Salesforce recently announced that they’re changing the name of several of its marketing related products, and soon “Pardot” will become “Marketing Cloud Account Engagement”. Along with this rebrand, they’re changing the names of some other products and releasing new features that will align with the new vision for the next-gen Marketing Cloud.
Salesforce announces the arrival of the next-gen Marketing Cloud
Salesforce recently shared upcoming product updates at the World Tour in Sydney, explaining its vision for the next-gen Marketing Cloud, introducing a new vocabulary to describe its capabilities, and renaming some of its products.
It is not that Salesforce likes renaming things, or maybe they do, but they have invested heavily in acquisitions to make their Marketing Platform the most complete tool to work with for any marketer.
The next generation of Marketing Cloud will consolidate within a unified platform full of functionalities and advanced features. Salesforce Marketing Cloud products bring together data, teams, and technology to help you know your customers better. Using that knowledge and enhancing it using artificial intelligence (AI), you can personalize and continually improve each interaction at scale and in real-time.
The upcoming Salesforce name changes
Here are the latest name changes affecting marketers who use Salesforce:
Why is this happening?
The words Salesforce has used when communicating these product name changes are Easy, Unified, and Flexible.
Easy. This is the new word on all of Salesforce’s AE’s lips as a cornerstone of the future of the platform. According to Salesforce, the Marketing Cloud portfolio is now more aligned with the language marketers already use, so the capabilities and value are easier to understand.
Unified. The new names are aligned with Salesforce’s strategy to integrate Marketing Cloud into one unified platform with a data-first strategy around your customers.
Flexible. Salesforce wants its platform to develop its features flexibly adapt to changes being innovative and reactive.
Salesforce EVP & GM Digital Experiences Lidiane Jones echoed this in the official announcement about the name change where you can read the announcement in more detail.
“More than ever, we need to ensure we are unifying customer data into a single source of truth, empowered by artificial intelligence, and actionable by everyone, because that’s how we will grow moments into lifelong customer relationships” Lynne Zaledonis, EVP Industries and Cloud Marketing at Salesforce
When is this happening?
The changes are not immediate and announcements and communications will be made at the right time. It’s important to know that there are no immediate changes to login access, URLs, or other infrastructure considerations you might have.
You’ll first start to see the changes reflected on Salesforce's website and in marketing and sales communications. Later this year, updates will then begin through the products, Help and Training, Customer Success, Support, and external certifications.
How will it affect you?
Some of these changes are greater than others, but we know Salesforce has a good plan to make the transition as smooth as possible. Most users, partners, and resellers will have to face some challenges and adapt to the changes.
We anticipate it will be hard for some people to stop using legacy brand names. For someone who branded themselves as a Pardot Specialist over the last few years, it will be hard to start talking about Marketing Cloud Account Engagement right away.
The name change may also affect people’s ability to find the partner they need as brand changes and SEO will be greatly affected by the renames. We are hoping everyone can adapt quickly and make everything easier for our customers over time.
With the name change, there are also a lot of things that stay the same. Take a look at what is NOT affected by the product name changes:
Product features & functionality
Pricing
Packaging and bundles
The actual SKU names
What other updates are coming?
The Marketing Cloud updates include innovations to its new Customer Data Platform (CDP) and intelligence features to help you better know your customers. These innovations help you create a single source of truth for your data with “Streaming Insights and Data Actions” to capture new real-time data signals, “Advanced Identity Resolution” to match and merge disparate data and “New Anonymous Profiles” to track people from when they interacted in our website before they were known to us, and connect that data to their profiles once they become known.
Do you want to talk about how this affects you?
So, is this just a name change or what is really happening? You might need some time to process the news from Salesforce and, if you need to talk to someone about it, we are happy to have a chat with you and see how the changes may affect you.
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