ExactTarget is Marketing Cloud Engagement

A procurement lead sends one brief to three partners. The subject line says ExactTarget data migration to Salesforce. The first reply prices a move of email templates into Sales Cloud. The second prices Marketing Cloud Next, and a month when Engagement will be turned off. The third asks which business unit still sends, and whether anyone has decided to leave it. Only the third question belongs on the brief. The other two have invented a project from a name.

The sends people are worried about are already running. Someone in marketing logged in this morning and checked a journey. The name on the old contract is ExactTarget. The name on the product they used is not. A quote that starts by moving those sends "into Salesforce" has skipped the account that already holds them.

#What the brief got wrong

ExactTarget was acquired in 2013. The email tools, the mobile tools, and the journey tools were not discarded in that deal. They sit in Marketing Cloud Engagement. A rebrand note puts the consolidation in one sentence: "Email Studio, Mobile Messaging, Journey Builder, and legacy ExactTarget features were all consolidated under Marketing Cloud Engagement." Read that as a location. Consolidated under is not the same verb as migrated off, and it is not the same verb as switched off.

People still type ExactTarget because it is the name on old training, old exports, and old statements of work. Search keeps the old name warm. A partner who prices the search query, rather than the account, will sell a migration for a rename that has already happened. The work, if there is work, is a decision you have not written down yet. Which journey is still wanted. Which mobile message still fires. Which send is kept only because nobody has opened it since a campaign in a year everyone has forgotten.

Sales Cloud is the wrong destination for this brief. It is a sales product. Engagement is where those ExactTarget tools went. A diagram that draws email as a custom object on the opportunity has mixed two platforms because both can store a person. A person on a lead is not a subscriber in a journey. Treat a quote that collapses them as a quote that has not looked.

#Marketing Cloud Next is not the handover

Marketing Cloud Next is a newer product. It does not replace Engagement. A slide that draws one arrow from ExactTarget to Next, and leaves Engagement off the page, has skipped the product you are running. If someone wants to sell Next, that is a separate scope. It needs its own reason, its own licence conversation, and its own cutover. It is not the automatic next step of a rename.

This page will not give you a date when Engagement ends. Nothing in the source for this guide publishes one. A partner who writes a date into the price is not quoting a notice you can check here. Ask which page the date is on. If they cannot point at it, take the date off the quote before you compare anyone.

Pardot is a different product. The name it carries now is Account Engagement. It is not Email Studio, and it is not a leftover ExactTarget business unit. A quote that bundles Pardot because the brief said marketing has mixed two histories. Keep that work off this quote unless you can write one sentence that says why Account Engagement must change in the same window. If you cannot write the sentence, you do not have the scope.

#What a number is made of

A serious reply refuses a single figure until four lines exist. This page will not print a price, a day rate, or a percentage of a contract. Those would be inventions. The four lines are the whole of the cost.

Scope is what changes home, and what stays. A rename changes the words on a slide. It does not, by itself, move a journey. If the brief says migration, name the send that will run somewhere else afterwards, and name the send that will still run where it runs today. If you cannot name either, you do not have a migration. You have a vocabulary problem. Vocabulary is cheaper than a rebuild, and it should be priced as a short piece of naming, not as a programme.

Licences are what you already pay. An Engagement contract does not expire because a search box still says ExactTarget. A quote that adds another marketing product so that you are "on the current name" is selling a second contract. Put the current contract on the table. Then ask what the new work needs on top of it. If the answer is nothing, the licence line is nothing, and someone should say so in writing. Do not let a blank get filled with a product you have not chosen.

People are the hours. Someone owns the journeys that are live. Someone can say which mobile message still fires. Someone can export. Someone from the business can mark a journey as dead without flinching. Internal hours sit beside partner hours. A quote that prices only the people who will invoice you has missed the person who has to approve a send while the work is open. That person is a cost even when they are already on the payroll. Their week is the week you do not get back.

Cutover is the window when a running process changes address. A rename does not need a weekend on a change calendar. Book a cutover only when a send, a journey, or a mobile message will start from a different product, and you can name that product without borrowing a date. If the cutover plan says Engagement will be turned off, and the date is not on a notice you have read, there is no cutover. There is a guess wearing a project plan.

#What migration services would touch

The tools named in the rebrand note are Email Studio, Mobile Messaging, Journey Builder, and legacy ExactTarget features. A partner who cannot say those names is not ready to price the account. A partner who says them, and then rebuilds all four in another product without a reason you recognise, is ready to price a large job you may not need. Ask which of the four is in scope. Then ask which of the four is out.

Email that already sends from Engagement stays, unless you have decided to send it from somewhere else for a reason that survives a meeting. Journeys that already run stay, unless a journey is being retired because the offer, the audience, or the team has gone. Mobile messages take the same test. Legacy features need a list. Legacy is not a licence to delete whatever an export makes hard to read. If a feature is unused, say unused, and say who checked. If it is ugly and still firing, it is in scope only if you are changing it on purpose.

The data argument usually follows the tools. Lists, data extensions, and the relationship to the subscriber are what people mean when they say the email data. This page will not invent a row count, a file size, or a daily API cap. Those figures, where they exist, live on your contract and in your account. They differ by what you bought and by what you stored. A quote that prints a cap from another customer's story is a quote to send back. Ask for the count from your export, with the date of the export next to it.

Business units matter more than the logo. One organisation can hold several, with different senders, different folders, and different people allowed in. A quote that says "the ExactTarget org" as if it were one pile will miss the unit that still sends the operational mail. Walk the units with the person who logs in. Write the ones in scope. Write the ones you are leaving alone, including the one everyone assumes is empty. Empty is a claim. Open it.

#Who has to be in the room

A consultant cannot discover a live journey from a slide. The room needs the marketer who would notice if tomorrow's send did not leave, the person who can read a data extension without guessing the columns, and the owner of the contract. If those three cannot attend, the quote is early. Do not fill the gap with a workshop that renames buttons.

Write what each person is allowed to decide. The marketer can kill a journey or keep it. The contract owner can say whether a new licence is even discussable. The person who reads the data can say whether an export is the subscriber set or a slice of it. A partner who needs a decision from someone not in the room should say so, and should stop the price until that person has answered. A price that assumes the answer is yes is how a rebuild starts.

Agencies like a single workstream because it is easier to staff. Your account may not be a single workstream. Operational mail, campaign mail, and mobile messages fail in different ways and on different days. Split them on the brief if the people who own them are different. A combined quote that hides the split will look tidy in procurement and messy on the first Monday.

#What you ask a partner to refuse

People search for the best agency for this work. This page will not rank SynconAI, and it will not rank anyone else. A league table written without your business units on the table would be theatre. The test is whether they can name the current product, the objects of the work, and the work they will not take.

The current product is Marketing Cloud Engagement. The objects of the work are the studios and the journeys you are actually touching, plus the data those journeys read. The refusal is specific. They will not invent a shutdown date. They will not treat Marketing Cloud Next as the thing Engagement becomes. They will not fold Account Engagement into the same statement of work because the word marketing appeared in the title. They will not price a move into Sales Cloud as if a subscriber were a lead with a different hat.

A polished story from another organisation does not pass. A slide of logos does not pass. The pass is a paragraph you can check against the login you already have. If they cannot name Email Studio, Mobile Messaging, and Journey Builder without reading them off your brief, they are not ready to be hired. You can still have a conversation. You should not have a price yet.

The reporting rename is a neighbour, not this project. Datorama Reports for Marketing Cloud became Intelligence Reports for Engagement. That history belongs to a different old name. Read it on the Datorama guide before you let one partner price Engagement and the intelligence workspace as a single shutdown. They share a word. They are not one migration.

#How to read the quote that comes back

Send the brief back in four lines before you ask for a revised figure. What is live. What may stop for a reason you already know. What must not be included. What the partner must refuse. A reply that opens with one number and a shutdown date has already failed the test. You do not need a scoreboard to see it. You need the old name kept in its place, and the current product named in the first paragraph of the quote.

Keep the old exports. They are evidence of what the account held, not a design for a new one. Label them with the date and the business unit. Do not hand them to a build team as if they were a specification. A specification says what will change. An export says what existed on a Tuesday. Confusing the two is how a quote grows a phase called discovery that lasts until someone loses patience and picks a number anyway.

If the only change you need is the words in a renewal, say that. A renewal that still describes ExactTarget as a separate platform, years after the tools sat in Engagement, should be corrected by someone who can read the contract. That correction is not an implementation. Price it as a reading, with the contract owner in the room. Then stop.

#The other searches

The project quote is on exacttarget implementation cost. That page does not print a figure. Who bought the company is on what happened to exacttarget. The connector is on integrating exacttarget with Salesforce. Whether to move is on should I migrate from exacttarget. The customer fee is on exacttarget licence cost. Who to hire is on hiring for exacttarget. This page does not rank an agency.