It’s time again to figure out which Salesforce products I own and if I know their new names. Luckily, I can rest assured that my Mulesoft, Slack, and Heroku products will retain their original branding. However, I have seen a few lightning bolts that may hint at something in various places across the platform.
Now, I’m not faulting Salesforce for changing product names or shifting other add-ons to add clarity around offerings. A rebranding exercise is no small undertaking. The number of hours spent across the enterprise add up, not to mention the capital spent for new signage and other assets.
For some reasons, such as through acquisition, it makes sense to rebrand. You don’t want to rename a product immediately after acquisition. Some customers may not want to be part of the Salesforce umbrella, so it’s an easy way to ease those clients and maintain brand loyalty.
Salesforce wants to have a cohesive market strategy and brand identity like any brand. But those names don’t last forever. So, there comes a time when products get renamed; sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worst.
This is without its side effects, though. It can lead to confusion for long-term customers. Do I own this product, or is it new? Administrators and others in the Salesforce support ecosystem may get random questions from their users.
Tableau CRM
It is no surprise that Tableau CRM is being renamed again to CRM Analytics. The attempt to bring Tableau’s brand into Salesforce backfired with mass confusion around naming. Admins everywhere had to clarify to their business partners that they did not own Tableau, that Tableau CRM is a product within Salesforce.
What is shocking is that we haven’t entirely locked down the name of this product. We have run the gamut from Wave Analytics to Einstein Analytics.
I am shocked to see the tie to CRM when clients use the platform for much more than CRM-related tasks. Why not open up the brand to more?
Marketing Cloud
Marketing Cloud has always been a challenge because it has been a jumble of acquired products. The team has done an excellent job weaving disparate products under one umbrella. In my opinion, it’s one of the most challenging clouds to navigate, from both a technical and naming perspective.
For a product designed for marketers, it’s understandable that they want to attempt and create a cohesive image for the marketing persona.
New product names:
- Pardot: Marketing Cloud Account Engagement
- Salesforce CDP: Marketing Cloud Customer Data Platform
- Advertising Studio: Marketing Cloud Advertising
- Interaction Studio: Marketing Cloud Personalization
- Messaging/Journeys: Marketing Cloud Engagement
It’s easy to pick up the pattern of Engagement and unification under Marketing Cloud. This renaming highlights they want to use the strength of the Marketing Cloud identity.
Most of these names are easy iterations, but the transition from Pardot to Marketing Cloud Account Engagement is intriguing. I know we have all grimaced when someone asks about Pardough, so it’s nice to have a different name to look forward to. But is it truly an Account-based marketing tool? So many customers utilize it for B2C messaging; it’s easy to do. It even has built-in transactional messaging, which is perfect.
It’s still early in 2022. These names are being released right before TDX2022, so we may see some new features released in the coming weeks. Since TDX is usually a trailer for Dreamforce. We could be seeing a significant focus on Marketing Cloud and Analytics this year.