Cate Godley, Author at The Spot

Marketing Cloud, Pro Tips, Strategy
July 10, 2025

Marketing Cloud Account Engagement (Pardot) & Person Accounts

Cate Godley

Person Accounts, an organizational feature of Salesforce, can be a powerful way to differentiate between a business contact (think Cate Godley who works at Sercante) and an individual you do business with that is not associated with a company (think Yuki Godley, shown below).

The reality is that Person Accounts are actually not that scary, but the fact that once they have been enabled they cannot be disabled is likely what causes a lot of that trepidation. This permanent enablement is also present when deciding to sync Marketing Cloud Account Engagement (Pardot) Prospects with Person Accounts in Salesforce, and there are definitely a few things that should be considered before enabling this option in your (or your clients’) Account Engagement organization. Read on to learn more about how to prepare for this setup.

Okay, but what’s a Person Account anyway?

Before we get into the things you’ll want to consider before enabling Person Accounts with ~~Pardot~~ Marketing Cloud Account Engagement (I’m a sucker for alliteration, always) let’s talk about what a Person Account in Salesforce actually is.

Person Accounts allow for a business to accurately track and manage relationships with customers if they’re in a B2C driven space, like education, health care, or non-profits. There are several considerations for Person Accounts inside the Salesforce platform, but here’s a quick summary:

Store information about individuals instead of businesses
Combines Account fields and Contact fields into one record and page layout – the Person Account
Takes up twice the Salesforce storage space due to having a backend Account and Contact record

Once Person Accounts are enabled, you’ll have the option to create a Business Account or a Person Account when creating a new Account from scratch in Salesforce. If you’re converting a lead using the standard Salesforce conversion process, you can create a Person Account by ensuring that the Company field on the lead is blank. No Company? Person Account. Company? Business Account.

The important thing to note here is that a Person Account is like two kids in a trenchcoat, Account & Contact, wearing a sign that says Person Account. In the backend of Salesforce, there is a Contact record and an Account record that are combined to show you the single Person Account record.

Great, but what about Marketing Cloud Account Engagement?

Now that we’ve got the initial details out of the way, it’s time to talk Person Accounts with Marketing Cloud Account Engagement. Just like in Salesforce, once you enable syncing with Person Accounts in Account Engagement you are not able to disable it. Additionally, when you sync a Person Account record with Account Engagement you’ll get a Prospect record and a Prospect Account record which will remain separate in Account Engagement (more on that later). The Prospect record will impact your mailable database number, but there are not any Prospect Account data limitations that you need to keep in mind.

Account Engagement Setup Options

When I first started out as a consultant, syncing Person Accounts with ~~Pardot~~ Account Engagement required reaching out to Salesforce Support to have the feature enabled. With recent updates to the Account Engagement Settings options, Admins are now able to turn on “Sync Prospects with Person Accounts” from within the setup menu.

Create Person Accounts on Assignment (instead of Leads)

In addition to enabling the option to sync Prospects with Person Accounts, you’re also able to tell the system to “Create Person Accounts Instead of Leads”. Turning this functionality on will tell the system to never create a lead when sending a Prospect to Salesforce and is irreversible. This is a good option if you never use leads, however if your organization does use leads or you are using both Business Accounts and Person Accounts you should leave this setting turned off.

Syncing Records Between Salesforce and Account Engagement

One of the biggest considerations with Person Accounts is how you set up your fields in Salesforce and in Account Engagement. Most of the Salesforce literature will tell you to create new custom fields on the Account record to have them added to the Person Account record and page layout. There’s nothing wrong with this setup, however if you’re going to be syncing Person Accounts with ~~Pardot~~ Account Engagement you should keep the Salesforce Connector sync directions in mind.

The Salesforce Connector for Account Engagement has Read & Write permissions for the Lead and Contact objects in Salesforce, and Read Only permissions for the Account object.

If you’re just starting out with Person Accounts in Salesforce, my recommendation is that you create any custom fields that you’ll want Account Engagement to be able to change on the Contact object in Salesforce. This will mean that when creating your custom field in Account Engagement, you’ll be able to do so on the Prospect object and use the standard Salesforce Connector sync options. If you have custom fields for the Person Account already created on the Account object in Salesforce, check out the section on automations below for how to keep these fields in sync.

In the Account Engagement system, the Prospect record that is synced with a Person Account will show the Prospect Name and Prospect Account as the same name. The Prospect record will have any Contact level fields you have added to Account Engagement showing, as well as a Record Type ID of a Person Account. The Prospect Account page will show you any Account level fields you have added to Account Engagement (remember, these are Read Only fields). Both the Prospect and Prospect Account records will show the owner as the Account Owner from Salesforce.

Other Gotchas to Know About

Person Accounts do not support scoring categories in Account Engagement, so if that’s a major player in your marketing strategy, you may need to think about other ways to achieve your goals. In addition to this, the Person Account will only sync to a single record type (the Person Account record type).

Finally, the Prospect Owner will always be the Account Owner in Salesforce. Crucially, this owner cannot be assigned from Account Engagement as we do not have write permissions to the Account record via the Salesforce connector.

Automations for Data Integrity

My earlier recommendation of creating any custom fields that you’d like to be updated by Account Engagement should be created on the Contact record in Salesforce. But what if you’ve already created custom fields on the Account level that you need to update and keep in sync in the Account Engagement system?

The best practice here is to create custom fields on the Prospect record in Account Engagement to hold this information, then create Automation Rules to keep it in sync with Salesforce. This will ensure that custom field information appears at the Account and Prospect levels and keeps bi-directional sync on the Prospect records active.

Enable Person Accounts without Fear

Did I write this entire blog post to get my dog’s photo online? Maybe, maybe not. But I did write this post after helping to answer questions about implementing Person Accounts in ~~Pardot~~ Marketing Cloud Account Engagement many, many times. I, too, used to be filled with trepidation at the idea of using Person Accounts both in Salesforce and in Account Engagement.

Once I understood the fundamentals of how this functionality works in both systems, I felt a lot more confident about getting this set up for clients in multiple business types. I hope this blog post helps you to feel more comfortable with this setup yourself! If you’ve still got questions, comment below or reach out to the team at Sercante and we’ll see how we can help.

Data Management, Marketing Cloud, Pro Tips, Technology
June 25, 2025

Building Data Graphs in Marketing Cloud Growth and Advanced Edition

Cate Godley

Product Note: Marketing Cloud Growth and Advanced are editions of Marketing Cloud Next and have also been referred to as Agentforce Marketing.

Marketing Cloud Growth and Advanced Edition (aka Marketing Cloud on Core or just Marketing Cloud) offers incredible capabilities to marketers in so many areas. From AI powered segmentation, scheduling and sending SMS in a nurture campaign, and unprecedented abilities to tailor your marketing content to the audience viewing it, Marketing Cloud Growth and Advanced Edition can help marketing teams large and small automate their marketing efforts. All of these amazing capabilities rely on the power of one key feature of Data Cloud – the Data Graph.

Data Graphs allow you to combine and transform data from multiple Data Cloud Data Model Objects (DMOs) into a single view. This read-only Data Graph can then be used in a variety of ways through API, automations, and Salesforce applications, like Marketing Cloud. In fact, a Data Graph is a requirement for using personalization (and some automations) within Marketing Cloud – the objects and fields you select when creating this graph are the same objects and fields that you’ll have access to when adding personalization to your marketing content or powering your automations.

Your Data Graph needs to have a specific shape to successfully send your emails. If you have Marketing Cloud Advanced Edition, you’ll also need to ensure that Einstein Engagement Scoring and Einstein Engagement Frequency features have been enabled before building. This blog will help you understand the steps needed to take to create and edit your Data Graph for Marketing Cloud.

Things to Consider Before Building a Data Graph

Once upon a time editing a data graph wasn’t possible, which meant gathering all of the information you’d need to reference in your marketing efforts before building your first graph. Now it’s entirely possible to edit your data graph, but I’d still highly recommend you gather your requirements ahead of time, so let’s think about what you’ll need.

What fields do you need for personalization?

Personalized marketing content is the name of the game, so the first thing to consider is what fields you’ll want to reference in any personalized marketing content. This should include things like First Name, Last Name, Title, and Account but you should also consider what custom fields you may want to reference, like the name of a product or webinar they’ve attended.

Are there any fields you’ll need for segmentation?

The segmentation capabilities in Marketing Cloud rely on the fields that are included in your data graph, so next up it’s time to think about how you’re planning on segmenting your prospects for email, SMS, and/or WhatsApp sends and automations. Common things to include could be industry, region, and address data. Make note of the fields and the object that those fields are on. For example, if you want to pull in industry, that field is likely on the Account Object. Keep in mind that anything you include here must have some relationship to the individual included in the segment.

What will you need for your automations?

The last thing you’ll need to consider is any information you might need for your flows. What information will you be basing your automation decisions on? Things to consider include campaign membership or status, email engagement, and geographical information.

Have Advanced edition? Turn on Einstein Features (if applicable)

Marketing Cloud Advanced Edition includes Einstein Engagement Scoring and Einstein Engagement Frequency. Be sure to enable these features before building your data graph!

Confirm the fields are in Data Cloud

Now that you have your field requirements determined, the next step is to make sure all these fields are mapped to your Data Streams. These field mappings take the new information ingested in the data stream and map it to the appropriate fields and objects in the Data Model Object (DMO) to create or update the appropriate records. Head to the Data Streams tab in Data Cloud and confirm all the fields you listed earlier are mapped to the appropriate DMOs. Check out this help article for some data mapping best practices.

Be sure the Data Cloud Connector can View All fields

One of Salesforce’s core tenets is trust, and that extends across all layers of the Salesforce ecosystem. This means that the connector between Data Cloud and Sales Cloud has minimum access to information in your Salesforce system. Make sure all the fields you’re including in your data graph are visible to Data Cloud by going to the Data Cloud Salesforce Connector Permission Set and updating the object settings to include the View All and Read permissions for every object you’ve listed. This ensures that all objects and fields are able to be ingested into Data Cloud.

Building the Standard Data Graph for Marketing Cloud

We have a step by step blog on building a data graph for personalization, but as a quick refresher, here are the steps you’ll need to take and things to keep in mind.

Go to Salesforce Setup > Marketing Cloud > Assisted Setup > Reporting and Optimization > Customer Engagement
Click on “Go to Data Graphs”
Create a new data graph from scratch
Use the default data space
Select the Unified Individual as your Primary Data Model Object
Ensure your data graph has the following shape:

Unified Individual (Primary Data Model Object)
- Unified Link Individual
  - Individual
    - Contact Point Email
    - Contact Point Phone

Make sure all the objects and fields on your lists are included in the data graph
1. The following fields must be selected during the Data Graph setup:
  1. Individual ID from ‘Individual’
  2. Email Address from ‘Contact Point Email’
  3. Telephone Number from ‘Contact Point Phone’

But what if you have Advanced?

If you’re using Marketing Cloud Advanced Edition, be sure to include the Email Engagement Score (Unified Individual > Unified Link Individual > Contact Point Email) and Email Engagement Frequency (Contact Point Email & Contact Point Phone).

Add in SMS

By now, your data graph should look something like this, give or take the Email Engagement Score, Email Engagement Frequency, and SMS options. To include SMS in your Data Graph, be sure to include the Contact Point Phone and the Message Engagement options, as shown below.

Message Engagement gives you lots of options for monitoring how your SMS marketing is doing. Use this to monitor engagement with your SMS messages, the messages you’re sending, links, subscription information and more!

Bringing in Custom Fields and Objects

Okay, so we’ve covered adding in all the standard objects and fields you’ll need for your standard personalization and automation needs, but what about the custom objects that you may have in your organization? These may be objects from integrations, or ones you’ve created to help manage campaigns or customer orders.

To bring this information into your Data Graph for use in your marketing, you’ll need to ensure that there’s a connection to the Individual in some manner. What does that mean? An easy example is an Opportunity – Opportunities are connected to the Individual via their Account in Salesforce. Select the top level item in your Data Graph, then use the + option to drill down to the object you’re looking for. Once you’ve gotten your object added on the graph, use the right side of the screen to select the fields you want to include in the graph.

Deploy Your Data Graph

Now that you’ve built your graph, the next step is to save and build, then deploy your graph. Click on Save and Build then choose your refresh interval. Keep in mind that every refresh will consume credits! The right refresh interval will depend on how you’re planning on using the Data Graph, but typically the daily refresh rate works well for marketing needs.

Head Back to Setup to Deploy Your Graph

From Salesforce Setup, type Reporting and Optimization in the Quick Find box and navigate to the Customer Engagement option. In the Configure Basic Personalization section, use the drop down menu to select the Data Graph you just created.

If prompted, confirm that you want to update your data graph by clicking the Update button.

Get Personalizing with Your Data Graph!

Now that you’ve built and deployed your Data Graph, you’re able to use the information in your personalization and automation efforts across Marketing Cloud. This powerful tool combines information from across your Salesforce organization into a single place of reference for Marketing Cloud to use that will update automatically on a planned schedule.

Marketing Cloud
December 16, 2024

Cross Object Personalization with Marketing Cloud

Cate Godley

Product Note: Marketing Cloud Growth and Advanced are editions of Marketing Cloud Next and have also been referred to as Agentforce Marketing.

Adding personalization to your marketing assets, like a recipient’s first name or company information, has been a hallmark of the marketing automation world for as long as I’ve been a marketer – probably longer. Legacy Salesforce tools for marketers have included ways to personalize content using data that resides in the system you’re working within – Account Engagement or Engagement – but with the Marketing Cloud Growth and Advanced Edition Salesforce has introduced a way to include personalization from multiple sources.

Cross Object Personalization opens up a world of possibilities when it comes to crafting the perfect message for your audience. Imagine post-virtual event follow up emails that include specific sessions an attendee was at and links to where they can find recordings for sessions they missed, or a personalized post-purchase nurture program that pulls in data from the customers most recent order. This is achieved by creating Data Graphs that allow you to add fields and other objects as related attributes to the Unified Individual.

Creating a Data Graph

The first step in cross object personalization is creating a Data Graph in Data Cloud. We’ll build this Data Graph based on the Unified Individual object and whichever objects hold the data you want to reference in your Marketing assets. You can only have one Data Graph per Marketing Cloud instance, so you’ll want to keep that in mind as you’re thinking through your connections.

Build a New Data Graph

To build out your Data Graph, select the App Manager and search for Data Graphs.

Select “New” in the upper right hand corner and then choose “Start from Scratch”.

Next select your Data Graph Type

Near Real-Time: Updates within a short time frame but not necessarily instantly. This option is recommended in most use cases and will help you save on Data Cloud credits.
Real-Time: Updates immediately with new information. Each update consumes Data Cloud credits.

Name your Data Graph, leave the Data Space as default, and choose the Unified Individual as your Primary Data Model Object.

On the next screen you’ll be able to choose which objects and fields you’d like to include in this Data Graph by clicking on the + button next to “Unified Individual”.

Depending on which of these objects you select, you’ll have a range of different options – either diving deeper into related objects or selecting fields you want to include from that object on the right hand side of the screen.

In the following example, I have drilled down to Campaign Member to bring in Campaign Name, Campaign Member Status, and Campaign First Response DateTime fields into Marketing Cloud. I’ve achieved this by going from Unified Individual > Unified Link Individual > Individual > Campaign Member. At each of these levels of data I am able to select fields I’d like to include in the Data Graph, which will make them available for use as personalization items in Marketing Cloud.

The Data Model Objects section on the left side of the screen displays the number of fields selected to bring into the Data Graph, as well as the total number of fields available and if there are any filters setup on these objects.

On the right side of the screen, we’re able to see the selected Data Model Object, in this case Campaign Member, and all of the fields available for us to bring into our Data Graph. Any field that’s marked with the 🗝️icon will automatically be selected to be brought in as it is either a Primary Key, Foreign Key, or Key Identifier used to link to other objects in Data Cloud.

Save and Build Your Data Graph

Once you have selected all of your objects and related fields for your Data Graph, click Save and Build in the upper right corner.

Select a refresh interval for your Data Graph. Remember – every time you refresh your data you’re consuming credits, so think carefully about how often you need to refresh this data. You can always adjust this later if you decide your refresh rate is too slow or too fast.

Deploying Your Data Graph

Now that you have successfully set up your Data Graph with additional objects and fields for personalization, deploy it so it can be used within Marketing Cloud. Head to Salesforce Setup, then in the Quick Find box search for “Reporting and Optimization”.

From there, click on the Customer Engagement tab. At the bottom of the page, under Configure Basic Personalization, click into the drop down menu to select a Data Graph.

Personalize To Your Heart’s Content

Now that you have successfully deployed your Data Graph, you’re ready to start personalizing your Marketing assets! We’ll build a Single Email Campaign for our example by going to App Manager > Marketing > Campaigns and creating a new Campaign.

Customizing your Email

Select Edit from the top right hand corner to open your email in the builder.

Select a Paragraph Component or drag and drop a new Paragraph Component onto the canvas. When a Paragraph Component is selected, an editing menu will appear along the top. Select the { } icon to enter a merge field.

Once selected, choose the Select Data Graph Attribute option.

Next, you can choose between Primary and Related Objects. Primary Objects will allow you to enter direct information about the Unified Individual, such as their First Name. Related Objects will allow you to enter any of the related fields you selected when building your Data Graph.

After you’ve selected your merge field, configure your merge field details. This includes the Merge Field API Name and Fallback Text that will be used if the recipient does not have a value in this field.

Select Done and you can see your merge tag inserted into your Paragraph Component.

Get Started with Cross-Object Personalization

Cross-object Personalization with Marketing Cloud brings an incredible amount of flexibility with how you personalize your marketing assets. With Data Graphs, you’re able to bring in any data that is tied back to the Unified Individual into your Marketing Cloud organization and personalize to your heart’s content!

Cate Godley