Pardot is Renamed Marketing Cloud Account Engagement

It's official, Salesforce is scrapping the name ‘Pardot' and renaming the platform ‘Marketing Cloud Account Engagement'. This is a big change and quite an emotional one for the Pardot community who have forever felt like the fringe marketing automation-ers who own the platform with the weird product name (it means to sell’ in Latvian). Yes, you do pronounce the t’.

But why the change?

More often than not, change is good, and I think this one will be particularly beneficial for Pardot users. In this blog I’ll explain more about why I think this is a good move for Salesforce, and what it means for you and your team using the platform.

List of name changes

Here's a list of what is before and what is now:

• Salesforce CDP is now Marketing Cloud Customer Data Platform
• Interaction Studio is now Marketing Cloud Personalization
• Email Studio, Mobile Studio, Advertising Studio and Journey Builder as a package (basically what ExactTarget was) is being referred to as Marketing Cloud Engagement
• Datorama is now Intelligence
• And of course, Pardot is now Marketing Cloud Account Engagement

Why change the name of Pardot?

Moving forward, there will be little room for pronunciation errors as Pardot is no more. Marketing Cloud Account Engagement is the new name and I already want to just call it MCAE or MarCloud Account Engagement. 

For years, Salesforce has been planning how to best position Pardot and often found themselves having to explain why it doesn’t directly compete with Marketing Cloud, which will be renamed ‘Marketing Cloud Engagement'. Often, the two have been siloed into B2B and B2C platforms, but this differentiation isn't clear-cut, with businesses choosing to use the platform most suited to the length and complexity of their sales cycle, rather than having a business or consumer audience. 

Salesforce is the first to acknowledge that the vocabulary and names used for the various products they've acquired over the years have led to confusion amongst users.

It’s now clear that Pardot will be brought under the Marketing Cloud’ umbrella as part of the brand's “new Marketing Cloud vision and vocabulary“. As Salesforce puts it:

The new names are aligned with our strategy to continually integrate Marketing Cloud into one unified platform with a data-first strategy around your customers.

I think this is an excellent move because every business is so different, yet all can find a solution that suits them through the single integrated Marketing Cloud. This is especially true for non-profit organisations, that have historically used Pardot for their longer ‘sales' cycle and considered marketing approaches but can certainly make use of the many Marketing Cloud features too.

Pardot isn't the only product getting a name change either. As announced by Salesforce at the Salesforce World Tour in Sydney, the following platforms and ‘Clouds' are also being renamed:

• Salesforce CDP is becoming ‘Customer Data Platform'.
• Interaction Studio is renamed to ‘Personalization'.
• Datorama will be known as ‘Intelligence'.

Additionally, all of the existing Marketing Cloud products (also known as ‘Studios') including email, mobile, advertising, and journey, will be known as ‘Engagement'.

From this point forward, MarCloud will refer to Pardot as Account Engagement (sometimes MarCloud Account Engagement).

The benefits of Pardot becoming Marketing Cloud Account Engagement

Sometimes you might need Account Engagement with Advertising or you might want the Intelligence piece alongside your email marketing efforts. 

With the change, I think it will help marketers understand which tool to use for Account-Based Marketing, multi-channel marketing, and recognising which products in the suite will be most effective.

It will make teams less platform or channel-focused and better able to deliver a seamless, consistent service for potential and existing customers, in one place and across many channels.

In a nutshell, the idea is that the platform will become easier to use, have a more unified feel and be more flexible in its utility.

Of course, as humans, we're hardwired to resist change, so the news that Pardot is changing names, along with other Salesforce products, isn't welcomed by everybody in the community. I'll admit, it presents challenges, especially for consultants like us who so clearly position ourselves as experts in the technology. Being experts in ‘Account Engagement' is a little more ambiguous than being experts in ‘Pardot'. Nonetheless, we're visionaries here! So we're on board with the name change and we'll roll with it in the best way we can to ensure our clients and all users become familiar with the new vocabulary.

When will the changes happen?

The first changes will happen across the company's marketing and sales materials, and on the website. Updates to the products themselves, Help and Training, Customer Success, and other support documentation won't begin until later in 2022. More information regarding these updates will be released closer to the time.

For now, just rest assured that despite the name changes, there are no immediate changes to login access, URLs, or product infrastructure.

One thing is for sure, Salesforce is becoming a one-stop-shop for your marketing tools and the consolidation of tech, alongside some clarity, is extremely refreshing given the number of tools out there. 

See the Salesforce Marketing Cloud announcement for this change here.

If you’d like a hand understanding what this name change means for you and your team, get in touch. We can also conduct a free Marketing Cloud Account Engagement (formerly Pardot) audit for your account.