Salesforce recently released the Summer 2024 Release Notes for Marketing Cloud Account Engagement (MCAE - and formerly 'Pardot'). Compared to previous releases it's pretty light on the ground, with five core updates included bullet points, but it's always worth staying on top of these things before they hit your instance!
The full release notes can be found on the Salesforce Help Centre, but for ease I've included them here in this blog along with who each update will impact and what it means for your marketing team and operations.
If you're in a rush, here are the headlines:
⭕ We can now send Operational Emails in the Engagement Studio!
⭕ Optimizer will now show alerts for recommendations
⭕ Engage for Gmail Chrome Extension will be retired in June
⭕ New features have been added to the API (we can make landing pages now!)
⭕ If you're using Data Cloud with MCAE Growth, you can now transfer image files directly from MCAE to your Data Cloud's related CMS
Now for the details...
Engagement Studios can now send Operational Emails
Who does this impact?
All versions of MCAE.
What does this mean?
Here's the big one! A much-requested feature has finally been released and we're getting the ability to send Operational Emails in the Engagement Studio.
If that phrase isn't jogging any memories for you, Operational Emails are non-marketing emails that contain important information that is not advertising a product or service. These emails are usually used to deliver technical information such as changes to Privacy Policy, alterations to Pricing structures or sign-up confirmation emails. As operational emails are non-marketing and should contain only essential information, they bypass opt-out status and will deliver to everyone on the mailing list regardless of if they've unsubscribed.
Of course this is a potential consent minefield, so until now these have only been able to be sent as List Emails by somebody with the Administrator role in MCAE. However, this has often been limiting when building event or webinar sign-up journeys in the Engagement Studio. Until this point, emails sent from an Engagement Studio have always been considered commercial, meaning they always respect a Prospect's opt-out status. This has often been a source of frustration as if an opted-out Prospect signs up for the webinar they would not be able to receive the reminders and follow-up emails for the event, even though they need the information.
With this new feature, we can mark these non-marketing reminder emails as operational, so that even opted out Prospects can receive the relevant information around an event they've registered for. Opted Out Prospects will receive the reminders for events they've signed up to, but they won't need to opt back in to do so, which is a great change!
You can read further about this change by clicking here.
New Alerts in Optimizer
Who does this impact?
All versions of MCAE.
What does this mean?
If you're not familiar with the Optimizer, I covered it previously on a webinar (click on the webinar recording link in the blog and go to the 9-minute mark to revisit this). This tool has been incredibly useful in helping marketers to fix issues in their MCAE instance. It appears we're getting a new section in the Optimizer that actually alerts you to recommended changes, rather than needing to go and check yourself!
You can read the full notes for this change here.
Engage for Gmail Chrome Extension Is Being Retired
Who does this impact?
All versions of MCAE.
What does this mean?
Google has made the decision to retire Manifest V2 Chrome extensions, which the (Salesforce) Engage for Gmail extension was built on. This means that any of your Sales team who are currently using the extension to send Salesforce Engage emails will be losing this functionality in June.
It doesn't seem like there's an immediate alternative coming for this, so Salesforce are recommending working on a transition plan to using Account Engagement Sales Email & Alerts feature.
You can find the full notes for this change here.
API Changes
Who does this impact?
All versions of MCAE.
What does this mean?
This one is for all my fellow MCAE developers, we now have the ability to create Landing Pages using the API, which is a nice change as previously all we could do was create layout templates and then we had to create the page in the interface.
They've also made improvements to the data export process via the API and the Bulk Asset Copy flows now supports forms.
You can find the full notes for these changes here.
Copy Images to a Salesforce CMS (Content Management System) Workspace
Who does this impact?
Anyone with the Growth edition of MCAE, with Data Cloud enabled.
What does this mean?
Simply, anyone who has taken the leap and started using Data Cloud (Salesforce's Customer Data Platform) can now easily move their images stored in MCAE across to their Salesforce CMS environment. This will be a nice change for many as previously images had to be downloaded from MCAE and re-uploaded to CMS - so this will be a big time saver.
You can find the full notes for these changes here.
As always, Salesforce state that these notes are technically a preview and that the features may not arrive exactly as described, on time, or at all, but this is just a caveat so expect all of these features to go live as described. These updates will be sprinkled into your MCAE instance over the following 3 release dates: 17th May, 7th June and 14th June, so don't be alarmed if you don't see all of these right away - they should all be in by the middle of June.
Read about these release notes from Salesforce at their Help Centre, here.
Learn Account Engagement (Pardot) with Clevertouch
If you have any questions about these platform updates, please don't hesitate to get in touch. Our Training and Enablement team also have a number of Account Engagement (Pardot) training courses available to suit your needs, contact us or connect with us on LinkedIn if you're interested in finding out more.