MCAE Product Roadmap, Summer 22 Release

Change is echoing throughout the Pardot - I mean Marketing Cloud Account Engagement - ecosystem, but with an exciting product roadmap through Summer 2022 and beyond, marketers still have plenty of reasons to keep up with the Pardashians.

In this blog post, we’ll be exploring some of these scintillating upcoming features and enhancements, with a little commentary on why we’re so excited to use these in practice. Feel free to skip ahead using the links below…

Enhancements and upgrades

• Business Units
• Drag-and-drop builders
• External activities
• Advanced Slack integration
• Automated setup and onboarding
• Tracking and consent enhancements

Brand new MCAE features

• Conditional Completion Actions
• Wait steps of less than one day
• Customised User notifications
• Einstein just got smarter
• Advanced email metrics

Product roadmap webinar

While there have been whisperings of some of these new features for some time, many of the insights in this blog post are from the recent Account Engagement Product Roadmap’ webinar, delivered by Alex Anderton, Regional Sales Director for MCAE, and Nicki Iverson, Lead Solution Engineer for MCAE.

This webinar did a nice job of recapping the recently introduced Pardot features, which put into context some of the enhancements Salesforce has been making to its drag-and-drop builders, as well as smoother integrations made possible by use of API5.

Enhancements and upgrades

Business Units

Marketers are embracing the ability to segment their MCAE org into several standalone databases using Business Units, but this has proven restrictive and can result in some headscratchers around asset management and Prospect tracking.

Business Units are set for an overhaul that will make it easy to:

• Track a single website across multiple BUs
• Manage/copy assets from one BU to another, such as Engagement Studio Programs
• Configure BUs centrally, such as creating a custom field just once for several BUs

Drag-and-drop builders

MCAE’s Landing Page and Email builders put the power of design into the hands of a no-code marketer, and new enhancements are set to take these platforms even further:

Landing page builder

• Improved form styling in the builder
• Easily include custom code, such as analytics and tag manager scripts
• More control over unpublished pages, such as being able to apply 301 redirects

Email builder

• Create more-engaging email templates with more custom components, such as data tables, YouTube Webinar Picklists, Calendar Event picklists
• Use drag-and-drop builder emails in all automations
• Customise URLs in automated emails to match brands

We’re also set to enjoy smoother and faster asset creation with classy touches such as better quick-start templates, branding design kits, and easy plain-text email creation.

Gulbiz Croasdale, Technical Specialist at MarCloud

“Branding design kits in MCAE will help ensure the look and feel of marketing assets stays consistent across the company, and everything is on-brand by default.”

Lightning Email Templates will also now be made available inside Salesforce Engage. Sales can be given access to private template folders, where pre-defined styling and messaging will allow marketers to control look and feel while empowering Sales with the right assets at the right time.

External activities

Using data points from third-party applications was made a whole lot more realistic with the introduction of External Activities, and soon marketers will be able to not only call from, but call out to external platforms in automations. 

For example, a step in your Engagement Studio Program could be to register a Prospect for a webinar on an external platform. This will also make it much easier to integrate with solutions on the Salesforce AppExchange.

Advanced Slack integration

Slack integration can be useful for both alerting marketers of key Prospect activity, and setting up sales with everything they need to move forward. We will soon be able to lean on Slack to build customised notifications for Sales execs, a much-sought-after feature for sales enablement in digital teams.

Slack for B2B marketers

• Receive real-time marketing notifications
• Share campaign performance across teams and channels with ease

Slack for Sales teams

• Notify channels in real-time
• Customise and tailor notifications
• Easily track where notifications are used

Automated setup and onboarding

A smooth Pardot implementation not only results in a happy end user, but also frees up time for Consultants to work on enhancements to the org. With new guided setup steps, where previously time-consuming processes are now being streamlined and automated, we’ll soon be able to eliminate things such as manual data imports, and have a one-stop shop for User management.

Tracking and consent enhancements

As well as being able to track the same domain over multiple BUs, we’ll also soon be able to honor the Prospect’s Global Privacy Preferences, which will be recorded via the GPC browser signal. We’ll also benefit from better understanding of anonymous engagement patterns - to monitor total engagement across marketing campaigns.

Delphine Tsiranana, Solutions Architect at MarCloud

“Users of Experience Cloud (formally Community Cloud) may find this somewhat familiar, as it seems MCAE is taking inspiration from the platform’s Tracking and Cookie Consent mechanisms. Good news for the user, as these have been working very well.”

Brand new MCAE features

And if those platform enhancements weren’t enough to excite you, there’s a bunch of brand new features that us marketers have been calling out for - and we can’t wait to use!

Conditional Completion Actions

We’re now able to add conditional logic to forms and other automations that previously wouldn’t have been possible, using field value data to determine the appropriate completion action. In practice, this enables you to take specific, tailored actions based on how a Prospect fills in a form, as opposed to relying on separate automations or even Salesforce flows to pick up the slack.

Carl Mortimer, Functional Consultant at MarCloud

“What’s your favourite new feature, and why is it Conditional Completion Actions?! This is set to transform everything from sales routing via form completion actions, to data enrichment, to enabling very tailored nurture campaigns. Roll on Summer 22!”

Wait steps of less than one day

Engagement Studio veterans will no doubt be screaming out for wait steps of less than one day, and they’re finally set to be introduced in Summer 22. 

The use-cases are plentiful, but being able to set up a welcome email series or tailored set of transactional emails using wait steps of hours, instead of days, can be a real difference maker in the world of customer engagement.

Customised User notifications

What good is a sturdy inbound lead process if notifications to Sales team members aren’t insightful? With this new feature, you can customise the alert that an assigned or specified User will receive, giving them actionable information as well as that all-important context on how to move forward.

Einstein just got smarter

Einstein is the all-powerful in the world of Salesforce, and these new features are set to transform not only the way we can tailor customer journeys based on their patterns of behaviour, but also report back on our successes.

Einstein Key Account Identification

We’ll soon be able to Leverage Account Tier’ in automations and workflows, such as engagement studio, to aid with targeted ABM campaigns.

Einstein Engagement Frequency

A brilliant new metric available via Einstein, this intelligent frequency status gives you visibility on who is receiving too much, too little, or just the right amount of email comms. You can then use this in automations to customise audiences based on frequency status.

Enhanced Einstein Attribution

While the old model was based on opportunity, this new attribution model measures revenue impact based on Accounts. You’re also able to fine-tune the other attribution models through additional configuration.

Advanced email metrics

We’ll soon be armed with additional metrics outside the norm leaning on the new reporting module from Einstein Send Time Optimisation.

We’ll also be armed with an Email Bounce Report, a daily operational report giving greater insights into bounces - identify who bounced, why, and take immediate action to mitigate any risk.

We’re incredibly excited to start using these new MCAE features and enhancements from June 2022 onwards. If you’d like more information about anything I’ve mentioned, drop a quick message and we’ll gladly talk you through it!