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Marketing Cloud Account Engagement (aka MCAE or Account Engagement) is a marketing automation solution that is built inside the Salesforce Lightning Platform. It provides a number of features that can help businesses to automate their marketing campaigns, track their marketing performance, and measure their marketing ROI.

Account Engagement (formerly known as Pardot) is a powerful marketing automation solution that can help businesses to improve their marketing campaigns and to achieve their marketing goals. If you are looking for a marketing automation solution that is easy to use and that can help you to track your marketing performance, upgrading to Account Engagement is a great option.

Why should you upgrade to Account Engagement?

If you know your Sales and Marketing automation platforms, upgrading to the most current version of Pardot, Account Engagement, should be a no-brainer!

But if you’re new to these tools, or simply wondering why you should bother upgrading from Pardot Classic to Account Engagement, here are a few reasons:

• Improved user interface: Account Engagement has a more modern and user-friendly interface than Pardot Classic. This makes it easier for Pardot users to leverage and get the most out of its features and customize Pardot settings.
• Enhanced functionality: Account Engagement includes a number of new features that were not available in Pardot Classic. These features include the drag-and drop email builder, responsive landing page templates, and mobile previews.
• Improved performance: Account Engagement is more performant than Pardot Classic. This means that you can create and send email campaigns more quickly and easily.
• Better integration with Salesforce: Account Engagement is more tightly integrated with Salesforce than Pardot Classic. This makes it easier to use with other Salesforce products, such as Sales Cloud and Service Cloud.
• Improved security: The Salesforce Lightning platform has been enhanced with a number of security features to help protect your marketing assets and data including single sign-on (SSO), two-factor authentication (2FA), data encryption, role-based access control (RBAC) and audit logging.
• Future compatibility: Pardot Classic is no longer being enhanced by Salesforce. This means that if you continue to use Pardot Classic, you will eventually run into compatibility issues with newer versions of Salesforce. Account Engagement, on the other hand, is actively being enhanced by Salesforce and will continue to be developed and updated in the future.

You can dive deeper into those differentiators in our recent blog, 6 Reasons You Should Switch From Pardot Classic to Account Engagement.

How to Upgrade to Account Engagement: Implementation guide

Step 1: Plan Your Upgrade

• Assess your current Pardot setup: This includes understanding your current Pardot data, your marketing campaigns, and your integrations with other systems.
• Set goals for your upgrade: What do you hope to achieve by upgrading to Account Engagement? Do you want to improve your user experience, add new features, or improve your integration with Salesforce?
• Create a timeline for your upgrade: How long will it take you to migrate your data, configure Account Engagement, and test your new setup?
• Budget for your upgrade: There are a number of costs associated with upgrading to Account Engagement, including the cost of the setup itself, the cost of training your team, and the cost of any downtime.

Step 2: Evaluate Your Current Pardot Setup

• Review your data: Make sure that your data is clean and accurate. Anytime you migrate or upgrade your system is a great opportunity to review your data hygiene and infrastructure. Take the time to clean up your data before you migrate to Account Engagement to ensure you start with fresh data.
• Analyze your marketing campaigns: Review how your ongoing nurture and drip campaigns are performing. This will help you to determine which programs you want to migrate to Account Engagement and which programs you can leave behind.
• Review your integrations: Make sure that your Pardot integrations are working properly. You may need to update your integrations before you can migrate to Account Engagement.

Step 3: Migrate Your Data to Account Engagement

• Export your data from Pardot Classic: There are a number of ways to export your data from Pardot Classic. You can use the Pardot API, the Pardot Data Export Tool, or the Pardot Data Migration Tool. If you’re taken the time to clean your records, we recommend using the Pardot Data Export Tool.
• Import your data into an Account Engagement Sandbox Environment: You can import your data into Account Engagement using the Pardot API, the Pardot Data Import Tool, or the Pardot Data Migration Tool. If you’ve taken the time to clean your records, we recommend using the Pardot Data Import Tool.
• Test your data migration: Once you have imported your data into your Account Engagement Sandbox, test to make sure that it is migrated correctly. Make sure to check for proper syncing between your Pardot connector and your Salesforce CRM if you’re using that platform as well.

Step 4: Configure Account Engagement

• Set up your Account Engagement account: This includes setting up your user accounts, your permissions and permission sets, and your settings.
• Create your marketing campaigns: Create your marketing campaigns in Account Engagement.
• Connect your Account Engagement account to other systems: Connect your Account Engagement account to other systems, such as Salesforce and your CRM.

Step 5: Test Your Account Engagement Configuration

• Test your marketing campaigns: Test your marketing campaigns to make sure that they are working properly.
• Test your integrations: Test your integrations to make sure that they are working properly.
• Test your user accounts: Test your user accounts to make sure that they have the correct permissions.

Step 6: Go Live with Account Engagement

• Announce your upgrade to your team: Let your team know that you are going live with Account Engagement, and provide them an opportunity to test various functionality before pushing the app to production. 
• Provide training to your team: Provide training to your team on how to use Account Engagement.
• Monitor your performance: Monitor your performance after you go live with Account Engagement.

Best Practices for Using Account Engagement

As we’ve shared, Account Engagement is a powerful tool that makes it easy to create beautiful and effective email campaigns, but if you need a bit more convincing, we’ve compiled a few best practices you can use to ensure you get the most from your platform.

Use Responsive Templates

One of the best ways to ensure that your emails look great on all devices is to use responsive templates. Responsive templates are email templates that are designed to look great on all devices, including desktops, laptops, tablets, and smartphones. This is important because more and more people are using their mobile devices to check email. Not all email templates are created equal, so make sure you evaluate and update your templates every 2-3 years at minimum.

Use the Mobile Preview Feature

The drag-and-drop email builder includes a mobile preview feature that allows you to see how your email will look on different mobile devices. This helps you to ensure that your emails are optimized for mobile devices.

Use a Dedicated IP Address

Another way to improve the deliverability of your emails is to use a dedicated IP address and a spam filter. A dedicated IP address and a spam filter can help to improve email deliverability. This means that your emails are more likely to reach your recipients’ inboxes and less likely to be marked as spam.

Leverage Improved Reporting

Finally, you can use the improved reporting in your Pardot account as well as Salesforce reporting to track the performance metrics of your email campaigns. This information can help you to identify areas for improvement and to optimize your email campaigns for better results.

Best Practices for Using Account Engagement with Salesforce

The Account Engagement, Salesforce Lightning integration is a powerful tool that can help you to improve your marketing results.

By syncing data between Pardot and Salesforce, you can keep your data up-to-date and make sure that your marketing and sales teams are working with the same information. You can also use Salesforce data to personalize your Pardot emails, track the performance of your marketing campaigns, and automate your marketing workflows.

Here are some specific tips for leveraging the integration:

• Review your sync your data regularly. Sync errors can arise when you least expect them, so make sure you are checking them regularly. This will ensure that your marketing and sales teams are always working with the most up-to-date information. Be sure to include a Salesforce user sync as well in case usership between platforms has changed since your last sync.
• Personalize your emails with Salesforce Account data. This will help you to increase the relevance of your emails, improve your email deliverability, and boost your Salesforce campaigns.
• Track the B2B marketing analytics of your campaigns. This will help you to identify areas for improvement and optimize your campaigns for better results.
• Automate your marketing workflows. This will save you time and improve the efficiency of your marketing efforts.

Need a migration/upgrade partner? Interrupt Media can help!

Choosing to migrate or upgrade your marketing operations and automation tool can be a daunting task. There are a lot of considerations to make during the planning phase that will ultimately dictate whether or not you have a successful migration/upgrade and the ROI you can get from your investment.

We know! We are migration partners for B2B businesses of all sizes implement, upgrade, and migrate their marketing and sales platforms every day. Our team of experienced and well-versed Pardot Admins and Salesforce marketing team have the skills to make any migration or upgrade project a success!

We can take your current setup and transform it into an efficient, modern Pardot environment. In addition to technical support, our strategic approach helps you come up with the best possible solutions for your business processes.

Let us help you take advantage of all that Pardot has to offer! Contact us today and get started on enhancing your user experience.

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Topics: Marketing Operations, pardot classic, pardot lightning, salesforce