Salesforce’s Marketing Cloud Account Engagement (Pardot) Winter ‘24 Release – What’s New?

Winter is coming!

And so is Salesforce’s Marketing Cloud Account Engagement (Pardot) Winter ‘24 release.

In the Winter ‘24 release, there’s a new feature added to Engagement Studio and improvements to the API. With improvements to APIs, more solutions can be created, and these solutions can be made live.

There are other exciting features in this update. For instance, you’ll be able to control how Account Engagement assets like forms and landing pages are shown on other websites.

Moreover, you can also make Engagement Programs with more precise waiting times and improve the health of your instance by getting rid of old visitor records that didn’t turn into leads.

Our experts explored this release’s potential and they’ve mentioned top 7 highlights. Let’s explore these highlights that the Account Engagement (Pardot) Winter ‘24 has in store for you!

Salesforce’s Marketing Cloud Account Engagement (Pardot) Winter ‘24 Release: Top 7 Highlights

Before we dive into the top 7 Salesforce’s Marketing Cloud Account Engagement (Pardot) Winter ‘24 release highlights note that:

Salesforce initiated a series of updates to all Salesforce instances on September 1, and this update process will continue until October 13.

Now, let’s check the top 7 highlights.

Highlight #1 – Customize Prospect Wait Times in Engagement Studio

Marketers have been waiting a long time for this feature to arrive. And now, it’s finally here. In the Winter ‘24 release, prospects can now wait in the Engagement Studio Program step from 2 to 8 hours. Previously, you could either wait for a certain number of days or go immediately.

In Engagement Studio, wait times have specific rules. However, with this update, marketers will have more choices in how their leads/prospects move through Engagement Studio programs. This is really useful if you want to wait for other processes to finish before going to the next steps or before connecting the Prospect to Salesforce.

For example, you can decide when to send emails to your audience in different time zones. Let’s say your audience is in two time zones – one set of them in the UK and the others in Europe. With this new feature, you can make one group of emails wait for a set amount of time, while sending out email to the other group immediately.

Highlight #2 – Track Prospect Changes Using Histogram

The Account Engagement Optimizer is a tool that helps you see how well different parts of your business are doing. Now, the Account Engagement Optimizer has a new feature called ‘histogram’ – a graph that shows trend frequency over time. With the histogram, you can quickly see and understand changes to your business and use filters to look at specific information.

Prospect Change Monitor histogram will let you see trends for specific things or for everything happening in your business. Salesforce will share more details about this soon!

Highlight #3 – Transfer Sandbox Assets to Production Flow Seamlessly

Using API Version 5, you can move Account Engagement Sandbox assets to Account Engagement Production. This means you can push assets you made in the sandboxes to the production area without having to rebuild them again. Easy breezy, right? Additionally, you’ll be given an example to help you make your own custom copy flows.

Note: With API Version 5 for Flow, you can easily copy marketing assets between business units or from sandbox to production business units using Salesforce Flow. This way, you don’t need to create everything again from scratch.

Highlight #4 – Assess Email Templates With Invalid Senders

From now on, you won’t be able to send an Account Engagement email if the sender’s email domain is not verified. This will help you to safeguard your sender reputation and identify which email templates currently have invalid senders, so you can easily fix them.

If you want to keep using a design, you need to use a different sender address or make sure the sending domain is confirmed.

Highlight #5 – Reinstate Paused Leads by Deleting Their Records

We all know how the actions of potential customers can quickly add up. When potential customers take action, their ‘score’ goes up, which leads to automated actions happening without meaning to.

Account Engagement temporarily pauses prospects if high activity levels as it affects the instance’s performance. With the latest update, if there’s a valuable prospect who is currently paused, you can reactivate them by removing their past actions. You just need to pick a date, and the instance will erase all the actions the prospect took before that date.

When enough actions are removed, Account Engagement will start keeping track of that prospect’s actions again.

Highlight #6 – Limit Iframing of Account Engagement Assets to Specific Domains

In the new Winter ‘24 release, you can control where your Account Engagement assets, like forms and landing pages, can be iframed on, or limit iframing assets all at once. You can make sure these things are only shown on websites you own, not on other websites. Starting from the Winter ‘24 update, new sections of your business will automatically have this iframe setting turned on.

You can choose to completely stop using iframes, only allow iframes for certain websites, or have no restrictions from your Business Unit settings.

Highlight #7 – Eliminate Unconverted Visitor Activity Records

You can optimize the performance of your Account Management instance by deleting old visitor information that didn’t convert to potential customers. To do this, use the new ‘Stale Unconverted Visitors’ option in your Business Unit Settings. This will help you automatically delete visitor records that are more than a year old (365 days) and didn’t turn into prospects.

A Quick Roundup

Salesforce’s Marketing Cloud Account Engagement Winter ‘24 release aims to help markets supercharge their marketing activities and fix bugs within the instance.

Moreover, the new features and updates of Account Engagement Winter ‘24 release, such as prospect pausing and restoration, will help you to optimize your campaigns and focus your resources on the most engaged prospects. You can identify a paused prospect who is important to your business and deliver a faster, more personalized experience to them.

As this new version is still in its preview stage, these features and updates won’t be ready for everyone to use until October 13.

Want to Know More About Marketing Cloud Account Engagement Winter ‘24 Release Updates? Talk to Us!