can be used for Single Sign-On or Pardot-centric purposes. However, you cannot assign to an Identity User. For more details on identity licenses, check out this Salesforce resource.

Solution #3: Update user records and check token types for email sender signatures

When you get ready to build your emails, you may want to include sales rep signatures in the email body.

Here are the fields you have access to inject into your emails from the User object:

• First Name
• Last Name
• Full Name
• Email
• Job Title
• Phone
• URL
• ID
• Signature

All of these details are managed in Salesforce under the User Settings (view Solution #1 above). If these are not filled out, then the row where you have the Handlebars Merge Language (HML) tag on your email will be awkwardly blank.

To resolve this, simply update the User record. Seems easy enough, right? 

You are correct!

However, let me call out a common mistake we see when using these HML tokens — there are two different sets of tokens. 

Tokens: Sender versus Owner

The owner fields pull directly from the Assigned User, which is one person for the Lead/Contact.

The sender fields pull directly from who you choose as a Sender User on the email. This can be an Account Owner, an Identity User, or a custom CRM user lookup.

Note: Depending on the scenario, you may want to use one over the other. But we use the Sender tokens to play it safe.

Lastly, we would like to note that general Users do not have titles, phones, signatures, or additional URLs. For best results, use an Identity User and make sure you fill in those fields. This will result in a more consistent experience for everyone.

As always, test your tokens!

Solution #4: Create a company-wide backup to avoid blank prospect data when you use queues

One of the main use cases for queues is to help with Lead assignments and send the Prospect to Pardot. If you are using queues for these cases, then there is one thing you have to know.

Queues do not have job titles, companies, or “people” names.

You may be thinking…

Yes, that is correct. So what’s your point?

Well, if you are sending emails on behalf of assigned users, for example, technically Prospects owned by a queue are owned — but not by a person. 

This means when you send emails out trying to use “dynamic” sender options, you may not be actually showing a signature or other details in your emails when queues are involved.

How to avoid email awkwardness caused by having Prospects owned queues

For these scenarios where you know you may have Prospects owned by queues we recommend two options:

Option 1: Ensure your backup Sender is a specific User (try an Identity User). Do not use a general User if you are adding signatures to your email copy.

OR

Option 2: Use HML to create conditional logic to create a backup to blank User fields. Be careful with the extra spacing around HML tokens.

This is what the final syntax looked like for the default in the event John Doe (User) didn’t have a phone number: we added a general corporate number.

{{#if Sender.Phone}}Contact us at {{Sender.Phone}}{{else}}Contact us at 1800 – Sercante{{/if}}

You can use this format to create syntax for other fields you need on your email signatures.

The end result is having a customizable backup for User or organization-specific details to make sure no one sees missing data or has a less than favorable experience.

Solution #5: Set global and default field values as a backup when you use HML in emails

Finally, we come to mail merge fields. We have all seen use cases of subject lines not rendering and showing as {Recipient.FirstName}} because someone forgot to add the extra “curly bracket” that you didn’t notice was missing earlier in this sentence or forgot to test altogether.

Here are some of the more common HML options used in an email:

• First Name
• Company Name
• Job Title
• City
• View Online
• Email Preferences Center
• Unsubscribe Page

For a list of all the out-of-the-box mail merge fields click here.

How to set global and default field values as a backup when you use HML in emails

If a Prospect does not have data on a field and you use mail merges (HML), it will be displayed as a blank.

We have two options to solve this issue:

1. Set a global field value.
   If you do this, anywhere where the field is used will display the same text IF there is no existing data.
2. Set a default value on the email template using HML.
   If you do this, the default text will only work for this one email template, but you can customize it across any email template (check out solution #4). However, if you selected the global field value option, this solution isn’t going to work.

Take action now to avoid awkward marketing email fails later

If you are new to Pardot and don’t know much about how you can use Prospect fields in emails or if you want to take your email personalization game beyond mail merge fields, we recommend you review Content Personalization: Using Dynamic Content, Pardot HML, and Pardot Snippets.

In the end, you have less awkward endings in your sentences and more customized messaging you can leverage to wow your audience(s) by taking these precautionary steps. Pardot can provide many tools to improve your email marketing. But your data flow has to be working properly to take full advantage of everything it has to offer.

The key thing we would love for you to walk away with is, in the words of our colleague Mike Creuzer, to remember to “test all the things”!

Feel free to contact us if you have any questions about how to improve your useability of Pardot.

Original article: How to Prevent 5 Awkward Email Sending Fails in MCAE (Pardot)

©2025 The Spot. All Rights Reserved.

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For many Salesforce Marketing Cloud Account Engagement (Pardot) customers, using Pardot provides them with the tools necessary to communicate with their distinctive audience(s) in a personalized way. 

One common way to do this is to create dynamic customer-centric journeys that send emails on behalf of individual sales reps and help to promote new products or to educate audiences on a specific topic. After all, this is one of the main reasons organizations buy Pardot — to drive the sales pipeline.

But what happens when you need to send emails from different teams in your organization?

Follow along with this blog and learn a few tricks to create new experiences for your Prospects for sales, service, and other parts of your business by leveraging the CRM user lookup feature in Pardot.

Use CRM user lookups to send Pardot emails on behalf of other departments at your company or organization

One of the advantages of Pardot automation for email is the ability to leverage relationships in Salesforce between your sales reps, account owners, and other key service players with your Pardot leads and contacts. 

Here are some examples below:

SDR (Lead Owner) to Prospect (Lead)

Account Executive (Account Owner) to Prospect (Contact)

In fact, here are the standard out-of-the-box relationships you can leverage from Salesforce in Pardot.

• Account Owner – Send the email from the prospect’s account owner in Salesforce.
• Assigned User – Send the email from the user who owns the prospect record.  If the prospect is synced to Salesforce. this is the Lead or Contact Owner.
• Specific User – Select from a list of your Pardot users to use as the email’s sender.
• General User – Set a general address (like marketing@yourcompany.com) or a non-Pardot user to be the sender of the Email.

You can usually cover 97% of all your use cases using one of these options while drafting your Pardot list emails or engagement studio programs.

While most organizations don’t have a need for custom relationships, yours may be different. And that’s okay.  

What if you need a different/custom user connection? 

In your Pardot emails, you can always edit the Sender to say General User. This sends the email on behalf of that person as long as they have the same email domain you have validated in Pardot (@company.com).



However, that’s not always the best outcome. Sometimes we need more dynamic solutions.

In that case, we may want a relationship outside of Sales/Marketing for specific customer service-centric journeys like the one below:

Service Manager (Custom CRM Relationship) to Prospect (Lead or Contact)

In the scenario above, the User/record relationships were built in Salesforce and shared with Pardot in order to build out a service team to prospect customer journeys — think CSAT, follow-up surveys, etc. 

Did you know you know you can create custom relationships AND send emails on their behalf?

Watch the demo below to set up your own custom CRM relationships between Users and your Prospects:

You can also follow along with these steps.

After you set this up, you can take advantage of this field right away with CRM user lookup.

This is what it looks like:

A quick note: Sometimes fields need a few minutes to sync. Be patient, go grab coffee and come back to this. In our experience, it is never more than a few minutes.

What are other examples of custom CRM user lookups?

Honestly, the possibilities are endless. Here are some options:

• Regional sales manager
• Customer service representative
• Technical support specialist

Don’t forget to check out our other cool ideas like A/B testing for you to leverage these different sender options within your organization in the most effective ways.

Where can I use these relationships?

These CRM user lookups are built into Salesforce, so you can use them in both Pardot and Salesforce. Within Pardot you can leverage them in the following ways:

• Email templates
• List emails
• Rules on automation rules, dynamic lists, and segmentation rules
• Potentially on the new conditional completion action criteria rules

This field cannot be used to send email notifications to the User linked to this Prospect. 

Additionally, we did not see them in Engagement Studio Programs as rule options. But remember, you can build a list to act as your criteria instead of using the field directly. 

Can I have more than one custom relationship?

Absolutely. This is out-of-the-box functionality in Salesforce, which can now be repurposed for Pardot-specific processes. 

Most organizations we have worked with have less than (3) custom User lookups. The only caveat is to make sure you name them correctly so there is no confusion while using them. 

As you see above, you can pick from a picklist (CRM User lookup fields) under the Prospect CRM User Custom option, and choose which one you want to leverage on that particular email. 

How do you test to make sure everything is working fine? 

The best way to test this information is up to date in Pardot is to go through the following checklist:

• Review User mappings
  • If the User is deactivated or not in Pardot, this will fail.
• Create a list of Prospects using the new field created and make sure the values are being reflected in Pardot.
  • Watch the video earlier in the blog for a few troubleshooting steps.
• Run a preview test in your email test tab.
  • Enter a few email addresses you know to have this field updated and see how it works out.
  • You can create fake prospects to sync for this testing or build in Sandbox if you have access to one.

CRM user lookups make life easier for Pardot admins

Thank you for following along! Check out part two of this blog where we cover how to avoid email personalization missteps.

If you have any questions about this feature or how to use it in Pardot (MCAE) please give us a shout here. 

Original article: Email Sender Options: Leverage CRM User Lookup in MCAE (Pardot)

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Conditional Completion actions are coming to Marketing Cloud Account Engagement (Pardot)! And they’re a game changer for adding complexity to completion actions on your marketing assets.

This has been a long awaited request in the IdeaExchange. So, we’re ecstatic to see it finally come to fruition.

Note: This feature is not currently available in production. Conditional Completion actions will be rolled out during the Summer ’22 release (May 21st – June 11th) and this blog will be updated as we get access to this feature. Stay tuned!

What are Marketing Cloud Account Engagement (Pardot) completion actions?

Pardot Completion Actions allow you to add follow up automations to most Pardot assets such as forms, landing pages, files, custom redirects, etc. 

These actions trigger after someone interacts with the asset such as a click or form fill. Pardot Admins and Marketing Users can configure which actions they want Pardot to trigger after the fact. 

Completion actions include:

• Add Tags
• Add To List
• Add to Salesforce Campaign
• Adjust Score
• Adjust Score For Scoring Category
• Assign Prospect via Salesforce Active Assignment Rule
• Assign To Queue
• Change prospect custom field value
• Change prospect default field value
• Create Salesforce task
• Increment prospect field value
• Notify assigned user
• Notify user
• Notify user via Twilio (phone)
• Register for webinar
• Remove from list
• Remove tags
• Send autoresponder email
• Set profile
• Set prospect’s first touch campaign
  

Currently, you can add as many of these as you see necessary. But keep in mind, they trigger on ALL Prospects that interact with the asset. Conditional completion actions are changing that. 

As Pardot stands today, other automation features, such as Engagement Studios and Automation Rules, can provide ways to conditionally process prospects. However, these automations have limits, and using multiple assets per form fill, link click, etc., can bog down your system. 

With Conditional Completion actions, you will be able to perform all the desired actions right from the asset setup page.  

What are Pardot conditional completion actions?

Welcome conditional completion actions! 

Conditional completion actions add complex logic to your existing or new completion actions on your Pardot assets.

Essentially, you are able to create logic similar to dynamic lists or automations rules (or Salesforce Reports) that follow this pattern:

Before: Upon engagement (click/form fill), then trigger Y
New: Upon engagement (click/form fill) look to see if X = Value; then trigger Y

You can still do regular completion actions that apply to ALL Prospects who engage with the asset in specific ways, but now we will be able to create conditional actions as well. 

Below is an example of what you can expect to see in your account when the feature is released later this summer:

This feature will be available on Lightning list emails, forms, form handlers, files, custom redirects and page actions.

You can read more about it here and watch a quick demo, courtesy of Salesforce, here.

How are conditional completion actions different from normal completion actions?

In terms of functionality, there isn’t much of a difference between regular and conditional completion actions — they look at an action and then apply the necessary follow-up actions. 

However, in terms of usage, conditional completion actions add complexity to the existing completion actions by allowing for criteria in addition to a click or form fill to decide if the action should be completed or not. 

This allows marketers to create branches and manage different types of Prospects differently in Pardot.

Are there any limits or requirements to conditional completion actions?

Lucky for everyone, these actions will be available to everyone upon its release date.

We have identified the following limitations (that could change with further releases):

• No conditional actions based on list membership
• No conditional actions on classic email builder list emails (only available in the new Email Lightning Builder)
• Limit of up to 6 conditional groups per asset (plus your standard completion actions)
• Limit of up to 15 conditional group actions across all conditional groups per asset

We won’t have a concrete list of limits until this feature goes live, so stay tuned for updates!

What Pardot conditional completion use cases that I can look forward to?

First things first, this particular section will be updated post-release with additional information and screenshots. For now, we are basing these scenarios on existing completion action functionality. So, proceed with caution!

UTM-Based Lead Sources

Reporting on where your online website traffic is coming from is more important now than ever. For many organizations, being able to distinguish between sources of ads and beyond continues to be a hot topic. 

At Sercante, we support our customer’s UTM tracking via custom hidden fields on their forms. Now with conditional completion actions, leveraging these UTM’s real-time to update Lead Source should be easier than ever!

Standard Lead Routing

Nothing magical here, aside from the fact that you can fit multiple territories/region/product assignment criteria into a single form. Previously, this would require multiple automations or a little support from Salesforce to route accordingly. 

If you are interested in learning about how to manage Lead Routing in Pardot, check out my presentation from ParDreamin’!

Block Competitors

For those in industry segments with few players (we know everyone in the ocean), you may find it difficult to exclude competitors currently in Pardot (before they enter Pardot). 

If you have a field that identifies your Prospects as a competitor (email or company for example) you can decide not to send them the email with your latest e-book or asset. This would save you time and effort from setting up individual automation or even using JavaScript.

Streamlined Campaign Management

During ParDreamin 2021, I discussed how you can streamline your asset delivery processes by creating custom fields and leveraging HML, Dynamic Content, and Snippets in the process. Although this is great to reduce the number of assets in the overall process of delivering content, you still need 1 automation rule per asset to update campaign membership. 

By capturing the page title or asset name into a hidden field, you can then leverage this field to add the person to the correct Salesforce Campaign on each form — up to 6 branches (conditional groups). 

This would reduce the number of forms you need to set up overall. 

Multiple Link Click Options For List Emails

One of the most frustrating experiences currently is having an email with more than one CTA and having to pick between “any link” or “specific link” clicks. This feature would allow you to do this with up to 6 different links (we have not seen conditional actions on list emails yet). 

This function would only be available in the Lightning Email Builder and not for the Classic Email Builder. 

Extending The Power of Webinar Connectors

This directly speaks about WebEx and GoToWebinar products. 

Many B2B organizations have webinar series where they would love for people to register for multiple webinars at the same time. As of today, you either had to use (3) automation rules and a custom field, or (3) separate forms as Pardot does not allow for multiple registrations (using Pardot forms).

An alternative to creating multiple automation rules is to use Javascript here, but the hope is that conditional completion actions provide a no-code alternative. 

With this conditional completion actions feature, you can skip setting up the automation across the platform, thus requiring less work and a central location for it all!

Supercharge Your ABM Strategy

Leverage account types or build a new field called “Account Tier” to signal which accounts need the “white glove treatment.” 

Using conditional completion actions, then create custom Slack notifications, User notifications, or User tasks immediately after these Prospects complete their forms. 

In addition, you can also update a custom field such as “Prioritization”  to increase their prioritization in Views in Salesforce. This would be an excellent companion to the Einstein Key Account Identification feature for those on Pardot’s Advance tier or higher.

Imagine the possibilities for conditional completion actions

As a consultant, I am very much looking forward to streamlining automations for my customers by leveraging conditional completion actions in their organizations in the near future. 

If you need to strategize how to leverage this feature in your organization, or you just want to brainstorm ideas, contact us here!

Original article: Get Ready for Pardot Conditional Completion Actions

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Prospects now more than ever are demanding personalized content. For the last 4 years, adding the first name for personalization in emails has been the default. Unfortunately, that alone isn’t going to cut it anymore. To keep their attention, you have to make sure they know you’re thinking of them— no matter how long your list becomes.

In Pardot, the options to provide these experiences differ depending on your account tier and how you intend to use them.

If you’re a veteran to Pardot, it’s likely you know that there are several ways to accomplish the personalization you need. That’s why we’ve broken down some of the most common use cases that call for Pardot HML, Pardot Snippets, or Pardot Dynamic Content. Understanding how each of these work best in different scenarios will help you save time in your creation process. 

Content personalization using Dynamic Content 

Dynamic content allows you to display custom content, via Javascript, on your company’s website or within Pardot. Think about displaying different content on forms, landing pages, layout templates, and emails based on prospect criteria.

When a prospect matches the criteria for your dynamic content, the content variation corresponding to that field value will display. With this feature, it is possible to display up to 25 variations of content. If there are no matches or that person has no data, then they see the default option.

The instant benefit is that you can use one email template to showcase different pieces of content per Dynamic Content block. This feature is available both in Pardot Classic and Lightning that have a Plus or higher edition.

Popular Use Case: Showing different images or text based on the values found in the country field within an email. See our post about use cases for Dynamic Content here.

Content personalization using Handlebar Merge Language (HML)

HML is a new merge language for personalizing email in Pardot. Basically it’s the representation of a field value that you can showcase anywhere you have access to the WYSIWYG editor. Think of displaying prospects data on landing pages, forms, emails, etc. based on the data found within a prospects record in Pardot.

The benefits of Pardot HML almost immediate:

• Easy to upgrade your content.
• Ability to search for the fields you need.
• The same language is shared across Salesforce Lightning Templates, laying the foundation for more email compatibility down the road. 
• HML can also be used within Dynamic Content, but not Snippets. 
• Allows you to do IF/ELSE statements to further expand its uses.
• HML is available across all editions of Pardot Classic and Lightning (if enabled).

How do you know you’re using HML?

The easiest way to know is to look at your tokens. Do they look like this %%first_name%% or like this {{Recipient.FirstName}}? The option with the curly brackets ({}) is the appropriate one. New accounts from 2020 (or more recent) should have HML activated already, however, if you have an older account and need help migrating over from PML to HML, just follow our guide.

Popular Use Case: Updating email signatures for both sales and marketing emails to quickly create a connection with prospects based on CRM ownership. We also wrote about use cases for HML here.

Content personalization using Pardot Snippets

A Snippet is a reusable block of text, date, or links that can be pulled into multiple Pardot emails, forms and landing pages. These blocks are static, meaning you select the one you want and the values don’t change unless you change them. They’re best for strict text purposes as they do not support HTML/CSS. 

Snippets cannot be used with Dynamic Content. However, you can insert HML into Snippets, you just have to do it manually because there’s no HML option in the Snippet wizard. You must have Connected Campaigns and HML enabled to use them within your instance. 

Snippets are based on Business Unit or Campaign ownership. Although you can use Snippets in Pardot Classic, you cannot create them without access to Salesforce (Pardot Lightning is preferred if you intend to use this feature). Snippets are available for all versions of Pardot.

Popular Use Case: Updating event or footer information across multiple assets. We recently wrote about Snippets and answered a few frequently asked questions on this blog!

Comparing HML, Snippets, and Dynamic Content

The bottom line is that people don’t want to go through a million forms. They want personalized content and they want it now.

This begs the question, when is it appropriate to use each Pardot personalization feature? If you have used Pardot for a while , you know that Pardot allows you to do similar things in several different ways. To help the decision making process, we put together this chart to help you decide when to choose each of these options.

Example Use Cases for Pardot Personalization 

Below are some scenarios you may find useful to differentiate between uses.

Scenario: You need to set up a completion action on a form that sends out an autoresponder email with specific content based on a picklist option for a field called “Area of Interest”. The picklist field on the form has four options. You don’t want to build multiple email templates. You are on the Plus edition of Pardot.

Solution: Dynamic Content shows specific content in relation to the data on the record of the prospect. This would allow you to use one email template but showcase different content based on which option the prospect chose while completing the form.

Scenario: You need to send a prospect an email receipt of the information they just submitted via a form or form handler to confirm their participation in your program. You are on the Growth edition of Pardot.

Solution: HML only shows what lies within the record of a prospect, nothing more, nothing less. You can customize the rows and order of the data in the email template to look however you want.

Scenario: Your team needs to be able to update and use a content block (with webinar information) across multiple Business Units. The information for this comes from the field marketing team and they do not have access to Pardot.

Solution: Snippets show information that is static that can be shared across different business units or locked down by campaigns. Snippets can be updated by Flows or manually by a person with the right permissions within Salesforce.

Personalization and delivering value are key to moving prospects quickly through the pipeline. Pardot provides you with a variety of features to allow you to leverage the data you already have in your CRM to your benefit.

Are you looking for ways to take your email marketing strategy to the next level with Pardot? With the guidance of our strategists, we can help you identify the fields which are and aren’t actively used by your team — it could be key to qualifying leads faster!

If you are ready to maximize your use of Pardot, give us a shout!

Original article: Content Personalization: Using Dynamic Content, Pardot HML, and Pardot Snippets

©2025 The Spot. All Rights Reserved.

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Salesforce just gifted us with their Summer 2021 Release Notes, and our team is— to say the least, ecstatic. With so many new Pardot updates, users and administrators can now optimize their workflow, prevent tedious nuances in dynamic content, and make better data-driven decisions. 

If you’ve been itching for better ways to organize your data, get the most out of your email sends, and have more control over your instance, we’re excited to show you how you can do just that with our top choices for exciting features to boost your marketing capabilities through Pardot and the Salesforce platform.

Pardot Release Highlights

#1: Einstein’s Key Account Identification

If you’ve been looking for a more accurate way of identifying who your best possible customers are, look no further. The ultimate visibility is within Einstein’s Key Account Identification— Salesforce handles all the dirty work of scrubbing data and spending hours making sense of attributions to show you which prospects are more likely to generate the most revenue.

• Similar to Pardot grading, Einstein’s Account Tier uses letters to rank your accounts. And unlike Pardot grading, this ranking adjusts itself automatically. No longer will you rely on the decisions of individuals to set the rules, but rather you can make more informed decisions on how to convert the prospects this grading system presents to you.
  
• With accounts generating so much data, it can be tedious to identify the most impactful trends in each account. In this game-changing release, Einstein will show you how certain accounts stack up against others using their industry and historical engagement.

#2: Send List Email Your Way (Pilot)

There’s (probably) nothing worse than getting a disingenuous email that looks like all the other sales pitches your prospects receive. If your sales reps expressed frustration in their limited capability of sending list emails exclusively through Salesforce, this release is for them. Now, they have the ability to send from Outlook or Gmail, giving them more control over their workflow. 

• Emails sent to qualified leads will look more authentic, like they came directly from a sales rep instead of a system. 
• Due to the more authentic look, we expect to see higher delivery, open, and click-through rates

One thing we encourage teams to keep an eye on is how it will impact reporting and governance controls at an early stage, so if you participate, advocate for what you would like to see on these grounds. 

#3: Score Lead Segments Separately for More Accurate Results

If the leads your business works with are vastly different from each other, this new way of tracking conversion patterns could greatly improve your scoring. With enough data, Einstein can calculate accurate scores to better define your segments and provide more clarity into each lead’s conversion patterns.

• Create fields of criteria that best describe your lead segments. After you’ve prioritized the criteria, Einstein will score it as part of the higher priority segment, essentially categorizing your leads for you. 
  

#4: Make Sure Emails Have the Right Dynamic Content

If you’re someone who somehow always has an excessive amount of tabs open at one time, this new feature will allow you to cut that down by a few and give you more confidence in your sends containing dynamic content.

Benefits: 

• Avoid the back-and-forth of your QA process.
• View ID numbers on the Dynamic Content list view so you can make sure you have the right merge field in each of your emails.

#5: Boost Email Engagement with Einstein Send Time Optimization

Send list emails to individual prospects at their preferred times. Take out the guesswork and elaborate segmentation with Einstein Send Time Optimization. Using Einstein’s machine learning skills, you can be sure your message gets to the right person at the right time.

#6: Designate a Marketing Admin to Handle Pardot Setup Tasks

Never worry about giving a user too many permissions. If you’ve been worried about losing control over Pardot administration, this feature of the release was made for you. Stop losing sleep over security concerns and give users access only to what you want them to have access to. 

A new user permission makes it easy to designate a marketing admin to handle Pardot setup and management tasks. Assign the new Manage marketing setup tasks permission and the View setup and configuration permission to grant access to all the Pardot configuration options in Salesforce Marketing Setup.

#7: Get More Clarity and Control on Email Marketing Settings

To call this part of the release an upgrade and say that we are “excited about it” would be a huge understatement. Before this was available, it was difficult and time-consuming to see the status of your prospects’ mailability. These settings can be edited in Automation Rules, Engagement Studio, and Prospect Import. 

Activate this feature by clicking the “Get Started” button at the top of your dashboard. Just remember that activating it would be permanent, and you should read Salesforce’s considerations when accessing the upgrade.

Doing so will give you a view of your prospects’:

• Overall mailable status
• Do Not Email
• Opted Out settings
• Bounce information

#8: Reporting on Email Messages

Spend less time requesting a useless email log and get more visibility into custom reporting. Previously, you only had access to the email’s delivery status— which is nothing compared to what’s available with this new feature. Now you can see if the customer opened it, when they opened it, bounces, engagement, and more. 

Bonus Platform Features Worth Noting

Inclusive terms are replacing legacy language

As part of Salesforce’s efforts to refine language in their products to more accurately reflect inclusivity, Salesforce is replacing terms deemed non inclusive. Though APIs and older API documentation aren’t included because changing terms in the code can break current implementations, this will allow your messaging to be more inclusive than ever, enabling you to reach a wider audience.

Inline editing of reports

If you have to make changes to records and reports, the previous capabilities might have made that a little tedious to deal with. In recent releases, you have been able to edit records directly in list view. Now, you can do the same thing with reports, saving you unnecessary clicks that bottleneck your workflow.

Enabling this feature is simple. Just go to your Reports and Dashboards Settings and modify the behavior of your interface by checking, “Enable Inline Editing In Reports.”

Once you’ve done that, look for the pencil icon, can click it, modify the value, and save. The field value will update on the report and in the source record, and the report reruns automatically. 

On the Salesforce Radar

It seems that as soon as we’re comfortable with the new features, even more updates are on the calendar. Here’s a couple that any user can be excited about (and will really allow you to take advantage of new Salesforce features).

Sandbox Release

Preview orgs are live now, so if you don’t have one, that should be the first thing you do after reading this!  Remember, Sandbox previews are coming, so now is a good time to look at what instance your sandboxes are on and make your plan.  

Don’t’ forget to join the Release Readiness Trailblazers group. That’s right, there’s a place for all your questions to get answers and share what you’ve found while testing out new features. 

Release Readiness Live (Week of May 21st)

This is a must-attend event. This series of webinars is run by project managers to talk about and demo new features so you can see these new items in action. Ask live questions and get live answers for all the things you’re stuck on.  

Now that you’ve seen all the ways you can customize your interface based on your needs as an administrator or consultant, check out the full Release Notes from Salesforce and let us know in the comments what your team is excited to implement! Be sure to stay on top of more updates and to add these up-and-coming deadlines to your calendar:

May 6 Cut off to refresh sandboxes for preview instance

May 7  Summer Preview Window begins 

(must have an active sandbox on a preview instance by May 6)

May 17  #LearnMOAR page goes live

May 21 Awesome Admin Release Preview

May 24 – 28 Release Readiness Live Week

June 6 – June 12 Main Release Dates

Need help with implementation or want to get training courses to gain a better understanding of Salesforce release features? Head over to our Pardot & Salesforce training page where you can sign up for mini-courses, become more familiar with Pardot basics, or attend bootcamps.

Original article: Top 8 New Features from the Salesforce Summer ‘21 Release

©2025 The Spot. All Rights Reserved.

The post Top 8 New Features from the Salesforce Summer ‘21 Release appeared first on The Spot.

Snippets were added to the Pardot functionality toolset fairly recently as a way to help the marketers of the world stay organized and reuse their content across multiple templates or Pardot Business Units without copy and pasting (*cues angelic music*). 

In short, Pardot Snippets are a content block of dates, links, images*, or plain text that you can leverage across your Pardot instance (or Business Units) with one central hub to manage them – your campaigns. The way Pardot snippets work focuses more on the relationship between the content block and the campaign, versus individual prospect data. Currently this feature is only accessible to marketers via the Pardot Lightning App.

Snippets are incredible for marketers who are running multiple campaigns and need to edit tiny bits of information across multiple landing pages, email templates, etc. If you have had to do this in the past with Pardot, it can be a long process which is prone to errors like forgetting to update one of your templates. Snippets now grant you flexibility as to where you can place the different content you create – – for example different messages customer types of event different Business Units. You can also configure who within your organization can see, create, and use Snippets. This flexibility is great for global marketing teams that would like to limit access to specific assets by region, campaign or Business Unit without custom user roles within Pardot.

In this blog, we will tackle some common questions we have received about Snippets.

Before we get started, I must point out that Snippets do have a few requirements before you can use them in your Pardot org. If you are in an older account (older than 2020) you may need to complete one or multiple steps to enable Snippets in Pardot.

Requirements for using Pardot Snippets:

• Must activate Pardot Lightning App
  • This can be configured in Sales Cloud and may need Salesforce Admin support
  • This also usually required SSO to be enabled for your Pardot/Salesforce User
• Enable Handlebars Merge Language (HML)
  • For older accounts, there’s usually a pop-up for this each time you login
• Connected Campaigns must be enabled
  • This can be turned on under your connector/account settings and may need Pardot Administrator support
• Access to create and edit Campaigns
  • Requires the Marketing User checkbox to be enabled in your Salesforce and may need Salesforce Admin support
• Be assigned the Sales Cloud, CRM, or Service Cloud permission set license
  • This can be configured in Sales Cloud and may need Salesforce Admin support

If you have a brand new instance, you should have automatically or manually configure most of these settings already (as part of the Pardot Setup Wizard in Sales Cloud) but it never hurts to take a second look. Make sure your Snippets tab isn’t hidden from your profile, this is usually the only thing preventing you from using Snippets.

Everything you need to know about Pardot Snippets: A Q&A

What are Snippets?

Based on the Salesforce help article, Snippets are reusable pieces of content that streamline how you create recurring marketing assets for your campaigns and business as a whole. Snippets can be leveraged in list emails, email templates, forms, and landing pages.

Why use Snippets?

This feature can save you time during setup and maintenance of your templates and content blocks across Pardot (or Business Units). Snippets can be used to populate and manage repeatable content across your Pardot assets (such as emails, forms and landing pages). These can be short character strings or full paragraphs of information that are tied to specific campaigns (or Business Units). They are also available in standard Salesforce reports.

Can I use Snippets in Pardot Classic?

It is important to note that although you can use Snippets in Pardot Classic’s WYSIWYG editor, you must first create them in the Pardot Lightning App as there is no tab to direct you to the Snippet library from within the Pardot Classic interface. You also cannot manage settings of Snippets such as which campaigns they are associated with from within the Pardot Classic UI.

What are some popular use cases for Snippets?

You can use snippets at the Business Unit level or the campaign level (and share it with as many campaigns/people as you want). Below are some examples of how we can leverage snippets to help you save time across Pardot assets:

• Emails (use in headers, footers, content blocks, additional CTA’s, navigation and more)
  • Webinar information – imagine being able to update details across multiple templates/landing pages, especially for series from one place
• Forms (use in before or after text, thank you content, etc)
  • Confirmation information – imagine adding “Add to Calendar” on multiple places without having to copy and paste, directly from the editor
• Landing Pages (Headers, footers, content blocks, disclaimers)
  • Accessibility requests – imagine adding directions for customer support or privacy notices to all your forms and being able to updates it from one place
    

Can I use Snippets across different Pardot Business Units?

Yes, you can. To be able to use a Snippet in a different Business Units, simply assign it to the right one using the assignment wizard. A Snippet can be used across multiple Pardot Business Units. This allows your team to leverage work used in one Business Unit without having to recreate it. You can also do the opposite, which in this case is limit the content to one Business Unit.

Can I limit who sees/uses Snippet?

Within the Pardot Lightning App, you are able to limit who can see the Snippet NavigationTab (you can hide the Snippets tab from their User Profile), which ultimately prevents you from accessing it.  Additionally, you can prevent certain people using Snippets if they don’t have access to edit the campaign object. If someone does not have the Marketing User checkbox enabled in Salesforce, they won’t be able to create Campaigns which are required to attach to a Snippet.

What if I want a Snippet to be available for multiple/all campaigns?

When you assign the Snippet you can go to each campaign and assign it on the campaign level. If you only have one Business Unit and you don’t want it to be restricted to one or a few campaigns, simply assign it to the Business Unit as illustrated in the step above.

I made a clone of my Snippet but I can’t seem to tie it to the right campaign. Why am I having issues with this?

When you Clone a Snippet it keeps the same API_NAME which is the unique identifier for the Snippet. Even if you change the Snippet Name, the API Name must be updated as well. Normally this won’t happen when you create a Snippet from scratch.

Why can I not see the Snippet tab in the Merge Field picker?

The first thing I would check is to see if you actually created a Snippet, otherwise this won’t appear. However, there are requirements to enable Snippets which could be the cause of you not being able to see them, and usually this is the issue – proper visibility. The first thing to check is to see if the email template or list email you are building has the same campaign associated with it. Nine times out of ten that’s the reason why you can’t see it, the snippet and campaign are not associated correctly (you can check the related list for that campaign), especially if you copied the template and updated the campaign.

Why can I not see my new Snippet but see others?

Notice that there is a short sync period. Usually waiting a few minutes (similar to campaign syncing period) is enough to get it to appear. If this doesn’t resolve on its own, then check the campaign or Business Unit that the Snippet is associated with.

If I edit Snippets, do they mass update or do I have to update each one manually?

Yes, Snippets will mass update, that’s the magical part of this feature. Similar to Dynamic Content any updates will go across all your templates. For example, think of being able to replace the privacy notice jargon on all your templates from one spot, that’s what Snippets can do! No more editing 100 templates. Need I say more?

Additionally, you can open this feature up to other people in your organization (in Sales Cloud) who might be the point of contact for those details.

Will a Snippet update if the email has already been sent? What about updating a landing page?

Similar to other Pardot functionality when an email has been sent already, the Snippet will NOT update after it has been sent. Future email sends with Snippets embedded will provide the latest updated information at the point of the send.

Landing pages, on the other hand, are different and will update close to real time as long as you are referring to the right snippet (via HML) and the campaign associated with this asset allows for the use of Snippets.

I tried adding an image and I can’t see an upload button or a gallery icon. Am I missing something?

At the moment the image tab is for organization only, you can input an image URL in it but this URL won’t render as an actual image. I tried the URL on its own, the URL within some HTML in the email and the same HTML without the URL reference just the direct reference. The only one that displayed it was the direct URL reference on the template preview, so if you want the actual image to display just add the image on the template, Snippets won’t work for this.

What happens if you dissociate the campaign of the asset that the snippet is on?

You will still see the HML that describes the Snippet name within the email builder. However, if you click on the preview tab, this shows as a blank, similar when you use HML to display a field and it’s empty. I received no warnings about this from the system when trying to save or publish a template.

What happens if you delete a Snippet that’s currently being used?

Although the system gives you a warning, it doesn’t act like other assets that prevent you from deleting it if there are dependencies associated with the Snippet. Proceed with caution if you delete a Snippet. Review the Related section under the Snippet tab and remove the Snippet from the assets associated with it prior to deleting it. If you delete a Snippet, it is not removed from your assets, but it will stop working. You would see a blank space where the Snippet should populate.

How do I restore a Snippet if I accidentally delete it?

In the App Launcher (in Sale Cloud), search “Recycle Bin” and it should be the top thing there. You can hit the down arrow at the right of the row to restore it. You may need a Salesforce Admin to support you in bringing it back if you can’t see the Recycle Bin. This option is available to you for 30 days.

Can I use standard Salesforce functionality to edit Snippets?

Yes you can. I actually learned this from Marianne Fields at ParDreamin’. In her presentation, she used Flow within Sales Cloud to look up a custom event object and pull data from it into her Snippets, while also automating the information updates from when her events team had changes to any of the event logistics, this would then update in Pardot and when it was time to send emails from Pardot, all the data was in the right spot. This is a great alternative for anyone on the Pardot Growth Tier, who may not have access to Dynamic Content or want more control in editing and approving content that goes out the door.

Wait, I already use Dynamic Content. What is the difference?

The difference here is that Dynamic Content depends on a prospects record data to populate information based on the criteria you established, it also has a limitation of 25 variations of content. Snippets on the other hand are “static” for everyone (meaning everyone sees the same thing) but can be updated universally similar to Dynamic Content. Snippets can be used by anyone with a Pardot instance, while Dynamic Content requires a Pardot Plus account or higher to be able to access it.

Although you can use Dynamic Content and HML together, using Snippets inside Dynamic Content or vice-versa don’t seem to be available at this time. There is no HML button in the Snippet wizard creator but you can manually add HML to Snippets.

This sounds great. How do I enable Snippets for Pardot in my account?

Review the prerequisites at the beginning of this post (and definitely the Salesforce documentation). If all that is completed, then make sure your profile has the Snippets tab turned on (set to Default On), then you can add the Snippets Related list to the Campaign page layout (and Lightning Record Pages if applicable) in order to see associations at the Campaign object level.

Lastly, you must be a Pardot Admin or Marketer User in order to be able to use Snippets within the Pardot Lightning App. Snippets however can be accessed from within Salesforce similar to Campaigns so don’t necessarily require a Pardot login to access.

Conclusion

With marketing teams and budgets changing during this pandemic, one thing is for sure. The winners will be the companies that can pivot quickly by leveraging all the tools at their disposal. Now that you know a little more about Snippets you can start to tinker with them to help you save time and effort. From going through this exercise three times in a week, I can say that it takes longer to set these up initially than actually using Snippets, but that’s a good thing given all the options for sharing and visibility. After that it’s a walk in the park!

Remember to be patient as you experiment with these and feel free to reach out if you need support leveraging this new feature or switching to Pardot Lightning from Classic.

What are some interesting use cases you have seen using Snippets in the wild?

Original article: Duck, Duck, Goose: How to Play with Pardot Snippets

©2025 The Spot. All Rights Reserved.

The post Duck, Duck, Goose: How to Play with Pardot Snippets appeared first on The Spot.