On April 6th, Salesforce changed the name of their B2B marketing automation tool, Pardot, to Marketing Cloud Account Engagement. You may be familiar with Marketing Cloud, Salesforce’s B2C digital marketing automation and analytics software. We’ll take a look at the “why” behind the big name change, and look at a few other new name changes as well.
All Name Changes
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- Salesforce CDP → Customer Data Platform
- Interaction Studio → Personalization
- Email, Mobile, Ad, Journey Studios → Engagement
- Pardot → Account Engagement
- Datorama → Intelligence
The “Why”
With these name changes, Salesforce is making Marketing Cloud more consistent and more understandable to marketers looking at the entire platform. It’s not just name changes either, Salesforce is continuing to integrate with these best-of-breed technologies, making their CRM even more powerful than before.
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- Aligning with the marketer’s language – Salesforce has aligned its Marketing Cloud products with terms that marketers use in their day-to-day activities to help make their values easier to understand. For example, “many marketers are looking for the capability and value of real-time Personalization, not an ‘Interaction Studio’” (Salesforce). Marketing Cloud’s previous naming convention came from add-ons that have been acquired by Salesforce and kept their original name.
- Continued unification – Salesforce’s unified platform is one reason it’s the #1 CRM. This renaming further shows users that Salesforce continues to integrate best-of-breed technology within their system. Products are continuing to receive advanced integrations within each other, giving users access to quality data and technology they’ve never had before.
- Future enhancements – These changes create new pathways down Salesforce’s product roadmap. Recently, Marketing Cloud added WhatsApp and Snapchat for advertising, targeting, messaging, and more. Integrations like these continue to be made, as the marketer’s strategy changes frequently.
Takeaways
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- Blending B2B and B2C – Pardot has always been labeled as the B2B marketing automation tool, whereas Marketing Cloud is for B2C marketing. Recently, B2B and B2C marketing have never been closer than before, overlapping in many buying qualities and strategies. With the recent trend of B2B and B2C blending, this takes another step in the right direction.
- No Account Access – One of the most frequently asked questions since the name change has been “does Account Engagement (Pardot) now have more than read-only access to Account objects”? Currently, Account Engagement still only has bi-directional updates with the Lead and Contact objects within Salesforce. Nothing in Salesforce’s current roadmaps state otherwise, but this could be the beginning of that process!
- Some things stay the same – Most things are staying the same, especially underneath the Account Engagement hood:
- Pricing and packages
- SKU names on your Salesforce contract
- Features and functionality
Pardot’s name change to Marketing Cloud Account Engagement is a big deal, but don’t forget all of the other name changes listed earlier. As Salesforce continues to integrate its products even more than before, these names should stay. For now, how do we best say the new name after knowing it as Pardot since 2007? Marketing Cloud Account Engagement Engagement Studios doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue as Pardot Engagement Studios does. Account Engagement? MCAE? That’s for us to decide and have fun with. The new “Pardashian” term is just around the corner!
Salesforce’s full article on Marketing Cloud’s name changes.
