Laura Curtis, Author at Sercante

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So far Laura Curtis has created 6 blog entries.

Help! I Have Errors in My Automation Studio

We’ve all been there. You’ve set up an awesome automation in Salesforce Marketing Cloud Automation Studio. But what do you do when you see errors?

It’s time to put on your detective hat. Follow these 4 steps to get to the cause and resolve the error. Then you can get back to what you do best… marketing!

Step 1: Understand the error

First, you need to understand the error that’s being thrown out.

Tip: Bookmark this Salesforce article. It will be your go-to resource when it comes to understanding errors.

You can find the error you’re working with by hovering over the red step icon that will appear in your automation.

This will detail what errored and the reason. Head over to the linked Salesforce article, and search for the error. This will give you your starting point.

Automation Studio Error Example

Error: Invalid column name ‘{{column name}}’.

Meaning: Either the Source or the Destination has a field that was renamed or deleted.

Suggested Action: Confirm that columns and fields haven’t been changed or deleted.

The big clues in this error are:

The what – Column name
The where – Source or destination
The why – A field has been deleted

This approach will be the same for any error you get. Use it to find the what, where, and why.

Use a table like this to take notes as you investigate your Automation Studio error.

The What	The Where	The Why	Marketing Cloud	Salesforce	Connector
a field name	automation source	deleted field		X
example

Step 2: Check out the what, where and why in Marketing Cloud

In the above example, our “what” was a particular field. The “where” was either the source (the thing that kicks off our automation) or the destination (where our automation goes to). And our “why” was that the field had been either deleted or renamed.

Go to both the source and destination (the where) and see if there have been any changes to the what.

If there has been a change, you’ll need to either update the automation to reflect that change or reverse the change.

If the “what” is no longer there and you cannot re-add it in the source or destination Data Extension, go to Step 3.

Some other common errors that could be solved directly in Marketing Cloud are:

The source or destination Data Extension name or external key has been changed
The source or destination Data Extension has been deleted
Field types and/or lengths do not match in the source and destination Data Extension
File upload naming patterns do not match the configuration

Step 3: Head over to Salesforce

If your Marketing Cloud instance is connected to Salesforce, and you don’t see anything wrong with your setup in Marketing Cloud or nothing has disappeared (such as a field), then it’s time to check out your Salesforce instance.

You may need a Salesforce admin for this part of the investigation. Check out Celine Newsome’s blog post Why Should Marketing Admins Have Salesforce Access? for help making the case in case you don’t have access.

Using your knowledge of how the automation studio has been set up, find “the what” this could mean going to the Salesforce object and finding the field, has anything changed? Other things you may need to check in Salesforce, depending on your error

Has a field been deleted or renamed?
Have permissions changed? Remember your Marketing Cloud Connect user in Salesforce will need to be able to see everything you want to see in Marketing Cloud
Has field or object visibility changed?

At this point, if you find something not quite right in Salesforce, you are no longer in Marketing territory. You’ll need to work with your Salesforce admin to

Understand why the change was made
Find out if it can be reversed
Inform them of the impact on marketing if it can’t be reversed and put a plan in place in Marketing Cloud

We don’t want to go in and start changing things back, as there could be good reasons for the change in Salesforce.

If you find the reason for your automation errors in Marketing Cloud is because of changes made in Salesforce, then it’s probably a good time to open up this blog post in another tab and read it after this one “Why Salesforce and Marketing Admins Work Better Together”

Step 4: Check your connector

If you’re at step 4, I’m going to assume you’ve found nothing in Marketing Cloud and nothing in Salesforce. Here I’d suggest reviewing your Salesforce connector in Marketing Cloud to make sure that’s the case.

You still have a Salesforce System User listed. You can find this by going to set up in Marketing Cloud > Apps > Salesforce Integration
Check that the user listed above is still integrated with Salesforce. You can do this by going to users in Marketing Cloud and checking the Salesforce.com Status.

Make sure your connector user is still active in Salesforce and has all the permissions needed to work with Marketing Cloud.

Work together with Salesforce admins to prevent Automation Studio errors

While there are lots of different errors that can appear in your Automation Studio, a simple process of elimination can often surface why the error occurred and help you fix it. Finally, knowing your Marketing Cloud set up and working with your Salesforce admin is a great step to take to help avoid errors.

What are the common errors you see in Marketing Cloud Automation Studio? Let us know in the comments.

The post <strong>Help! I Have Errors in My Automation Studio</strong> appeared first on The Spot.

By Laura Curtis|2022-12-07T20:06:11+00:00December 7th, 2022|Categories: Marketing Automations, Pro Tips, revive|

How often do your Salesforce and marketing platform admins talk to each other?

Very little
Not at all
Only when things go wrong

If you selected any of the above, you’re not alone.

I’m here to tell you, no matter how awkward or challenging starting that conversation may be, it’s one that needs to happen (and continue) sooner rather than later. Having a solid bridge between Salesforce marketing and Sales Cloud admins will (I promise!) make both your lives so much easier. Here’s why…

Benefits of marketing and Salesforce admins working together

#1 Keep your data clean in both places

Whether you’re using Marketing Cloud Account Engagement (Pardot) or the OG Marketing Cloud, the way data flows between your marketing automation platform and Salesforce was probably one of the reasons you purchased the tool. So, let’s keep it flowing.

By working together you can avoid the following pitfalls:

Duplicate fields
Data being overwritten
Sync errors (Marketing Cloud Account Engagement (Pardot)):
- Fun fact – most common sync errors can be avoided by knowing the Salesforce set up.
  - Field values = prevents invalid picklist errors
  - Expected data = Prevents validation rule errors
  - Field types = Prevents invalid field format errors

If both admins are communicating, you can ensure any updates that happen are accurately reflected in both systems.

#2 Prevent loss of access for users and systems

When marketing and Salesforce admins stop working together, systems can stop working together.

True story, I’ve worked with clients who have seen automations stop working and users unable to access the systems and data because of updates that the other admins were not aware of — permissions, profiles, field accessibility. When these changes are not communicated, frustrations can arise and time can be wasted looking into the cause.

Additionally, If you’re using a sandbox environment, understanding the refresh schedule can help prevent loss of work when it’s unexpectedly refreshed.

Include both admins in conversations around any updates in either system. The changes may not affect the opposing team but it’s good to know just in case.

#3 Experience Team and Business Benefits

The above are all technical reasons why marketing and Salesforce admins should be best friends. But, we haven’t even touched on the business and team building benefits, which are huge.

Here are a few reasons why:

Improve productivity. Stop looking for the cause of a problem but rather plan for the update as a team.
You can help advocate for each other with other decision-makers. We are both on the same team and we should both want the same thing. But when one team of admins is working on something and leaves the other out, they can be left to play catch up and try and figure out what’s going on… increasing the frustration and silo.
Ultimately, it comes down to $$$ – Two sets of admins working independently = Mo $ Mo time
Teach each other. The great thing about being an admin is that every day is a school day, we are always learning about the latest tools, security updates and new ways of doing things. Let’s share that knowledge. Get to know what the other team does and find out how you can help each other and make each other’s lives easier.

How to build relationships between Salesforce admins

So what can you do to improve or build a relationship between marketing and Salesforce admins?

Documentation, documentation and yes, more documentation. Having a record of changes that have been made and how that change relates to the other system will be a huge help in marketing and Salesforce admins working together.

Tip: Using Pardot? Create a shared spreadsheet with all the Salesforce fields and note if they are synced with a Pardot field. What’s that field for? What’s the sync behavior? What are the values? Admins can then refer to this document when field changes need to be made and ensure the other admin knows if it’s going to affect them

Schedule a regular sync up and use this time as a feedback loop, planning session. This can be monthly or quarterly, depending on how often changes are made. Here are some questions you can ask during these meetings:
- What plans do each admin have for the month ahead?
- How will this impact the other team?
- Consideration you hadn’t thought about
- What does each team need to do to prepare? How long will it take to get things in order?
- What’s not working at the moment and what can be done?
Create a joint Slack, Teams, Google Hangouts channel. Whatever your choice of instant messaging channel, use it to inform admins on both sides of any upcoming changes. Use it to post reminders, questions, updates. This will become your go to place to find answers and work with your admins.
Consider an overview training session of your respective platform. Does your Salesforce admin understand the impact on Marketing cloud when field visibility is changed in Salesforce? Probably not. Work with them to help them understand the implications of such changes. They simply may not know what affects the connection between Salesforce and Marketing Cloud.

Wouldn’t it just be easier to just give Marketing admins Salesforce admin access?

Yes and no… If you’ve read our blog on Why Should Marketing Admins Have Salesforce Access?, you would have noticed a lot of very good reasons as to why marketing admins should have salesforce access. This is great if you can hand out this access but what happens when you can’t? Should each admin go their separate ways, never to speak again? Absolutely not!

Even if you can get Salesforce access you should still be opening up communication between yourself and other Salesforce admins.

Strengthen those relationships between marketing and Salesforce admins

Creating a harmonious relationship between both marketing and Salesforce admins starts with the basics… communication and understanding for each other’s roles. When this is followed the benefits can be huge, both personally and technically.

What tips do you have for improving the relationship between both admins? Let us know in the comments.

Original article: Why Salesforce and Marketing Admins Work Better Together

The post Why Salesforce and Marketing Admins Work Better Together appeared first on The Spot.

By Laura Curtis|2022-11-19T00:54:00+00:00November 19th, 2022|Categories: Analytics & Reporting, Data Management, Pro Tips, revive, Strategy|

If you’ve ever experienced email bounces in Pardot (and chances are you have), you’ll know that reporting on and exporting them has been a labor-intensive task.

That all changes now.

As part of the Summer ‘22 Release, marketers have been blessed with a new tool for Marketing Cloud Account Engagement (Pardot) called Email Bounce Report.

It’s a feature that shows who, when and why prospects bounced. And it also allows you to export all that insightful data.

That’s right, our prayers have been answered. We no longer need to manually pull this data from each and every email report.

What is an email bounce rate?

First, let’s understand what a bounce rate is.

Your org’s bounce rate is the number of hard bounces plus soft bounces, divided by the number of emails sent, multiplied by 100.

In B2B marketing, anything below 10% is considered a good bounce rate.

It’s good practice to monitor your bounce rate. And this report helps you do just that!

Who can get the Pardot Email Bounce Report?

This report is available on all Pardot editions, and it includes bounced email addresses from both Pardot Classic and Lightning.

Not upgraded to Pardot Lightning App? Here’s your nudge to do so.

What do you get in the report?

The report is pretty comprehensive and shows bounce data for ALL Pardot prospects. We’ll go into some of the use cases in another blog post.

From total number of email bounces (filtered by date) to bounce reasons, this report has it all. And yes, all of the bounce rate report data is exportable.

Found under marketing reports, you are greeted with a chart illustrating,

All emails sent over the last year – one year from todays date – so if its the 12 May 2022, you can go back to 12 May 2021. Personally, I’d hope this is amended in future updates as it would be useful to see further than the last year in some cases.
Total emails sent
Total bounced & delivered
Bounce by type – Soft vs. Hard

Scroll down, and you get to the good stuff… the bounce details, including bounce reason.

It’s no good seeing the number of bounces you’ve received if you can’t do anything about it. Filtered by bounce type and date, the Email Bounce details table tells you:

Prospects who have bounced
Email addresses and company names
Email subject
Bounce type
Bounce reason
Bounce date
Email name – linked
Email send type and template name

Why is the Pardot email bounce report so useful?

Understand why your emails are bouncing

From full inboxes, invaild email address and none responsive servers, there are a number of reasons why your emails may bounce. This report helps you understand those reasons and potentially act on them.

Types of bounces

Soft bounce – Occurs when an email is recognized by the recipient’s mail server but is returned to the sender because the recipient’s mailbox is full or the mail server is temporarily unavailable.
These prospects may be able to receive emails at a later time. However, after an email soft-bounces five times, Pardot will mark the prospect as undeliverable and suppresses them from receiving emails from you.
Hard bounce – Occurs when the prospect’s email address is invalid, the domain name does not exist, or the sender is suspected as spam and/or has been blocked. Prospects with a hard bounce are no longer mailable.
Bounce reasons – If you’re able to resolve the email bounce issue, you can reset the bounce count on the prospect record and start mailing them again.

2. Spot trends and take action

Use the report and export feature to filter and identify trends that may be contributing to you bounce rate, such as:

Particular templates that continuously bounce
Subject lines that cause bounces – Spammy subject lines?
Dates of email sends – Think back to the Google outage way back December 2020. Are there any significant dates when bounces were high?
Certain companies/ email domains – Contact the recipient and ask them if they’ve configured an email rule that forwards incoming email messages from you to another destination. Their rule could have tried to send a copy of your message to a bad email address. Or, have you simply misspelled the address/email domain?

3. See the bigger picture

Ever sent an email and thought “wow, that bounce rate was high!” You may have wondered if this was an isolated incident or if bounces were in fact an issue in your org?

Often marketers see a few emails with high bounce rate and assume they are destined for failure when it comes to getting their message into the inbox of prospects. Using this report, you can see the bigger picture. Then, you can understand how many bounces you have IN TOTAL out of all the emails sent in the last year.

4. Keep your Pardot data clean

Bounces often relate to the quality of your data and a low bounce rate overall indicates a healthy and clean org. Knowing how big of a problem bounces may (or may not) be can help with keeping your org clean and relevant.

Using the “Reset” feature found on individual prospect records you can reset bounces (hard and soft) and give yourself a second chance.

Still no luck? Consider removing these prospects, particularly if the bounce reason is permanent.

5. Avoid Salesforce account suspension

Salesforce is super serious about permission-based marketing. And its reputation as an email service provider, as well as your reputation as an email sender, is why they monitor accounts with bounce rates over 10% (as well as high spam complaint rates).

If Salesforce notices an issue with either of these numbers, they can suspend email sending from your account.

What can you do to lower your email bounce rate?

No email service provider can ever guarantee your deliverability rates — that’s down to your email practices and behavior.

Here are some things you can do to help with your email sending reputation and lower those bounce rates.

As above, understand why your emails are bouncing and take action.
Set up email authentication.
Build email sending lists using a confirmed opt-in process
Don’t purchase data without getting permission to send emails to the list.
Clean your database regularly & check that email addresses are spelled correctly.
Make sure your emails aren’t spammy.

Understanding email bounces is a big win for marketers

Armed with the data behind the bounces, this report is a win for marketers serious about their email sending reputation.
However, if you’re left feeling confused, worried or overwhelmed by the numbers, reach out to the Sercante team to see how we can help.

Original article: Salesforce Summer ‘22 Release: Review Email Bounce Data in One Report

The post Salesforce Summer ‘22 Release: Review Email Bounce Data in One Report appeared first on The Spot.

By Laura Curtis|2022-05-26T21:10:46+00:00May 26th, 2022|Categories: Data Management, Emails & Forms, New Features|

Picture the scene… You’re using a custom amount field on your opportunities (or even multiple amount fields) in Salesforce. You notice that your Salesforce Campaign Influence reports are not showing any data. You have an amount value on all your opportunities, and you’re using custom roles.

So, why is nothing working?*

The standard Salesforce Opportunity Influence model (and the associated reports) work on the basis that you are using the standard Opportunity Amount field. But more often than not, business operations are far from the “standard” processes.

*It is assumed at this point that all other Campaign Influence set up items and prerequisites have been completed.

Going beyond standard amount fields on opportunities in Salesforce

Business models flex and are customized to the business needs. So, there are use cases where populating the one standard amount field on opportunities just won’t work. We also know that Sercante loves to break free of the “standard mindframe” and test the limits of Salesforce!

So how can you use Campaign Influence (and reports) when you don’t use the standard opportunity amount field?

The recommended option would be to create a Salesforce Flow to update the standard amount field with the values found in your multiple custom amount field(s). But flow can be tricky to navigate if you don’t have the experience.

This post will offer an alternative way to use a custom opportunity amount field in Salesforce Campaign Influence reports that any Salesforce admin will be able to follow and apply.

Step 1: Create one custom amount field

If you only have one custom amount field, skip to Step 2.

If you are using multiple custom amount fields, for example “Estimated Amount” and “Won Amount,” you will need to create ONE custom amount field that populates from your multiple amount fields. You will need to create this custom amount field because you cannot edit the standard amount field.

I’d recommend you create a formula field using the opportunity statuses to determine which value is shown in the newly created amount field.

Instructions

Create a new custom field on the Opportunity Object

Data Type = Formula
Formular Return Type = Currency

Create an advanced formula – IF( IsWon = true, Won_Amount__c , Estimated amount__c )

What is this formula doing?

If the opportunity Stage = Closed Won, then the custom Opportunity Amount field will populate with the Amount Won value. However, if the opportunity stage is anything but Closed Won, the value in this field will be populated from the Estimated Amount.

Check Syntax
Set the field-level security

NOTE: If users cannot see the field they won’t be able to see it in reports or create reports using it

Add the new field onto your page layouts if you wish.

You don’t have to add this field to the page layout(s). Not adding this field to the Opportunity page layout would prevent confusion for the sales reps – They would continue to populate the custom Revenue fields as normal

Save

Consideration

I would recommend adding a validation rule that prevents users from marking an opportunity as “Closed Won” without an Amount Won Value. If the opportunity is marked as Closed Won and there is no value in Amount Won, then the Custom Opportunity Amount Field will show £0.

Step 2: Create a custom Campaign Influence Amount field

The Campaign Influence reports and dashboards get their data from the Campaign Influence object. The data the reports need from the Campaign Influence object are:

Opportunity Amount
Revenue Share

Now we have one singular custom opportunity amount field we need to get it onto the Campaign Influence object, so the campaign influence reports have visibility of the data.

Instructions

Create a new custom field on the Campaign Influence Object

Data Type = Formula
Formular Return Type = Currency

Create an advanced formula – Opportunity.Custom_Amount_Field__c

What is this formula doing?

This formula is simply pulling in the value found on the custom Opportunity Amount field and adding it to the Campaign Influence object.

Check Syntax
Set the field-level security

NOTE: If users cannot see the field, they won’t be able to see it in reports or create reports using it.

Add the new field onto your page layouts if you wish.
Save

Step 3: Create a custom Campaign Influence Share field

At this point we have:

A Custom Opportunity Amount field (if you’re using multiple amount fields, you now have one that populates depending on the opportunity stage)
A Custom Campaign Influence Amount field, which simply pulls in the value from the custom opportunity amount field

The final custom field that needs to be created is the Custom Revenue Share, which is also found on the Campaign Influence object.

The Standard Revenue Share field on the Campaign Influence object will use the standard Opportunity Amount to work out the revenue share for each campaign and opportunity.

So, since a custom Opportunity Amount is being used we need to create a custom Revenue Share field, which will replicate the standard behavior using a formula.

Instructions

Create a new custom field on the Campaign Influence Object

Data Type = Formula
Formular Return Type = Currency

2. Create an advanced formula – Opportunity.Custom_Amount_Field__c * Influence

What is this formula doing?

This formula is looking at the value in the custom Opportunity Amount field and multiplying it by the Influence percentage field (this is a standard field that we do not need to change)

3. Check Syntax

4. Set the field-level security

NOTE: If users cannot see the field, they won’t be able to see it in reports or create reports using it.

5. Add the new field onto your page layouts if you wish.

6. Save

Final Outcome

You should now have:

Custom Opportunity Amount Field – If you are using multiple custom amount fields this should be pulling in the value from either of these fields
Custom Campaign Influence Amount Field – Pulling in the value from the Custom Opportunity Amount Field
Custom Campaign Influence Revenue Share Field – Displaying the share of the revenue by using the Custom Opportunity Amount field and Influence field

Step 4: Customize Campaign Influence reports

If you have installed the Sercante Campaign Influence Starter Pack, then the reports and dashboard that come with this will only work when the standard Salesforce fields are used (Opportunity Amount and Revenue Share). So, you will need to customize these reports and the dashboard (we’ll tell you how to do this next) to include your custom Opportunity Amount and Custom Revenue Share fields. If you have any of your own Campaign Influence reports you will also need to edit these.

Sercante Campaign Influence Starter Pack – Editing the reports and dashboard

Step 1. Open Salesforce Dashboards where you will see the Campaign Influence Dashboard that comes with the Sercante starter pack.

Additionally. open up this link. You will need the images on this page to ensure that when you update the dashboard components you

Select the right report
Select the correct chart
Add the chart title and subtitle
Select the correct Measure

Step 2: Right click the report on the dashboard component and open the report in a new tab

Step 3: Edit the report

Under Columns, remove #Revenue Share and #Opportunity Amount.
Under Columns, add the Custom Opportunity Amount field and Custom Revenue Share (Campaign Influence).
Save and Run.

Step 4. Go back to the Dashboard and click Edit on the dashboard.

Step 5. Edit the individual component in which you just edited its report and use this link as a reference.

Update the report the component uses
Check that the correct chart is used.

Update the Measure.

Update the component title and subtitle.

Step 6: Save the component and dashboard.

You’ll need to Repeat these steps for each of the other dashboard components.

Begin your journey to the marketing ROI promised land with the Sercante Campaign Influence Starter Pack

We’ve enabled and configured Salesforce Campaign Influence a number of times, and we noticed a pattern of reports and dashboard elements that were useful in getting started.

So, we consolidated those views down into a report and dashboard package that you can ask your Salesforce Admin to install for free from our Github account.

Get started here. Or reach out to us with any questions.

Original article: How To Use a Custom Opportunity Amount Field in Salesforce Campaign Influence Reports

The post How To Use a Custom Opportunity Amount Field in Salesforce Campaign Influence Reports appeared first on The Spot.

By Laura Curtis|2022-05-16T17:10:00+00:00May 16th, 2022|Categories: Analytics & Reporting, Data Management, Pro Tips, revive, Strategy|

You’ve conquered the Pardot Specialist exam* (Yipee!) and you’ve caught the Pardot bug. Next on your hit list is the Pardot Consultant exam, but what does it take to pass the Pardot Consultant exam?

First and foremost, not everyone needs to take the Pardot Consultant exam. The exam is aimed at those who are implementing Pardot or solutioning with clients.

In this post, I share the steps I took to pass the Pardot Consultant Certification exam — from study resources and practice exams to preparing for your exam and what you can do on the day of the exam

Note: Yes, we know Pardot is now called Marketing Cloud Account Engagement. However, as of the time of this blog publication, Salesforce is still calling the exam the Pardot Consultant Certification. We’ll update this blog post if/when Salesforce updates the certification name.

*Passing the Pardot Specialist exam is a requisite of taking the consultants exam.

Preparing for your Pardot Consultant Exam

Before you start studying for your Pardot Consultant exam, have you booked it?

No? Go and book it now (we’ll wait here). There is no better driver to studying than having a set date to work toward.

Download the Exam Guide

Let’s start with the basics, download the Exam Guide!

It can be tempting to jump straight into the practice exams and study material but if you don’t know what areas you need to study for you may end up spending time on topics that feature very little in the exam.

How do YOU study?

This won’t be the first Salesforce exam you’ve taken so use what you learnt from the specialist exam, by this I mean how do YOU study best? Are you a practice test taker, a reader, a watcher or a discussion leader.

Spoiler Alert! The length of the questions in the consultant exam are MUCH longer than in the specialist exam, there is a lot more detail to consider, so bear this in mind when choosing your study resources. You’ll need to not only talk the talk when it comes to Pardot but you will also need to master the art of understanding Salesforce exam questions.

I’m a firm believer that the time in which you take the exam and how you take it (online vs onsite) makes a difference. Every Salesforce exam I have taken has always been at 11 a.m. and online (and 2 out of three have been strangely on a Tuesday, call me superstitious!).

The 11 a.m. exam slot gives me time to fully wake up, exercise and get my brain in gear. It also means I don’t sit and worry about the exam all day. Taking the exam online means I don’t have to worry about traffic or finding a parking spot.

If you prefer to take the exam in person then great. Do what works best for YOU!

Understand your strengths and weaknesses

We can’t be experts on all topics. But what we can do is break the exam down (using the guide) and find the areas that hold the most weight. These are going to give you the biggest percentage of marks, so focus on these.

Don’t sweat over the small stuff! There is little value in worrying and trying to learn everything about all topics if they only count for a small percentage of the exam (Salesforce Engage).

The number of questions you will get on them is very small. So get a good understanding of the topics with the larger percentage. More on that coming up!

Pardot Consultant Certification Study Resources

It’s probably the main reason you found yourself here on this post — what study resources should I be using for the Pardot consultant exam!?

There are so many resources out there when it comes to mastering the Pardot ropes and you clearly have a solid foundation as you have gained your specialist exam. However, the consultant exam pushes your understanding of the tool outside of the basics.

You’re required to advise and provide detailed solutions. So when it comes to study resources, the best thing out there is hands-on experience. Try and get as much experience working in Pardot as possible. If you’re after some resources to supplement your hands-on experience, then read on.

Video Content

If video is your thing, check out this Pardot Consultant Bootcamp video series.

This is a great way for those who are newer to Pardot and consulting. It does take time to get through all the content. So, set aside 45 minutes – 1 hour a day to watch all the videos before your exam. If you don’t have time to watch all the videos, watch those covering the areas you lack knowledge in.

Flashcards and Quizzes

If you’re more of a quizer, Quizlt has a whole host of flashcards to test your knowledge. Consider buddying up and test each other, there’s nothing better than a healthy bit of competition .

The flashcards will also help you get familiar with the wording used on the consultant exam.

Jenna Molby also provides flashcards, quizzes and study games found here. You’ll also want to bookmark her website as she has lots of additional resources related to Pardot features!

Practice Exams

When I took the Pardot Consultant Exam, I found it hard to find quality practice exams. However, these Pardot Consultant practice exams have been tried and tested by the Sercante team, so if you learn better by putting your knowledge to the test, these may just work for you.

With all practice exams, bear in mind that some may be a little outdated.

TestPrep.com – For a small fee (about 10 USD) you’ll get access to 6 full-length practice exams and a set of practice questions.
Udemy – Again for a fee (anywhere between 10 – 30 USD) Udemy provided access to full-length practice exams. These exams mimc the exam pretty closely.

Reading Material

There are a ton of resources available to read through but let’s focus on the areas that have the biggest weight.

Automating Business Processes: 17%

You’ll need to know your automation tools inside out.

Given a scenario, recommend the best automation tool(s) (automation rule, segmentation rule, dynamic list, completion action).

Given a scenario, design a sequence of events in Pardot to complete a marketing initiative (assets, automations, notifications, etc.).

Given a scenario, develop and implement a lead nurturing strategy

Account Configuration: 20%

This is the difference between the specialist exam and the consultant exam, you’ll need to know Pardot implementation and setup.

Articulate the implications and importance of technical setup.

Develop a plan to maintain data integrity during data migration.

Given a usage governance plan, develop and recommend a strategy that addresses organization and authorization (or access).

Evaluation: 17%

This is a pretty vague area, but one not to be ignored. Carrying an impressive 17% of the exam you’ll need to master this topic.

The exam guide notes that you should have at least 12 months hands-on experience of implementing and administering Pardot. This is because of sections like this one. It’s going to be pretty hard to study for this section without hands-on experience — memorizing answers for this section won’t be enough.

For this reason, I’d recommend reading through this post for tips on how to approach this section of the exam. But don’t go anywhere just yet!

Spoiler Alert! Think like Salesforce… There may be multiple ways to achieve the end goal but what would Salesforce advise. Brush up on Salesforce Pardot best practices.

Day of the exam

The day has arrived, you have studied and practiced all you can… it’s exam day! I’d consider the next set of tips as important as studying.

Even though you have been through the process of a Salesforce exam before you shouldn’t neglect prepping your mind and environment before this one. After all, who wants to be let down by a bad internet connection just as you log in to take the exam. Believe it or not, this happened to me twice during this exam. Either way, you have to keep your cool and focus.

Get a good night’s sleep. Studies show that the key to transitioning what we learn from short-term memory to longer-term memory (so you can recall it on a test!) is getting enough sleep.
Eat brain food. Blueberries, eggs, and whole grains are known to improve brain performance. Make a healthy meal the day of your exam to keep you full and energized during the exam.
Relax! Perform breathing exercises, meditation and reserve 30 minutes before your exam to relax.
Exercise. Endorphins can improve brain function. Take 15-30 minutes to take a walk, do yoga or stretch the day of your exam.
Last-minute studying. Is there a topic you’re still unsure about? Use the day of your exam to review those areas.
(Online exams) Check your technology and remove any distractions. By taking the exam remotely, you are in a less controlled environment. Prep your space with good lighting, remove watches, phones and pets and children from the room, as well as keep the door shut to avoid any unwanted interruptions.

You do have an online proctor, so pay attention to messages that come through and if something does happen, you can work with support to reschedule your exam. Finally, run a speed test and check your webcam is working.

How to succeed during the exam

Read the question and each answer a few times (at least 3) to make sure you know what it’s asking. You may know what the question is asking but reading it a few times through may indicate what you need to answer.
Reversely, reading the answers before the question can sometimes be useful. Particularly with the Consultant exam, the answers are recommendations based on the question. Try this time with a few practice questions to get the hang of it.
Eliminate the obvious wrong answers. Are there any answers that you know are just wrong? This narrows your answer options significantly when you remove the clearly incorrect answer. When you have your remaining options, think about what answer satisfies the whole question.
Decipher the right answer for the question. This is particularly true for the Consultant Exam as there are multiple “right” answers based on the client’s need. Remember that since this is a Salesforce exam, try to select the answer that you believe Salesforce would recommend.
Trust your gut instinct. Even if you aren’t 100% sure, your first instinct is probably correct.
Be mindful of the time. This is a timed exam, so you’ll want to make sure you finish the entire exam before the time runs out. The best approach is to answer every question once through, and “mark for review” those questions you aren’t confident on. Save 30 minutes at the end of the exam to review those questions and think thoroughly on your answers.

Come prepared and leave happy

The Pardot Specialist certification exam may have been a walk in the park for you, but the Pardot Consultant certification exam is on a whole new level. While it is possible to pass the exam without hands-on experience, there really is no substitute for getting in there and working inside the platform so you can fully understand it.
Need structured Salesforce training to get you where you need to be? Check out our current roster of training courses. And tell us all about your best study secrets in the comments section below.

Original article: How to Pass the Pardot Consultant Certification Exam

The post How to Pass the Pardot Consultant Certification Exam appeared first on The Spot.

By Laura Curtis|2022-05-04T15:52:00+00:00May 4th, 2022|Categories: Career Development, Community, Real Talk, revive|

Pardot and Salesforce Marketing Reporting: A 101 Guide

When it comes to reporting on your marketing assets, the feeling of not knowing what tool to use can be quite overwhelming. I’ve been there! You’ve been asked to show the performance of a marketing asset, asked to explain the impact of a marketing campaign on the sales pipeline or simply, “how can we report on x?” and you don’t know where to start.

Whether you’ve been using Pardot for a while or you’ve just started, having an understanding of what the most common reporting tools can do can go a long way in knocking the socks off stakeholders when you’re next asked about reporting! This post provides a non-technical overview of the most common Pardot reporting tools.

Pardot Reporting Basics

I’m looking for… Reports that will show the performance of my marketing assets, so I can monitor and make adjustments. Only the marketing team needs to see this data.

Pardot provides a set of built-in reports, which are the day-to-day reports for marketing teams. From emails to forms, these reports show the performance of marketing assets created in Pardot, and they allow you to monitor and make adjustments to assets.

Low click-through rate (CTR) showing on your list email report? Let’s switch the calls-to-action (CTAs). High error rate showing on one of your forms? Maybe we need to re-evaluate how easy the form is to complete.

When could I use these built-in Pardot reports?

Pardot reports are great if you want to report on the performance of individual Pardot assets. They are likely to be the tool of choice for your marketing team and will be used to monitor marketing key performance indicators (KPIs) such as, CTR, bounce rate, submissions or visitor-to-prospect conversions.

Pardot reports cover the basic needs for a marketing team to monitor and react, but they do lack the customizability you’ll find in other reporting tools. They don’t always tell the full story for piecing together the whole customer journey, from visitor to opportunity. That means primarily relying on Pardot built-in reports isn’t recommended and can sometimes be inaccurate if you don’t have all the data inside Pardot.

What Pardot reports are available?

Prospect Lifecycle Report
Gives you a high-level view of your sales cycle
List Email Report
Breaks down data from your sent list emails, such as number sent, unique clicks and click-through rate
Form and Form Handler Report
Gain insight into the number of views, submissions and conversions your forms and form handlers have generated.
Landing Page Reports
Shows how many people viewed your landing pages, submitted a form and converted.
Social Posts Reports
Monitor the performance of your social messages via these reports
Pardot Campaign Reports
Provides insight into the effectiveness of your marketing activities.

A full list of Pardot reports can be found here.

Are there any prerequisites for built-in Pardot reports?

Nope! Pardot reports are available straight out of the box and data will populate as you start to create assets.

Salesforce Reports and Dashboards

I’m looking for… Customizable reports and the ability to create visual dashboards using selective data held within Pardot. These reports and dashboards should help align marketing and sales teams.

Salesforce reports and dashboards allow you to be a bit more customized with your reports and can be the first step in helping to align the marketing and sales teams. Not only can you sync data from Pardot into Salesforce (such as data collected from forms), but you can then start to create Salesforce reports using this data, and from here start to create shared marketing and sales dashboards.

If you want to create a Salesforce report that includes data collected in Pardot, you’ll need to ensure you have synced the Pardot field to the correct Salesforce object. Note: There are some Pardot fields, like Score and Grade, that are automatically synced when you connect Pardot and Salesforce (take a look at those fields).

When could I use these reports?

Use Salesforce reports to create a dashboard for sales and marketing managers and track information that is important to your business. You can also use Salesforce reports to segment your leads and opportunities using the data collected from marketing forms, for example, industry split on won opportunities greater than $50k.

Bonus Tip! You can download (FREE) sample reports and dashboards from the AppExchange.

Are there any prerequisites?

Yes, marketers who want to create Salesforce reports will need access to Salesforce (so you’ll want to check your permissions in Salesforce). You’ll also want to make sure you connect Pardot and Salesforce. Finally, if you want any additional Pardot fields to show within Salesforce reports, then you’ll need to plan out, map and sync these.

Connected Campaigns for Salesforce and Pardot

I’m looking for…Campaign performance and attribution reporting, as well as the ability to report on marketing asset engagement within Salesforce. I want these reports to be available for both marketing and sales teams.

A report you’re more than likely to be asked to pull as a marketer is a campaign performance report (Answers questions like, How are our marketing campaigns performing? How many opportunities have they generated?). If you’re actively using Pardot and Salesforce, you’ll notice that they both use campaigns. This can be confusing when faced with this reporting request — which one do you use!?

First we need to understand the difference between the two types of campaigns.

Difference between Pardot and Salesforce Campaigns

Pardot Campaigns are considered thematic touchpoints, which is similar to a “source.” They are used to track a prospect’s first touch. Pardot prospects can only have one campaign (the first touch). But as marketers, we know a number of different marketing campaigns can influence a sales journey, so with Pardot campaigns only showing the first touch, we are no closer to being able to report on campaign performance by just using Pardot campaigns.

Meanwhile, Salesforce Campaigns are treated as marketing initiatives, such as advertisements, email campaigns or marketing events. This way of using campaigns is more familiar with marketers, with a Salesforce Campaign being an actual marketing campaign and not necessarily the first touch point or source. With Salesforce Campaigns, leads and contacts in Salesforce can be members of multiple campaigns, unlike Pardot Campaigns and opportunity data (such as $$$) can be attributed with Salesforce Campaigns (via Contact Roles). This all sounds perfect, and at this point you’d think Salesforce Campaigns is clearly where I go for all my campaign performance reporting.

Pardot Connected Campaigns

But, there’s one problem. While Salesforce Campaigns are linked to your sales funnel, Pardot Campaigns are linked to your marketing assets as Engagement. How can we get this data over into Salesforce so we can report on things like campaign performance, number of opportunities created from campaigns, or best performing campaigns?

Enter Connected Campaigns, which bridge this gap to create a relationship between Salesforce Campaigns and Pardot Campaigns. Once enabled, everyone can see the performance of marketing assets and measure the success of a campaign and its contribution to the sales funnel from within the Campaigns tab in Salesforce.

Prospects are added into a campaign at the start of their journey based on their first touch action. Using Pardot automation, we can add them to even more campaigns (Email nurture, webinar attendance, whitepaper download), and once they convert into leads they are now members of several campaigns. You can now start reporting on campaign performance metrics, like how many leads each campaign has from within Salesforce, for example.

When could I use Connected Campaigns reports?

Use these reports when you’re asked to report on campaign performance, attribution reports, or reporting on your marketing initiatives. Take a look at the Engagement History and Campaign Influence section of this blog post to expand the reporting capabilities of Connected Campaigns.

Are there any prerequisites?

Connected Campaigns requires a verified Salesforce-Pardot connector and an admin to enable the feature.

BONUS – Engagement History Reporting and Campaign Influence Reporting

With Connected Campaigns comes the opportunity to use Engagement History Components and Campaign Influence reporting to expand your reporting powers!

Salesforce Engagement History

Engagement History (components that you will add to your Salesforce objects) gives you access to prospect engagement data (that traditionally lives in Pardot) inside Salesforce. Engagement History is a generic term for a collection of fields, related lists, and other Salesforce Lightning components that make it possible to show valuable prospect engagement data in Salesforce.

Engagement Metric Fields
Engagement History Report Types
Engagement History Related Lists
Lightning Components
Engagement History Dashboard

Campaign Influence Reporting

Campaign Influence allows you to report on and measure the success of your campaigns in terms of opportunities gained. It associates your opportunities with campaigns that helped generate them, joining the dots between sales revenue and marketing campaigns.

When could I use these reports?

Engagement History Components – If you want to report on Marketing engagement activity from within Salesforce. Use the Engagement History Metrics Fields to create more advanced Salesforce reports and dashboards based on Engagement on marketing assets.

Campaign Influence – If you want to report on all things campaign attribution and marketing ROI. Report on things like how much a campaign has influenced opportunities (using first touch, last touch, and even touch distribution). Take a look at this post for more on how to use Connected Campaigns and Campaign Influence to get the metrics that matter.

Are there any prerequisites?

For both Engagement History and Campaign Influence you’ll need to have Connected Campaigns enabled. For Engagement History, you’ll also need to implement the feature, and ensure you add the relevant Engagement History components on your lead, contact, opportunity and campaign objects. For Campaign Influence you will need to implement the feature – Need help? We can help with our Campaign Influence Starter Pack!

Pardot B2B Marketing Analytics (B2BMA) and Tableau CRM

I’m looking for… the whole package. I want customizable dashboards using a vast amount of data from both Pardot and Salesforce. I also want to be able to report on the whole sales pipeline and include how marketing activities have contributed to won opportunities. And I want to be able to share these dashboards with key stakeholders in the business.

Pardot B2B Marketing Analytics

Pardot B2B Marketing Analytics can help if you’re asked to report on things like:

How’s our sales pipeline looking?
What marketing campaigns were attributed to the most opportunities in Q1?
What marketing activities should we focus on next quarter to win more opportunities

B2BMA is a marketing analytics app (within the Salesforce platform through the Analytics Studio), which, with the help of your Salesforce connector, pulls Pardot Data to populate up to five out-of-the-box dashboards. These pre-built dashboards allow you to track your sales pipeline or campaign performance, as well as other common KPIs.

The tool even allows you to add multi-touch attribution dashboards, account-based dashboards, Einstein Behavior Scoring dashboards and custom dashboards depending on your set up and license level.

Tableau CRM and Pardot

Tableau CRM is the underlying tool that allows you to create new dashboards and combine or transform data for truly customized visualizations.

Engagement Dashboard – See how your marketing assets perform and how they are contributing to the sales pipeline and lifecycle.
Pipeline Dashboard – Visually displays your sales funnel, from visitors captured in Pardot through to the opportunities you’ve won
Marketing Manager Dashboard – A great dashboard for those Monday morning meetings between sales and marketing teams. Take a quick look at the health of your business and which campaigns are bringing in the best results.

Explore the out-of-the-box dashboards in this Trailhead.

Grouped Datasets

How does it all work? In a nutshell, data is grouped into datasets (a dataset is a collection of source data). Think of it as a spreadsheet containing summaries of data coming from Salesforce.

Types of data included in datasets.

Emails and email templates
Forms and form handlers
Landing pages
Opportunities
Campaigns
Visitors
Tags

Datasets can be used to create lenses (a view of your dataset). These lenses can be used to explore the data further (think of it as a query) and save for reuse. You can also easily change your lens to visualize your data as a chart, pivot or compare table.

Dashboards are created by selecting a dataset and then bringing in widgets that allow you to enhance your view of the data to explore the aspects that will answer your questions.

What is a use case for creating a dashboard?

Anytime the standard B2BMA app dashboards don’t meet your needs. For example, using the Pardot dataset “Emails and Email Templates,” you could create a custom dashboard looking at the change in open, or click through rate that shows information not displayed in the standard Marketing Engagement B2BMA template dashboard.

Are there any prerequisites?

The B2BMA app is available in Pardot Plus, Advanced and Premium editions (or for an extra cost in Pardot Pro and Ultimate). To use the Multi-Touch Attribution Dashboard, you’ll need to set up Customizable Campaign Influence first. You will also need to make adjustments to your user permissions such as, the ability to create B2BMA apps and assigning the permission sets for the connector user and B2BMA users. Take a look at the B2B Marketing Analytics Implementation Guide for more information.

If you don’t have/can’t have access to B2BMA, you could use Connected Campaigns- Engagement History components and Campaign Influence to build out reports and dashboards.

More on Pardot and Salesforce Reporting

Taking the time to understand how each of these tools work is a great first step in understanding the power of Pardot and Salesforce when it comes to your reporting needs.

Learn more about these reporting tools with these resources

Let us know how you’re using Pardot and Salesforce reporting tools in the comments or reach out to the team at Sercante if you need help along the way.

The post Pardot and Salesforce Marketing Reporting: A 101 Guide appeared first on The Spot For Pardot.

By Laura Curtis|2021-11-11T19:18:01+00:00November 11th, 2021|Categories: Campaigns, Data Management, Pardot B2B Marketing Analytics, Salesforce|