Nonprofits on Salesforce: How to leverage Pardot for marketing and more

Nonprofits that are using Salesforce have much to gain by incorporating Pardot into their marketing strategy. 

But, isn’t Pardot only meant for teams following a B2B marketing strategy? While Pardot is built for B2B marketers, lots of nonprofits follow the business-to-business marketing model to deliver a diverse range of services to communities.

Here’s how nonprofits of many shapes and sizes use Pardot to drive marketing, fundraising, and volunteer management strategies.

Why use Pardot instead of other marketing automation platforms?

Missions of all nonprofit organizations of the world are as diverse as the communities they serve. With that in mind, the marketing automation platform you choose must meet the specific needs of your team. You may already be using an email marketing platform like Mailchimp, Constant Contact, or HubSpot. And migrating to Pardot may be the thing you’ve been looking for to scale your marketing efforts and open departmental silos at your organization.

Pardot is a lead generation and nurturing tool that falls under the Salesforce umbrella.

Here are three main questions you should ask yourself when determining if Pardot is right for your organization.

  1. Does your organization already have a Salesforce org in place?
  2. What is your marketing team trying to achieve?
  3. What resources are available to your organization?

Take a few minutes to consider these questions. Pardot is a powerful tool, but it can only make teams successful when it’s the right tool for the job.

Pardot for nonprofits on Salesforce

If your organization is already a Salesforce customer, then using Pardot for marketing may be the right choice for you. Pardot is built on the Salesforce platform. That means, it’s fairly easy to pass data from Pardot to other Salesforce clouds that are connected to your org.

One of the advantages of using a combination of Salesforce clouds is the ability to view Salesforce as the single source of truth when checking on the health of your organization. It also makes it easy to gather valuable reporting data you can use to show the results of your work and the impact your organization has on the community.

You can see Pardot data inside other Salesforce products, like Sales Cloud, Nonprofit Success Pack, Nonprofit Cloud. Philanthropy Cloud, and Education Cloud. This creates a connection between marketing and other teams at your organization, whether they’re fundraising, sales, or volunteer recruiting teams. 

For example, content from Pardot is available inside Salesforce. That means your marketing team can control branding and content usage in other departments and create consistent experiences for everyone.

However, you can still use Pardot at your nonprofit organization if you’re not on Salesforce. Check out this article to learn more.

What Pardot does for marketing teams at nonprofits

Pardot works great for small teams, which means it may be ideal for smaller nonprofits with limited resources. Beyond connecting teams that use Salesforce by eliminating data silos, Pardot provides nonprofits with the tools they need to nurture prospects throughout long engagement cycles.

Pardot Dashboard View

Marketers at nonprofits use Pardot for many reasons. But here are the main ones:

Fundraising and Donor Communications

Many nonprofits rely on individuals and companies to provide the funding they need to accomplish their organizational mission. Pardot allows nonprofits to track engagement with prospective and existing donors so they can see the results of specific marketing campaigns. They can adjust their marketing strategies to focus on the types of campaigns that result in the greatest fundraising success.

The engagements these nonprofits track are related to content and email marketing efforts. Nonprofit organizations leverage their website, social media, Pardot landing pages, paid advertisements and other marketing channels to generate interest in their organization. 

Pardot collects engagement data as people interact with the organization’s content. After nurturing prospective donors for an extended period of time, fundraising teams can use the engagement data reporting to pinpoint the most interested individuals and companies. Then, they can swoop in at the perfect time because they know when prospective donors are most likely to make a donation. And, they have rich data they can use for impact reporting and budget justification.

Volunteer Recruitment and Management

Engagement studio program

Recruiting volunteers and managing the day-to-day operations of a nonprofit organization is no easy task. In general, the teams at nonprofits wear many hats and do what they do more out of passion than pay grade. That’s where Pardot comes in. It’s a versatile tool built to ease the burden for small marketing teams with limited resources.

Pardot can help to recruit and manage volunteers for nonprofits similar to the way it tracks prospective donors. You can pull volunteers into Pardot by uploading their information through a .csv file or syncing to a custom field in Salesforce. 

You can also gather prospective volunteer data in Pardot. To do that, you create a conversion point, like a form on a ‘Become a Volunteer’ page on your website. Then, create a Pardot campaign for that form so you know people in that campaign have interest in volunteering for your organization.

Once they decide to start volunteering, you can use Pardot for onboarding and to keep them informed and engaged after they join. Pardot Engagement Studio allows you to create automated journeys for your volunteers. Then, they get the communications they need in the right place and at the right time based on engagement activity.

You can even track whether or not volunteers are getting proper training. For example, using a Pardot Engagement Studio Program, you can send emails containing training sessions recorded through Zoom over a 30-day period for new volunteers as they join your organization. The Pardot-Zoom integration allows you to see whether or not new volunteers watch the training videos. Then, you can understand the effectiveness of the training and adjust your strategy accordingly.

Fundraising Events

Nonprofits use fundraising events to get the community involved by promoting a culture of giving. These events are often the culmination of all the hard work teams endure throughout the year, and they drive budgetary allocations for the entire organization. 

Things have changed in recent years for nonprofit organizations that use event-based fundraising tactics. Giving the option to participate in events virtually has become commonplace and essential for many organizations. That’s where Pardot becomes a game-changer.

Pardot is ideal for all types of events — in person, virtual, or hybrid. You can track prospect engagement in all of these situations using Pardot, and marketing automation makes it easy to build a journey that builds excitement while providing essential information for your event.

But how can you track in-person event attendance, you ask? Since Pardot is built on the Salesforce platform, you can enlist the help of a Salesforce developer to build custom apps. Then, in-person attendees can use the app to check in to the event and specific presentations. Or, you can use a third-party event platform to host a hybrid event. This allows you to pull engagement data from the platform into Pardot through integrations.

Resources for nonprofits marketing with Pardot

Now that you know how Pardot works for marketing teams at nonprofits, you can start thinking about your next steps. Evaluate your current marketing processes to identify what’s working, what isn’t, and where there are opportunities for improvement. Then, you can start to explore Pardot to weigh it against other marketing automation tools available and see if it’s a good fit.

Keep it going with these resources to learn more about nonprofit marketing with Pardot:

Tell us how your organization is handling marketing and donor communications in the comments. And reach out to Sercante to see if Pardot is the right option to take your organizational goals to the next level.

The post Nonprofits on Salesforce: How to leverage Pardot for marketing and more appeared first on The Spot For Pardot.

By |2021-11-29T16:52:00+00:00November 29th, 2021|Categories: Campaigns, Content Marketing, Data Management, Email Marketing, Engagement Studio, Events, Integration, Non-Traditional Use Cases, Salesforce|
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How to Empower Higher Ed Marketing Teams with Pardot

Higher ed institutions around the world are embracing a digital future with the shift to marketing with Pardot. 

The traditional way of reaching prospective students, donors, and community partners is being replaced by personalized digital marketing tactics. And Pardot is the key to connecting institutional departments while providing right-time and right-message marketing.

Enter Pardot. Marketing teams at higher education institutions that are also Salesforce customers can finally feel like they’re part of the action. That’s because Pardot is built on the Salesforce platform, which enables marketing teams to connect their data and content to other departments at their institution. And Pardot allows marketers to generate valuable leads, nurture relationships, and convert more prospects throughout the power of marketing automation.

This is how Pardot empowers marketers working in higher education to reach their goals.

Pardot Connects Higher Ed Marketers to Other Departments

Have you ever had the feeling that your marketing team is on an island? Well, if the college or university you’re at already has an existing Salesforce org in place, then you’re in luck.

Pardot is a Salesforce product. That means it connects seamlessly with other Salesforce clouds in place at your institution. You can pass data (e.g., prospect activity) and content (e.g. email and landing page templates) for better cross-departmental collaboration.

Pardot has a cloud product for just about any type of company and organization. That includes clouds different departments in higher education may be using already. For example, here’s how the technology stack may look for a mid-size regional university.

higher ed marketing with pardot

Prospects get better experiences with higher ed institutions through Pardot

Pardot is great for B2B companies because they have a long sales cycle. This cycle includes lead generation, nurturing, and multiple opportunities and sales over a long period of time. Many institutions of higher education operate in a similar fashion.

Current students may come from a long line of repeat students and family legacy. 

They may engage with your institution by attending as undergraduate students. While at your university, they require student success resources so they keep coming back each semester. After graduation, they may slowly start giving back as their earnings increase each year. And finally, their children will make it to your mailing lists as the time to look at colleges arrives.

Pardot ensures a consistent and personalized experience for everyone in your funnel. And it gives you the opportunity to tailor your efforts based on tangible insights through engagement activity tracking.

Here’s how it works.

Lead Generation

You create a conversion point, like a form on a ‘Schedule a Visit’ page on your website. Then, create a Pardot campaign for that form so you know people in that campaign have interest in visiting your university campus. 

Pardot creates a prospect record for everyone who completes the form. Then, you’ll start to see engagement activity on the prospect record as they interact with your content (e.g., web pages and emails) thanks to the power of web tracking cookies.

Prospect Nurturing and Student Retention

pardot engagement studio example
Pardot Engagement Studio Program Example

Once you get prospects into your funnel, the goal is to keep them engaged so your institution is top of mind when they finally make a decision about where to go to school or spend their annual donation budget. 

You can accomplish that by creating content that provides value for your audience — whether it’s educational, entertaining, or inspirational. Your content marketing strategy will include a robust website with rich content resources. Then, you can use Pardot to track the effectiveness of your content efforts.

Then, you can start nurturing your prospects by sending them on personalized and automated content journeys with Pardot Engagement Studio.

You can even use Pardot to drive student retention initiatives. For example, your team can create an Engagement Studio Program that delivers wellness and educational resources to current students. You can use the data from that program to identify students who need outreach from a school advisor or administrator.

Marketing Reporting

Higher ed institutions are feeling the crunch when it comes to scaling marketing efforts with limited budgetary resources. And nothing helps to justify budget allocation more than solid marketing reporting metrics. 

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. 

Salesforce reports and dashboards allow you to customize your reports. Additionally, it can be the first step in helping to align the marketing team with other departments within the college or university. 

That means, you can sync data from Pardot into Salesforce, such as data collected from forms. Then, you can create Salesforce reports using the data and start using shared marketing and advancement or student recruiting dashboards. 

Resources about Pardot for higher education marketers

Understanding why your college, university, or higher education institution should migrate to Pardot is the easier part. Convincing your colleagues and leadership team may be another story. 

One thing’s for sure. Your marketing team can finally feel like part of the greater team by migrating to Pardot if the rest of the institution is operating on the Salesforce platform.

Learn everything you need to know to make the case and upgrade your marketing strategy for the all-digital future by checking out these resources.

Thinking about making the switch? Tell us about your current marketing strategy in the comments. And reach out to Sercante when you’re ready to implement Pardot at your higher education institution.

The post How to Empower Higher Ed Marketing Teams with Pardot appeared first on The Spot For Pardot.

By |2021-11-18T20:58:00+00:00November 18th, 2021|Categories: Campaigns, Content Marketing, Data Management, Email Marketing, Engagement Studio, Salesforce|
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ParDreamies Best In Show Pardot Award Winner: Destined

The first-ever ParDreamies awards, which were presented during the ParDreamin’ 2021 VIP After Party, celebrate solutions marketing and IT professionals built to reach their goals using Pardot. These solutions are especially impressive because they each rose to solve a specific challenge while utilizing technology to automate their way to greatness. Winners of the ParDreamin’ awards get bragging rights for their team and company, a sweet swag pack, and a fancy trophy to remind them how awesome they are every day.

ParDreamies Categories

The ParDreamin’ team created five categories to honor the teams behind the magic:

  1. Personalization Perfection: Right-time, right-message marketing
  2. Social Impact: Creating positive change through Pardot
  3. Grassroots Innovation: Scaling small business with Pardot
  4. Extending Pardot: API-driven solutions
  5. Best in Show

Here’s the solution that won the ParDreamies 2021 Pardot award for the Best in Show category, which recognizes the overall winner among all ParDreamies award submissions. The ParDreamies Best in Show award went to Destined, which was submitted by Tammy Begley and Claudia Hoops.

Best in Show with Destined

Understanding who your prospects are and how they might interact with your brand presents a challenge to even the most seasoned marketers. The team at Destined saw opportunities in that challenge.

The ParDreamies Best in Show award goes to the team at Destined for building a fun icon-driven landing page their prospects use to profile themselves. Prospects use the landing page to provide information about themselves so Destined can send them on a personalized journey through a Pardot Engagement Studio Program.

Quick Facts:

  • Automates prospect profiling
  • Enables easy prospect segmentation
  • Empowers prospects to tell brands what they’re looking for
  • Combines Pardot forms, landing pages, scoring and grading, and engagement studio programs

About the Award-Winning Solution

Destined is a premier Salesforce consulting partner based in Australia. They do great work in the Pardot space and have several amazing marketing champions. 

With a client from the property industry, the team at Destined workshopped the criteria of an ideal client and put a Pardot grading profile together. As a result, we built an engaging, icons-driven profiling landing page for prospects to self-identify and build their own profiles. Anyone who signs up for the newsletter is added to a welcome journey within Pardot Engagement Studio. The objective of this journey is to build rapport and trust so the prospect profiles can grade them.

They built an easy and engaging way to automate the collection of information rather than for a sales team member to ask these questions over the phone to then find out that the person they are talking to wasn’t ready to buy. 

Challenge the team wanted to solve

Australia’s property industry is very competitive. As a property developer, you want to collect as much information as possible about your potential buyers. It is imperative that sales teams can quickly follow up with clients who are ready to buy, have finance approved, and are high budget investors. 

At the same time, it likely makes sense to send prospects who are still saving and might be looking to buy in 12+ months on an educational nurture campaign. The profiling page automates the gathering of this information in an engaging way.

Hurdles they overcame during the project

There were no major hurdles to overcome other than coming up with the idea in the first place on how to build an engaging landing page that prospects actually want to complete. 

Pardot forms and landing pages helped the team to build an engaging profile page. They used Pardot’s profile feature to build the criteria of the property developer’s ideal client profile. Then, they built automation rules to trigger the grading. And finally, they built a welcome journey as a Pardot Engagement Studio Program with the profile page as a call to action to gather the information from our prospects.

Results after implementing the solution

To date, the team has seen a 34% conversion rate on average. This is for customers who have been put onto the welcome journey and who have profiled themselves and have met the MQL threshold of being the right client.

Learn more and keep it going

The project was a huge success, but it took several people and a great deal of expertise and resources to make it happen. Here are resources you can use to replicate the project in your own Pardot instance or get inspiration to do something similar.

Going to try this on your own? Tell us about it in the comments or reach out to Sercante for help along the way. 

The post ParDreamies Best In Show Pardot Award Winner: Destined appeared first on The Spot For Pardot.

By |2021-11-16T21:43:54+00:00November 16th, 2021|Categories: Campaigns, Content Marketing, Data Management, Design, Email Marketing, Engagement Studio, Events, Integration|
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ParDreamies Social Impact Pardot Award Winner: Lexipol

The first-ever ParDreamies awards, which were presented during the ParDreamin’ 2021 VIP After Party, celebrate solutions marketing and IT professionals built to reach their goals using Pardot. These solutions are especially impressive because they each rose to solve a specific challenge while utilizing technology to automate their way to greatness. Winners of the ParDreamin’ awards get bragging rights for their team and company, a sweet swag pack, and a fancy trophy to remind them how awesome they are every day.

The ParDreamin’ team created five categories to honor the teams behind the magic:

  1. Personalization Perfection: Right-time, right-message marketing
  2. Social Impact: Creating positive change through Pardot
  3. Grassroots Innovation: Scaling small business with Pardot
  4. Extending Pardot: API-driven solutions
  5. Best in Show

Perhaps the greatest side effect of the awards is the opportunity to share the winning solutions so others can replicate them in their own Pardot instances. Here’s the solution that won the ParDreamies 2021 Pardot award for the Social Impact category, which recognizes teams that utilize Pardot to affect positive social change. The ParDreamies Social Impact award went to Lexipol, which was submitted by Miriam Childs and Julian Janssen.

Social Impact with Lexipol

Lexipol is a Texas-based company that provides policy manuals, training bulletins, and consulting services to law enforcement agencies, fire departments, and other public safety departments. 

The team at Lexipol sprang into action in March 2020 and utilized Pardot to launch a Coronavirus Learning & Policy Center. This was a resource designed to give public safety agencies free access to industry-specific COVID-19 online learning courses, policies and news to assist in their response on the front lines of the pandemic and to help their communities during a particularly challenging time.

To add an extra hurdle, the company was evolving from a recent merger. This project represented one of the first times they offered these solutions under one brand, which in turn helped demonstrate how the merged entities could add value and deliver on their brand promise.

Quick Facts: 

  • Pardot was critical in promoting and tracking success.
  • List emails and social posts informed the market of the site, highlighting critical information via dynamic segmentation.
  • Pardot files hosted and tracked policy documents available on the microsite.
  • Scoring and connected campaigns allowed leveraging of interaction data.
  • Per Einstein AI campaign influence, these efforts influenced 2,445 opportunities to date.

Challenge the team wanted to solve

At the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, Lexipol, the leader in policy, training and wellness support for public safety and local government, recognized the urgent need for pandemic-related resources in public safety agencies who were tasked with executing many of the public health responses necessary in the pandemic. The team at Lexipol investigated opportunities to help public servants safely succeed in helping their communities during a particularly challenging time.

Hurdles they overcame during the project

Internally, Lexipol innovated by pooling relevant resources across product lines, consolidating them in a unified place and providing free access to any agency, whether or not they were a current customer. Evolving from a recent merger, this project represented one of the first times they offered these solutions under one brand. In turn, the project demonstrates how Lexipol uniquely provides comprehensive solutions to help agencies serve their communities in times of critical stress.

Results after implementing the solution

Compiling resources across systems and unifying access through a free online environment presented a challenge. However, the product was incredibly successful in helping first responders access critical resources to address the challenges of the pandemic.

List emails and social posts informed first responders of the site, and they highlighted critical information via dynamic segmentation. Additionally, scoring and connected campaigns allowed leveraging of interaction data to help sales and services teams follow up with agencies that benefited from the resource. This process contributed significantly to  converting prospects to customers while helping existing customers adopt additional solutions.

Over the course of the campaign, over 13,000 courses were accessed, 17,000 policies downloaded, and 1,700+ agency leaders requested online learning access be set up for their agency. Per Einstein attribution’s campaign influence model, these efforts influenced 2,445 opportunities to date.

Learn more and keep it going

The project was a huge success, but it took several people and a great deal of expertise and resources to make it happen. Here are resources you can use to replicate the project in your own Pardot instance or get inspiration to do something similar.

Going to try this on your own? Tell us about it in the comments or reach out to Sercante for help along the way. 

The post ParDreamies Social Impact Pardot Award Winner: Lexipol appeared first on The Spot For Pardot.

By |2021-11-16T16:53:35+00:00November 16th, 2021|Categories: Campaigns, Content Marketing, Data Management, Design, Events|
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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. 

Pardot reports

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
Landing page reporting

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. 

Campaign Influence reporting

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 |2021-11-11T19:18:01+00:00November 11th, 2021|Categories: Campaigns, Data Management, Pardot B2B Marketing Analytics, Salesforce|
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ParDreamies Personalization Perfection Pardot Award Winner: Restaurant 365

The first-ever ParDreamies awards, which were presented during the ParDreamin’ 2021 VIP After Party, celebrate solutions marketing and IT professionals built to reach their goals using Pardot. These solutions are especially impressive because they each rose to solve a specific challenge while utilizing technology to automate their way to greatness. Winners of the ParDreamin’ awards get bragging rights for their team and company, a sweet swag pack, and a fancy trophy to remind them how awesome they are every day.

The ParDreamin’ team created five categories to honor the teams behind the magic:

  1. Personalization Perfection: Right-time, right-message marketing
  2. Social Impact: Creating positive change through Pardot
  3. Grassroots Innovation: Scaling small business with Pardot
  4. Extending Pardot: API-driven solutions
  5. Best in Show
Personalization Perfection

Perhaps the greatest side effect of the awards is the opportunity to share the winning solutions so others can replicate them in their own Pardot instances. Here’s the solution that won the ParDreamies 2021 Pardot award for the Personalization Perfection category, which recognizes right-time, right message marketing solutions.

Personalization Perfection Pardot Campaign with Restaurant 365

Things have been out of sorts for most industries in the past two years, but the restaurant industry is among one of the hardest hit by the coronavirus pandemic. Restaurants around the world had no choice but to switch to take-out only or close completely. At the same time, many restaurants were experiencing staffing shortages and had to increase their prices due to rising food costs.

Restaurant 365 is an all-in-one restaurant management platform that serves independent restaurants, multi-concept restaurant groups, franchises, and accounting firms. The Restaurant 365 platform is the leading all-in-one, restaurant-specific, cloud-based accounting, inventory, scheduling, payroll and HR solution to simplify day-to-day restaurant operations, lower cost of goods sold (CoGS) and optimize labor costs.

Pardot Campaign Solution Summary

Senior Marketing Operations Manager Brittany Rhyme saw the challenges restaurants were facing. She wanted to ease the burden for them using the power of the Pardot platform and personalization enhancements to create optimal and engaging experiences for existing clients and prospects.

She accomplished these goals by creating a quiz-style interactive experience via the Outgrow and Pardot integration paired with a personalized and interactive experience using custom fields and dynamic content on Pardot Landing Pages.

Hurdles to Implementing Campaign Solution

The two main hurdles Brittany experienced while managing the project were related to cross-departmental contribution and implementation. 

She had to work across departments to get the campaign created, which required her to sync with CSM and product teams to perfect the quiz content (questions and results). While this slowed the implementation process, it was an essential part of the campaign’s success.

Additionally, the sales teams were eager to test the quiz, and they forwarded the email with the landing page results to other team members. Email forwarding caused results in the landing page dynamic content to fail. She addressed that challenge by implementing campaign training for internal teams.

Landing Page (Dynamic Content + Custom Fields)

Pardot Campaign Results

The campaign has been successful in reaching several reporting metric goals Brittany and her team had for the project. 

Perhaps the greatest result was an increased outbound lead flow to the sales development representative (SDR) team during a quarter that typically has low prospect engagement (Q3). This was the team’s first try at this type of interactive content, and the new type of helpful quiz-style content allowed them to generate net new leads to the database.

The team saw equally impressive reporting metrics for other goals as well. The Pardot campaign helped the team to crush their objectives and key results (OKR) goals as well as their overall marketing qualified lead (MQL) goal. 

They also experience unexpected results. The campaign helped to “wake the dead” in terms of stagnant/lost opportunities in the database with the engaging quiz content. 

OKR Achieved: 79 quiz completions/50 goal

Learn more and keep it going

Now that you’ve learned about the campaign solution, you can take that knowledge and use it in your own Pardot instance. Here are a few resources to help you replicate the project.

Going to try this on your own? Tell us about it in the comments or reach out to Sercante for help along the way.

The post ParDreamies Personalization Perfection Pardot Award Winner: Restaurant 365 appeared first on The Spot For Pardot.

By |2021-11-11T11:42:44+00:00November 11th, 2021|Categories: Campaigns, Email Marketing, Events, Integration|
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Pardot External Activity: What it is and how to use it

Pardot is delivering a whole new way to leverage your prospect data in the Salesforce Winter ‘22 release. Similar to webhooks, the new Pardot External Activities feature allows users to receive data from third-party systems and use the data in automations and Engagement Studio Programs. For instance, you could record when a prospect registers for a webinar, completes a survey, or watches a video, and then trigger automations from those actions.

Pardot external activities

There are 3 main steps we will be guiding you through in this post. 

  1. Register the Pardot External Activity types in Salesforce
  2. Integrate third-party systems with Pardot External Activity (we use the API here)
  3. Leverage the new External Activities inside Pardot

To use External Activities, you must have a Plus, Advanced, or Premium Pardot Account and be using the Pardot Lightning App (remember, the Pardot Classic app is being retired).

Register the External Activity types in Salesforce

Similar to how a Salesforce Custom Object needs to be defined before you can start creating records, we need to set up an Extension and the Extension’s Types before we can record External Activity on Prospect records. A Salesforce Administrator or a Marketing Setup Administrator will need to perform these steps. 

  1. Create a Marketing App Extension.
    1. Navigate to Setup > Marketing App Extensions.
    2. Select “New.”
marketing app extensions
  1. Name your new Extension.
  2. Select “Active in Automations.” This is what allows the extension to show up within Pardot.
  3. Select “Save.”
new marketing app extension
  1. Create an associated Activity.
    1. Select the “Related” tab.
    2. Select “New” next to Activity Types.
      • This will be an action your prospects perform, such as registering, attending, or being absent from a webinar.
      • Activity types cannot be shared across extensions, so make sure you create these activities for each extension!
      • Choose activity type names that make sense to your users.
new activity type
  1. Select “Active in Automations.”
  2. Select “Save.”
  3. Assign the extension to your Pardot Business Unit(s). 

You’ll need to perform this step even if you only have one Business Unit. Extensions can be assigned to multiple Business Units. 

  1. Within the Related tab, select “New” next to Business unit Assignments.
  2. Select the first Business Unit.
  3. Select “Save.”
  4. Repeat if you’re using multiple Business Units.
new business unit assignment

Before you build/set up this external activity, check to make sure the solution you are looking to integrate doesn’t have an existing solution built. They may handle this whole side of the process for you, or you may only need to assign the extension to your Pardot Business Unit(s).

Integrate third-party systems with Pardot External Activity

This step is where we’ll connect the third-party system that is collecting the prospect’s activities and extension we built above. This step will use the Pardot API and should be included in any vendor’s solution that supports External Activity. Given this is a brand new feature, odds are External Activity is not yet supported by existing integrations.

If it is not included, you should be able to glue things together yourself. Below are three guides that will help: 

Leveraging the new External Activities inside Pardot

Now that you’ve created an External Activity and have a solution to send the prospect’s activities to Pardot, “Prospect External Activity” will be available within Automations:

rules prospect external activity

And “External Activity” will be an available Trigger in Engagement Studio:

trigger external activity

The value for the External Activity refers to the individual event, webinar, etc. These values will change for each activity and will NOT be pre-populated, so you’ll want to ensure your users know the exact values to look for when using the External Activities in Pardot. You can use the semicolon operator for a list of values.

rule match all

Keep in mind

External Activities do not update the prospect’s last activity time stamp. That means external activities will not trigger a sync between SFDC and Pardot, and they should not be used to indicate the last time the prospect took an action.

rules match all

Finally, Automations will process External Activity data even if the external activity is inactive within Salesforce. So, if you deactivate an extension, you’ll want to review the Automations and Engagement Studio Programs that are using the External Activity. Consider using tags on your Pardot Automations to help you easily find and administer them.

Requirements

  • Plus, Advanced, or Premium editions of Pardot
  • Requires the Pardot Lightning App
  • Work with your Salesforce Admin or Marketing Setup Admin to configure this. 

External Activity helps Pardot customers send information to Pardot from external systems. While many things are possible with the Pardot API, this feature does not send information from Pardot to other systems. If this is a critical capability for your org, you can help impact the Pardot Roadmap by sharing your Product and feature ideas on the  Salesforce Idea Exchange. 

Want to keep learning about External Activity? Check out these two additional blog posts:

The post Pardot External Activity: What it is and how to use it appeared first on The Spot For Pardot.

By |2021-10-15T17:38:10+00:00October 15th, 2021|Categories: Campaigns, Data Management, Email Marketing, Integration, Pardot Business Units, Salesforce|
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How To Automate Salesforce Campaign Naming Conventions

Campaign naming conventions are a must have. They keep your campaigns organized, improve reporting, and provide key information about the campaign at a glance. However, campaign naming conventions can only be helpful if they are used — and used consistently. 

Enforcing naming conventions is tricky because it typically relies on the users to remember the order, abbreviations, variations by type etc. Without good governance, your campaigns will end up having disparities.

Here’s an example of possible disparities: 

Instead of continuing to rely on your users remembering your naming conventions, we can automate this process with APEX.

But First

Before you start automating your campaign names, ensure the data that goes into your naming conventions is on the campaign object. For instance, my naming convention is YYYY_MM_Campaign Type_Description/Name, so I’ll need to make sure the following fields are required:

  1. Start Date 

Year and Month will be pulled from this field

  1. Campaign Type 

Create a picklist field on the campaign object for your different campaign types such as webinar, email, trade show, etc.

  1. Short Name 

Create a text field on the campaign object for the user specified description/name. The user will only enter data into the “Short Name” field, the default field “Campaign Name” will be completed by our APEX trigger.

You’ll need to do a quick calculation to see how long your new Campaign “Short Name” field can be. The default “Campaign Name” field can only be 80 characters, so you’ll need to calculate:

calculating character count for naming convention

X=58

The Campaign “Short Name” field can be up to 58 characters.

To ensure this is clear to your users, add Help Text to both the “Short Name” and “Campaign Name” fields.

new campaign

Automating the Salesforce Campaign Name

Next, we’ve created a little Salesforce DX project that you can take a look at to see an example of how this can be done: https://github.com/sercante-llc/campaign-name-enforcer. 

The project includes the Custom Field, Trigger code and the APEX Test code as well.

The CampaignNameTrigger is how we can enforce the Name of the Campaign. In this code, we see that we are using the date format “YYYY_MM_” to get us started, which will write out the 4 digit year and 2 digit month. Other formats are available.

trigger CampaignNameTrigger on Campaign (before insert, before update) {
    if(Trigger.isBefore && Trigger.isInsert) {
        //we will set the Name of the Campaign based on other fields,
        //overwriting whatever was placed there before
        for(Campaign campaign : Trigger.new) {
            campaign.Name = 
                Datetime.newInstanceGmt(campaign.StartDate, 
                    Time.newInstance(0,0,0,0)).formatGmt('YYYY_MM_')
                + campaign.Type + '_' + campaign.Short_Name__c;
            if(campaign.Name.length() > 80) //make sure length is good
                //if it isn't, trim it down to size
                campaign.Name = campaign.Name.substring(0, 80); 
        }
    }
    else if(Trigger.isBefore && Trigger.isUpdate) {
        for(Campaign campaign : Trigger.new) {
            Campaign oldCampaign = Trigger.oldMap.get(campaign.Id);
            //first lets see if anyone else tried changing the name
            if(campaign.Name != oldCampaign.Name) {
                //we want to prevent that
                campaign.addError('You can\'t change the Name directly.');
                continue;
            }
            //ok, we are safe to set the correct value now
            campaign.Name = 
            Datetime.newInstanceGmt(campaign.StartDate, 
                Time.newInstance(0,0,0,0)).formatGmt('YYYY_MM_')
            + campaign.Type + '_' + campaign.Short_Name__c;
            if(campaign.Name.length() > 80) //make sure length is good
                //if it isn't, trim it down to size
                campaign.Name = campaign.Name.substring(0, 80); 
        }
    }
}

This trigger will also trim the final campaign name down to 80 characters, if needed. 

Once implemented, the above APEX Trigger will fire whenever a Campaign is created and/or edited. 

final view

This is a subtle reminder that this year’s ParDreamin virtual conference starts on October 27th! Register here.

Want to automate your campaigns even further? Check out how you can auto-generate and enforce campaign member statuses by campaign type.

Thanks to Adam Erstelle for contributing to this post.

The post How To Automate Salesforce Campaign Naming Conventions appeared first on The Spot For Pardot.

By |2021-09-21T15:09:57+00:00September 21st, 2021|Categories: Campaigns, Data Management, Salesforce|
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Pardot Protected Campaign Member Statuses Solution

Get a solution for Protected Campaign Member Statuses in Pardot and step-by-step instructions for installation.

We go through all the effort of setting up beautiful Salesforce Campaigns, naming standards and maybe even a hierarchy. The next challenge in completing your beautiful work of campaign art is getting a hold on your Campaign Member Statuses for each campaign.

When a new Salesforce Campaign is created, many people aren’t just happy with the two default statuses of Sent and Responded. This prompts them to create what they think makes the most sense. Though as time goes on and as reporting starts to be needed, everyone making their own Campaign Member Statuses can be a nightmare that prevents you from getting meaningful and actionable intelligence. It would be really nice to take the guesswork out of status reporting and have a standard set of Campaign Member Statuses everyone uses consistently.

Jenna Molby posted a fantastic solution that enables you to automatically create the right Statuses on Campaign creation.

The automation here is good, though as you increase the number of Types the Flow could become a bit unwieldy.

Another thing that could be a problem comes later when other people might make changes to your carefully crafted structure. What happens if someone edits or even removes these statuses?

Install Protected Campaign Member Statuses

Protected Campaign Member Statuses is a free solution you can install and easily configure to solve this problem. It allows you to:

  1. Define the Campaign Member Statuses that should always be present on given Campaign Types.
  2. Restore the Protected Statuses on Active Campaigns should someone make changes.
  3. Create additional Statuses for specific reasons.
  4. Override by authorized users on a per-Campaign basis.

I don’t want the details, just let me install it

(Don’t worry. Keep reading to learn exactly what’s going on inside.)

We have an Unlocked Package you can install that sets up the application.

Get Started

Once installed, you need to define your Protected Statuses. This is done with Custom Metadata Types.

  1. Login to Salesforce Lightning, and go to Setup.
  2. Navigate to Custom Metadata Types, and click Manage Records for Protected Campaign Status.
    Pardot Protected Campaign Member Statuses
  3. To create your first ones, click New
    Pardot Protected Campaign Member Statuses
  4. Fill in the various fields.
    • Label: Used in the List of Campaign Statuses in the Setup view in step 3 above. Recommended convention:  TYPE-STATUS
    • Name: This is an API name that can be used by developers. Not required by this package. Recommended: let this autofill after you type in the Label.
    • Campaign Type: This is the actual value for the Campaign’s Type field.
    • Protected Status: This is the Status value that will become protected.
    • Is Default: Select this if this Status should be the default (please pick only 1 per Type).
    • Is Responded: Select this if this Status should be marked as Responded.
    • When complete, your screen may look something like this:
      Pardot Protected Campaign Member Statuses
  5. Click Save (or Save & New) and repeat a whole bunch.
  6. Lastly, time to set up a scheduled job to restore deleted protected statuses.
  7. Back in Setup, go to Apex Classes and click Schedule Apex.
    Pardot Protected Campaign Member Statuses
  8. Fill in the few fields.
    • Job Name: give this a nice descriptive name so you remember what it is in 3 months.
    • Apex Class: SL_ProtectedCampaignStatusJob
    • Frequency: set this to what works for you. We recommend running this daily during off-peak hours.
    • Start: today
    • End: some time in the distant future
    • Preferred Start Time: off peak hours
    • When complete, your screen may look something like this:
      Pardot Protected Campaign Member Statuses

You are good to go once you have provided your statuses. Give it a whirl by creating a new Campaign with the Type you have set up. Then take a look at the statuses already created.

Campaigns with Types not already set up will keep the default two statuses that Salesforce creates.

That’s cool. What’s behind the curtain?

To accomplish this, we leverage a few cool tools available to us:

  • Custom Metadata Types: Allows the Protected Statuses to be treated like normal Salesforce metadata and can be deployed around like any other metadata (changesets, insert devops tool here)
  • Campaign Custom Field: Has_Protected_Campaign_Member_Statuses__c is automatically checked by the solution if a Campaign is created and there are Custom Metadata Type records that specify this Campaign’s Type. It is also what allows the rest of the code to keep the statuses intact. You can clear the checkbox for this field to make changes to the statuses if you need to. However, you can’t enable protection afterwards.
  • Change Data Capture: We turn this on for CampaignMemberStatus so we can detect edits to statuses and then fix the records after-the-fact. Sadly we can’t (yet?) put any triggers on CampaignMemberStatus (which would have been ideal).
  • Triggers: yea these have been around for a while and are quite handy. We use them to kick off the automation that we’ve built when a Campaign is created. We also use them to watch for Campaign Member Status edits (through the ChangeEvents from Change Data Capture) so we can set things right afterwardsd.

If you want even more details, check out the Github project where you can see all the inner workings of what is going on.

Further Reading

Here are some resources you can use to learn more about Salesforce Campaigns and how they work in Pardot:

The post Pardot Protected Campaign Member Statuses Solution appeared first on The Spot For Pardot.

By |2021-07-16T18:27:52+00:00July 16th, 2021|Categories: Campaigns, Data Management|
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