Setting up Marketing Cloud Account Engagement, the product still labeled Pardot in parts of the app, happens in a fixed order. Configure and unpause the Salesforce connector, decide which records sync and which system owns each field, then import existing leads and contacts as prospects. Only after that should you build scoring and grading, forms and landing pages, Engagement Studio programs and connected campaigns. Teams that start with emails and forms usually end up rebuilding the sync later, at far greater cost.
Step one: the connector and what it syncs
Salesforce creates the version 2 connector in a paused state when your Account Engagement business unit is provisioned, and nothing syncs until an admin reviews the settings and unpauses it. That pause is your chance to make the decisions that are hard to reverse later. Each business unit can have only one connector, and syncs can run as often as every two minutes.
By default the connector runs as an automatically provisioned user called B2BMA Integration, which needs no extra license and can see every record eligible to sync. If you only want part of your database in marketing, for example one region or one division, set up Marketing Data Sharing before unpausing, or swap in a connector user whose permissions limit what it can reach. Anything the connector changes in Salesforce is attributed to that user, which helps when you are tracing why a field changed.
Before unpausing, map Account Engagement users to Salesforce users. A prospect assigned to someone who is not mapped gets reassigned to the connector user, and reps then wonder why their leads disappeared from their views.
Prospects, leads and contacts
Account Engagement works with prospects: people it tracks by email address and cookie. Salesforce works with leads and contacts. The connector pairs one prospect with one lead, contact or person account using the CRM ID, and falls back to email address when no CRM ID exists. If several Salesforce records share that email, it syncs to the first one it finds, which is why duplicates are the root of so many sync complaints. Sync happens person by person; there is no company-level record on the marketing side.
| Situation | What the connector does | What to decide |
|---|---|---|
| Prospect assigned to a user, with no matching Salesforce record | Creates a lead | Your assignment rule: when a prospect is ready for sales, and who gets it |
| Unassigned prospect, no matching record | Keeps it in Account Engagement only | Whether unqualified prospects should stay out of the CRM |
| Prospect email matches an existing lead or contact | Syncs to that record, or the first match if several exist | Your duplicate strategy before the first sync |
| Leads and contacts already in Salesforce at go-live | Nothing until you import them as prospects | Which existing records belong in marketing at all |
| Record merged or deleted in Salesforce | Updates the prospect and moves deleted ones to the recycle bin | Who owns merges, so marketing history is not lost |
Field mapping is the other half. Custom fields need a matching field created in Account Engagement first, and each mapping gets a sync behavior that decides which system wins when the values differ. Lookup and geolocation fields do not sync, and a Salesforce phone field should map to a text field rather than a number. Write the ownership decisions down: which fields sales maintains, which marketing maintains, and which should only ever flow one way.
Scoring and grading
Scoring measures interest from behavior, such as page views, email clicks, form submissions and file downloads. Grading measures fit from what a prospect tells you: every prospect starts at a D and moves between F and A+ as profile criteria match or miss. The default grading profile weighs company size, industry, location, job title and department. Opportunity activity also feeds the default scoring model once the connector is live, so a lost opportunity can drop a score sharply and trip automation you forgot was watching it.
The numbers matter less than the agreement behind them. Sit down with sales, agree the minimum grade and score that make a prospect worth a call, and write the threshold into an automation rule that assigns the prospect and creates the lead. Review it after a quarter with the reps who worked those leads. A building-products manufacturer we worked with set up scoring and grading as part of moving its email marketing onto Account Engagement, so reps could see which trade-show and web prospects deserved attention first.
Forms, landing pages and domains
Forms are where most prospects are born, so build them after the fields and sync rules exist. Keep each form short, use progressive profiling to collect more on repeat visits, and use form handlers when a form must stay on an existing website page. Every form and landing page should belong to a campaign so the first touch is recorded correctly.
- Authenticate your sending domain before the first email so messages do not land in spam folders.
- Set up a tracker domain on your own domain so links and page tracking look trustworthy and cookies attach properly.
- Install the tracking code on every page of the website, not only the landing pages.
- Add completion actions to key forms, such as notifying the owner or adding the prospect to a list.
- Test each form with a new email address and an existing one, then check the resulting lead or contact in Salesforce.
- Decide how opt-outs and email preferences should appear on the Salesforce record before any list goes out.
Engagement Studio and campaign influence
Engagement Studio builds programs from actions, triggers and rules: send an email, wait, check whether the prospect clicked or matches a grade, then branch. Start with one program tied to a real moment in your sales cycle rather than a generic newsletter drip. A fee-only investment advisor we worked with used a Flow to start a program three days after a planning meeting was marked complete, sending a feedback survey; it went out more than 35 times in its first months without anyone sending it by hand.
Reporting on marketing's contribution depends on Connected Campaigns, which ties each Account Engagement campaign to a Salesforce campaign so engagement metrics land on the Salesforce record. Once connected, you can turn on Customizable Campaign Influence and the additional models, first touch, last touch and even distribution, to spread opportunity revenue across campaigns. Influence is only calculated for contacts attached to the opportunity, so a sales team that never adds contact roles leaves marketing with nothing to report.
Common sync problems and where they come from
Most sync errors trace back to three causes: the connector user cannot see or edit a record or field, a Salesforce rule rejects the update, or a customization such as a validation rule or required field blocks the save. Account Engagement lists failed records in its sync error queue, and checking it weekly catches problems while they are still small.
- A mapped field stops updating: confirm the connector user can see and edit it, and that field types match.
- Picklist values fail: the Account Engagement dropdown must carry the same values as the Salesforce picklist.
- Leads land in the wrong queue: check user mapping and the assignment rule behind the automation.
- Validation rules reject records: add an exception for the connector user or make marketing collect the required value.
- Scores jump after go-live: opportunity scoring started once the connector was unpaused.
- A prospect updates the wrong person: duplicates in Salesforce share its email address.
Account Engagement also sits alongside Marketing Cloud Next, the newer marketing platform Salesforce has built on Data 360 and Agentforce. A clean connector, agreed field ownership and connected campaigns are worth doing either way, because that groundwork carries over to whatever marketing product you run next.
