There’s some fear in the air.

I’m sensing major mixed emotions swirling for many with the announcement of Marketing Cloud Growth Edition and the vision of marketing automation on the Einstein 1 (a.k.a. Salesforce core) platform.

On the one hand — it’s everything we’ve all been asking for. True one platform, no-integration-needed shared infrastructure for marketing to work seamlessly with all customer data. 

But there’s a glimmer of doubt with people thinking: “What does this mean for me? Are my skills still relevant? What does this mean for my product, my team, or my consulting business?” 

Don’t bet on innovation being slow 

There is a very large population of people who benefit from the status quo as it sits today. 

Employees benefit from their skills being in demand to drive up compensation. 

Consultants benefit from their experience being rare and slow to accumulate to stay relevant.

Product companies have grown to address a specific product gap or market need in today’s toolset.

But if the technology changes, all of that gets disrupted. When I hear people asking about timelines for the expansion of Marketing Cloud Growth Edition, I feel like they’re actually hoping that the pace of innovation on this will be slow. When I tell them I don’t think that’s going to be the case, that statement is met with uneasiness, and it’s clear that‘s not what they were hoping to hear.

Big change takes time, for sure. But I really wouldn’t bet on this freight train moving slowly. This has been a long time coming, and there’s momentum behind this new product that is incredibly exciting.

Remember that the technology is only one piece of the puzzle

I think that the fear of change here is somewhat misplaced.

Yes, there is a lot of power in the technical knowledge of any platform — Marketing Cloud Engagement, Account Engagement (Pardot), Salesforce, and any number of new tools.

But even harder to come by are the soft and business skills that make you successful with those platforms. Things like: 

• Understanding business process
• Mapping out data relationships 
• Wrangling colleagues from across sales, marketing, customer service, and product to get agreement on content 
• Training and driving the adoption of a new tool or process
• Defining project plans and dependencies with the work of other teams 
• The logistics that go into the execution of any complex campaign 
• Spotting a gap or a need, and the extreme ownership you bring to “I’m going to figure out how to solve it” 
• Spreading best practices & defining standard processes
• Breaking complex terminology into terms anyone on your team can understand

Just think about your job today: How much of it is actually hands-on configuration in a tech platform, and how much of it is “tech-adjacent” planning, organizing, collaborating, and communicating? 

I bet it’s a blend of both, and as you move up the ladder in your career the “tech adjacent” becomes more critical.

Time to go back to school 

So, if we could flip a switch and change all customers to the new platform overnight — the skills and experience we’ve all gained from many years on Pardot and Marketing Cloud are still super useful, even if we’re logging in at a different URL. 

We’re not being sent back to the starting line. But we do probably have some relearning to do to keep our edge and stay relevant. But I choose to view that as exciting and not daunting. (Well maybe a little daunting. But I’m going to crack open a Red Bull and push through.) 

The way I think of it is this: Someone has to emerge as leaders, thinkers, and builders on any new platform. Who better than you and I? Let’s leverage the hard-won experience in this ecosystem as a springboard in this next chapter. 

Let’s lean into the next-gen set of tools that are going to bring marketing strategies to life on the Salesforce platform, and let’s go build some cool stuff.

Some quick shameless plugs

I can’t resist sharing two more things on this topic…

#1: Check out our Salesforce Flow for Marketers course

Flow is a big piece of how Marketing Cloud Growth Edition users can automate customer journeys. Need to brush up on your skills? Sercante has a Salesforce Flow Basics for Marketers Workshop that will kickstart your learning.

#2 Come join a team of growth-minded learners

When change is in the air, it’s a great time to be among like-minded learners. If this article resonated with you, I would invite you to come check out roles on the Sercante team. We’re committed to always learning, always chasing that edge, and we are eagerly seizing opportunities to get our team’s hands on the “next gen” ASAP. It’s a great spot to try on new skills and figure out the role you want to play in the next chapter of your career. Drop us a note at hiring@sercante.com if you’d like to chat!

Original article: What Marketing Cloud Growth Edition Means for Your Career

©2025 The Spot. All Rights Reserved.

The post What Marketing Cloud Growth Edition Means for Your Career appeared first on The Spot.

ICYMI: Salesforce dropped a hot product announcement yesterday. And she’s called Marketing Cloud Growth Edition. 

There was a flurry of blogs and social postings following the official drop of the Salesforce press release, notably: 

• Salesforce Ben
• Anthony Lamot
• Timo Kovala
• Eliot Harper
• Natasha Martin

To hear some talk, MC Growth Edition is going to instantly change everything and be the best thing in the world. 

On the flip side of the spectrum, I’ve seen some hyper-skeptical commentary around MC Growth Edition. “It’s SMB only”, “It’s going to take years to catch up”, and “You don’t have to worry about this now,” (I’m sensing a twinge of fear/self-doubt intermingled in these statements, though).

Like most things involving extreme opposites, the current reality and answer to “What is Marketing Cloud Growth Edition?” is somewhere in the middle of these two takes.

Let’s dig into some of the nuances here and read the tea leaves. If I could boil this down to a top 5 highlights, they would be: 

1) Marketing Cloud Growth Edition is built on “Core,” and that’s a fundamental advantage for innovation 

Marketing Cloud Growth Edition is built on the Einstein 1 platform — aka the same underlying infrastructure as Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, Experience Cloud, Data Cloud, and recently, Commerce Cloud. 

Marketing Cloud Engagement is NOT on core today (but it’s integrated).

Pardot / Marketing Cloud Account Engagement IS on core… kind of. It’s a blend of on and off-core. Call it “near core” if you need another buzzword for your collection.

Many long-time Pardot customers have been rallying around the vision for “Pardot on Platform” for the last several years. And if you’ve been watching closely, you may have noticed that many of the product enhancements delivered in recent years have been either built-in core, rely heavily on components from core, or had prerequisites of things like enabling SSO with core. 

Why does this “on core” distinction matter, though? The simplified answer is that as new things are released, you can take advantage of those within other “on-core” tools. Examples would include things like Flow for automation, UI enhancements like Path, improvements to Salesforce reporting functionality, etc. These product innovations can be leveraged for the most part across objects and clouds that are built on core. 

So TL;DR — MC Growth Edition being on the Einstein 1 platform means that when enhancements are added to Salesforce and Data Cloud, we don’t have to wait for an integration to come out to use them in the marketing department. We will be able to take advantage of these enhancements immediately, in many cases.

2) The significance isn’t what’s available now — it’s about the vision 

In subsequent posts on The Spot, we’re going to be getting way in the weeds of how MC Growth Edition works and outlining functions and constraints of the current builders. 

There will be edition comparison guides.

Screenshots.

Pros & cons lists.

But amidst all of this, I would emphasize that what’s generally available now isn’t the important thing to look at unless you are actively evaluating a platform to purchase in the next 30 days. The exciting thing about MC Growth Edition is about where the product is headed.

Salesforce has an aggressive vision for this, and looking at the speed with which Data Cloud has grown, I’m betting on them to move FAST.

3) Expect to see a focus on unifying builders & tooling 

A friction point for existing customers is there are usually several ways to do things in different clouds. We have two email builders in Pardot. Another email builder in Salesforce. And an entirely different content builder in Marketing Cloud Engagement. 

Expect to see these tools start to converge, with Marketing Cloud Growth Edition as the first mover for shared functionality. 

One email builder. 

One landing page builder. 

One segmentation engine (built on Data Cloud).

(P.S. The buzzword for this concept is “composable services” — as a new tool is built, expect to see it designed in a way that it can be used and leveraged in multiple parts of Salesforce. We’re already seeing examples of today for more behind-the-scenes things of Pardot/Marketing Cloud, like the backend email sending engine.)

4) This makes AI real 

I’ve been listening quietly to all of the headlines about generative AI for the last year. 

Listening, because as Thumper says, “if you can’t say something nice, don’t say nothing at all.” 

The picture has been painted like this: 

• You’re working with smart marketing automation tooling
• You log in and the system can suggest a target audience for you 
• It can suggest a product offer for you 
• Heck, it can write your content from a campaign brief 
• AI tells you when to send your email
• AI makes it omnichannel 
• Campaign results come flooding in… and yes, AI analyzes that for you too 
• We cheers with our Mad Men era old fashioneds because the computers do all of the heavy lifting for us

That sounds nice, but also super unattainable with today’s tooling.

The elephant in the room: No one’s data is that organized. Systems remain super siloed. And the systems most customers are on today don’t solve for that. 

Until now. 

Marketing Cloud Growth Edition is the vision for how we move past that. It’s the beginnings of the shared infrastructure and unified data that get us to the AI-shaped pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

Bring on the robots.

5) Existing customers are going to see the benefits too… without switching

Customers new to marketing automation, or new to marketing with Salesforce should absolutely evaluate MC Growth Edition.

Pardot and Marketing Cloud Engagement customers should wait a bit before asking themselves “Should I switch?” Largely because they may find they get some of the “good stuff” without having to switch.

We had two team members (one from a Pardot background, and one who’s an OG ExactTarget pro) participate in the pilot of MC Growth. What we saw is that Salesforce is thinking very carefully about how to share the value of the development work being done in MC Growth with its existing customer base. 

Over the next few months, customers will start to see new features you can opt into or just turn on in your org. It’s not going to be a “migration” or a requirement to move anything — just a gradual transformation and growth in the tools that are available to you as more of these composable services are built and shared.

The future looks bright 

One thing is for sure — the next chapter is going to be anything but boring for marketing technologists on the Salesforce platform!  I’ve never been more excited to grow in this ecosystem <3

Original article: The Marketing Cloud That Broke the Internet (& 5 Key Takeaways)

©2025 The Spot. All Rights Reserved.

The post The Marketing Cloud That Broke the Internet (& 5 Key Takeaways) appeared first on The Spot.

I just returned from an action-packed week at Connections (Salesforce’s banner event for marketers) and I gotta say — it feels good to be back with the Ohana.

It’s been a hot minute since in-person Salesforce community events were in full force. Dreamforce 2019 is the last big thing I attended prior to this event. As we ramp back up, I’m realizing that some of my team members, customers, and friends in the ecosystem actually have never attended a Salesforce event. And those who have are a little rusty (I know I was.)

If you’re looking to get more involved in the Salesforce ecosystem through events, here are a few rules/guidelines you can follow to maximize the benefits.

Rule 1. Mix it up and attend both “official” and “community” Salesforce events

There are a few types of Salesforce community events that might come across your radar. And there’s value in attending all of them.

Each event type brings something unique to the table. If you have the opportunity to, I’d recommend engaging with a mix of Salesforce-sponsored and community-led events. 

Salesforce User Groups

Local events led by a community member, customer or partner. Topics are often how to/best practice oriented. They’re usually 20-30 people, sometimes more in bigger metro areas. 

Search for Salesforce user groups in your region here.

Salesforce World Tours

These are usually in a big city and are official events put on by Salesforce (free to attendees). Expect a couple thousand people, a big expo hall, dancing mascots, and a high energy keynote full of product news and big logo customers. Oh, and post-event happy hours from vendors and partners. 

Dreamin’ Events

Although increasingly virtual or hybrid, these are usually in a big city and put on by members of the Salesforce community for a modest fee (usually $100-300). In other words, they’re created by Salesforce users, for users, and are loosely sanctioned/supported by Salesforce. 

The content is totally different in comparison to Salesforce World Tours. There’s no “selling” angle in mind — instead, you’ll find “in the trenches” advice from admins and hands-on folks with lots of real talk. This is a great place to find your people and meet someone you can call with an SOS when you’re stuck on something.

Dreamforce

This is the Superbowl of Salesforce. There’s a huge volume of content catered to almost any audience, and Salesforce pulls out all the stops to make this a fun, flashy, and engaging event. And the entire partner ecosystem rallies to woo customers, throw parties, and celebrate headline product news. 

The price tag is $1-3Kish depending on discounts and how early you buy your Dreamforce ticket. 

Pre-covid, they shut down multiple city blocks in San Francisco and had nearly 200K people. This year, rumor has it that attendance will be capped at 30K (but limited info out about that yet.) 

Salesforce Connections

Already happened this year, but for future reference, Connections is like a mini Dreamforce for marketers (also Salesforce sponsored). It’s been in Chicago for the last several years, and is the place to be for customers (or would-be customers) of Marketing Cloud and Commerce Cloud.

Rule 2. Define your goal for participating 

Do a little soul searching to figure out your ‘why’ for attending these events. Your objectives for attending Salesforce community events might include:

• Tactical, how-to learning
• Getting ideas & inspiration
• Networking with other users 
• Meeting your Salesforce account team
• Recruiting 
• Sales & prospecting
• Learning about interesting products that work with Salesforce 
• Evaluating prospective partners
• Building a personal brand in the ecosystem 

Determining what’s most important to you will inform what events you should prioritize. As a rule of thumb, I would say user-led events are the best for tactical, how-to learning. 

Rule 3. Get digital business cards

I completely forgot business cards were a thing until Connections. Surely I have a stash of pre-covid cards somewhere in my house… but it didn’t even enter my mind until I was ready to swap contact info with someone.

I was surprised to see A LOT of people using QR codes for an efficient contact info swap. Some people connected this to their Linkedin, and others had a QR code that created a contact record in the scanning user’s phone. I will definitely be doing this before the next event! 

Image credit

Rule 4. Don’t just attend… speak and volunteer! 

Once you have a feel for what these events are all about, I highly recommend throwing your hat in the ring to speak. I’ve found speaking at events to be incredibly rewarding and fantastic for networking. 

You know you’ve found your people when you can get up in front of a group and say

 “I worked on XYZ, I struggled with ABC, and here’s where I’m at,” and see heads nodding. It’s validating to find others who have the exact same challenges and know we’re all figuring this thing out together.

I’m a big believer that we all have something to learn and something to teach. If you’re reading this thinking “I have nothing to speak on” — check that imposter syndrome. 

Another great way to get more engaged is through volunteering. As someone who isn’t a particularly natural networker, working badge check in desks used to be my go-to to meet people in a low-pressure way.

Rule 5. Pick what sessions you want to prioritize

When it comes to the bigger conferences and Dreamin’ events, it’s not uncommon for popular sessions to fill up and not be able to accommodate everyone who wants to join. Skim the agenda before you go and pick three things you really want to attend.

Pro tip: If you see Circles of Success on the agenda, pick those! They’re group discussions and rarely disappoint.

Rule 6. Try to figure out who you want to meet… in advance of the event 

Ask around (i.e. customers, partners, friends, Salesforce AEs) and see who’s going. Events are a great opportunity to get some facetime with people you only work with online. Skim the speaker list — anyone with an interesting background? 

Ping these folks before the event and set up a coffee or lunch date, or plan to go find them the day of.

(And if you don’t know anyone who’s going — not to fear. You can still have a great networking experience attending live! This extra step ensures you get the value you were hoping for out of the event.) 

Rule 7. Check out Twitter 

The Salesforce ecosystem is active on Twitter. That means it’s the place to be for social connection during the actual event. 

For bigger events, follow the event hashtag to see pictures, find information about happy hours and adjacent events, read people’s hot takes, and more. Many user groups also have their own Twitter accounts and hashtags.

Pro Tip: Follow the #SalesforceWorldTour hashtag.

Rule 8. Don’t skip the “real life” social parts 

After a long day of networking, you might want to head home or get back to your hotel room to decompress. But you’d be missing the best part — happy hours, dinners, and spontaneous post-event hang outs are some of my favorite memories from Salesforce events. That’s because people tend to be more relaxed and aren’t rushing to the next thing.

If the idea of unstructured open networking makes you green in the face, then try thinking of a few questions to keep in your back pocket. 

For example: 

• What was your biggest takeaway from the event? 
• Are you working on anything you’re excited about?
• What do you see as the biggest barrier or struggle with Salesforce at your organization? 
• Have you ever seen a ghost? (Seriously — someone asked me this once at a happy hour, and it led to the most interesting group conversation ever.)

Rule 9. Say thank you and follow up 

Most people consider the event over when it’s…. well, over. But the magic is staying connected and building on value you got from the event. 

What relationships can you nurture? Who can you say thank you to? Do you have any thoughtful resources or help you could offer a new acquaintance? 

If all else fails, at least fire off a few Linkedin requests. 

Salesforce community events propel careers

I can’t tell you how many people I’ve met at Salesforce community events who later became teammates, clients, and partners. And I get it. These things aren’t easy for natural introverts like me. 

What I can tell you is someone else in the room is likely experiencing the same anxiety you’re feeling about being in these situations. And there’s luckily a big enough variety of Salesforce community events to accommodate all social situation comfort levels.

• Not a fan of crowds? Check out an intimate user group meeting in your area. 
• Don’t wanna be around people at all? Connect with Trailblazers through a virtual community group meeting (this blog post has a few examples).
• Rather blend in with a crowd? Dreamin’ conferences have a spot for you to soak in all the educational in-person sessions.

Bottom line is — get yourself out there. You’ll connect with people who have similar work experiences and learn a few things. And, who knows, it may lead to your next big opportunity.

Have any nuggets of wisdom for attending Salesforce community events that we forgot? Tell us about it in the comments section.

Original article: 9 Essential Rules for Attending Salesforce Community Events

©2025 The Spot. All Rights Reserved.

The post 9 Essential Rules for Attending Salesforce Community Events appeared first on The Spot.

It’s official — Pardot is going to be called Marketing Cloud Account Engagement going forward.

This is a big, bold change.

I have a lot of respect for whoever did the work on this rebrand, and whoever ultimately had to push the button and make the final approval on these changes. Having been a part of several corporate rebrands, I have a tiny peek at how much work goes into that.

Time and Twitter will tell how the new names land. Like most things — there are both pros and cons for this change. I suspect there will be a lot of strong opinions on both sides.

Quick background on the Marketing Cloud name changes

Here are the latest name changes affecting marketers who use Salesforce:

• Marketing Cloud Email Studio (aka ExactTarget) 🡪 Marketing Cloud Engagement
• Pardot 🡪 Marketing Cloud Account Engagement
• CDP 🡪 Marketing Cloud Customer Data Platform
• Interaction Studio 🡪 Marketing Cloud Personalization
• Email, Messaging, and Journeys 🡪 Marketing Cloud Engagement
• Advertising Studio 🡪 Marketing Cloud Advertising
• Datorama 🡪 Marketing Cloud Intelligence
• myTrailhead 🡪 Salesforce Sales Enablement
• Salesforce CMS 🡪 Digital Experiences

Get all the details on the recent Salesforce product name changes here.

What I like about the name changes (particularly the Pardot one)

Let’s start with the good stuff.

1. It sets a vision for the connection between Salesforce products

The new naming conventions for the Marketing Cloud suite of products emphasizes that these products are part of the same family. 

Salesforce has made a large number of acquisitions in the martech space, and retaining the individual brand names dilutes the message that they’re all one platform. A unified naming system simplifies the message for the existing stack, and makes it easier to name and talk about future additions.

2. It aligns with marketers’ big picture needs 

Marketers need more than a pile of point solutions.

They have a vision, and they need infrastructure to execute on that. This line in Salesforce’s announcement about the change stated it perfectly: 

“As you consider how to make the wow moments that build customer trust and loyalty, we know you’re focusing less on one channel or technology and more on the full experience. Our job is to deliver the how behind the wow.”

This shift also mirrors a recent change that we made in the positioning of this blog. We announced a few weeks ago that “The Spot for Pardot” is becoming “The Spot” and broadening its focus to a broader subset of martech — and this need is exactly why.

3. It focuses on what the products actually DO from a customer’s perspective

If you already know what Pardot is, you know what it does and what problems it solves. If you already know what Datorama is, you know what it does and what problems it solves.

But no one is sitting around saying “I need a Datorama.” 

They’re saying: “I need actionable business intelligence.”

Putting the names in the customer’s language simplifies the message, in some cases, on why a particular product is the solution of choice for a particular business challenge.

4. It makes it clearer that Pardot + ExactTarget play nice in the sandbox 

For whatever reason, Pardot and ExactTarget have often been viewed as “competing” with one another. People liked to compare features, list pros and cons, and generally viewed it as a “this or that” choice. 

Really, the products both send email, and that’s about where the similarities end. They are totally different tools, designed for totally different customers, with totally different admin experiences. 

Using Sercante enterprise customers as a sample, I’d estimate about half use both ExactTarget and Pardot in different subsets of their business. Having both ensures their marketing teams can run fast and solve hard problems for the business. 

(Somehow in this “either or” narrative people seem to forget that’s why ExactTarget actually bought Pardot before Salesforce scooped them both up. Clearly their founders recognized they were better together than they are apart.)

4. It’s easy to pronounce!

First, at least people will pronounce the new name correctly. Goodbye, Par-dough. 

Silver linings, guys.

Some challenges with the rebrand

Now, for a gentle critique.

1. It’s going to be hard to unstick the legacy brand names

My friend’s mom decided she wanted to be called “Grand-mère” when her daughter brought little humans into the world. 

Her grandchildren decided she was, in fact, “Lulu.” 

Why? Not a clue.

But it stuck.

Take it from the 2 year olds: it’s really hard to tell people what to call you.

The ExactTarget brand was “sunsetted” ages ago. But people still call it that today, mostly for disambiguation with Marketing Cloud. It was rebranded Email Studio. Then Messaging & Journeys (kind of.) Now it’s “Engagement.” 

Jury’s out on how Pardot customers will react to this change.

2. It’s going to make things harder to talk about 

While the new naming system does have a unified nomenclature, it looks clean and sharp on a slide deck, it messages the right things from a customer perspective… 

…it’s going to make the products really hard to talk about.

Take Salesforce Personalization for example. Formerly known as “Interaction Studio,” Salesforce Personalization provides a category-leading experience for AI-driven personalization in cross-channel marketing campaigns. It can be used alongside both Marketing Cloud or Pardot (see also: 3 Interaction Studio Features Marketers Should Look Out For from our Pardot conference last year.)

But labeling it with the generic word “Personalization” makes it really hard for people (customers, colleagues, the community, etc.) to know what you’re actually referring to. 

Because you can personalize content with Pardot using handlebars merge language, dynamic content, or legacy variable tags. You can personalize content in Marketing Cloud with AMPscript or personalization strings. And we call those things “Personalization” too.

I don’t think it’s super clear in the current naming system that “Personalization” is its own thing that requires a separate SKU on your Salesforce order form and requires its own implementation.

3. “Account Engagement” doesn’t reflect the needs of all Pardot customers 

“Account Engagement” implies a go-to-market model where sales reps are identifying target accounts and getting after them, and marketing is complementing those efforts through an ABM strategy. 

That reflects the use case of some customers, for sure. 

But many others use Pardot differently. They use it to communicate with students and donors. They use it for community engagement. They use it for recruiting and internal comms. And Pardot is pretty darn good at those things. The new name doesn’t jive with this. 

4. It makes talent acquisition more confusing 

If I see “project managed Pardot implementation” or “reported on KPIs to stakeholders using Datorama” on a resumé, I have a pretty clear vision of what that person did and what they can do for my company. 

If you take away the OG brand names, it sounds like nonsensical fluff. Project managed Account Engagement? Reported on KPIs to stakeholders using Intelligence?

This is going to need some work.

5. It makes finding a partner more confusing 

The AppExchange made a change to its filters a few days ago, presumably to align with this change to remove “Pardot” and “Datorama” from their filter criteria:

Expertise implementing one part of Marketing Cloud does not always translate to other parts of Marketing Cloud. In the short term, I think this change to the searchability of the AppExchange is going to really damage the ability of customers to find and vet qualified partners. 

In the long term, I think we will see an increased emphasis on partners growing to support across the entire Marketing Cloud. But that will take some time.

6. It makes Googling your way to success more confusing 

What do you search if you’re looking for Pardot help in the future? 

“Marketing Cloud Account Engagement Tips for _______” is almost certainly going to turn up a lot of irrelevant content.

I have a lot of faith in Google, but it’s going to be tricky there for a while.

How I expect the Pardot community to respond to the name change 

The Pardot community is going to full-on rebel in the wake of this name change.

Mostly kidding.

I think a decent subset of Pardot customers, consultants, and long-time users will see the intent of what Salesforce is trying to do with the naming update and get on board.

I also think a decent subset of Pardot customers, consultants, and long-time users will call it “Pardot” until their final days. 

Remember back in 2019 where Salesforce tried to force a name change of Pardot User Groups to “B2B Marketing User Groups”? Yeah, they’re still called “PUGs.”

The Spot has several digital community hubs to rebrand following this change:

• Pardashians community | Slack home of Pardot lovers and learners
• The Spot for Pardot Jobs | The place to find Pardot gigs 
• ParDreamin’ | The virtual event bringing together the best minds in martech

More to come on those after the dust settles from this announcement. 

The bottom line 

I believe in the “why” behind the Pardot name change 100%. I appreciate that Salesforce is aligning with customer needs and meeting them where they’re at when they’re talking about their business challenges.

I have faith that Salesforce is going to work on the details and logistics of what this means to customers to make this a net positive at the end of the day. There will be some bumps in the road. And many people will hold on to the Pardot name. And it will continue to help marketers kick butt and take names with engaging their audiences in a scalable way.

What’s your take on the name change? 

I’m dying to hear what ya’ll think of this renaming. Are you for or against? Spicy feelings? 

Drop a comment with your opinion and let’s discuss.

Original article: A Hot Take on the Pardot Rebrand to Marketing Cloud Account Engagement

©2025 The Spot. All Rights Reserved.

The post A Hot Take on the Pardot Rebrand to Marketing Cloud Account Engagement appeared first on The Spot.

Salesforce announced today that they’re changing the name “Pardot” to… drumroll… Marketing Cloud Account Engagement. Along with this rebrand, they’re changing the names of about a dozen products — but of course, Pardot is nearest and dearest to my heart.

Do I have opinions? Ohhhh yes. And I will be sharing those in a blog tomorrow.

In the meantime — here’s what you need to know about the future of the Pardot brand. 

2022 Salesforce product name changes

Salesforce likes renaming things. It’s what they do. Having been a customer and partner in this ecosystem for 12 years, I’ve kind of accepted it.

In this quarter’s wave of brand updates, Salesforce itself is actually getting an upgrade. The company announced in March 2022 that Salesforce.com is changing its legal name to Salesforce, Inc. (Sorry, I’m still going to call it SFDC though.) 

The most recent wave of Salesforce name changes

Several products are also getting the rename treatment. Pay attention — you’ll have to use these new names when communicating with Salesforce support agents. 

Here are the latest name changes affecting marketers who use Salesforce:

• Marketing Cloud Email Studio (aka ExactTarget) to Marketing Cloud Engagement
• Pardot to Marketing Cloud Account Engagement
• CDP to Marketing Cloud Customer Data Platform
• Interaction Studio to Marketing Cloud Personalization
• Email, Messaging, and Journeys to Marketing Cloud Engagement
• Advertising Studio to Marketing Cloud Advertising
• Datorama to Marketing Cloud Intelligence
• myTrailhead to Salesforce Sales Enablement
• Salesforce CMS to Digital Experiences

Wait, what? Why?

The word Salesforce has used as a touchstone when communicating these product name changes is that they are EASY. 

Salesforce EVP & GM Digital Experiences Lidiane Jones echoed this in the official announcement about the name change: 

The Marketing Cloud portfolio is now more aligned with the language marketers already use, so the capabilities and value are easier to understand. For example, many marketers are looking for the capability and value of real-time Personalization, not an “Interaction Studio” solution.

We’re expecting to hear more on Salesforce’s logic behind the changes at the Sydney World Tour. 

What is NOT affected by the Pardot name change

With the name change, there’s lots that is staying the same:

• Product features & functionality (continuing to grow and expand as part of the normal release cycle) 
• Pricing 
• Packaging / bundles
• The actual SKU names on your Salesforce contract

Not ready to accept the new brand? Let’s cope together. 

If you’re anything like us, Pardot is your BFF and you know all the Pardot trivia, including how Pardot got its name.

So, you might need some time to process the news from Salesforce — especially since Marketing Cloud Account Engagement just doesn’t have the same ring to it.

Spotify playlists for your recovery

While we are still waiting for the ecosystem to establish its own moniker (McKay, anyone?) we have just the thing to get you through all of your stages of grief — some tunes to carry you through. Check out our breakup playlists on Spotify. 

• Side A: Songs to scream to
• Side B: Songs to cry to
• Side C: Songs to empower you to get up, move on, and SLAY

What’s your reaction to the new name? Share your take in the comments while we all process this.

Original article: Salesforce Name Changes: Pardot & Marketing Cloud Get A Rebrand

©2025 The Spot. All Rights Reserved.

The post Salesforce Name Changes: Pardot & Marketing Cloud Get A Rebrand appeared first on The Spot.

Your Marketing Automation Platform (MAP) doesn’t exist in a vacuum. And neither do we.

The Spot for Pardot is following a natural evolution we’re seeing in the marketing technology industry. As demand for integrations with MAPs increase and Marketing Operations Professionals (MOPs) are finally finding voices among the big players, we’ve shifted our focus to the MarTech stack as a whole.

We’re still The Spot for Pardot. But now we’re so much more.

Moving forward, you’ll find community resources for ALL marketers who use the Salesforce platform. The ones who use Pardot. Or Marketing Cloud. Or both. Or some other MAP they’re integrating with Sales Cloud.

We’ll share what we know about using marketing technology and the Salesforce platform together.

A new focus for “The Spot” (and a new name)

It started as a personal blog sharing quick tips and solutions from one Pardot user. Then others joined to share their knowledge. And more readers followed. Now it’s a community hub for marketers on Salesforce who work together to reach their goals. 

Here’s a message from the original The Spot blogger, Andrea Tarrell, to share how we got here.

A message from Andrea, OG blogger at The Spot

I am thrilled to announce a fully revamped, reimagined, relaunch of “The Spot.”  Shout out to the amazing marketing team at Sercante — especially Sarah, Ambre, and Christina — for bringing this to life.

The new site looks infinitely better than the old WordPress site I hacked together in 2017. 

But it’s much more than a face lift.  The content, authors, categorization, and overall focus are evolving to better serve you, dear reader — and I couldn’t be more excited about it.  

Where The Spot got its start

I started The Spot for Pardot in August of 2017.

It was a side project.

Actually, if I’m being honest — it was a bit of a stall tactic.

I was thinking about starting a business, but I was scared.  So, I started the blog instead.

As a marketer, I wrote hundreds of blog posts for various clients and employers, on everything from insurance best practices, to architecture, to industrial printing, to trucking firms, and more.

But I had never had a place to write about things that mattered to me.

I created The Spot as a place to express myself and share learnings, hot takes, and the occasional war story.  I half expected no one to read it.

But it picked up steam shockingly quickly.  Turns out that a lot of other marketers had been grappling with the exact same problems that kept me up at night.  And before I knew it, the blog became a magnet for my PEOPLE — the kinds of marketers that I want to work with, both as team members, clients, and community members.

The authors on The Spot: More insights from the best minds in MarTech

For the first two years of The Spot, it was just me penning posts.

But today, it is supported by authors from the Sercante team, and across the entire martech community.  (Shout out to Brittany Rhyme for being our first ever “guest post” back in 2018 and opening the flood gates!)

Do you have a perspective you’d like to share?  We welcome guest posts and paid, long-term contributor gigs.

The Name: Welcome to “The Spot”

To reflect our new focus, we’re dropping the word “Pardot” from our blog name.  Instead, you can just call us “The Spot.”  (And actually, most people called us that anyway.)

We’re keeping thespotforpardot.com as the URL right now for SEO juice, and will be phasing that out over the next 12 months.

What’s not changing: Our relentless zeal for learning & sharing

To recap — in addition to a new look for The Spot, you’ll now see:

• More authors & perspectives
• Content on an expanded list of topics
• New brand name & logo 

You’ll also continue to see our team share content and resources through:

• ParDreamin’, the annual virtual Pardot user conference
• Pardashians, the largest Slack community for Pardot pros
• The Spot for Pardot Jobs, a place to find your next gig or team member

When I started The Spot back in 2017, I had no idea what it would grow into.  Thank you for being here, for sharing this content with your friends and colleagues, and for constantly challenging my team and I to bring our best to this community.  

Cheers to the next chapter!

Content on The Spot: Hello Marketing Cloud, martech & more

The Spot started out as content about Pardot with the goal of sharing insights to help marketers be successful on the Salesforce platform.

To meet that goal, we’ve branched out beyond Pardot. We’re covering topics and platforms like:

• Tableau CRM
• Marketing Cloud
• LeanData
• ABM + Terminus
• Qualified
• Event marketing + Splash
• Conversational marketing
• Sales Cloud
• And more

Expect to see a wave of new content covering all kinds of martech — especially other parts of Salesforce Marketing Cloud that we see growing in relevancy for savvy digital marketers. 

We’ve also added a categorization system to our posts. Now, it’s easier to browse and find what you’re looking for:

Why marketers on Salesforce need third-party resources

Yes, we realize Salesforce has Trailhead. And product-specific blog posts. And webinars. And all kinds of other resources. But you’re only getting information from the Salesforce perspective. 

You’re a real marketer with real-life challenges. And you know your tech stack includes more than just Salesforce products.

The Spot has resources to find solutions and better utilize all of your technology tools — all from the perspective of a marketer who uses the Salesforce platform.

On a mission to mobilize marketers

Our mission is simple — to provide an online home for marketers on Salesforce to learn and collaborate. It’s a central location to find Pardot resources across all levels — from getting started guides to launch an org to expert tips for advanced integrations that extend marketing technology stacks.

We want marketers to realize “what could be” and feel empowered to take their marketing campaigns and lead generation efforts to the next level. 

Get involved and claim your spot

Contributors from around the world represent all kinds of digital marketing specialties on The Spot. It’s filled with easy-to-digest (and sometimes cheeky) content for marketing professionals who use Salesforce and want to automate all the things.

Join us by getting involved and connecting with the community.

3 ways you can get involved with The Spot

1. Become a contributor.
2. Post an open job listing.
3. Join the conversation in our Slack community group.
   

And remember to become a subscriber! The Spot newsletter delivers a healthy dose of martech to your inbox — and nothing more.

Original article: The Spot: A Community Resource for Marketers on Salesforce

©2025 The Spot. All Rights Reserved.

The post The Spot: A Community Resource for Marketers on Salesforce appeared first on The Spot.

I think we need to do more to celebrate the work that Pardot and Marketing Operations pros do. I’ll explain why. 

But first, a random story.

A mysterious package

One day a large brown box from Crystal Cave showed up at my door. It was addressed to me.

“I didn’t order this,”

I grumbled to myself, kicking it to the corner of my foyer. I assumed it was my hubby’s or something.  Maybe a gift?  I didn’t think too hard about it.

After a week of tripping over this thing, I finally opened the box.  It was lined with dark blue satin and held a large crystal prism with the words “B2B Marketing Partner of the Year” etched into it.

I had so many questions.

What is a B2B Marketing Partner of the year?

How did we get nominated?

Who were the judges?

Who did we compete with?

Whatever the source of this mysterious sparkly object, I was excited, so I posted it in Slack to show the Sercante team:

I patiently waited to hear the backstory from the anonymous awarder.

But no one said anything.

Someone suggested saying the engraved part in Latin in hopes the incantation would reveal its purpose and unleash its power.

That did not prove effective.

So I reached out to our Partner Account Manager.  No clue, had never heard of it. 

I reached out to Pardot.  Also had never heard of it.

In the absence of an actual documented reason for the trophy, I turned to introspection.

“Maybe the best trophy is the one we give ourselves.”

“Maybe the real trophy is the friends we made along the way.”

I briefly considered mailing people I respect in the ecosystem unsolicited trophies for “best hair” or “most likely to sleep through a Dreamforce keynote” and other such superlatives.

Anyway, it’s been 10 months now. I still have no idea who sent me this thing, but sometimes I do curls with it on calls because it weighs at least 10 pounds.

The recognition gap in marketing operations

The strangeness of this aside, one of the things this random trophy got me thinking about is that this is a hard field to find recognition in.

The role of Pardot Admin is weird in that if you’re doing everything right, a lot of times no one will notice anything.  If your automations are firing behind the scenes, data is getting cleaned, leads are getting routed, opportunities are getting nurtured… it’s kind of just business as usual.  When someone notices it’s often because something bad happened.

It’s also tough to be a solo admin and not have someone to share successes with.  There aren’t many places to say “I built this!” and celebrate what worked.

That’s one of the reasons the ParDreamin’ team has decided to include an award show in this year’s ParDreamin’ conference.  We’re calling it the ParDreamies.  And yes, there will be crystal trophies.

About the ParDreamies, the first-ever Pardot awards

People do really cool stuff in Pardot, and we want to recognize them for it.

The ParDreamies Awards will honor Pardot community members for finding creative and thoughtful methods to reach business goals using the power of the Pardot platform.

Please consider submitting your work or nominating someone that you know that’s crushing it on the platform.  Here are the most important things to know:

Deadline to enter

You have to submit your entry before the deadline for a chance to win. The deadline for entering is October 15, 2021.

Eligibility 

The competition is open to all individuals, companies, and organizations involved in producing any marketing and communication materials utilizing the Pardot platform for external or internal audiences.

To be eligible, an entry must have been produced after January 1, 2020.

Entry Fee

The ParDreamies inaugural event is launching with FREE submissions.

Award categories

1: Personalization Perfection: Right-time, right-message marketing

2: Social Impact: Creating positive change through Pardot

3: Grassroots Innovation: Scaling small business with Pardot

4: Extending Pardot: API-driven solutions

All entries will also be submitted into the Best In Show category. See who will be crowned the overall winner of 2021.

When you’ll see the winners

We’ll announce the winners of the ParDreamies Awards during the VIP After Party taking place October 28, 2021 @ 4 p.m. ET – 6:30 p.m. ET.

Be sure to sign up for a VIP pass to ParDreamin’ so you can cheer for the winners during the live event!

Submit your entries for the Pardot Awards!

What better way to recognize a client or someone you know from the community who is crushing it? Or to celebrate your own hard-earned wins on the platform?

The entry form is quick and easy… so get yours in!

Original article: Celebrating the Success of Pardot Pros

©2025 The Spot. All Rights Reserved.

The post Celebrating the Success of Pardot Pros appeared first on The Spot.

Last week was ParDreamin’ 2020, the first Pardot specific conference ever. The event brought together 3600+ members of the Pardot community from 65 countries for 4 days of content. Day 1 hosted five deep dive paid workshops led by Sercante experts. The free portion of the event took place on days 2 – 4 and comprised over 40 different types of sessions, including keynotes, panels, breakouts and (we believe) the first Pardot demo jam ever. 

Community event

It has been a crazy year, but without its unique challenges ParDreamin’ may never have happened. We at Sercante were missing a sense of community and one of the places we often find it is at the Dreamin’ events.

We wanted to create a space for those connections and learnings again and end the year in a positive place. After all, it has been a transformative year for digital marketing and there’s always so much more to learn about Pardot. 

Keynote highlights

One of the best things about ParDreamin’ was how much positivity the speakers brought.

In the opening keynote Mike Kostow, SVP and GM of Salesforce Pardot, spoke with Carrie Pena from BuildOn and Gail Moody-Byrd from Noodle.ai about dealing with multiple crises at once and confronting problems that were never considered before. Both highlighted how their companies are using Pardot as a problem solving tool to forge connections that they previously would have made in person and relying on it for sharing information in an efficient and engaging way. They also talked about how Pardot can help bridge the gap between development, sales, and marketing teams, and prevent those groups from working in silos. 

Meeting your customers where they are

The importance of meeting your customer where they are was another big theme of ParDreamin’ and in the year 2020 we were reminded about the importance of bringing empathy to your marketing.

Jill Carpenter reminded us of this during the Marketing’s Role in Digital Transformation Panel when she said, “marketing is empathy for the consumer’s situation matched with whatever your company is offering.”

The panel members all talked about how the digital transformation offers new opportunities for marketers to expand the definition and role of marketing across the entire customer lifecycle.

2020 was also a lesson in the importance of breaking out of the mold. It’s very easy to rinse and repeat ideas in digital marketing, but it’s essential to try new things and not be afraid to fail.

Fireside chat with Salesforce team

Friday’s closing Keynote with Neha Shah, Director, Product Marketing at Salesforce and Meredith Brown, VP Product Management at Salesforce Pardot, discussed ABM and the Power of the platform and included a Fireside Chat with Adam Blitzer, EVP & GM, Salesforce Digital.

They all reflected on the things we’ve learned about digital marketing this year that will help us going forward. In Q1 of this year businesses were paralyzed and not taking any chances, and at first there was the concern that would continue into Q2 but the opposite actually ended up happening. Businesses began to realize the potential longevity of the pandemic situation and knew they had to act and act decisively.

The result was a huge amount of digital transformation crammed into a very small period of time. With no other way to get in touch with customers, companies had to amp up their digital presence and try new channels and techniques to foster connection. 

Digital transformation in 2020

As we enter the final stages of the pandemic and look to 2021, it is obvious that while some things will return to normal, other significant changes will be enduring. The myth that people would be unproductive while working from home has been disproven and companies are much more accustomed to it now. Consumer patterns have changed forever which means digital marketing has changed forever as well. This year forced everyone to look at their marketing differently and forced digital transformation to center stage and we think this is just the beginning of our ParDreamin’ conversations.

Check out our most popular breakout sessions:

Benchmark your Pardot database health – Matt Lincoln

A hands-on session where we look at key health metrics of your Pardot database, why they matter and follow along click-by-click to see the performance of your own org.

Video Recording

Deliverability vs. Mailability – Nightclub Guide for Pardot Marketers – Lucy Mazalon

Email deliverability is a universal challenge, or concern at the very least, for all marketers, however, it can become mixed up with another measure: mailability. In this talk, Lucy shares her favorite analogy for explaining the differences between deliverability and mailability: the upscale nightclub.

Video Recording

Leads in Salesforce: And why you may be doing it wrong – Erick Mahle

This session goes over the proper definition for the Leads object in Salesforce, what it’s there for, and discusses how it aligns with Pardot and a Lead Nurturing Process (including Marketing Qualified Leads and Sales Qualified Leads). 

Video Recording

11 Key Insights About the New Pardot Email Builder – Jen Kazin

What is the new Pardot Email Builder? How does it work? This session will teach you powerful and interesting tips that will give users a better experience.

Video Recording

How to Show Marketing’s Influence on Pipeline with Salesforce Campaigns – Ben LaMothe

This session gives an in depth look at campaign naming conventions, member status values, influence reporting in Pardot and Salesforce campaigns, campaign influence models in Salesforce, a demonstration of the Campaigns with Influenced Opportunities report type in Salesforce and a demonstration of how data can be used in a Salesforce dashboard effectively.

Video Recording

Designing Pardot and Salesforce solutions that track ROI off all your online channels – Kristina Alexandra 

This session tackles designing Pardot and Salesforce solutions to make sure you are working as efficiently as possible.

Video Recording

We want to say a final huge thank you to our sponsors, we couldn’t have done it without them! A few of them shared their final thoughts on ParDreamin’:

From Salesforce Pardot:

From Marketing Chats to #wherespardragon to ParDreamin’ together, we are so grateful for our Pardot Community. 

Special thank you to the ParDreamin’ community for helping raise funds for BuildOn to help build a school. 

From FormAssembly

FormAssembly had a great time interacting with attendees at the ParDreamin’ event! There was an abundance of great sessions to learn from along with an interactive chat area to mingle with others in the field. And we can’t forget our personal favorite – the demo jam! Overall, this event was a great way to virtually connect.

From Workato

The Workato team had a great time meeting other Pardot practitioners and sharing how users can leverage Pardot and other Martech stack to achieve successful metrics. Creating valuable connections and sharing insights with others in this field, is the reason ParDreamin’ is a huge highlight for our team.

In fact, Workato aims to empower marketing professionals to make their lives easier with integrations and workflow automations when using Pardot and the rest of your tech stack.

To allow marketers to enjoy the holidays without facing a backlog of tasks, on December 16th join RevOps leaders as they discuss how they’ve automated manual tasks which helped them stay up to date and prepare themselves to fully enjoy their holidays!

Register to get the secrets on how RevOps leaders are automating their tasks for the holiday here:https://bit.ly/36Q1Zk5 

From LeanData

ParDreamin’ reminded us that common to all B2B companies is the investment of an extraordinary amount of organizational resources – time, energy and money – into creating demand for products, solutions and services. However, in too many instances, go-to-market strategies to connect those buyers to revenue teams unravel into siloed efforts across Marketing, Sales, and Customer Success, leading to ineffective and inefficient processes, and a sub-optimal customer experience. 

Winning in the space requires seamless coordination among all go-to-market functions, and it all starts with leads and the pipeline, the very lifeblood of all revenue operations teams. Holistic lead management strategies require end-to-end processes that include consistent data cleansing and unification, effective campaign execution, timely and accurate data routing, actionable insights and meaningful performance metrics. Fortunately for today’s go-to-market professionals, technology stacks and automated solutions empower revenue teams to deploy customer-centric, customer-first motions and, in turn, drive increased productivity, optimized conversion and reduced time-to-revenue.

Did you attend ParDreamin’ 2020? We want to hear from you! Please take 5 minutes to take our survey to help us improve and deliver even better events to you in the future.

Ready for more Pardot? Sercante is hosting Mini Bootcamp: Pardot Basics Workshop

• January 18, 2021: 1pm – 5pm ET (US, East Coast)
• February 1, 2021: 1pm – 5pm GMT (UK)
• February 15, 2021: 11am – 2pm PM AEDT (APAC)

Learn more at sercante.com/pardot-training/

Original article: ParDreamin’ 2021 Recap

©2025 The Spot. All Rights Reserved.

The post ParDreamin’ 2021 Recap appeared first on The Spot.

Day 4 of ParDreamin’ kicked off today with a Demo Jam. Sercante’s own Celine Newsome and Mike Creuzer helped to lead us through 3-minute demos from our sponsors.

The demo jam was, to our knowledge, the first ever Pardot focused demo jam. The chat was rowdy and fast and everyone loved the “golden hook” for sponsors who went over! That’s right, we cut off those who went over!

Sercante was crowned winner by the attendees and we handed out Dragons to participants who chatted it up at the demo jam! It was a great, high energy session to start the 4th and final day of ParDreamin’!

Session Highlights

Demo Jam

Check out awesome demos from our sponsors including: 

Form Assembly: They took us through the power of Form Assembly with a great demo of the tool! 

Sercante Labs: Adam Erstelle from Sercante showed off 4 apps created and built by Sercante. Adam did it with just 2 seconds to go! He showed us the power of Automated Opportunity Contact Roles, Campaign Influence Starter Pack, Creuz Your Data, and Email to PDF for Pardot. 

Lean Data: Jay Vira took us through the Salesforce native tool that helps to route incoming leads and capitalize on fuzzy matching to get them to the right account and the best sales rep to support them and getting them enrolled in nurture programs to keep them engaged. Hot tip: it even integrates with Slack allowing you to Slack your reps and be sure your SLAs are met. Reporting eliminates the black box for admins! Jay made it through thanks to some forgiving judges, he went 1 second over! 

Speed to Lead from Workato: Integrate anything, automate everything! David Kreitter aspires to automate his job but took us through speed to lead. This allows us to route to sales rep, check to see if prospects exist in Salesforce, and alert the SDR through Slack notifications. The Slack bot is built on Workato. The tool integrates with Clearbit, Zoominfo and others. It also allows you to add leads to nurture programs. David finished up in 3 minutes flat! 

Qualified: Let’s you know when a decision maker is on your site through a conversational marketing platform. Sean Whitely takes us through the situation room in Qualified, shows us how to message our target account. He starts selling right on the website, switches to the phone, and sets a meeting with the AEs, and updates the Salesforce record RIGHT in Qualified! Sean got cut off because Demo Jams keep moving! 

Appinium: Steven Jacobson, CEO, of Appinium took over and talked us through how video data can flow into Salesforce to help us see not only how leads are converting but how they are learning and moving down the funnel. Steven shouted out Mike Creuzer for his help. Appinium has given away 6 months of Appinium FREE! Zero cost for Pardot, Sales Enablement, Implementation, and unlimited storage! 

And The 2020 ParDreamin’ Demo Jam Winners Are……

• Third Place: Form Assembly
• Second Place: Sean Whitely from Qualified
• First Place and Demo Jam Winner: Sercante

View Session Recording

Bad Data is the Plastic of the Marketing Ecosystem: How much should we pay to clean it up? 

Skip discussed the hidden cost of bad data and gave the attendees some simple techniques for identifying bad data, cleaning their database and keeping the bad data out in the first place. Interesting fact, 40% of session attendees said they had bad data in the session poll! 

The key takeaways were:

• Cost of bad data increases the cost of your sales team by 131%.
• Bad new lead data impacts sales trust in marketing.
• How to fix:
  • Completeness – does the field have the correct “parts” (ex. “@“ in email field)
  • Accuracy – is the data correct?
  • Consistency – is the data the same in every system?
  • Conformity – is tall of the data in standard and understandable formats?
  • Uniqueness – no duplicates in database
  • Integrity – is your data valid across all relationships? Is data mapped properly between Salesforce and Pardot?
  • Intention – will you ever sell to this record?
  • Timeliness – is the data available when you need it?
  •  Freshness – has the data gone by its sell by date? How are you keeping it update to date?

View Session Recording

Pardot Automation Rules to the Rescue

In this session, Thimuth Amarakoon, covered the need for Pardot Automation Rules and how Admins and Marketers can build customized processes using it. Thimuth had attendees take a step back and revisited the basics of automation to demonstrate the power of Pardot Automation Rules. 

Key Takeaways: 

• Use automation rules to custom score when dealing with large batches of third-party and imported prospects, both increase and decrease scores
• Use automation rules to bulk update prospect field values ie grouping country fields to populate region value 
• Use automation rules to clean up your data. Remember you can add actions like ‘do not sync with CRM’ to reduce bad data from going to sales. 
• Reminder to clean up your unused automation rules. You can set-up ‘inactive automation notifications’ to monitor running automation rules that have not matched any prospects within the past 30 days. 

View Session Recording

Snippets: Connected Campaigns Power Tool

Snippets are one of the best tools you can have in your Pardot/Salesforce org. With minimal planning and few prerequisites you can drive engagement with specific details that are maintained by stakeholders within your organization. Snippets can set your Pardot free from verifying details managed by others.

Key Takeaways:

• Snippets are an undiscovered gem when it comes to tools for your Pardot/Salesforce org
• Snippets provide visibility, accessibility, versatility and availability

View Session Recording

Deliver richer personalization leveraging Pardot and Interaction Studio

This session was a deep dive into how you can bring together Pardot and Interaction Studio to supercharge ABM experiences. Interaction studio helps you build anonymous and account based website personalization, provides the optimal next step to engage prospects and changes content dynamically to help you personalize your marketing content. The session includes a full demo of the solution.

View Session Recording

Key Takeaway: 

Interaction Studio and Engagement Studio work in parallel together to meet customer expectations (Interaction is more focused on customer and Engagement is focused more on brand).

View Session Recording

Pardot Sync Errors: Diagnosing, Solving, and Preventing them

When Pardot syncs with Salesforce life is good. When it doesn’t sync with Salesforce, life is bad. In this session, Lara Black showed attendees how to diagnose, treat, cure, and even prevent Pardot/Salesforce sync errors. She discussed common problems, solutions, and some fun Pardot tricks on how to make sure the records that are syncing with Salesforce are actually valuable, not just junk. 

Key Takeaway: 

Instead of spending hours manually cleaning records, automatically detect bad prospects and mark them as junk by using automation rules to run in realtime.  

View Session Recording

Content that Converts

Ashley talked about content that converts and how to build a nurture program. She covered the importance of personas, the three phases of the nurture funnel, what to do with personas once you have them, and she gives participants a handy checklist to use! 100% of emails need content created for them. That’s a lot of new copy! She discussed how to create content specific to KPIs and the funnels starting with the awareness phase and following best practices, like ensuring your CTA is above the fold. Using the buyer persona Ashley talked about using profiles, scoring categories, and segmenting. The session is wrapped with an engagement program build checklist. 

Key Takeaways: 

• Importance of persona development (keeping in mind they are still people)
• Three phases of the nurture funnel (awareness, consideration, decision) and how the emails correlate with each other, but keeping it at a basic level for those who may not be as familiar with engagement programs
• How to develop content for each phase and things to consider
• Possibility of tying profiles and personas together in Pardot
• A few key email takeaways and checks before you start your program/send your email

View Session Recording

The Future of Marketing is Conversational: Using Pardot + Conversational Marketing to Engage with Buyers in Real Time

During this session, Sean Whiteley highlighted how B2B companies are using Conversational Marketing technologies to convert leads at unprecedented rates by delivering highly-personalized experiences at scale. The old process of form fills and follow-up emails is now an obsolete way of connecting with buyers. By combining Conversational Marketing with other martech tools like Salesforce and Pardot, you can identify and engage high-intent visitors with real-time conversations directly on your website. You can even set up alerts so you never miss when a target account is browsing! Watch the on-demand session to get an inside look at the power of Conversational Marketing and why this movement is taking the B2B market by storm.

View Session Recording

Transform ABM with the Power of the Platform + Fireside Chat with Adam Blitzer

We wrapped up a fantastic 4-days of ParDreamin’ with our closing keynote. Neha Shah, Director, Product Marketing at Salesforce, talked about the power of the platform for ABM and how marketing transformation is not an option. We’ll see marketers double down on ABM because it’s successful. 80% of marketers say it improves customer lifetime value and 86% say it improves win rates. Customer 360 helps to connect sales, service, and commerce to help keep everything centered around your customer needs. 

Meredith Brown, VP Product Management at Salesforce Pardot talks about how Salesforce and Pardot helps you meet your customers where they are. Advertising Studio delivers relevant ads at the right time. Salesforce CMS serves as a way to provide dynamic content based on buyers needs. Interaction Studio serves up personalized web content, and Pardot delivers relevant and timely emails. Combining all of these tools helps align teams with the ABM strategy, and KPI tracking to give ROI. 

History of Pardot

Michael Kostow, SVP & GM, Salesforce Pardot, and Adam Blitzer, EVP & GM, Salesforce Digital, sat down for a fireside chat and talked about the origins of Pardot.

Pardot started in March 2007, and then went through multiple acquisitions. Pardot was built organically with about 150 employees when it was sold to Exact Target, which was then acquired by Salesforce in 2013.

Exact Target became the underpinning of Marketing Cloud, and Pardot became part of Sales Cloud. Now they are working together. Adam has worked on a variety of products including Marketing, Service, and Sales Cloud. Now he’s leading digital where he can talk about the digital journey and digital transformation as it sits just above the Cloud products.

Thriving from home

Adam talks about how we’ve continued to thrive as marketers while working from home and growing businesses online. Asked what’s next Adam suggested that marketers need to dive into the data and create the “golden record” for their customers. He also thinks omni-channel personalization is next so that you are always seeing the right thing no matter where you are.

Looking toward the future

To close out their chat, Michael asked Adam about Pardot and what he’s most excited about. Adam talked a lot about the community and how he’s most excited about the push into enterprise space with deep cloning of assets and campaigns as well as sandboxes to create a more sustainable environment.

He’s also excited about integrations and the work that has gone on to bring marketing into the platform including the new email editor. Adam also shared his love of the Peloton and the Pardot group, #KeepPardotWeird and join Adam at #judojew for your next ride! 

Conclusion

Thank you to everyone who joined ParDreamin’! Join us for encore sessions of our pre-conference workshops. We’ve included some time-zone friendly options and PARDRAGON will give 20% off. Register now at https://www.sercante.com/pardot-training/.

Original article: ParDreamin’ Day 4 Recap

©2025 The Spot. All Rights Reserved.

The post ParDreamin’ Day 4 Recap appeared first on The Spot.

ParDreamin’ sessions kicked off today bringing in over 3,400 people represented across 65 countries. Over the course of the week, we will hear from 58 speakers as they share their Pardot knowledge, telling stories how they utilize the tool to grow their business and keep up with the changes.

Session Highlights

Opening Keynote: Marketers Leading Through Change

Our keynote presenter, Michael Kostow, SVP and general manager of Salesforce Pardot, kicked things off to share how Salesforce is helping customers lead through change by leaning on Salesforce’s core values of Trust, Customer Success, Innovation, and Equality. Carrie Pena, BuildOn, and Gail Moody-Byrd, Noodle.ai, joined Michael Kostow to talk about their journey with Pardot and how it helped lead them through change.

View Recording

Pardot & EDA: Solutioning for Higher Ed

In this session, Michelle Littlefield, 8x Salesforce Certified & Solution Architect, reviewed how Pardot and the Salesforce Data Architecture can work together to bridge the gap between marketing and admissions teams. She discussed strategies for solutioning EDA with Pardot to ensure that segmentation goals can be achieved to establish just-in-time nurturing programs, and how native Pardot tools such as lead scoring and grading can set your recruiting and admissions teams up for greater success and increased yield.

• Lead Strategy: How to decide which architecture model is right for your institution. When thinking about to using leads & contacts or just contacts only, you need to think about what your volume looks like and what your process looks like.
• The Opportunity Object, USE IT! Using Opportunity, Application, and Affiliation Objects cohesively can be extremely effective. Why? You can then use this data for segmentation and automation inside of Pardot.
• Customer Object Integration, consider it. Why? Some of the most valuable information in the recruiting and admissions process lives on the Application object. This data can be used in segmentation, lead scoring & grading, and is likely desired as dynamic content. Pardot cannot see this data without Custom Object Integration.
• Cohesive Solutioning, Gotta have it. Given the challenges in segmentation, and because we know that Pardot can’t see some valuable information on EDA child object, implement automation around your student lifecycle to ensure your records are always aligned at the Contact level for access in Pardot.
• View Session Recording

More than Martech: Wall-to-Wall Automation

Sara McNamara, David Kreitter, and Mike Creuzer took us on a technical journey as they explored how integrating teams & tools can increase the impact your team is making and the visibility you are earning across your business.

• Account Based Marketing. How can we enable easy-to-maintain target account identification in Pardot without a major ABM platform? You might have tools that have native connections that aren’t giving you everything you want, there are ways to dig deeper into the code to connect what you need to give you more powerful ABM data in your platform.
• “Increase speed to lead” by utilizing tools, like Slack, to send out alerts on contact forms or other activities with all the information from Salesforce. Bonus points, you can accept or deny leads, assign leads, and more in Slack directly by integrating Salesforce directly.
• View Session Recording

Syncing Salesforce Custom Objects with Pardot

In this session, Dan Umbro, 3x Salesforce Certified & Co-leader of NH Pardot User Group, took a dive into syncing salesforce custom objects with Pardot.

• Standard Salesforce objects still count as Pardot custom objects.
• So, Pardot Custom objects are any Salesforce standard object that doesn’t natively connect. Pardot natively connects with Leads, Contacts, Campaigns, Campaign Members, Accounts, Opportunities, Tasks, and Users. Worth mentioning again, not all of those are bi-directional syncs as we discussed previously.
• Pardot Custom Objects would be considered any true Salesforce Custom Object or any Salesforce Standard Object that isn’t native to Pardot. So, any standard object not listed to the left.
• View Session Recording

11 Key Insights About the New Pardot Email Builder

Everyone was excited, as Jen Kazin gave attendees an interactive demo of the new Email Builder. Jen reviewed the basics of the builder as well as gave attendees key insights on how to get more out of this impressive, new functionality.

• Pardot users have been clamoring for a more flexible, drop-and-drag, email editor and Salesforce has responded.
• The new Lightning email builder rolled out in October and is now available in all Pardot versions. However, you must have Pardot Lightning, Connected Campaigns, and HML enabled to use it.
• This is the first release of the email builder and it only supports list emails at the moment. It is not available for Engagement Studio, automation rules or Salesforce Engage at the moment. It also does not support snippets, A/B tests, dynamic content, Litmus, or brand styling – yet. It includes some new features like an “Undo” button, sharing across multiple business units, the ability to send the same email multiple times, and a Content Delivery network to efficiently deliver emails at scale.
• You can use the new Email Builder and traditional builder simultaneously, so it’s definitely worth setting up to get a look at current capabilities and get a look into this new experience.
• View Session Recording

Full Funnel Marketing

In this session, Auseh Britt, VP of Growth Marketing at Terminus, talked about the importance of focusing on the entire funnel and shared tips and tactics to help create more opportunities, accelerate deal cycles, and maintaining and growing customers.

• Full funnel is even more important now than ever. We have new tools and capabilities that make this even more actionable.
• Link to State of ABM Report
• View Session Recording

Closing Keynote: Marketing’s Role in Digital Transformation Panel

Andrea Tarrell was joined by panelists Natasha Wetten, Liam Taylor and Jill Carpenter to discuss the unique environment marketing teams are living in due to the current climate. Panelists discussed how digital transformation offers new opportunities for marketers to expand the definition and role of marketing across the entire customer lifecycle, offered tips for articulating the importance of marketing’s role, and shouted out some of their favorite tools. It’s important to really understand the role of marketing in your business and in the client’s journey, to ensure you are leveraging your tools to their full capacity and getting the most out of your data.

• Break out of the mold – it’s very easy to rinse and repeat marketing cycles, but you have to roll up your sleeves, try new things and not be afraid to fail.
• Do your homework – when trying to get higher-ups to support your marketing initiatives, make sure you’ve done some research and can outline all the potential benefits of the changes you are suggesting.
• Ownership. Ownership. Ownership.
• Look at the big picture – As Jill so eloquently said, “Marketing is empathy for the consumer’s situation matched with whatever your company is offering” so remember to look at how marketing touches every part of the customer journey. If it’s not clear to you how marketing touches an area of the customer journey then that’s an area you should be focusing on to figure out how marketing can be infused.
• When it comes to tools, it’s quality not quantity.
• View Session Recording

There are still two days jam-packed full of amazing sessions. If you have not yet registered, don’t worry, we saved you a seat. You can head over to Pardreamin’ website to register and join in on the upcoming sessions as well as access recordings to the past sessions.

Original article: ParDreamin’ Day 2 Recap

©2025 The Spot. All Rights Reserved.

The post ParDreamin’ Day 2 Recap appeared first on The Spot.