Pardot Spring 2024 Release

Salesforce have communicated the pre-release notes for their Pardot (Marketing Cloud Account Engagement) Spring 2024 Release. As usual, these features will be added to the platform in phases on January 12th, February 2nd and February 9th (all Fridays). We don't know exactly which features will be released on each date yet, but almost everything should be available by mid-February. Here’s a short summary of what's coming:

The [NEW] New Email Builder

What is it?

This is an upgrade on the Lightning builder that was released a couple of years ago, which it seems Salesforce weren’t entirely happy with. So we can expect an updated version of the drag-and-drop editor coming to the platform. Details are a little sparse right now on exactly what is changing, but if you are currently using the Lightning builder you will have the new experience available to use. I’ll update this post as soon as we know more!

Who does this impact? Customers using all editions of Pardot.

Note: This is listed as releasing "in the weeks following the Spring '24 Release", so may be slightly later than mid-February.

Einstein Assistant and Generative AI

What is it?

In a surprise twist that I'm sure none of us saw coming (😁), Salesforce have added an AI assistant to Pardot. This co-pilot will be able to turn your text input into assets. This first release version is able to quickly create Forms, Landing Pages, Email Body Copy and Subject Lines from your text prompts!

Who does this impact? Advanced/Premium Editions of Pardot, or Lightning Experience users in Enterprise, Unlimited and Performance Editions.

[More] Sending Domain Updates

What is it?

Yet more security updates, this time prompted by spam-filtering changes in Gmail and Yahoo. Sending Domains for emails are now required to have a verified DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM) record. Many Pardot customers are likely to have this sorted as there were changes along these lines earlier in 2023, but will be one to keep an eye on - it’s likely that if you don’t have this configured, you will get an error message at the top of your dashboard when you log in. If a sending domain does not have a verified DKIM record after this update then emails sent from the Pardot instance are quite likely to be detected as spam.

Who does it impact? Customers using all editions of Pardot.

Data Cloud Connector Improvements

What is it?

Earlier this year, Pardot was updated to have a connector integration to Salesforce's Customer Data Platform (CDP), Data Cloud. They are now extending this connector so that Pardot can not only share field data from Prospect records, but also Email Engagement data, to add to the unified picture that Data Cloud can resolve for a person. This may not mean much to many Pardot customers at the moment but will become more prevalent with adoption of CDP technologies in the near future.

Who does it impact? Customers using all editions of Pardot.

X (Twitter) Connector Has Been Retired

What is it?

Technically this one has happened already (October 31st 2023). The Twitter connector has been retired so posting and engagement metric reporting is no longer natively possible in Pardot. This is due to Twitter changing access to its public API's, so a simple solution is yet to be found for a replacement.

Who does it impact? Customers using all editions of Pardot.

Note: Technically, these are all beta features that Salesforce always state may or may not actually make it to the final update. As the update schedule is so close to these release notes, it's always likely that most (if not all) of these features will make it in, but there are no guarantees!

 

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