I don’t know how many of you have seen the notification that Pardot is not going to allow the Email Opt Out field to update based on the most recently updated record. Here is the knowledge article link: https://help.salesforce.com/s/articleView?id=000366583&type=1.
I find it ridiculous that Pardot is yet again making it extremely difficult to accurately manage subscriptions and opt outs.
We need people to be able to opt themselves in and out via an email. We also have the need for staff to be able to opt people in and out in Salesforce (and not need to navigate to Pardot).
For the tool that is supposed to be the best native implementation with Salesforce, this is really shoddy implementation (especially for the amount of money that Pardot costs). They are really showing how little they care for their customers. They can’t even be bothered to link the correct Knowledge Article for customers who need to see both opt out values in Pardot and Salesforce. That link goes to a Salesforce login page, but I think it was supposed to go to this link (which I searched for separately): https://help.salesforce.com/s/articleView?id=000366361&type=1.
@Rodney Bell has already posted an idea to keep the sync behavior the same. If this change will impact you, please upvote the idea and maybe we can get this reversed: https://ideas.salesforce.com/s/idea/a0B8W00000KTjOyUAL/email-opt-out-sync-behavior-use-the-most-recently-updated-record.
While you are at it, I would suggest upvoting this idea as well, which will solve other problems with the Email Opt Out field, without causing a huge amount of manual labor like the half-baked change Pardot has apparently decided to enforce on us: https://ideas.salesforce.com/s/idea/a0B8W00000GdWv2UAF/overwrite-prospect-opted-out-field-based-on-most-recent-optout-activity.
Also, if anyone has suggestions on other email platforms that integrate with Salesforce, I’d be happy to hear them. It would be nice to have a platform that works and where updates don’t break basic functionality.
Looks like there is some more information here about the new option for "Most Recently Updated record": https://help.salesforce.com/s/articleView?id=000391838&type=1.
It appears they are going to utilize field history tracking to get the actual most recently updated field. I am extremely excited about this update if the information reported is accurate.
I admit, I didn't think all of our concerns would actually be listened to by Salesforce, but kudos to them for paying attention and working on delivering an improved feature that gives options for everyone's use cases!
It would also be amazing if the new most recently updated record process works for other fields as well to stop weird overwrites, but maybe they can work toward that in the future.
