It’s time to prepare for the Salesforce Winter ‘22 Release and how it will affect your Pardot instance.
We get three major releases from Salesforce each year — Spring, Summer and Winter. Each Salesforce release includes upgrades and enhancements that affect Salesforce orgs in different ways.
So, if you’re using and managing Pardot for your company or organization, then you’re in the right place. We’re going to cover everything you need to know about the Salesforce Winter ‘22 Release for Pardot admins and users.
Salesforce Winter ‘22 Release Dates
Here are the Salesforce Winter ‘22 Release dates:
- August 12, 2021: Pre-release org signup
- August 16, 2021: Release notes available
- August 27, 2021: Sandbox preview starts, release site available, and release Trailhead module launches
- August 30, 2021: Release overview deck and feature matrix available
- September 10, 2021: Release weekend
- October 1, 2021: Release weekend
- October 8, 2021: Release weekend
- September 10-17, 2021: Release Readiness Live
Salesforce Winter ’22 Release: Four highlights for Pardot users and admins
Pardot users and admins are getting lots of attention from the Salesforce Winter ‘22 Release. Some updates are changing the way we work to meet evolving technology demands. Others are saving us time by connecting the dots in a logical way. All we know is, this release includes big updates for people in the sales and marketing world.
Highlight 1: Salesforce My Domain requirement
A Winter ‘22 release update has the potential to create chaos for companies that want to use branded domain names.
The Salesforce Winter ‘22 release will require all orgs to have a My Domain.
That means Pardot orgs that aren’t already configured for My Domain will get a random Salesforce-picked domain name. My Domain names have to be unique, so you’re outta luck if some other Salesforce customer has yours already.
If you don’t have a My Domain yet — then register your brand name now! You don’t have to deploy My Domain right away, but you can claim your preferred domain name now and deploy later (preferably in a Sandbox).
There’s likely to be a gold rush for domains from now until the first few weeks of the Winter ‘22 release, peaking at release, as folks register My Domains before enforcement or pick new ones after being force-registered.
What you should do: Implement a My Domain if you don’t have one
Here are resources to use when implementing a Salesforce My Domain.
- Salesforce Trailhead: Customize Your Login Process with My Domain
- Salesforce Identity Implementation Guide
(Thanks to Sercante Salesforce Solution Engineer Hayley Tuller for this one!)
Highlight 2: Pardot Classic App Retirement
Pardot Classic isn’t going away completely. But, the Winter ‘22 release includes a step toward moving in that direction. Salesforce has given soft nudges to customers encouraging them to adopt Lightning for quite some time. With that in mind, the Winter ‘22 release brings the news that Salesforce is retiring the Pardot Classic App after October 17, 2021.
Current Pardot Classic users can refrain from panicking for now because they still have time. The Pardot Classic App is a Salesforce page with Pardot on top via iFrame. The Pardot Classic App experience is going away, but you can still access Pardot Classic for now. Salesforce will disable the Pardot Classic App for ALL users on October 17, 2022. After that date, Pardot Classic users will only be able to access Pardot using the standalone Pardot app (available at pi.pardot.com).
What you should do: Start planning for the switch to Pardot Lightning
Salesforce Lightning is here to stay, so expect more pushes toward making the switch if you’re using Pardot Classic.
Here are resources to prepare for switching to Pardot Lightning.
Highlight 3: Pardot marketing asset design capability enhancements
Marketers love drag-and-drop tools like fish love water. Salesforce is opening the doors for more drag-and-drop design functionality in Pardot through a few different enhancements.
Enhancement #1: Pardot drag-and-drop landing page editor
Pardot Lightning users now have the ability to build landing pages faster in Pardot with a user-friendly landing page editor. After you enable the feature, the Pardot drag-and-drop landing page editor allows you to create landing pages from templates or scratch.
Enhancement #2: Custom components for the email content builder
You currently use standard components when you create emails in Pardot. These are the blocks you use to add elements, like graphics or text boxes, to your email drafts.
Winter ‘22 brings an enhancement that will open the doors to using custom components in your emails to add fancy features and customizations.
Enhancement #3: Push emails from Lightning Experience into Engagement Programs
We were all excited to start creating emails in the drag-and-drop editor in Salesforce Lightning Experience. But, we were limited in how we could use those emails.
After Winter ‘22, you can push those emails from Lightning Experience into Pardot Engagement Studio programs. All you have to do is create your emails and activate them for use in automations.
What you should do: Evaluate how your team creates Pardot marketing assets
All of these enhancements to the way marketers build assets in Pardot are meant to make the tool easier to use. It may make sense for your team to adopt them or look toward other options. You can figure that out by evaluating your team’s current process for building marketing assets like landing pages and emails.
Document your team’s current processes and talk to them about what works and doesn’t work well for them. Also, pay attention to how much time they are spending on these tasks so you can determine if it makes sense to invest in upgrades or external resources.
Highlight 4: Extending Pardot through integrations
Salesforce is highly customizable thanks to integrations. And new ways to extend Pardot through integrations are going live all the time.
Here are a few Salesforce Winter ‘22 Release enhancements that use integrations to extend Pardot functionality.
Enhancement #1: Send Slack notifications to Pardot users via completion actions (beta)
Interacting with prospects at the right time and in the right way is key to earning their trust. And now you can enable your sales team to capture those moments even more.
A Winter ‘22 enhancement allows you to set a completion action that notifies Pardot users in Slack when prospects interact with marketing assets. Because the Slack acquisition is still unfolding, this new feature also gives us a glimpse of what’s to come now that Slack is officially under the Salesforce umbrella.
Enhancement #2: New enablement resources and the Pardot API v5
Salesforce developers who work with Pardot will have access to the Pardot API v5 with the Winter ‘22 release. This update also includes super helpful enablement resources for Salesforce developers who are new to working with the Pardot API.
Enhancement #3: Pardot extensibility enhancements
You probably use third-party apps all the time for things like webinars and virtual events. But using the data from those third-party apps in Pardot can be difficult without heavy lifting.
The Salesforce Winter ‘22 Release is opening the doors to capturing and using that third-party data in Pardot. You can now collect prospect data in third-party apps and bring it into Pardot by setting up a Marketing App Extension.
What you should do: Integration brainstorming session
Have a brainstorming session to discover ways you can use integrations more effectively in your Pardot instance. You can kickstart the session by completing the sentence “wouldn’t it be nice if Pardot…” as many times as you can. Then, rank those sentences you created and focus on the ones that will have the greatest impact on your marketing efforts.
Implementing those integrations you identified through your brainstorming may go beyond your team’s capabilities. If that’s the case, you can reach out to Sercante Labs to find out how you can make it happen.
Pardot is getting bigger and better all the time
B2B marketers who come to Pardot are usually looking to scale their efforts and grow in a way that makes sense. These latest enhancements from the Salesforce Winter ‘22 Release get Pardot marketers closer to those goals by saving them time and resources.
Adding more user-friendly design capabilities addresses a major pain point for many Pardot customers. And extending Pardot through integrations and feature upgrades is preparing Pardot orgs of all sizes for the future.
Contact the team at Sercante to get help implementing these enhancements in your Salesforce org and Pardot instance. And leave us a comment below to let us know what you think about the Winter ‘22 Release.
Great article!