Pardot, one of Salesforce’s marketing automation offerings, was renamed “Account Engagement” back in April 2022. This was part of the company-wide “Salesforce Easy” innovation goal, to make Marketing Cloud’s expansive product suite consistent and immediately understandable to align everyone’s understanding.
Since then, the new name has been rolled out across the user interface, official documentation, and training resources. Adoption from the Salesforce community has been slower, with habits hard to break.
The new name did receive some criticism from many in the ecosystem. Not only is it longer (versus the snappier ‘Pardot’), but some felt that it didn’t accurately represent the product’s capabilities.
Even over a year on, people are speculating whether it will stick. With hints at the future state of Marketing Cloud (which include Account Engagement/Pardot), I thought it would be a fitting time to outline where we’ve got to, and sentiments from the community.
People Want Simplicity
Simplicity, alongside clarity (the next point), has been a key theme running through the conversation.
“Pardot” is one word, and is distinct. Its full name now, “Marketing Cloud Account Engagement” is much longer, and is already being shortened to “Account Engagement”. There aren’t any other Salesforce products with four words in their name.
Perhaps if there was an acronym that’s acceptable to both Salesforce themselves and the community, that would be a good way forward. However, the use of the abbreviation MCAE (Marketing Cloud Account Engagement) has been discouraged. Marketing Cloud has always been abbreviated to “SFMC”, and one suggestion put forward for Account Engagement/Pardot is “SFPC” (Salesforce Pardot Cloud).
Then we come to the features, for example, saying “Account Engagement Engagement Studio” or “Account Engagement Conversion Object Type” leaves you gasping for breath afterwards.
People Need Clarity
This has been raised as a question mark by both consultants and admins alike.
Clarity Between Account Engagement and Sales Cloud
A good point to raise here is that the term ‘Account’ could easily be confused with Sales Cloud functionality. Some organizations are opting not to adopt the new name so that they can differentiate the app (tool) for the sales team from that used by the marketing team.
Clarity Between Account Engagement and Marketing Cloud
Account Engagement (Pardot) and Marketing Cloud are different tools, both in terms of the use cases they cater to, and their infrastructure/data models.
The fact that Marketing Cloud’s journey and messaging modules have been grouped under the name “Marketing Cloud Engage” does take some getting used to.
When applied practically, there’s specific confusion when people are doing search engine searches, and are getting results for the wrong tool. The implications here are that people could be led to believe the tool they have purchased supports features that it, in fact, doesn’t support.
Clarity Between Account Engagement and Other Salesforce Products
You’ll find the terms ‘Engage’ and ‘Engagement’ used beyond Marketing Cloud, for example, “Salesforce Digital Engagement”.
Tweaking Our Communication?
In the move towards adopting the new name for Pardot, and to get everyone on the same page, is it a case that we should tweak the way we communicate between longer term users (Pardot) versus new users (Account Engagement)?
Not Changed Universally (But Happening Gradually)
Naturally, a change as great as this one wasn’t going to happen overnight – especially when it comes to detangling product features and users adopting the terminology. The Salesforce teams had their work cut out. Over a year on, there have been changes to both the technology and people’s behavior that has happened slowly, but surely.
User Interface
Perhaps it was the day that ‘Pardot’ changed to ‘Account Engagement’ in the user interface that proved that it is here to stay. The Pardot app within Salesforce Lightning is now ‘Account Engagement’ and the tabs have also been renamed (e.g. from ‘Pardot Settings’ to ‘Account Engagement Settings’ That day, consultants and admins received messages from confused users who couldn’t find the Pardot Lightning app from the App Launcher.
Field labels also changed in the user interface. However, as you can see in the image below, it’s more time consuming to locate the desired field when amending page layouts. One positive is that now the fields begin with ‘a’, we no longer have to scroll through to ‘p’ to find them.
Search Behavior
Taking a look at the queries people are using on search engines, “Pardot” is generally searched 4x more than “Account Engagement”. We’re certainly still in a transition period where both terms need to be included to help guide people to the correct information (this reflects back to users ending up believing that Account Engagement supports functionality that’s Marketing Cloud only).
Having said this, one eagle-eyed community member pointed out that the tide is turning in some US states, where search behavior is favoring “Account Engagement”.
Job Market and Credentials
Job market, i.e. job titles, haven’t caught up, with some individuals preferring to retain the term “Pardot” to describe their skill sets. The likely implications of this is that finding the right experts for the job is more challenging (as if there wasn’t already a skills gap!). Could searching for “Account Engagement Specialist” or “Pardot Specialists” be potentially excluding a section of the job market from being discovered?
When it comes to certifications and accreditations, we’re in a limbo phase.
- The accreditations (available to Salesforce partners):
- The certifications:
Past Examples of Name Changes
Of course, this is not the first time that Salesforce has made changes to names in their product suite. Consider all the acquisitions they have made and need to unify under particular brand umbrellas.
- Marketing Cloud, as in Marketing Cloud Engage, was once ExactTarget. People managed to transition when that was renamed.
- CRM Analytics is the name we’ve ended up at after changing from Wave → Einstein Analytics → Tableau CRM → CRM Analytics.
- Data Cloud, Salesforce’s CDP offering, also went on a journey from Customer Audience 360 (CA360) → Salesforce CDP → Marketing Cloud Customer Data Platform → Genie → Data Cloud. However, the name changes did reflect technology enhancements at each stage. There was also Krux → Salesforce DMP (now defunct).
- Quip is an example of a name being reverted. It went full circle: Quip → Salesforce Anywhere → Quip.
Hints to the Future?
Let’s reflect back on why Salesforce made the move to change names. This was part of the company-wide “Salesforce Easy” innovation goal, to make Marketing Cloud’s expansive product suite consistent and immediately understandable to align everyone’s understanding. After all, “Pardot” doesn’t immediately suggest ‘marketing’ to an outsider to the industry.
Adding “Marketing Cloud” into the name suggests there could be a consolidation of all Salesforce’s marketing tools. Some sources say that a single Marketing Cloud platform is in the works, and could become a reality within the next 3-5 years.
Finally, I’m sure many people out there would be more accepting of the new name if more account-based marketing features were introduced. Currently, Account Engagement does not cater to true account-based marketing (a key sticking point that was voiced at the time of the announcement).
Summary
My aim wasn’t to come across as negative in this article – instead, I set out to report a balanced view of both the reasons behind these changes, what it has meant for the job market, and sentiments from the community one year on.
It looks as if the name “Account Engagement” is here to stay, however, there are suggestions for easing the adoption of the new name and hints to the future:
- Perhaps, if there was an acronym that’s acceptable to both Salesforce themselves and the community, that would be a good way forward.
- People need clarity between the tools that the marketing and the sales teams use, and also to ensure we’re not getting confused with Marketing Cloud (still a very different tool). Could tweaking the way we communicate between longer term users (Pardot) versus new users (Account Engagement) help get everyone on the same page?
- With the name change reflected in the user interface, we know that this is not a change Salesforce are taking lightly. We could eventually see the scale tipping between the two names in terms of search behavior and people’s job titles/how they describe their skills.
- This isn’t the first name change in Salesforce’s product portfolio. There are a handful of other examples that have had different outcomes – to emphasize technology enhancements, and even an example where the original name was returned to.
- Could this spell something about the future of Marketing Cloud? A consolidation of all Salesforce marketing technology onto one platform? More account-based marketing capabilities to reflect the emphasis on the ‘account’?
We’re encouraged to think about how the name change is going to pay off in the long term. The Marketing Cloud marketing teams have already made good headway with this major task!
At least we can be grateful that people will finally say Pardeaux (or ‘Par-doh’) less often.
