In today’s international and digital business landscape, modern marketers often coordinate messaging and strategy across multiple countries or regions. Luckily, Marketing Cloud Account Engagement (Pardot) is an ideal tool to support those types of global marketing strategies. That’s because it enables marketers to find a balance between global coordination and initiatives that reflect the challenges and regulations of local markets.
Here are functions and customizations in Marketing Cloud Account Engagement that support an international marketing strategy.
Crossing Language Barriers
One of the most important considerations for an international marketing strategy is delivering high-quality, localized content that doesn’t provide any barriers to engagement through the local language.
Enable international users in a single Marketing Cloud Account Engagement instance
Administrators and individual users within Account Engagement can control the time zone, language and data formats in which the user interface (UI) is displayed.
Languages and locales currently support:
- English
- Japanese
- German
- Spanish
- French
This can be configured by an Account Engagement admin upon creating a user record. Go to Account Engagement Setting > User Management Users.
Individual users can control their language and locale settings under Account Engagement Settings > Account Engagement > My Profile.
Marketing Asset Creation
While the user interface is limited to languages supported by Salesforce, all marketing assets in Account Engagement can be developed and customized in any language. For the most part, this just involves typing/inserting content in the language desired, but the following points detail areas where advanced customization is necessary to change the display language.
Form error message
The native form error message for lacking required fields in Account Engagement displays in English by default “Please correct the errors below.” This cannot be customized within the form creation wizard, but instead must be customized within the layout template.
To update, navigate to the layout template used by the form (Content > Layout Templates). Navigate to the form tab and replace the message after %%form-if-error%% with the desired text.
The structure may not exactly match the included screenshot if you are using a layout template that significantly differs from the default. Use this reference for Layout Template Form Code to determine what components may need to be updated.
Encoding special characters
You may encounter situations in which characters display incorrectly when importing data to Account Engagement. To ensure all characters display correctly, you have to use UTF-8 encoding.
Always confirm any exported data is edited and saved using UTF-8 encoding to ensure data is not improperly overwritten. To edit data with UTF-8 encoding in Excel, for example:
- Export CSV data from Account Engagement
- Navigate to Data > From Text (Get External Data) in Excel
- Select the CSV export, and chose “Delimited” and File Origin > “Unicode (UTF-8),” then “Comma” to open the data with correct forming in Excel
Any custom layout templates developed for Account Engagement landing pages should also be sure to use UTF-8 encoding. Set the below meta tag in the <head> section of the layout template so any special characters render correctly.
<meta http-equiv=”Content-Type” content=”text/html; charset=utf-8”>Unsubscribe and Email Preference Center Pages
Account Engagement only allows for one global unsubscribe page, which can limit the feasibility of supporting multiple languages or unique messaging on the page. However, the suggested way to allow recipients to manage communication preferences is the email preference center (EPC) feature, which enables recipients to choose specific segments they would like to be included or excluded from, in addition to universally unsubscribing.
Multiple EPCs can be set up under Account Engagement Email > Preferences Page, so customization to language and included distribution lists can be made per language.
To ensure the correct email preference center is included in different language emails, insert a link, choose “Email Preference Page,” and choose from the list of available pages.
Learn about other customizations that can be made to Pardot unsubscribe and email preference pages.
“Not you?”/Form Reset Link
In the form creation wizard, under 3. Look and Feel > Advanced, is a handy setting to enable a link that allows viewers to reset Account Engagement pre-population and dynamic form functions, in case it is pre-populated with the wrong information (which may be the case due to shared devices, etc.) However, similar to the form required field error message discussed above, this only renders in English by default, in the format “Not Name? Click here.”
To resolve, creating another form layout template update is required. Insert the following script between the opening and closing <head> tag in the “layout” tab of the desired layout template.
<script type="text/javascript" src="/js/jquery/jquery.min. js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript">
//Replace the Not... string
$(document).ready(function(){ var span = $('span.description');
span.html(span.html().replace("Not","Desired Replacement for Not")); span.html(span.html().replace("Click Here","Desired Replacement for Click Here"));
});
</script>
International Privacy and Data Management
With growing international business, also comes managing compliance with the various data protection and privacy laws in place across your target markets. It’s important to consult with your company’s legal counsel to ensure understanding of the regulations across various jurisdictions. Fortunately, Account Engagement includes a variety of features to enable and enforce compliant data collection and protection.
Tracking Cookies
Account Engagement uses a combination of third and first party cookies to track visitor web behavior and build a profile of data on prospects in your database. To customize how cookies behave and allow visitors to opt-out of tracking, you can:
- Enable first-party cookies and disable third-party cookies under Account Engagement Settings > Account Settings
- Honor “Do Not Track (DNT)” headers under by enabling under Account Engagement Settings > Account Settings
- Customize Account Engagement cookie duration via Account Engagement Settings > Account Settings
- Display a banner requesting tracking opt-in in some or all countries via Account Engagement Settings > Domain Management > Edit Tracking Opt-in Preferences
- Utilize the Tracking and Consent API to integrate with other systems and create custom solutions
Communication Preferences
Many regulations require that explicit and informed consent be collected before a recipient can be emailed marketing materials, as well allow recipients to revoke that consent at any time. Some industries also require detailed records of communications sent. Account Engagement enables this via:
- A strict, platform-wide Permission-Based Marketing Policy that requires permission collected before email communications are sent
- Enable BCC function on all outbound emails for regulatory archival purposes
- Customizable, dynamic forms that allow addition of opt-in and privacy policy acknowledgement fields
- Automation to enable confirmed/double opt-in processes.
Additional permission-based marketing resources:
- Forms Are Great, But Confirmed Opt-In Is Better
- MailChimp Says Sayonara to Double Opt-In – Should Account Engagement Admins?
Data Security
Data stored in Account Engagement is kept securely to meet international data processing regulations, along with strict user login requirements.
Here is documentation from Salesforce on these practices:
- Salesforce Single Sign-On Requirements
- Salesforce Multi-Factor Authentication
- Data Processing Addendums
Other Resources from The Spot on Managing Global Compliance
- GDPR Compliance in Account Engagement: The Freaky Fast & Un-Boring Guide
- 7 Huge Lessons GDPR Has Already Taught Us About Email Marketing
- CASL + Account Engagement, Explained Via Terrible Canadian Jokes
- What Marketers Need to Know About the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA)
What’s Next
Need help finding the right mix of Account Engagement solutions to meet your localization and compliance requirements? Reach out to the team at Sercante to get help customizing features and content in your org and enable your global team. And leave us a comment below to let us know any tips or tricks you’ve picked up for managing international teams with Account Engagement!
