My experiences as a Salesforce/MCAE (Pardot) freelancer in 2024 an end-of-year recap
2024 was my first full year as a freelancer, having gone freelance in April 2023. Here are my years highlights, takeaways and thoughts for 2025.
New Year in Budapest - I welcomed the New Year in Budapest. I believe in a work-life balance, I transitioned from in-house to freelance to help more clients with their Salesforce and Marketing Cloud Account Engagement (Pardot) needs but also to have a healthy work-life balance, which as a freelancer with multiple clients isn't always easy so when there's an opportunity to utilise the quiet time I took it. I was lucky enough to visit Budapest for work over a decade ago, it was nice to return, with friendly people, and lots to do I would definitely recommend a visit, and over the holidays it's beautiful, if a little cold.
I attended my first Salesforce conference - No, not Dreamforce...Connections, the Salesforce AI learning event of the year for marketing and commerce. Chicago is a must-visit city...I feel like this recap is starting to be like a travel blog. And Connections was great for networking and learning alike. I made the mistake of not writing a recap when I got back, so 6 months on I'm a little fuzzy on everything but I remember the hands-on workshops being a great learning experience and me fighting through jetlag to complete a workshop then heading out for some unseasonably warm sunny weather and a cocktail near the river. I also got to play with Einstein's co-pilot which would become Agentforce.
A return to my second home - An extended trip to DC over the summer gave me a chance to catch up with old work friends who helped shape me as a person and as a Marketing professional. Conversations helped me value my marketing background again and reminded me that was a strength in my Salesforce freelancing.
I published three Blogs - Well four if you count this. With my most popular being Pardot Scoring and Grading - it's set up what do I do now? Read it now if you haven't yet!
Underwhelmed then surprised - After having been left underwhelmed by my first Salesforce World Tour London, where registration was poorly organised, the event overcrowded and I wasn’t wowed by any of the sessions I attended, to then what was probably my surprise event of the year, the Agentforce World Tour in London, I found the sessions I went to very insightful, loved having the opportunity to build my own Agentforce Agent, a step on from my playing around with what was then co-pilot at Connections.
2025
Value what you have, use it well then look to build off that - Many Pardot clients don’t use what they have to its full potential and treat it like Mailchimp. It has powerful functionality with my favourites being lead scoring and grading, engagement studios (which yes in the future will move to Flow but I like engagement studios so relish these days when they are still here), and automations and connected campaigns the latter of which I’m so happy the Marketing Cloud Core products are utilising and building on.
Marketing Cloud products on Core aren’t there yet - BUT they are getting there Marketing Cloud Advanced has a lot of potential. Pardot customers get access to Marketing Cloud Core functionalities for free (with Data Cloud) check out - https://help.salesforce.com/s/articleView?id=mktg.mcae_mc_campaigns.htm&type=5
AI - Artificial Intelligence isn’t a replacement for workers, it's a tool to aid workers. Skilled human workers are needed to make the best out of AI. Don’t be intimidated by AI learn to value it and find its place.
Data - I’m leaving data to last, doesn’t everyone, isn’t data always the afterthought…we want to double revenue in x area let's e-mail that segment. Can we identify that segment in the data? How clean is that data? Is the data owned by an active member of staff? Where is the data? Data Cloud is the future for helping on the data front but data hygiene work needs to be done to ensure those Data Cloud credits are working on the best data possible. No AI strategy works without well-organised and understood data. Taken directly from Bobby Jania talking in the Closing Keynote of the recent Mardreamin conference (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hB5TXGCIsvk)
You might not be ready or even want to utilise AI now but get your data ready for when that time comes!
