Salesforce Summer ‘20 Release – Pardot New Features

The Summer ’20 preview release notes have been dropped, and oh my – I knew that this release was going to be big for Pardot, but the amount of new features and apps is jaw-dropping. The full release notes are 530 pages long – but don’t worry, I have pulled out the most important things to know about Pardot updates: the ‘wow’ factor announcements, B2B Marketing Analytics enhancements, sexy Pardot Einstein releases, and other miscellaneous updates.

The first thing you need to know is that two Pardot releases have been merged into one (May 2020 and Summer ’20). With the Coronavirus disruption, the Pardot team took more time to deliver the release safely, while reprioritising what was important to develop (namely features and enhancements around the theme of ‘user productivity’).

• May 2020: will be rolled out between 18th-29th May. You will see notification banners in your account when these changes happen, stating the next steps.
• Summer ’20: part of the big all-salesforce release, which will depend on your instance of Salesforce. Check your release date here.

As I was going through the release materials, it seems that the bigger announcements are part of the Summer ’20 release; updates part of the May 2020 release are found in the ‘miscellaneous’ section.

Summer ’20 Favourites

Here are the announcements with ‘wow’ factor from the release:

• Pardot Sandboxes
• Add to Pardot Lists and Engagement Studio Programs Buttons
• Upgrade to Salesforce Connector v2
• Manage Pardot Users in Salesforce
• Engagement Data on Opportunities

Pardot Sandboxes

Yes, this may have been the day you’ve been waiting for: Developer Sandboxes for Pardot have arrived. Sandboxes function as test or staging environments, where you can build and test configuration without risking anything going horribly wrong and disrupting business operations.

As a copy of your organisation’s live environment (production), you can simulate things like new automation, integrations using the Pardot API, or feature updates to ensure you are happy with the results before launching it live.

The Sandbox will function like a regular business unit, which can be spun up from a full Salesforce Sandbox. Hold up! While this is big news, don’t get carried away until you’ve read the small print about your eligibility – you must have Pardot Advanced edition (or Pardot Premium with the v2 connector) (full considerations here).

Take a look at the Pardot Sandbox infographic to discover the what, how, who and when.

Upgrade to Salesforce Connector v2

The Salesforce v2 connector for Pardot is easier to setup, offers easier (better) control over data syncing, and doesn’t require a user license as a ‘connector user’ – in short, v2 went out on a mission to solve the biggest pain points of the v1 connector.

Now you can ‘upgrade’ your connector to take advantage.

See the full comparison chart.

Manage Pardot Users in Salesforce

Salesforce User Sync (now available for 3 years) keeps Salesforce user profiles in sync with Pardot user roles. The new enhancement will mean that Admins will manage a single user record in Salesforce, where they can ‘assign’ a user to Pardot. The big difference is that a user record doesn’t have to be created twice in both Salesforce and Pardot, avoiding the duplication of work that was required before.

Read the release notes for instructions on how you should enable this because the steps you need to follow will depend on whether you have already enabled Salesforce User Sync, or not.

Engagement History Dashboard for Opportunities

Have you seen Engagement History Dashboards? If you haven’t, where have you been hiding?!

Engagement History Dashboards are out-of-the-box dashboards that you can embed in Salesforce Lightning pages that show campaign performance over time – from the campaign perspective, account, and now opportunity too!

Add the Engagement History Dashboard to Opportunities to see:

• Prospect activity of related contacts*,
• Details about the associated campaigns,
• A list of recent activity of related contacts*.

*’Related contacts include both Opportunity Contact Roles or any contact related to the account.

What I love about Engagement History Dashboards is that they give a slice of analytics to organisations that don’t have B2B Marketing Analytics, or bring Analytics closer to users that haven’t explored the full Analytics platform yet.

Release notes details here.

B2B MARKETING ANALYTICS (B2B MA)

• B2B Marketing Analytics Setup Path
• Pardot Dataflows Easy Interface
• Retiring B2B Marketing Analytics Legacy Apps

Note: B2B Marketing Analytics is only available with Pardot Advanced edition, or as an add-on.

B2B Marketing Analytics Setup Path

Nice one, Pardot! The setup steps and process for B2B MA has evolved since its launch 2+ years ago which has caused some contradictions in documentation. Looking forward, a setup assistant built in to the Salesforce setup interface will be the source of truth to guide Admins through a logical ‘path’, “instead of comparing help articles to figure out what comes next”, as Salesforce themselves put it.

Here’s a preview of the slimmed-down implementation path:

Release notes details here.

Pardot Dataflows Easy Interface

Note: this change is available for the B2B Marketing Analytics Plus add-on.

In a nutshell: an easy interface to create datasets. Access and customize datasets by seeing which fields flow into your datasets, and selecting/deselecting which fields to include.

Release notes details here.

Retiring B2B Marketing Analytics Legacy Apps

Have you been using B2B Marketing Analytics for a long time? Do some of your datasets predate B2B Marketing Analytics app templates? If yes, you need to migrate your apps to B2B Marketing Analytics 2.0.

Check if this applies to you, and some recommended steps to follow here.

PARDOT EINSTEIN

These are certainly the most ‘sexy’ features of the Pardot Summer ‘20 release, and worth reading about even if you don’t use Pardot Einstein – you may even be swayed to upgrade, and make the leap.

• Pardot Einstein Attribution
• Marketing Campaign Intelligence App

Note: Pardot Einstein is only available with Pardot Advanced edition, or as an add-on.

Pardot Einstein Attribution

When I first heard about Einstein Attribution a few months ago, my mind was blown.

“Einstein Attribution leaves rules-based influence models in the rearview mirror”

‘Rules-based influence models’ are the first-touch/last-touch/even-touch Campaign Influence models you will familiar with. These models rely on data relationships (opportunity contact roles) and timing (Campaign History at the time of lead conversion etc.), which makes this way of measurement less accurate overall.

What does Einstein Attribution aim to do? Essentially, Einstein Attribution will override rules-based attribution, and pick up gaps in attribution using a AI data-driven model that “attributes revenue share based on your actual customers, their engagement, and your successes”. It’s an additional Campaign Influence model called ‘Data-Driven Model’ (and will appear in the Campaign Influence models list in Salesforce setup, alongside your other standard ones).

The star of the show is exploring the Data-Driven Model in the B2B Marketing Analytics Multi-Touch Attribution dashboard:

I could talk for longer (much longer) on this topic, but instead, I will leave that for a future blog post!

Release notes details here.

Marketing Campaign Intelligence App

Note: this change is available for the B2B Marketing Analytics Plus add-on.

Another stellar addition is the Marketing Campaign Intelligence App – now you can get further predictive with your Pardot data.

This app “brings two easy-to-read dashboards together in one place”:

• Campaign Engagement dashboard: prospect engagement data from Pardot,
• Campaign Performance dashboard: relevant campaign data from Salesforce.

The main aims of this app are:

• To get a better view of specific relationships that are hidden within dataflows.
• Identify the best next step for future campaigns (use Einstein Discovery Stories)

This is only scratching the surface – release notes details here. Read how B2BMA Plus is different to B2BMA.

Pardot API: New and Changed Items

Release notes outline updated support for the Export API, improved Visitor Activity querying, and Pardot API Authentication (removes the need for a Pardot-only user to authenticate).

Miscellaneous

• First-Party Tracking (Beta)
• Reuse Snippet API Names
• Pardot Assets to Load HTTPS (May 2020)
• Enable Person Account Syncing Yourself (May 2020)
• Advanced Email Analytics Data Limits (May 2020)
• Handlebars Merge Language Enabled By Default for New Accounts (May 2020)

First-Party Tracking (Beta)

I hold my hands up – I am not a cookie or web tracking expert, so I will explain this briefly, in a way that doesn’t go above my own head!

“First-party cookies are created by the host domain – the domain the user is visiting. These types of cookies are generally considered good; they help provide a better user experience and keep the session open. This basically means the browser is able to remember key pieces of information, such as which items you add to shopping carts, your username and passwords, and language preferences.”
Explained with the help of clearcode.cc

The other type is third-party cookies, which are “created by ‘parties’ other than the website that the user is currently visiting”, so its no surprise that many individuals consider these privacy infringements and threatening to overall digital security. These have been common to Marketing Automation tracking, but word on the street is that web browsers have started moving away from supporting third-party cookies (even blocking them by default) – so Pardot have launched a pilot to leap ahead of the curve to improve Prospect tracked web activity.

Release notes details here.

Reuse Snippet API Names

“Now you can use the same API Name for your snippets when you assign each snippet to a different campaign or business unit.” No doubt a nice win for organisations that went head-first in with Snippets.

Release notes details here.

Pardot Assets to Load HTTPS

May 2020 release

“When a browser requests an SSL-enabled Pardot asset over HTTP, Pardot will force redirect the request to HTTPS.”

Release notes details here.

Enable Person Account Syncing Yourself

May 2020 release

If you are going through a new implementation of Pardot, or decide to enable the Salesforce person accounts feature, you can turn on this setting by yourself from your Salesforce-Pardot Connector settings (without contacting support).

Release notes details here.

Advanced Email Analytics Data Limits

May 2020 release

“View Timely Advanced Email Analytics for List Email Reports Data’ – so basically, Pardot will store the data for no more than 14 months that’s used on the ‘Interaction’ tab (the breakdown of unread, glanced skimmed, read) and ‘Email Clients’ tab (which devices and ESPs prospects are using).

Release notes details here.

Handlebars Merge Language Enabled By Default for New Accounts

May 2020 release
Release notes details here.