Big News! Account Engagement Users Can Access Marketing Cloud Growth Edition

In February 2024, Salesforce released Marketing Cloud Growth Edition, its first marketing automation platform built fully on the Einstein 1 Platform (a.k.a. “On Core”). Marketing Cloud Growth Edition has been rapidly evolving and expanding the features of this new solution ever since, and Account Engagement (f.k.a. Pardot) users are about to get a taste of it.

Salesforce released exciting news — current Account Engagement users can get access to Marketing Cloud Growth Edition for free. Currently, Account Engagement users on the Growth Edition SKU are eligible for this offer and eligibility is expected to expand to other Account Engagement Editions very soon.

In this post, we’ll cover how to take advantage of the offer and use Marketing Cloud Growth Edition alongside Account Engagement.

What Account Engagement Users Need to Access Marketing Cloud Growth Edition

1. A current instance of a Marketing Cloud Account Engagement with “Growth” Edition
   Currently, Marketing Cloud Growth Edition’s feature set is geared toward SMB B2B businesses, so it makes sense that Account Engagement users of a similar size are eligible. However, as Growth’s features continue to expand with each release, this new solution will eventually support enterprises, and even B2C organizations. 

To locate your Account Engagement edition open the Account Engagement Lightning App within Salesforce and navigate to the Account Engagement Settings tab. Your edition will show next to Account Type at the top of the screen.

2. Data Cloud
   Data Cloud not only unifies customer data for use within Growth, but also ensures data continuity between Account Engagement and Marketing Cloud Growth. Free Data Cloud is available for Enterprise and Unlimited Edition customers. If you have a lower edition of Salesforce, check out more information on provisioning and access here.
   

Implementing Marketing Cloud Growth Edition

If you meet the requirements for the free Marketing Cloud Growth Edition, reach out to your Salesforce Account Executive to get Growth provisioned for your account. Once provisioned, set up Marketing Cloud Growth Edition using the implementation guide and checklist.

Understanding Consent and Subscriptions

Consent works a little differently between the two systems. 

Account Engagement has a permission-based marketing policy, meaning that although there is no default “Opt-in” field, users must certify that they only contact prospects who have expressly consented to receive marketing communications. 

In Marketing Cloud Growth Edition, consent is a bit more rigid. To send marketing communications, each prospect must have a Consent Record comprising of:

• The Contact Point (email or phone number)
• The Marketing Channel (Email, SMS, etc.)
• The Communication Subscription (Webinars, Events, Product updates, etc.)
• The Date and Time the prospect opted in

More considerations for Consent and Subscriptions are available in this Salesforce Help article. 

Import Consent Data

Before you import consent data, make sure the contact point exists in Marketing Cloud Growth Edition. A consent import can update consent information for existing contact points, but it can’t create new leads or contacts or update other fields (at least as of the Summer ‘24 release).

First, export your list from Account Engagement:

1. In Account Engagement, navigate to Prospects > Segmentation > Segmentation Lists
2. Locate and open the preference list you would like to import into Growth
3. Select Tools
4. Select CSV Export

You’ll need to format your export before importing it into Growth, see this help article for guidance. 

Start Your Import

1. Within Marketing Cloud Growth, navigate to the Consent tab
2. Ensure you are on the Consent Imports tab, then select + Import

3. Select your Channel, Communication Subscription, and whether this list is opted in or opted out

4. Select Next
5. Upload your CSV, select Next
6. Review the import preview and select Import
7. Select Done

Send Account Engagement Images to CMS

Use images in both Account Engagement and Marketing Cloud Growth by enabling “Copy to CMS”.

1. In Salesforce, navigate to Marketing Setup > Copy to CMS
2. Use the dropdown menu next to your Account Engagement business unit to select Enable
3. Repeat for additional Account Engagement business units

This will create a CMS Workspace named, “Content Workspace for Marketing Cloud Account Engagement – Copied Content – [business unit name]”. To avoid issues, do not change the workspace name or remove the B2BMA Integration user as a contributor. 

Copy Images from Account Engagement to the Growth Edition CMS Workspace

Next, you’ll need to copy the images from Account Engagement to your new CMS Workspace. 

1. In Account Engagement, navigate to Content > Files
2. Use the checkboxes on the left-hand side to select the files you would like to move. Once selected, use the dropdown menu at the bottom of the table to select Copy to CMS 
3. Select Go

Use the New Growth Edition Email Editing Experience

Now you can build emails that are available in both Account Engagement and Growth Edition. When creating or editing Email Content in the Lightning Email Builder, select New Email Experience to use Marketing Cloud Growth Edition’s editor.

Account Engagement Campaign Considerations 

Account Engagement and Marketing Cloud Growth Edition cannot currently share campaigns, so you’ll want to have distinct naming conventions to easily identify which campaigns belong to each platform. You can also keep Marketing Cloud Growth’s campaigns from syncing to Account Engagement by creating a new campaign record type for Growth. 

Read more about Campaigns for Marketing Cloud Growth in this help article. 

Using Account Engagement & Growth Edition Together

Current users of Account Engagement probably have long-standing engagement studio programs that are set up to run on a recurring basis. Account Engagement thrives in this situation and provides flexibility for enrolling prospects and ensuring that the marketing journey you want to happen actually happens. Let’s look at instances where you can use this existing functionality with all the bells and whistles Growth offers.

Use cases for combining the two platforms

1. SMS functionality. In Account Engagement, You may have a pre-existing engagement studio program set up for every event your company puts on, thanking attendees for joining and sharing pertinent details. If you want to send a reminder text message to people who have registered for the event, you can now take advantage of native Growth functionality to do so. 

2. Using cross-object personalization. Say you have a recurring monthly email sent out to your customers letting them know their account status, YTD savings with your company, and other information pertinent to the customer on an ongoing basis. If this information is stored within custom objects, it’s difficult to populate an Account Engagement email with those details. With Marketing Cloud Growth Edition, users can create Data Graphs for cross-object personalization, allowing marketers to personalize emails with data from any object. 

3. Custom processes for post-form-fill actions. Another great example of how you can use Marketing Cloud Growth Edition alongside Account Engagement is when you want to implement a custom process when someone submits a form. 

Since Growth uses Flow for automation, the actions taken after a form is completed can be customized to each unique need. For instance, you can standardize field values or send data to several objects within Salesforce before the Lead/Contact record is updated. 

There you have it

You are now ready to start experiencing Marketing Cloud Growth Edition. The future of Salesforce marketing is bright and evolving every day. 

Stay tuned for Growth’s next iterations. In the meantime, use these resources to get started:

• Prepare for a New Campaign Experience with Marketing Cloud Growth
• Marketing Cloud Growth Edition: Landing Page and Form Builder
• Marketing Cloud Growth Edition: Creating Brand Guidelines
• All the FAQs on Marketing Cloud Growth Edition

If you need help implementing or learning how to use Marketing Cloud Growth Edition, send us a message!