Salesforce Pardot Spring '21 Release
The turn of the year has just been coped with, and the next big events are already casting their shadow ahead: the “Spring '21 Release” (not only) for Pardot is coming up in February and, according to the previous announcements, those responsible have worked hard again. A lot of changes have been announced for Pardot and, as with the Winter '21 release, we have once again picked out the five most important ones from our point of view. The full list of announced changes can be found in the Salesforce Release Notes be viewed.
What does the “Spring '21 Release” bring for Pardot?
User authentication via Salesforce SSO
Probably the most important because time-critical and not optional, change is the Disable previous user authentication by Pardot. From February 15, 2021, all Pardot users must log in with Salesforce user data.
Who is already today Salesforce User Sync activated and linked all of its “Pardot-only” users with Salesforce users, has a clear advantage here. Everyone else should hurry up, because Pardot users without a connected Salesforce user will otherwise be in front of closed doors from February 15. This also applies to any API integrations.
By the way, you don't have to be afraid of higher licensing costs with Salesforce: for all users who should only continue to use Pardot and do not need access to Salesforce, all Pardot customers have been provided with 100 so-called “identity licenses”, which do not incur any additional costs.
First-party tracking
Firefox and Safari are already blocking third-party cookies by default, Chrome has announced this move for 2022 to better protect user privacy. This is crumbling the technical basis for continuous tracking of prospects. With the Spring '21 release, Pardot is making first-party tracking, which has been tested in an open beta phase for some time, generally available. Existing tracker domains can be updated after activating the feature and after updating the tracking code on the website, tracking works using first-party cookies, which are still accepted by browsers.
Two-Click Unsubscribe
Anyone who uses Pardot's generic unsubscribe link in their emails may have already come into contact with the unpleasant phenomenon of automated unsubscriptions. Common spam filter software, among other things, checks the links in an email and “clicks” them automatically. With Pardot's previous unsubscribe link, this is equivalent to a direct unsubscription, as no further confirmation is required, such as another click on the target page. Anyone who also hasn't configured Pardot's Resubscribe feature (We have described instructions for a very elegant solution in a previous blog post), it is difficult to reactivate logins lost in this way.
With Two-Click Unsubscribe, Pardot puts a stop to automated cancellations: After activating the feature, the unsubscription must be confirmed by another click on the unsubscribe page — simple but effective!
Sync Salesforce leads and contacts with more than one Pardot business unit
Anyone who uses multiple Pardot Business Units (BU) is sometimes faced with a difficult decision: into which of my business units should a specific lead or contact be synchronized? Using Marketing data sharing Rules can be defined which ensure automated allocation to the corresponding BU. So far, there has been a hard 1:1 relationship between a lead or contact and a Pardot Prospect, so that the same lead or contact can only exist in a single BU. Until now, the recommendation has been to duplicate the corresponding records in Salesforce and then synchronize them into the desired BUs — in our opinion, this has little to do with a holistic view of the customer! The people responsible at Pardot probably thought so too: Although it involves some effort, it is now possible to synchronize leads and contacts into several BUs. This is really a big milestone since the Pardot Business Units were introduced.
Pardot API version 5
With the upcoming release, Pardot is publishing an extended version of its API that uses current standards (keyword: REST API/JSON) and which authenticates itself using Salesforce Connected Apps. The latter makes a Pardot-only user unnecessary, which was previously required for API integrations. This will also make it possible to provide apps for Pardot via the Salesforce AppExchange in the future. In addition, the new API version provides access to some additional objects that were not available with previous versions. For the first time, it will be possible to create, edit, retrieve or delete files and layout templates using an API. Even though this might not look like “a big hit” at first glance, it offers interesting opportunities to automatically keep content up to date across the company.
