Everything You Need to Know About Marketing Cloud Account Engagement: Part 2

Management & Growth

Are you new to Marketing Cloud Account Engagement (MCAE, f.k.a. Pardot) and feeling overwhelmed? You’re not alone! More time, energy, and training go into mastering this app than many organizations realize—so much so that this series is dedicated to helping others better understand MCAE.

As a consultant, I have first-hand experience with common errors and roadblocks that the typical user or admin faces. And I’m here to give you my best tips, tricks, and advice on navigating pitfalls and avoiding these headaches altogether. If you haven’t yet, check out Part 1 for critical information on unboxing and setup before continuing.

Let's revisit the next steps of tending our Account Engagement garden:

Planting seeds with static and dynamic lists to align campaigns and automate your marketing goals
Watering consistently to maintain engagement programs and nurture leads
Pruning as needed to optimize and adjust based on performance in the software

First, let’s discuss the difference between static and dynamic lists and why they are essential. Then, we’ll cover how these lists feed into Engagement Studio and email preference centers and why their use matters. Lastly, you’ll receive an overview of scoring models and how Lead Calculus can help track clear and positive ROI, all while stopping leads from slipping through the cracks.

Planting Seeds with Static & Dynamic Lists

Keeping your data organized and your prospects correctly categorized will make analyzing and reporting easier. Both static and dynamic segmentation lists can prove helpful, but it’s key to remember the differences:

Static lists are managed manually; once a prospect is added, they stay on the list until you remove them. Static lists work great for one-time email sends or exporting specific prospects to analyze.
In contrast, dynamic lists bring more complexity to the table but give you the ability to automate. Dynamic lists update automatically based on pre-defined rules and criteria. Prospects enter or leave the list based on whether they meet these set conditions.

Overall, well-built segmentation lists will allow you to create more targeted, criteria-based marketing campaigns using data from a prospect's behavior, demographics, or engagement. They improve your ability to provide personalization, which can increase engagement and conversion rates.

Here’s an example of how we used dynamic lists for a client to identify prospects with financial services opportunities valued at $100,000 or greater that entered closed/won status less than a month ago. This provides actionable segmentation for their sales team to follow up and thank these prospects:

These lists are key to sending targeted emails through engagement programs, which automate and personalize prospect interactions. The next section will explore how these programs can enhance your email campaigns.

Water Your Engagement Programs

Like watering your garden ensures your “plants” stay healthy, the Engagement Studio tool in Account Engagement helps nurture leads and grow them into sales-ready prospects. By automating personalized interactions, you ensure your prospects receive the right message at the right time based on their behavior.

Breaking down Engagement Studio features could be a whole blog post on its own, so to keep it straightforward, I’ll go over the key features that will set you up for success.

As mentioned above, your lists, which are either static or dynamic, will serve as your audience. Engagement Studio allows you to create an Engagement Program, which gives you access to many activities that tailor the prospect's experience. These activities are split into three categories: Actions, Triggers, and Rules—each playing a unique role in managing overall engagement.

In our example below, let’s map out what each node type can do in this (hypothetical) form completion automation.

1. Actions: Direct Interactions

(Blue) Actions are deliberate steps to engage, move, or update your prospects. Examples include:

Sending an email – a prospect receives a tailored message to keep them engaged.
Adding to a list – organizing your prospects into different segments for better targeting.
Notify sales – handing over a prospect to the sales team once they are ready.
Updating scores or tags – adjusting engagement scores based on actions to track interest levels.

2. Triggers: Automated Responses to Prospect Behavior

(Green) Triggers act as responses to a prospect’s behavior, ensuring that each prospect receives attention at the right time based on their actions. Examples include:

Opened email – if a prospect engages with your content, it signals interest.
Clicked link in an email – a prospect clicking a link shows deeper engagement.
Visited webpage or downloaded content – indicates curiosity or interest in your offerings.
Submitted a form – when a prospect takes action, they demonstrate intent.

3. Rules: Evaluating and Categorizing Prospects

(Orange) Rules evaluate and categorize prospects based on predefined conditions, ensuring they get the proper attention. Examples include:

A score above a certain threshold – if a prospect has engaged enough, they might be sales-ready.
Has a specific tag or list membership – helps segment and personalize the journey.
Assigned to a Sales Rep – ensures no leads get lost in the process.

If a prospect meets certain conditions, it will prompt a specific reaction. For example, If a prospect opens an email, the system will send them a follow-up sooner. If a prospect does not engage, the system could wait longer or send a different follow-up message. Remember that you control these rules and can dictate what happens and when.

Ultimately, an Engagement Program aims to sort your prospects and pass the qualified ones onto your sales team. Unqualified prospects should be sent to a re-engagement sequence.

Email Preference Centers Help Maintain Growth

Like a well-tended garden that thrives when plants get the right amount of sunlight and water, your email marketing efforts flourish when prospects receive the right messages at the right time. An email preference center acts as a filter, allowing prospects to choose the communications they want to receive, helping you maintain healthy, engaged lists while reducing unsubscribes and spam complaints.

Why Preference Centers Matter

When you build segmentation lists and set up Engagement Programs, you’re crafting personalized journeys for your prospects. But if they feel overwhelmed with emails that aren’t relevant to them, they may disengage altogether. A preference center gives them control over their inbox experience, ensuring they remain engaged rather than opting out completely.

How to Set Up a Preference Center in Account Engagement

Setting up a preference center in Account Engagement allows your prospects to manage their subscription preferences instead of forcing them into an all-or-nothing choice. Here’s how to plant the seeds for success:

Create a Custom Email Preference Center Page
- In MCAE, navigate to Marketing > Emails > Preference Center, modify the default page, or create a new one.
- Add subscription options that align with your segmentation lists, such as newsletters, product updates, and event invites
- Ensure clear, user-friendly labels so prospects understand their choices
Set Up Subscription Lists
- Preference centers rely on public lists, which prospects can opt into or out of
- Go to Marketing > Segmentation > Lists and create public lists for each subscription category
- If you use dynamic lists, ensure they reflect the right preferences by using rules that update based on prospect engagement
Link the Preference Center to Your Emails
- Instead of a generic "Unsubscribe" link, update your email footers to direct users to the preference center
- Use the %%email_preference_center%% variable in your email templates to dynamically insert the link
Test and Optimize
- Like adjusting watering schedules based on a plant’s needs, you should regularly review engagement data and tweak your preference center options
- Monitor which subscription options are most popular and adjust your content strategy accordingly

Tying It All Together

Your Engagement Studio programs can use subscription preferences to deliver tailored content aligned with prospects' needs. Instead of sending the same emails to everyone, nurture different prospect segments based on their interests.

By implementing a well-designed preference center, you’re not just keeping your email lists healthy—you’re fostering stronger relationships with your audience and ensuring long-term engagement. Like pruning away dead leaves to encourage new growth, allowing prospects to fine-tune their preferences helps your marketing strategy flourish.

Pruning to Measure Return on Investment (ROI)

You should now have everything you need to create a successful email campaign to promote growth and capture leads. Sufficient tracking and lead scoring are necessary to optimize and adjust your cadences as needed. This, along with measuring ROI, ensures you’re continually evolving and that your efforts are always helping you progress in the right direction.

Marketing Cloud Account Engagement is a reliable marketing automation tool for tracking marketing activities. The Account Engagement Connector integrates seamlessly with Sales Cloud, allowing marketers to attribute user activity directly to marketing efforts. However, it’s difficult to move beyond the top-level reporting to get the granular insights needed for precise ROI calculations. You need to step up to B2B Marketing Analytics for that level of detail.

B2B Marketing Analytics offers pre-built dashboards that can help you establish attribution for your business. It populates marketing and sales data directly from Salesforce and has built-in multi-touch attribution modeling, becoming the backbone for a marketing analytics bridge. On the flip side, integrating into your marketing strategies can be a mammoth, and it takes customization and expertise to implement and interpret correctly.

This is why we recommend using Lead Calculus by Digital Mass. We designed this lead scoring engine to connect the dots on marketing activities beyond what existing ROI measurement tools can provide.

Understanding the most effective touchpoint—from the first customer interaction to the first purchase—will give you the valuable insight needed to know where to direct your marketing strategy. Like pruning your Account Engagement garden to optimize growth, Lead Calculus helps you see the full picture and prevents leads from slipping through the cracks.

In Summary

Segmentation is Key – Use static and dynamic lists to organize prospects effectively and enhance personalization in your campaigns.
Nurture with Engagement Studio – Automate interactions through Actions, Triggers, and Rules to keep prospects engaged and move them toward conversion.
Maintain List Health – An email preference center helps prospects manage their subscriptions, improving deliverability and engagement.
Measure and Optimize – Leverage lead scoring, ROI tracking, and advanced analytics tools like B2B Marketing Analytics and Lead Calculus to refine your marketing strategy.
Continuous Improvement – Regularly assess and adjust your Account Engagement setup to maximize efficiency and drive better results.

Account Engagement is a game-changer in marketing strategy. Its many beneficial features can enhance customer engagement, drive sales growth, and boost revenue overall. No matter where you are in your Account Engagement journey, we hope this series has provided tips and tricks to improve your experience with this software.

Have more questions about MCAE or the vast world of Salesforce? Our trusted consultants at Digital Mass would love to hear from you! Contact us today.