A little while ago now Salesforce released as a part of the Winter 21 update the Lighting Builder, the all new WISIWIG editor for Pardot. This feature was met with open arms as the classic builder hasn’t seen any major updates for quite a few years now, enabling other vendors to take the lead on features and usability.
It’s very easy to be caught in the shining light of a new feature but due to it being a developing feature, customers will not yet be running to use it yet for all campaign execution.
As most of us know, within Pardot there are a few methods of sending communications:
- Engagement Studio
- List Emails
- Automation Rules
- Completion Actions
The methods you choose above is obviously dependant upon the need, however with Pardot being an intelligent engagement platform we would typically side with the use of the Engagement Studio in order to support in executing the majority of your campaign strategy.
What can I currently use the Lightning builder for?
List emails – The new three step process of building, testing and sending has been streamlined and looks fantastic. Please take into account however the following considerations due to the infancy of this editor:
- Dynamic Content is not supported
- A/B testing is not supported
- Restricted ability to access the entire emails HTML without going through the template
- Litmus rendering is not a part of the testing process
If you haven’t yet seen the new builder, here is a snapshot of the steps:
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What does this mean for the other methods?
Emails developed in the new builder cannot be used in Engagement Studios, for Automation Rules or Completion Actions. This means you would still need to use the dedicated Pardot App, so be aware of this as you would need to access two different platforms should you choose to use the new editor for single sends. It’s in the Salesforce development roadmap to support the other methods however at this time we don’t know when…
Any other considerations I should know about?
- You cannot port across your templates from the classic builder, they must be built from scratch to utilise the available functionality
- The Lightning builder, as you guessed it, is only available in Salesforce Lightning
- If you use the Salesforce CMS, in the lightning builder you can now access the repository for images, meaning you no longer need to manage the inbuilt files area of Pardot that has a storage limit
- You cannot access the Lightning builder in the standalone Pardot app, it must be in Salesforce
- Connected Campaigns must be enabled to use the new builder
To round up, this is a fantastic move in the right direction but isn’t something customers will be jumping into straight for all campaign execution. On the other hand, for more tactical communications the new Lightning builder and send process will enable you to be more efficient with your use of templates and take advantage of the simple build process all directly within CRM.
