Our Favorite Resources for New Marketing Cloud Account Engagement Users
Have you recently made the leap to Marketing Cloud Account Engagement (MCAE)? Congratulations and welcome to the club!
I’m sure you’ve heard about all the features, tools, and support options for your new marketing automation platform. You’ve probably had many discussions on your setup with your consultant or admin. You’ve even started to explore what your new platform can do. And maybe you’re starting to get overwhelmed with all this new information.
As someone who’s been there, I’ve got your back. When I was learning MCAE (formerly Pardot), I bookmarked any helpful resource I came across, a good habit for anyone learning a new platform. I saved every community and blog I could get my hands on and got up and running quick.
Recently, I have found myself sending out my list of saved bookmarks to other new MCAE users. But I’d like to make it even easier to get you up-and-running with MCAE as well. So to save you from a long list of bookmarks, here’s my ultimate list of MCAE resources.
In late 2017, MCAE (then Pardot) began moving their documentation and help resources over to Salesforce. Due to this, some of these links have changed, are no longer be active, or will redirect to their new home.
Getting acquainted
You probably were excited about MCAE's long list of features when you had just purchased it, but remembering what each of them can do and how to best use them is difficult. Check out these resources if you need a refresher:
1. A handy glossary: Can’t remember the difference between an automation rule and completion action? Start here
2. Best Practices: There are many routes to the same goal in MCAE but some will achieve results more quickly than others
Email
Forms
Naming Conventions (I highly recommend reading this article if you’re looking to be organized from the get-go)
Tags
Using your lifelines
Marketing Cloud Account Engagement support and peer users are incredibly helpful and plentiful. Whether you need an answer ASAP or want to connect with other users, there’s a way for you to get support, find answers, and connect:
1. Customer HUB: Homebase for all MCAE support resources
2. In person events and MCAE user groups: Nothing beats in-person if you’re in a major metro area
3. MCAE Salesforce Success Community: Feed of real-time MCAE user questions: likely your quickest way to get an answer to what is stumping you
4. Knowledge Base: Search here first for common questions/feature refreshers
5. Technical Support: Create and view support tickets - escalate here when all else fails
6. Customer Success Group/Advocates: Sign up for office hours (there are several every week, plus themed webinars) to get real-time help with MCAE experts.
7. What’s up with my instance of MCAE? See the latest status of known Marketing Cloud Account Engagement issues here
8. Learn from experts: There are tons of blogs out there with helpful tips and tricks. This one by independent consultant Jenna Molby is fantastic for learning new ways to use MCAE.
Planning your Marketing Cloud Account Engagement strategy
Marketing is a passion of mine, and I bet yours too. MCAE and Salesforce offer a bounty of resources to learn the latest strategies and get started on the platform:
2. B2B Marketing Blitz webinar series
3. Past Topical Office Hours covering best practices
5. Salesforce’s Marketing Blog
Diving into the advanced features
As you probably know, MCAE offers some cool advanced tools to really take your engagement to the next level. Try using these three features to take it to the max:
1. Explore Engagement Studio: where you’ll set up drip campaigns and more
2. Learn automation rules: you can facilitate bulk updates and much more
3. Use dynamic content: for personalizing emails to different segments
Taking a deeper dive
Maybe you’re obsessed like me and have loved using Marketing Cloud Account Engagement. Take a break from browsing MCAE's resources and see if you have what it takes to become a certified MCAE Specialist.
Still looking for more resources?
We’d love to step up a time to help your get the most out of MCAE. We specialize in getting you up and running quickly as well as helping you improve your current use of marketing automation.
