Account Engagement to Marketing Cloud Next: the migration checklist in build order

Marketing Cloud Next · 20 min read
Account Engagement to Marketing Cloud Next: the migration checklist in build order
#Marketing Cloud Next Migration #Account Engagement migration #Pardot migration #Migration checklist #Salesforce marketing

Account Engagement to Marketing Cloud Next: the migration checklist in build order

Each phase depends on the one before it. Work top to bottom, tick items off, and your progress stays in this browser. Select the 🛈 beside an item for more detail.

Isaac Cachero, marketing operations and revenue growth

Progress by phase

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CONTACT

Let's fix what's slowing
your pipeline down.

Tell me what's not working — leads, data, automation, reporting or your CRM — and I'll tell you straight away if I can help.

[email protected]

Salesforce Account Engagement AKA Pardot fundamentals: the dashboard, the navigation and the words that trip everyone up

Account Engagement · 12 min read
Account Engagement Fundamentals
#Salesforce Account Engagement #Pardot fundamentals #Account Engagement dashboard #Salesforce Pardot

Salesforce Account Engagement fundamentals: the dashboard, the navigation and the words that trip everyone up

Most Salesforce Account Engagement (formerly Pardot) confusion isn’t technical. It comes from vocabulary: a visitor 🛈 mistaken for a prospect 🛈, an Account Engagement campaign mistaken for a Salesforce campaign, a source 🛈 mistaken for a campaign. This is a plain read-through of the product, from the screen you land on to the terms your reports depend on.

What Account Engagement actually is

Account Engagement is Salesforce’s B2B marketing automation platform. Its job is to watch how people interact with your marketing (your website, your emails, your forms) and turn that behaviour into structured records the sales team can act on. Everything in the product serves one loop: attract someone, identify them, record what they did, and hand them over with context attached.

Because Account Engagement sits next to Salesforce rather than inside it, some objects exist in both places with similar names and different rules. Keeping those apart is most of the learning curve, which is why the terminology section below is the longest part of this page. Hover or tap any dashed word to see its definition without leaving the page.

Account Engagement dashboard

When you log into Account Engagement you land on the Dashboard, an overview of everything currently happening across marketing activity. It is deliberately shallow: a summary layer that points you towards the area that needs attention rather than a place you work in. Select a card to see what each part does.

Updates about new Account Engagement features and product announcements, surfaced the moment you log in. Worth scanning, because Salesforce ships changes to Account Engagement on its own release cadence and features occasionally move.

Search, help and settings

Prospect search

Find prospects by name or email address. You can also search by company using syntax such as at [company], which is the fastest route into an account when you only know where someone works.

Help (?)

Contextual help and how-to information. The content changes with the section you are viewing, and support cases can be logged directly from here.

Settings (⚙)

Account information, account type and time zone, sending IPs and renewal information. Time zone matters more than it looks: it governs how scheduled sends and report date ranges are interpreted.

Usage and limits

Shows how much of your account’s resources are in use. This is the screen to check regularly, because the mailable database limit is the constraint most teams hit first, and it is easy to breach through an unplanned import.

My profile

Update your name, email and job title, control which Account Engagement email notifications you receive, and grant Support access to your account when troubleshooting.

Key terminology

Five words cause most of the confusion. Learn these and the rest of the product gets easier to read.

Visitor

Anonymous

Someone Account Engagement can see through their IP address but cannot yet identify. They browse the site without submitting a form or engaging with an email, and they stay a visitor until their activity is connected to a real person.

Prospect

Identified

Any individual in the Account Engagement database, uniquely identified by email address. A prospect maps to a Salesforce Lead or Contact. Visitor equals anonymous; prospect equals identified. The email address is the key, so two records with the same address are the same prospect.

Account Engagement campaign

First touch

The first tracked marketing touchpoint through which Account Engagement discovered the prospect. It answers where marketing first met someone and what drove acquisition and ROI. A prospect has exactly one first-touch Account Engagement campaign, unlike Salesforce Campaigns, which allow a prospect to be a member of many.

Source

How they arrived

How the prospect found or arrived at a particular interaction point. Campaign answers what the first touchpoint was; source answers how they got there. A single campaign can have many sources: organic search, paid social, a partner newsletter.

Conversion

Visitor to prospect

The moment a visitor becomes an identified prospect, typically by submitting an Account Engagement form for the first time. Anonymous visitor, then form plus email, then prospect. It is the clearest single measure of marketing generating new people rather than new traffic.

Visitor vs prospect, in detail

This is the distinction worth over-explaining, because nearly every reporting argument traces back to it. A visitor is a browser session tied to an IP address and a cookie. A prospect is a person tied to an email address. One is an observation; the other is a record.

The consequence is that visitor counts and prospect counts are not comparable and should never be divided into each other casually. Ten thousand visitors and two hundred prospects is not a two per cent conversion rate unless you are certain both numbers cover the same window and the same traffic. Visitors can also be duplicated across devices, while prospects deduplicate on email by design.

Try it

Turn a visitor into a prospect

Choose the pages this anonymous visitor browsed, then submit the form and watch the record change. All data here is an example.

The form on your website

The visitor has not identified themselves yet.

The biggest distinction is Visitor vs Prospect: a visitor is not yet identified, while a prospect is linked to an email address.

How tracking actually works

Account Engagement spots the visitor’s IP address, and the tracking code and cookies watch the activity. When that person later submits a form or clicks a link in an Account Engagement email, their previously anonymous browsing is stitched onto their email identity. That is why a new prospect often arrives with a history of pages they visited before you knew who they were.

Three practical implications follow.

Check coverage

Code on every page

Tracking code must be present on every page you care about, or the history simply doesn’t exist.

Consent risk

Consent can break the stitch

Cookie consent and browser restrictions can break the stitch, so some prospects will appear with no prior activity.

Data quality risk

Clicks identify people

Email link clicks identify people just as forms do, which is why sending to a purchased list is both a deliverability and a data-quality problem.

Folders and tags

Where it lives

Folders

A filing system for marketing assets: campaigns, emails, content and everything else. Structure now saves hours later, and folder permissions are how larger teams keep regions or business units out of each other’s assets.

What it is about

Tags

Small descriptive labels, much like hashtags. Use them to filter prospects and assets, organise information, and build segmentation and nurture strategies: Webinar, Enterprise, Product-A, High-Interest.

An asset lives in one folder but can carry many tags at once. Filter the example assets below by tag.

    Recap table

    Tap a card to flip it, then check yourself with five quick questions.

    The flow to remember

    Put everything together in one path. Step through it.

    CONTACT

    Let’s fix what’s slowing
    your pipeline down.

    Tell me what’s not working — leads, data, automation, reporting or your CRM — and I’ll tell you straight away if I can help.

    [email protected]

    Marketing operations, rebuilt: connecting data, technology and teams into one growth engine

    Marketing Automation · 10 min read
    Marketing operations, rebuilt
    #Data quality #Marketing attribution #Sales alignment #MarOps

    Marketing operations, rebuilt: connecting data, technology and teams into one growth engine.

    Data quality, attribution, account-based marketing, market intelligence, lead nurturing, testing and sales alignment. Together they form the connected discipline that turns marketing technology into marketing results.

    What B2B marketing operations actually is

    At its simplest, marketing operations is the infrastructure behind modern marketing.

    It makes sure information can move between systems, customer interactions can be tracked, leads can be managed, campaigns can be measured, and marketing and sales can work from the same information.

    A typical B2B company may have a CRM 🛈, marketing automation platform, website analytics, advertising platforms, event tools, sales engagement software, customer databases, reporting systems, and many other applications.

    Each system may work perfectly well on its own. The problem starts when those systems do not work well together.

    Your tracking may know what a prospect downloaded. Your advertising platform knows which campaign brought them to the site. Your CRM knows what happened during the sales process. Your event system knows that the prospect attended a conference.

    If that information remains separated, the business never gets a complete picture of the customer.

    The goal of marketing operations is not to have more technology. It is to make the technology, data, and processes you already have work together.

    Connecting the marketing technology stack

    Modern marketing teams rely on many different technologies. The problem is not necessarily the number of systems. The problem is what happens when those systems operate independently.

    Website analytics may capture one part of the customer journey while the CRM captures another. Advertising platforms collect campaign information, while marketing automation records email interactions and form submissions.

    When those systems are connected, information collected in one place can become useful somewhere else.

    Website activity can help inform lead qualification. Campaign information can be connected to opportunities. Sales teams can see relevant marketing activity, while marketers can understand what happens to leads after they are handed over.

    This is why integrations, tracking, and a consistent understanding of customer data are such important parts of marketing operations.

    Marketing technology has also moved through four stages, and each one adds a layer of connection. Select a card to see what each stage looks like.

    Traditional marketing

    • Mass outreach
    • Print, TV and trade shows
    • Limited targeting
    • Hard to measure impact
    The impact
    Broad but untargeted reachResults hard to measureSpend hard to tie to revenue

    Why data quality matters

    Everything else depends on the quality of your data.

    Incorrect contact information, duplicate records, outdated company information, inconsistent fields, and incomplete customer profiles can affect almost every part of marketing.

    Poor data can lead to incorrect segmentation, poor personalization, inaccurate lead scoring, bad routing, unreliable reporting, and irrelevant communications.

    Data quality should therefore not be treated as a one-time database cleanup. Companies change. People change jobs. Contact information becomes outdated. Businesses grow, merge, or close.

    A good marketing operation continuously monitors and improves its data.

    One practical approach is to improve data at the point where it enters your systems. Instead of asking prospects to provide information you can obtain elsewhere, you can keep forms simpler while enriching records with additional company and contact information behind the scenes.

    The objective is not to collect as much information as possible. The objective is to collect the right information and keep it trustworthy.

    Marketing attribution and revenue

    One of the biggest challenges for B2B marketers is demonstrating the connection between marketing activity and business results.

    Leads, clicks, downloads, and website traffic are useful measurements, but they do not necessarily tell you whether marketing is helping create revenue.

    This is where marketing attribution 🛈 becomes important.

    Consider a typical B2B buyer. They might first discover your company through an advertisement. Several weeks later, they read an article. Someone else from the same company attends a webinar. Months later, a salesperson gets involved.

    Which interaction created the opportunity? The answer is usually not one interaction.

    First-touch

    First interaction

    Gives all the credit to the first marketing interaction.

    Last-touch

    Last interaction

    Gives all the credit to the interaction immediately before conversion.

    Multi-touch

    Whole journey

    Provides a more realistic view by considering several interactions throughout the buying journey.

    Try it

    Who gets the credit?

    Pick an attribution model to see how one opportunity credits three marketing interactions. All data here is an example.

    Both first-touch and last-touch approaches can be useful for specific purposes, but neither tells the complete story.

    If the buying journey involves multiple interactions, your measurement should reflect that journey.

    Account-based marketing

    B2B purchases are rarely made by one person.

    One person may discover your company. Another may evaluate your product. Someone else may influence the decision, while an executive ultimately approves the purchase. Looking at each person independently can hide what is happening inside the organization.

    Account-based marketing changes the perspective. Instead of asking only how many leads marketing generated, marketing and sales can ask which companies are engaging, who is involved, and what is happening inside those accounts.

    This creates a stronger connection between marketing and sales and shifts attention toward opportunities, revenue, account growth, deal velocity, and other business outcomes.

    Getting started does not have to begin with another software purchase. It starts with alignment.

    1. Align marketing and sales.
    2. Agree on the business goals.
    3. Define the target accounts.
    4. Understand the people involved in those accounts.
    5. Create relevant marketing programs.
    6. Give sales useful information about account activity.
    7. Measure results through opportunities, revenue, deal velocity, and account growth.

    Two different approaches lead to two very different outcomes. Compare them below.

    Volume, then quality

    Reach a wide audience, then sort through it to find the right ones.

    • Wide audience: attract as many prospects as possible.
    • Generate leads
    • Qualify leads
    • Sales follow-up
    • Customers
    Broad reachHigh volumeLower lead precision

    Market intelligence and buying signals

    Knowing what a company looks like is useful. Knowing what is changing inside that company can be much more valuable.

    Basic company information might tell you an organization’s industry, employee count, location, or revenue.

    Market intelligence goes further by looking for signals that indicate a change in circumstances.

    • A company receives new funding.
    • The organization is growing rapidly.
    • A new executive joins.
    • The company changes its technology.
    • Website activity increases.
    • The organization begins investing in a particular area.
    • A competitor’s technology is replaced.

    These events can provide context that a static database cannot.

    The value comes from turning those signals into action. They can influence segmentation, campaigns, account prioritization, and sales outreach.

    Call tracking and offline conversions

    Modern marketing has become very good at measuring digital behavior.

    We can see who clicked an advertisement, visited a landing page, downloaded a document, or opened an email.

    But what happens when the prospect simply picks up the phone?

    That interaction usually doesn’t appear in any marketing report, or it might not even be logged in the CRM to start with.

    This is particularly important for mobile visitors. On a phone, calling a business can sometimes be easier than completing a long form.

    A visitor who does not fill out a form has not necessarily failed to convert. They may simply have chosen a different path.

    You cannot accurately measure a marketing channel if you only measure the part of the customer journey that is easiest to track.

    Call tracking can connect inbound phone calls to the marketing activities that influenced them. This allows businesses to understand where calls came from, which campaigns influenced them, and whether those calls eventually became qualified opportunities or customers.

    Lead management and nurturing

    Most of your prospects aren’t ready to speak with sales. Some are actively looking for a solution. Others are researching a problem. Some are simply trying to understand what options are available.

    Treating every prospect the same can create a poor experience. Marketing operations can help create different paths based on a combination of fit and behavior.

    Someone who requests a demonstration may deserve a very different follow-up from someone who has only downloaded an introductory guide.

    Effective nurturing is therefore not simply about sending more emails. It is about delivering the right information at the right stage of the buying process.

    Experience optimization and testing

    Marketing operations should not simply keep campaigns running. It should help the organization learn.

    Consider a simple landing page problem. You are paying to send visitors to a page, but the conversion rate is lower than expected. You believe the problem may be that the advertisement and landing page communicate different messages.

    Rather than redesigning everything based on an assumption, test the idea.

    Create one version of the landing page with the existing messaging and another where the landing page reflects the message from the advertisement.

    Then measure the difference. Don’t guess when you can test.

    • Test the headline.
    • Test the offer.
    • Test the landing page.
    • Test the timing.
    • Test the message.

    Every useful experiment gives the marketing team more information about what works.

    Marketing and sales alignment

    Marketing operations also plays an important role in connecting marketing and sales.

    Marketing may celebrate generating thousands of leads while sales complains that few of them are useful. Both teams may have a point.

    The underlying problem is often that they are working from different definitions of success.

    A strong marketing operation helps create shared definitions around what makes a lead qualified, what information sales needs, when a lead should be routed, how quickly sales should respond, what happens when a lead is rejected, and how opportunities and revenue are measured.

    Where to start

    If your marketing operation is complicated today, trying to fix everything at once is usually the wrong approach.

    Start with the biggest problem affecting the business. Open the symptom that matches yours.

    Sales does not trust the leads

    Investigate lead quality and routing.

    Reporting does not match what the business sees in the pipeline

    Investigate attribution and data.

    Campaigns regularly break

    Investigate your processes and technology.

    Personalization is unreliable

    Investigate the underlying customer data.

    Prospects are receiving irrelevant messages

    Investigate segmentation and nurturing.

    Solve the most important problem first, then use that improvement as the foundation for the next one.

    A useful way to think about the full marketing operations function is as a set of connected capabilities. Here are just a few examples.

    Data managementAccurate, complete and usable customer and prospect information
    TechnologyConnecting marketing platforms and making information move between systems
    AttributionConnecting marketing activity to opportunities and revenue
    Account-based marketingFocusing marketing and sales on important target accounts
    Market intelligenceUnderstanding external signals and changes that may indicate buying interest
    Lead managementQualifying, nurturing and routing prospects appropriately
    Call trackingConnecting phone conversions with marketing activity
    OptimizationTesting and improving campaigns and customer experiences
    Sales alignmentCreating shared goals, processes and definitions between marketing and sales

    The bigger picture

    The best B2B marketing operations teams are not simply the people who know how to configure marketing platforms.

    They understand how marketing works as a business process.

    They connect data to decisions. They connect marketing activity to sales outcomes. They connect technology to processes.

    Most importantly, they connect the different parts of the customer journey so the business can understand what is happening and act on it.

    The technology will continue to change. New platforms will appear, existing systems will evolve, and buyers will continue to change how they research and purchase.

    The fundamentals remain remarkably consistent.

    • Keep your data trustworthy.
    • Connect your systems.
    • Understand your buyers.
    • Align marketing and sales.
    • Measure what matters to the business.
    • Track the entire customer journey.
    • Test what you can improve.
    • Build processes that make the operation easier to manage.

    That is the real purpose of B2B marketing operations. It is not about having more tools. It is about building a marketing engine that works.

    Self-check

    Check yourself with five quick questions.

    CONTACT

    Let’s fix what’s slowing
    your pipeline down.

    Tell me what’s not working — leads, data, automation, reporting or your CRM — and I’ll tell you straight away if I can help.

    [email protected]