Salesforce has announced upcoming changes to the limits in Marketing Cloud, with significant updates planned for the Winter ‘25 release. The main release dates are anticipated to be October 5, 2024, and October 12, 2024. These changes are driven by Salesforce’s use of external providers for its infrastructure. The goal is to ensure that customers with lower usage do not subsidize those with more complex use cases or higher consumption.
Key Update: Data Retention Policy
Starting January 15, 2025, Salesforce will update its data retention policy for Marketing Cloud Engagement. Subscriber and journey engagement data will be retained for 180 days before it is deleted and no longer accessible. This change aims to improve data management and comply with regulations and data management standards.
If you need to retain data for more than 180 days, Salesforce recommends exporting and storing it outside of Marketing Cloud Engagement. You can export data using the following methods:
- Automation Studio for tracking data.
- Email Studio for individual email tracking data.
- Analytics Studio for broader data exports.
For detailed instructions on exporting your data, refer to Salesforce’s help article on Marketing Cloud Engagement Data Retention.
Looking Ahead
Salesforce’s shift to a usage-based pricing model is intended to create a fairer cost distribution, ensuring that customers only pay for what they use. This approach helps avoid scenarios where lower-use customers subsidize those with higher usage. Historical data, which can amount to millions of rows, will be managed more effectively by being stored in external repositories and deleted after a specified period.
As Salesforce’s CMO of Marketing Cloud, Bobby Jaina, notes, this change aims to ensure that sophisticated campaigns and data handling yield the highest return on investment. The new pricing model will offer a more equitable system, moving away from flat fees to a pay-as-you-go structure based on actual usage.
