Today, more than 80% of marketers worldwide leverage some kind of email marketing. With revenue reaching an estimated 10 billion in 2023, it’s safe to say that a successful email marketing strategy is fundamental to business success. 

However, without support, the efficacy of email marketing – and other marketing efforts – tends to be limited. Leaders need a solution that enables information-sharing across departments, so teams collaborate strategically and engage prospective customers throughout their lifecycle. Salesforce Marketing Cloud Account Engagement is an industry-agnostic product that does precisely that.

What is Marketing Cloud Account Engagement (or Pardot)?

Marketing Cloud Account Engagement: Formerly known as Pardot, this Salesforce solution is designed to connect Sales and Marketing departments, enable better operations with automation, and facilitate more effective customer outreach.

Account Engagement is primarily known for facilitating compelling, personalized email marketing campaigns. However, the true scope of its capability is considerably larger.

Like other Salesforce solutions, Marketing Cloud Account Engagement creates a single source of customer data among departments, aligning departments toward the common goal of conversion. All the while, the product’s unique slate of engagement tools facilitates faster and more organic conversions throughout the customer journey. 

Some of those tools include:

• Lead Tracking and Scoring: Once a marketing team sets scoring criteria within Account Engagement, every potential account that interacts with the company will receive a grade based on the likelihood of further interaction. Salesforce leverages AI to identify and track the warmest leads, helping marketers identify and target promising prospects quickly.
• Engagement Studio: With this tool, marketers can pre-program responsive, lead-nurturing paths to guide prospects through the sales funnel.
• Email Segmentation Lists: Marketing Cloud Account Engagement allows teams to quickly and efficiently create new email lists, as well as add or remove contacts from those lists.
• Lightning Email Builder with Drag-and-Drop functionality: Account Engagement provides marketers with a library of templates and tools, so they can build custom email marketing campaigns with minimal effort.

Marketing Cloud Account Engagement’s toolbox allows marketers to develop engagement hooks at every stage of a customer’s journey. The initial point of contact — a personalized email sent to a warm lead — transitions into an automated, pre-programmed path that organically takes the consumer to sales and beyond.

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How Salesforce leads consumers throughout the conversion funnel

Good interdepartmental communication is always a net positive for any organization, as silos create confusion and slow down operations. However, leaders might struggle to visualize how Marketing Cloud Account Engagement can facilitate the roles of each department throughout the conversion funnel.

Let’s break down one possible way it may do so:

1. Marketers utilize Account Engagement’s advanced lead scoring and tracking capabilities to identify priority prospects for the sales department. 
2. The team uses Engagement Studio and Marketing Cloud Account Engagement’s Lightning Email Builder to craft a personalized campaign to boost customer engagement and pre-program consumer journeys based on their responses.
3. Marketers send out targeted email campaigns to high-scoring potential clients that lead them through automated, personalized journeys, turning potential prospects into interested, engaged parties.
4. Marketers assign those prospects to particular sales reps, hastening the conversion process and connecting customers with knowledgeable staff. 
5. Sales leads the customer through the purchasing process, keeping the consumer engaged through the end of their journey – and, if all goes well, the beginning of their next.

Ideally, the customer’s journey will not end with a single purchase. With each customer’s purchasing history tracked in the Salesforce system, Marketing can send emails designed to encourage subsequent transactions. 

It’s also worth noting that the entire customer journey is recorded and stored within the Salesforce system — thus making it easy for the service department to pull up customer information and address any customer issues, questions, or concerns.

Marketing Cloud Account Engagement adds value across industries

Like other Salesforce solutions, Marketing Cloud Account Engagement’s benefits aren’t just applicable to one industry. Wherever customer journeys suffer from siloization and companies lack market visibility, Marketing Cloud Account Engagement has a use case. 

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Let’s break down some of the use cases for Account Engagement across industries:

• Healthcare - With Account Engagement, providers and payers can transmit personalized content to beneficiaries to keep them engaged in their wellness journey. For example, Account Engagement can send automated text reminders during flu season to remind plan members to take advantage of their preventative care benefits.
• Manufacturing - Manufacturing companies can leverage Account Engagement’s AI-powered lead scoring to immediately identify the most lucrative leads and, upon capture, send them on personalized, cross-channel marketing journeys. For example, Account Engagement might notify a sales team member when a lead is ready to convert; Sales would then send the potential customer’s information to Marketing, so the team could leverage the leads’ engagement history to quickly craft a personalized, automated marketing journey. 
• Financial Services - Account-based marketing allows companies to track how each account holder interacts with marketing efforts and tailor future offerings based on the topics consumers engage with the most. As an example, if a credit union member opens an email about the bank's home loan offerings, Salesforce can automatically notify a member of the mortgage team and prompt personalized outreach.

Learn how our team has empowered businesses with Marketing Cloud Account Engagement by checking out our client stories page!

Though the use cases for Account Engagement might differ from industry to industry, the solution provides the same results: increased pipeline and market visibility, new marketing automation capabilities, and faster journeys through the conversion funnel.

‍If you’re interested in how Marketing Cloud Account Engagement can revolutionize your company’s marketing efforts, give us a call to start a personalized journey with one of our consultants.