Summer ‘24 Release Highlights: Marketing Cloud Account Engagement

You don’t want to miss these!

We look to the clear blue sea as Trailblazers prepare themselves to enjoy some awesome waves, cool waters, and hot summer skies. We take off our flip-flops and jump into the pool to cool down as the heat carries us through the night. Let’s pour some ice and crack open our favorite drink to help us break down some of the highlights coming with this Summer ’24 Release.

In today’s Release Highlights post, we will take a look at some of the new and exciting updates, upgrades, and features that are headed to Marketing Cloud Account Engagement (a.k.a Pardot)!

Send Operational Emails Directly from Engagement Studio

Enjoy automating programs to engage with prospects that help establish personal communications to nurture leads? Building a visual journey with triggers based on behavior and optimizing along the way is what using Engagement Studio is all about. Before this update, Pardot (a.k.a Account Engagement) required the use of Automation Rules or Completion Actions through list emails to send transactional or critical messages to prospects. The use of Engagement Studio to send operational emails was not typical or possible due to compliance and deliverability limitations.

These simple yet valuable messages help relay necessary information that is not targeted for marketing purposes but for more specific purposes such as order confirmations, password resets, or subscription confirmations to name a few. Now, with this update, you can have prospects within Engagement Studio, Opted-Out or not, be sent operational emails to ensure critical or necessary information is delivered at all times.

This change will take effect for all editions of Marketing Cloud Account Engagement.

Use CMS Workspaces To Save Digital Content

If you are either a content manager or content administrator then this update, may be worth a glance. If you are or plan to use experience sites to create, manage, and deliver personalized content for your partners, customers, or clients then leveraging a content management system is something Salesforce recommends.

This update, or more of like a reminder, is to ensure content managers and administrators are leveraging one of Salesforce's existing features. Previously known as CMS Workspaces, you can now find it within “Setup” by typing in Digital Experiences. From here, enable it and create a site to get started. Then access their Digital Experiences App by using the waffle icon on the top left-hand corner of your Org and searching for “Digital Experiences”. Create, upload, and manage content for all your publishing sources from this central location.

Standardize the look and feel of your content, set up users and permissions, utilize collaboration tools, and integrate existing data within your Org(s) by using this CMS. If your Org is using Marketing Cloud Account Engagement Growth Edition and has just enabled Data Cloud, then this feature may be something to consider.

Say “Goodbye” to the ‘Engage for Gmail’ Chrome Extension

This Chrome Extension offered features like email tracking, scheduling, and follow-up reminders. With Engage, you could be notified when emails were opened and links were clicked, identify the best times to send and receive emails, or be reminded when to follow up on important conversations.

The Manifest V2 (Google’s structure and functionality to Chrome Extensions) is being retired and replaced with Manifest V3 which introduces new security protocols and the end for ad blockers. These changes included within this update apply to all Marketing Cloud Account Engagement editions.

For the time being, we encourage you to work with your system Admin to begin a transition plan to shift away from this advertising product and transition to either a Google Partners Program or something else. You may want to consider integrating Google Ads within Pardot or Utilizing Google Analytics as an alternative.

Conclusion

Be sure to tune in to our Release Highlights for the latest changes coming to an Org near you. And while you are at it, comment on what Summer ’24 Release features and functionality got you moving and excited this time around.

Until next time keep working hard, smart, and happy. And we’ll see you in the cloud!