The Salesforce Winter ’23 Release Notes are out, and they include important features for marketers who are on the Salesforce platform.
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 marketing operations for your company or organization and want to know more about Marketing Cloud Account Engagement (Pardot), then you’re in the right place. We’re going to cover everything you need to know about the Salesforce Winter ‘23 Release for Pardot Admins.
Salesforce Winter ’23 Release: Pardot Highlights
Marketers who use the Salesforce platform are getting lots of attention from the Salesforce Winter ‘23 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 marketing world!
Highlight #1: Send data to third-party systems with External Actions
New External Actions allow you to send data to third-party systems from within an Engagement Studio Program. For example, you may want to send a prospect a survey, send them a text message, or even log a case based off of an action they took with your marketing materials.
External Actions, as well as External Activities, allow marketers to automate across platforms for a more unified experience. This feature is available to Plus, Advanced, and Premium editions of Pardot.
Highlight #2: Perform full database syncs
Gone are the days of adding a new prospect field just to trigger a full sync! The Winter ‘23 release is adding a new option to the Salesforce Connector to allow for a full sync of Prospect records.
Image Source: Salesforce
This feature is available to all Pardot editions, but it can only be performed in Pardot Business Units with fewer than 500k prospects. A full sync can be performed once every seven days.
Highlight #3: Pardot’s “Opt Out” Field Syncing is Changing
Starting February 26th, 2023, the Pardot “Opt Out” field’s sync behavior can no longer be set to “use most recently updated.”
This field will be limited to “Use Pardot’s Value” or “Use Salesforce” value. If your “Opt Out” field is currently set to “use most recently updated” you likely already seeing this banner in your org:
If Pardot is the only system you are sending emails out of, you should be okay to change the syncing behavior to “Use Pardot’s Value.”
However, if you are sending emails out of Sales Cloud, Marketing Cloud, or any other system, you’ll likely need separate Opt Out fields for each platform and then automations to keep them in line.
This update affects all Pardot Editions. New Pardot orgs created after August 26th, 2022, will default to “Use Pardot’s Value.”
Highlight #4: Pause activity tracking for individual prospects
Do you have an onslaught of bots or prospects who are performing a massive amount of activities in a short window?
With the Winter ‘23 release you can now pause tracking for individual prospects to keep that overactivity from being tracked.
When a prospect’s activity tracking is paused, the following will happen:
- An icon will appear on the prospect’s list view
- An error will appear on the prospect record
- The prospect will still receive marketing emails
Highlight #5: New permission sets!
When Salesforce changed over to SSO, your marketers who needed access to Pardot but not Salesforce, likely became Identity Users. However, Identity User licenses do not grant marketers access to the Pardot Lightning app. That means they were missing out on cool new features, such as the Lightning Landing Page and Email Builders.
The Winter ‘23 release aims to fix this with a new permission set and permission set license that grants users access to these features.
These new permissions will be available to all Pardot Editions purchased or upgraded after February 12th, 2019. These new permissions do not grant users full access to Salesforce Campaigns though. That means users will still need full Salesforce licenses to create and manage Salesforce Campaigns.
Highlight #6: Running Automation Rules in real time is being retired
Being able to execute your Automation Rules in real time is being retired.
If you are not currently using this feature, this option will be removed from your org during the Winter ‘23 release. If you are using this feature, you’ll have until the Summer ‘23 release before this option is removed.
Highlight #7: The Pardot Classic App is being retired
And finally, the Pardot Classic App is officially being retired on October 17th. This retirement only affects the Classic App within Salesforce, you will still be able to access Pardot at pi.pardot.com or via the Lightning App.
If you haven’t made the switch to the Pardot Lightning App yet, check out Salesforce’s Pardot Lightning Implementation Guide or get in touch with us for help!
Pardot is getting bigger and better all the time
B2B marketers who come to Salesforce are usually looking to scale their efforts and grow in a way that makes sense. These latest enhancements from the Salesforce Winter ‘23 Release get marketers closer to those goals by saving them time and resources. Contact the team at Sercante to get help implementing these enhancements in your Salesforce org. And leave us a comment below to let us know what you think about the Winter ‘23 Release.
