Customer Relationship Management

A Coffee Lover’s Guide to Default Pardot User Roles

When you have a ton of users in Pardot, controlling who has access to what they can view or edit takes time. But no one wants to spend a whole day setting up Pardot user role details and permissions.

Thankfully, Pardot comes with default user roles to quickly set up which users can view and edit certain types of content and data. 

Each Pardot user role comes with a predefined set of permissions. This allows you to quickly assign users and saves you time to grab a cup of coffee.

Default Pardot user roles = More time for coffee

Having trouble understanding the difference between the four default Pardot user roles? Well, we’ve got you covered. 

Choosing Pardot default user roles is similar to how I determine which type of coffee to drink. 

Perhaps I need to control all of the coffee for everyone in addition to my own. So, I’d be the admin by making a big ol’ pot for my team. Or, I may need to get a straight shot of caffeine from espresso like a Pardot Sales user needs a lightning path to prospect records and 1-1 email sends.

Either way, the default Pardot user roles offer a straightforward method of doling out permissions and access to your Pardot users.

A Pardot user role for everyone

Here are the four default Pardot user roles.

1. Administrators

Need access to everything in Pardot? Pardot Administrator user roles let you view, create, edit, and even delete anything and everything. 

Think of the Pardot Admin user role as your highest authority on what stays and goes — they adjust Pardot settings and control your general Pardot structure.

Admin users are granted full access to all data and assets. So, avoid a Pardot horror story and assess which team members really need to see and adjust everything.

2. Marketing

Marketers are gods of creation. The Pardot Marketing user role lets them create all of the marketing assets they need to effectively convert prospects and nurture leads with content.

Inside Pardot, they can create lists, forms, landing pages, email templates and view prospect data. And they avoid technical setups or integrations to focus on building the tools their team uses to get messages out.

3. Sales

Sales teams need to be able to view prospect data and make changes to individual prospect records. But that’s basically it.

The Pardot Sales user role gives them everything they need to send one-to-one emails and view, edit, or export information for their assigned prospects. It’s a “read only” user role in terms of having the ability to make major changes to the Pardot instance or manage marketing assets.

This way, sales teams don’t get overwhelmed by Pardot’s numerous features. They can focus on what they do best — talking to prospects and closing opportunities.

4. Sales Manager

Someone with a Pardot Sales Manager user role keeps a high-level eye on the sales pipeline and checks in on their team’s progress. While a Sales user in Pardot only sees prospects assigned to them, a Sales Manager can see all prospects and visitors.

They can assign prospects and send one-to-one emails to better support their team sales wizards.

How to assign default Pardot user roles

In many cases, determining which roles to assign your Pardot users should be straightforward with the default user roles available. You can click through the user role profiles to see exactly which features are available to users with those roles. 

You’ll see that the user role profiles have checkboxes, which you can use to create custom Pardot user roles. Custom Pardot user roles are available with Pardot Advanced Edition Available or for an additional cost in Pardot Plus Edition.

While Pardot user roles are simple, defining the best role for a user is sometimes not easy. Certain use cases call for certain types of user roles. But there are questions you can ask yourself while adding users to your Pardot instance and determining their user roles to be sure you’re assigning the right roles.

Ask yourself these 4 questions to determine the best default Pardot user roles

1. Does this user need to adjust any settings in Pardot?

They should be an Administrator. Your power users can take care of your Pardot instance with an admin role.

2. Does this Pardot user also have a Salesforce user license?

It’s best practice to make sure that your Salesforce users are set up with the Sales or Sales Manager roles. Even if they likely will never log in to Pardot, you can create a user with one of these roles in case they need access in the future.

3. Does this user need to create or edit Pardot forms, email templates, or landing pages?

Make sure they have a Marketing user role, which lets them edit, view, and create marketing assets.

4. Should this user only be able to access data for their assigned prospects?

Sales users can only see prospects that are assigned to them, unlike Sales Managers who can view all prospects in Pardot.

You can also check out the full list of each default Pardot user role permission set on Salesforce Help.

Now you’re the Pardot user role assignment barista extraordinaire

As the Pardot admin, you control whether your users help you pour for the team as another admin, or if they just need a round of espresso shots to focus on day to day sales tasks. But deciding which type of coffee you give your users doesn’t have to be difficult.

Pardot’s default user roles are a great starter set to stock in your coffee bar. While you can mix and match pieces of them to create custom user roles, sometimes a user just needs a classic cup of coffee.

Have a fun story to tell about your experiences with assigning Pardot user roles? Tell us about it in the comments. Or, reach out to Sercante if your situation calls for the professional-grade coffee beans.

The post A Coffee Lover’s Guide to Default Pardot User Roles appeared first on The Spot For Pardot.

By |2022-02-18T19:43:50+00:00February 18th, 2022|Categories: Salesforce|
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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 Grassroots Innovation Pardot Award Winner: BrandEd Holdings

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 Grassroots Innovation category, which recognizes small teams with a big impact using Pardot.

Grassroots innovation with BrandEd

The team at BrandEd Holdings successfully migrated from siloed data systems to implement Pardot at their organization with a team of only two full-time employees in 60 days. The project is especially impressive because they also changed the way their department handles leads to optimize their entire marketing process and strategy. They did this all while using the Pardot Sandbox and implementing multiple business units and multiple product interests for each business unit.

Quick Facts: 

  • Complicated requirements – multiple business units, multiple products within each unit, tailored user journeys based on business unit/product choices, and tracking path for each customer-business unit-product combination 
  • More than 70% of their prospects select more than 1 program of interest, so communication needs to be coherent and unduplicated as much as possible.
  • Some Pardot features did not meet our requirements, so they devised creative solutions.
  • Utilized Pardot Sandbox to validate functionality

Challenge the team wanted to solve

BrandEd works with non-traditional educational brands to turn their knowledge bases into educational offerings. The company has two sub-entities within one umbrella organization.  Data for the sub-entities needed to be segregated for tracking purposes and day-to-day management, but it ultimately needs to be aggregated. 

BrandEd also has multiple products within each sub-entity, which means a lead could be interested in more than one. As a result, communication needs to be coherent and unduplicated, as much as possible.

Additionally, teams were completing a great deal of work manually that could be automated through Pardot. For example, the teams were using Outlook for sending emails when they could send marketing emails through Pardot and capture valuable reporting metrics.

Hurdles they overcame during the project

The team at BrandEd implemented Pardot Business Units, a relatively new concept, as well as figured out a way to capture, track and manage multiple product interests for the same lead record (i.e., allowing prospects to select more than one program of interest upon form submission), and map them to Salesforce. And they did all of this in-house with no consulting help, besides Sercante Training coursework.

  • They had two full-time employees; one who had never worked with Pardot.
  • There was limited material for the Pardot Sandbox and Pardot Business Unit set up.
  • The team reimagined their marketing strategy as they were implementing.

Results after implementing the solution

After the 60-day implementation, the small-but-mighty team celebrated their successes. They implemented Pardot so that it would work seamlessly for multiple business units and products, and their Pardot instance allows them to track the user journey in Salesforce and Pardot.

After implementation, the team enjoyed the confidence of knowing everything will work as expected. That’s because they utilized the Pardot Sandbox to validate functionality.

And finally, they discovered how important their work is to optimize the process for selecting more than one program of interest. The BrandEd team found that more than 70% of their prospects select more than one program of interest. If they had not designed a creative solution (sans code development), they would have had to create multiple lead records in Salesforce and prospect records in Pardot to solve that issue.

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 Grassroots Innovation Pardot Award Winner: BrandEd Holdings appeared first on The Spot For Pardot.

By |2021-11-15T20:08:54+00:00November 15th, 2021|Categories: Data Management, Email Marketing, Events, Pardot Business Units, Salesforce|
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ParDreamies Extending Pardot Award Winner: LexisNexis Canada

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 Extending Pardot category, which recognizes API-driven solutions.

Extending Pardot with LexisNexis Canada

The team at LexisNexis Canada, a leading global provider of legal, regulatory and business information and analytics tools, was encountering the problem related to siloed data,  So, they developed a solution to pull product subscription information into Pardot. This allows the team’s  marketers to pull their own campaign lists, which reduces list turnaround time and miscommunication errors. They can now see fresh data for 12 products, and drill down to “module level” subscriptions for their two flagship products.

Quick Facts: 

  • The Pardot v4 Batch Import API 
  • Pardot custom fields 
  • Developers delivered work in four waves
  • Automated QA testing
  • Formal refactoring phase
  • Navigated Pardot switch to OAuth

Challenge the team wanted to solve

For as long as LexisNexis Canada had a marketing automation tool, they relied on an external data team to pull campaign lists. However, 30% of their requests were simple product status updates, like “I want a list of everyone who cancelled their subscription to Product X, within geography Y.” The team’s marketing director, Collin Smith, wanted to put product subscription information into Pardot, thus allowing marketers to pull their own campaign lists. The team aimed to reduce list turnaround time and decrease miscommunication errors.

Hurdles they overcame during the project

The main obstacle: handling risks and complexity. Prior to this project start, this exact mission was attempted in the past. And it failed. The systems at LexisNexis Canada are complex because they’ve been in business so long (since before 1995, which is ancient for a software company!).

The team handled the risks and complexity of the project by delivering work in waves with close involvement from marketing stakeholders.

Other major obstacles included discovering which non-obvious data points were vital for the project, handling the Pardot switch to OAuth, and dealing with users who change their email addresses.

ParDreamies 2021 Pardot Award Winners - LexisNexis Canada

Results after implementing the solution

The team at LexisNexis Canada unlocked the ability to see 81,000 additional subscription data points inside Pardot. Marketers from the company can also see 45,000 “subscription modules” and 32,000 extra demographic details about Pardot prospects. This is information that was hidden from them before the solution implementation.

Marketing managers and coordinators can now create lists on their own in under ten minutes. This is in contrast with the old way that took three days and involved an external team.

The Pardot v4 Batch Import API was key to getting this work done.

The project was submitted by Jacob Filipp, and the team handling the project included:

  • Programming – Alla Fradkin
  • Database work – Corey Heasley
  • Marketing director – Collin Smith

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 Extending Pardot Award Winner: LexisNexis Canada appeared first on The Spot For Pardot.

By |2021-11-12T18:50:45+00:00November 12th, 2021|Categories: Data Management, Email Marketing, Events, Integration, Salesforce|
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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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Announcing the 2021 ParDreamies Pardot Award Winners

People do really cool stuff in Pardot, and the ParDreamin’ team is recognizing them for it with the first-ever ParDreamies Pardot Awards. The ParDreamies honor community members for finding creative and thoughtful methods to reach business goals using the power of the Pardot platform. 

Individuals submitted their stories as independent consultants, on behalf of their clients as part of an agency, and as in-house Pardot admins and marketing professionals. Then, we announced the winners of the ParDreamies Awards during the ParDreamin’ VIP After Party on October 28, 2021.

Here are the winners of the 2021 ParDreamies Pardot Awards.

ParDreamies 2021 Best in Show Award

Each ParDreamies submission entered the race to take all the glory by winning the ParDreamies 2021 Best in Show Award. The ParDreamin’ team considered each entry for their respective category, but the most innovative stories rose to the top to battle it out for Best in Show Pardot Award.

With that in mind, we are pleased to announce the overall winner for the ParDreamies 2021 Best in Show Award…

The fun way to profile your prospects

Submitted by Claudia Hoops for Destined

ParDreamies 2021 Pardot Award Winners - Destined

Summary:

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

ParDreamies 2021 Personalization Perfection Award

The best marketers know their audience and they know how to use technology to deliver messaging at the perfect time and in the perfect channel. The Personalization Perfection Award celebrates that perfection by recognizing right-time, right-message marketing achieved using the power of the Pardot platform. 

And the Personalization Perfection Award goes to…

Engaging prospects with quiz-style content

Submitted by Brittany Rhyme for Restaurant365

ParDreamies 2021 Pardot Award Winners - Restaurant 365

Summary:

Engage your prospect database using quiz-style content via the Outgrow + Pardot integration and creating an interactive experience using custom fields and dynamic content on Pardot Landing Pages.

Quick Facts: 

  • Outgrow + Pardot integration
  • Dynamic Content 
  • Custom Fields
  • Pardot Landing Pages 

ParDreamies 2021 Social Impact Award

While the past two years have been challenging for everyone, nonprofit organizations that serve the world’s most vulnerable populations were stretched to the limits while demand for services increased. One team rose to the challenge and found innovative ways to use Pardot to continue providing essential services.

The 2021 ParDreamies Social Impact Award recognizes an organization that creates positive social change through Pardot, and this year it goes to…

COVID-19 Learning & Policy Center

Submitted by Miriam Childs for Lexipol

ParDreamies 2021 Pardot Award Winners - Lexipol

Summary:

In March 2020, Lexipol utilized Pardot to provide targeted promotion and follow-up of our Coronavirus Learning & Policy Center. The resource is 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.

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 are 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.

ParDreamies 2021 Grassroots Innovation Award

Marketers are known for wearing many hats, and that’s especially true for marketers working for small businesses. But small business marketers using Pardot have an advantage because they have the power to automate that which can’t be accomplished manually by a small team.

That scrappy innovation is what led one (tiny) in-house team to implement new Pardot features to reduce workloads and prevent duplication of tasks. The winner of the ParDreamies 2021 Grassroots Innovation Award is… 

In-house Implementation: Business Units, Sandbox and Multiple Product Interests

Submitted by Pooja Goel for BrandEd

ParDreamies 2021 Pardot Award Winners - BrandEd

Summary:

The BrandEd team implemented Pardot Business Units and built a way to capture, track and manage multiple product interests for the same lead record (i.e. allowing prospects to select more than one program of interest upon form submission), and map them to Salesforce. BrandEd completed the project in approximately 60 days with a team of only two full-time employees who had no prior Pardot knowledge. 

Quick Facts: 

  • Complicated requirements – multiple business units, multiple products within each unit, tailored user journeys based on business unit/product choices, and tracking path for each customer-business unit-product combination 
  • More than 70% of prospects select more than one program of interest, so communication needs to be coherent and unduplicated, as much as possible.
  • Some Pardot features did not meet the team’s requirements so they devised creative solutions.
  • Utilized Pardot Sandbox to validate functionality

ParDreamies 2021 Extending Pardot Award

The ways companies and organizations use Pardot to achieve their goals is endless. That’s what makes Pardot integrations essential to teams of all shapes and sizes. Some teams use Pardot native features to collect prospect data, while others have their own industry-specific tools they hope will play nice with the platform.

One company leveraged the Pardot API to bring prospect subscription data into their marketing team’s hands so they can take the next steps. All this Pardot API innovation earned this company the 2021 ParDreamies Extending Pardot Award, which recognizes teams leveraging API-driven solutions. And the winner is…

Project Octopus: Bringing customer subscription status into Pardot

Submitted by Jacob Filipp for LexisNexis Canada

ParDreamies 2021 Pardot Award Winners - LexisNexis Canada

Summary:

The team at LexisNexis Canada was encountering the problem of “I want a list of everyone who cancelled their subscription to Product X, within geography Y.”  So, they developed a solution to put product subscription information into Pardot. This allows the team’s  marketers to pull their own campaign lists, which reduces list turnaround time and miscommunication errors.

Quick Facts: 

  • The Pardot v4 Batch Import API 
  • Pardot custom fields 
  • Developers delivered work in four waves
  • Automated QA testing
  • Formal refactoring phase
  • Navigated Pardot’s switch to OAuth

Pardot Award Honorable Mentions

We had many amazing stories and solution submissions from Pardot professionals in the community. So, of course, choosing the winners was challenging. 

Here are the honorable mentions from the ParDreamies award submissions. These solutions are all helpful in their own right, and they deserve recognition.

Honorable Mention: Hot Job Email Using Dynamic Content 

Submitted by BJ Dodenbier for Flexcare Medical Staffing

ParDreamies 2021 Pardot Award Winners

A weekly email FlexCare Staffing sent to their prospects wasn’t getting the results they hoped because the relevant information wasn’t immediately obvious to readers. That prompted the team to take action through personalization.

Email personalization, which was achieved using Pardot Dynamic Content, created a better experience for readers by bringing the information they wanted to see to the top of the email.

FlexCare sends two primary emails every week with each email showing  the top-paying assignments of the week for each group.: 

  • Hot jobs for traveling nurses
  • Hot jobs for traveling allied clinicians

When these emails originated, they included the top 13 jobs for each group regardless of the recipient’s primary specialty. To provide a more personalized experience for the recipients of these emails, Flexcare Staffing redesigned the emails to show only the top-paying jobs for each clinician’s primary specialty. The updates lead to better engagement with prospects by significantly increasing click-through rates for the emails.

Honorable Mention: Pardot Business Card Scanner App from MarCloud Technologies

Submitted by Tom Ryan for MarCloud Technologies

ParDreamies 2021 Pardot Award Winners - MarCloud

Physical business cards give a personal tangible touch when forming business relationships, but they can be difficult to keep organized when you’re collecting them on a large scale at in-person events and conferences. That’s where the Pardot Business Card Scanner App from MarCloud Technologies becomes a game changer.

Most businesses that use Pardot also use Salesforce as their CRM. However, the data held in these two systems can become inconsistent, particularly when the sales team enters cold prospects straight into Salesforce thus bypassing Pardot altogether. 

The team at MarCloud saw an opportunity to create a business card scanner app that allows professionals to instantly add prospects they meet offline into Pardot. This aligns sales and marketing teams by ensuring the correct treatment of new prospects and saves time.

When MarCloud set out to create the world’s first ‘Pardot Business Card Scanner’ app, they had no idea if it would be possible. Integrating with the Pardot API is difficult, but they were able to deliver an app that:

  • Sends prospect data directly into Pardot lists, campaigns, and custom fields
  • Works without WiFi
  • Recognises multiple languages

Since launching in August 2021, the app has had over 45 iOS downloads and 25 Android downloads with global corporations making direct contact regarding paid plans.

Honorable Mention: Drop email templates like they’re HOT!

Submitted by Tammy Begley for Destined 

ParDreamies 2021 Pardot Award Winners - Destined email templates

While the new drag-and-drop Pardot Email Template Builder does make building emails in Salesforce a lot easier, it still requires a certain amount of time and effort for the marketing team to design, build and tweak them. That’s where the team at Destined decided to make the process easier for busy marketers.

The innovative team at Destined built email template packages that can be installed into a Salesforce org and ready to use in less than 15 minutes. Marketing teams just need to rebrand the templates, and then they are ready to use.

When Pardot announced the extensibility feature for the drag-and-drop email template builder that allows marketers to use pre-built components from the Salesforce AppExchange, Destined jumped at it. The developer team at Destined converted the company’s entire email template gallery into install packages that can go straight into any Salesforce org. Destined is the first Salesforce Partner in the world to have used the Pardot Email Template Builder extensibility feature to create install packages for download and use, and the project was featured at Dreamforce ‘21 in the Marketing Roadmap session.

The new Email Template Builder will be available to be used across all other Salesforce clouds, too. That means a company will have the power to deliver consistent branding and messaging from any Salesforce platform.

Honorable Mention: Pardot Forms: Customized content download on selection criteria

Submitted by Pankaj Verma for Accenture

ParDreamies 2021 Pardot Award Winners - Accenture

An Accenture client wanted to provide the best experience for their prospects by delivering relevant content to them with instant gratification built in. That’s where the team at Accenture swooped in with JavaScript magic to save the day.

The client has multiple product and service lines, which means prospects have specific needs when interacting with the company. Prospects visiting the client’s website encounter a form that gauges their interest area to determine those specific needs. So, the team at Accenture suggested the client use dynamic content in an email that’s triggered when prospects complete the form. However, the Accenture client wanted to deliver relevant content to prospects in real time rather than in an email to reduce the number of clicks for prospects.

So, the team at Accenture solved the challenge by introducing JavaScript Thank You Code and custom field values to the form that triggers an automatic content download based on prospect interest area. 

The hurdle was to have JavaScript code working within the Thankyou code of Pardot forms. The code had to pick the value and automatically download the personalized asset on form submission after prospects select their interest area from the radio button and drop-down menu. The team ultimately had to refine their approach of providing multiple selection criteria. 

The result of the project was a more personalized experience for prospects with instant gratification built in. After enabling the solution, conversion rates significantly increased for the form and leads were directed more efficiently based on assets consumed by them.

Honorable Mention: Pardot + Salesforce = Personalization Perfection

Submitted by Cara Woo for Cloudtegic

Cloudtegic

A Cloudtegic client using multiple Salesforce clouds was dealing with sync issues and lack of personalization options that made account journeys inconsistent for prospects. So, a consultant from Cloudtegic took six journeys out of Salesforce Marketing Cloud and duplicated them in Pardot to create a seamless experience that behaves and syncs as expected.

Using a combination of custom objects, formula fields, flows and automation rules, the Cloudtegic consultant was able to create fully personalized and automated account status journeys including:

  • Account-activated emails
  • Welcome emails
  • Account executive introduction emails
  • Account cancellation emails

Formula fields are generally not recommended for any use within Pardot because they do not trigger a sync. So, the consultant created a process builder that looked for the criteria of those formula fields to be created and/or edited. Then, she created a secondary field called “Pardot Sync” that uses Boolean to check from true to false and back again whenever changes are made on the account. This forces a sync between Salesforce & Pardot, and it clears the path to use personalization from custom objects in Pardot Dynamic Content.

The biggest hurdle she faced was the timeline. She only had three weeks to take six account journeys out of Salesforce Marketing Cloud and duplicate them in Pardot. These three weeks included scoping, building and testing. Due to the client’s flexibility and the consultant’s drive to get it done, they met their deadline with time to spare to deploy the changes in production.

The project touched nearly every feature of Pardot. The ability to sync with custom objects, the seamless sync between Pardot & Salesforce, and the ability to use Pardot Sandboxes and custom objects in automation rules all made this project a success. Additionally, the project likely saved the client budget in the long run while contributing to ROI by creating personalized experiences for prospects.

Honorable Mention: Next-Level Email Marketing Design for Brand Awareness by InterWorks

Submitted by Jenny Parnell for InterWorks

InterWorks

One team was searching for the perfect digital hub to house all of their marketing assets in addition to providing email marketing capabilities and robust reporting metrics. That search led the team to adopt Pardot for the organization. 

Since adopting Pardot as a home base for digital brand awareness and demand generation, the InterWorks Marketing Team has been maximizing their experiments with design. Their monthly blog newsletters, product updates, customer message and webinar communications all received custom designs, curated content and engaging themes. These custom emails hit inboxes and are undeniably stunning while also relaying vital information to their contact base to help grow the business.

The hurdles involved in this initiative included establishing a monthly cadence on multiple levels of their marketing funnel with limited time and resources to customize the content and design. 

In 2021, the team delivered nearly 500,000 messages to their contacts. They currently hold 13,000 active contacts for brand awareness and average 1,200 active prospects monthly. The team’s click-through rate is above industry-average at around 5%. 

Pardot has given InterWorks a digital home base to manage their marketing funnel. From email marketing, to webinar integrations with Zoom, replay integrations with Wistia, and customer insights integrations with Salesforce, they now have a better understanding of their contact base, which is vital to their global marketing strategy. 

The world of marketing and design is subjective. Pardot has enabled the team to become data-driven and confident in their creative approaches to drive interest in their brand.

Honorable Mention: Custom Pardot / Zoom Integration

Submitted by Julia Hoffman for FARO / Sercante Labs

ParDreamies 2021 Pardot Award Winners - FARO and Sercante Labs

FARO hosts 300+ webinars a year via Zoom. The Zoom-provided integration provides basic list management that can sync to Pardot from a Zoom registration page, but FARO was looking for a way to host webinar registration landing pages on their event website and automate a confirmation email using a Pardot template. Furthermore, there was a desire to send reminder and follow-up emails directly from Pardot in nine different languages.

FARO worked with Sercante to build a custom Pardot and Zoom integration that streamlined FARO’s webinar process. The solution accomplished that by allowing all of the participant management (confirmation emails, reminders, pre- and post-webinar action items) to take place in Pardot rather than Zoom. By using email templates with dynamic content, the team significantly decreased the amount of time required for weekly email design and by making the process more automated, webinar attendees are passed to sales days sooner.

The build included email templates with dynamic content to allow us to reuse assets, as well as an API that syncs data from Zoom to Pardot to automate records being upgraded from Registered to Attended. A Pardot engagement studio program template and process was created for scheduled execution of pre- and post webinar actions, supported in nine different languages.

Since FARO began using the solution from Sercante in April: 76 Webinars have been hosted; 9,215 Records processed via the integration, with approximately 30% of those then being updated from Registered to Attended via the integration; Resulting in 127 Closed Won Opportunities and $1.1M in revenue from those efforts.

Honorable Mention: Driving Business and Investment across the African Continent

By Africa Events Limited

African Investments Limited

Africa is a fragmented continent split into 54 economies, each of sub-scale size. Global businesses want to operate in Africa, but deciding who to deal with is complex, time consuming and expensive. Africa Events Limited launched a Salesforce-Pardot solution in 2021 to meet these challenges. The solution is set to become one of Africa’s most important business tools. Additionally, the team hosts a physical event, AFSIC – Investing in Africa, which has become one of the African continent’s most important investment events.

African Investments Limited developed a scalable system that will increasingly drive business and investment across the entire African continent by combining matching business requirements in all sectors of Africa’s 54 countries.

The team believes they have produced the first pan-African multi-sector, multi-country Pardot Business Opportunities Dashboard solution allowing companies to promote investment and business opportunities not just within Africa, but also as export opportunities to global companies. This is entirely new ground as they are not aware of a competitor doing anything similar. Business opportunities, and their growing network are shown at www.invest-in-africa.co.

Pardot is the company’s main communication tool. They use it to trigger email templates that are sent to 100,000+ of Africa’s most important business executives and investors. 

Honorable Mention: Leading & Inspiring Career Growth in the Pardot Community

By Ben Lamothe for BDO Digital

People working in the Salesforce ecosystem will typically choose to specialize in a specific platform. The path to becoming a Salesforce developer/architect/admin/analyst is fairly well established and clear to follow. The same can’t be said for someone who wants to work in marketing automation and has a passion for nonprofits or education, for example. Ben Lamothe sought to provide insight for those people and to hear from people working in those jobs today.

Ben’s Salesforce mentees were seeking a path into the ecosystem focused on the core Salesforce platform. It made him realize the path to becoming a Pardot professional is less than clear. That led to the decision to host a four-part Pardot Career Paths panel focused on the different career paths available for a Pardot expert/user/admin in marketing operations and automation at B2B and B2C companies; education organizations and institutions; nonprofits; and as independent consultant or with a Salesforce Partner. More than 20 Pardot professionals participated as panelists. They shared their career paths and answered questions from more than 340 attendees.

You don’t go to school for marketing automation. Instead, Pardot has passionate community users and platform evangelists to provide guidance. The Pardot community helped to achieve the goal of making the four panels happen.

Thanks to everyone who shared their Pardot stories

While the purpose of the first-ever ParDreamies Pardot Award Show was to recognize people for their amazing achievements, we’re presenting these stories with another motive. 

Understanding all of the possibilities within Pardot can be difficult to grasp. We hope that presenting these challenges and the solutions marketing professionals built to solve them helps others to do the same. Reading real-world examples of Pardot solutions is a great way to get the gears moving and ideas flowing.Have you built a really cool Pardot solution that may be helpful to solve challenges marketers face? Tell us about it in the comments below. And remember to sign up for the ParDreamin’ newsletter so you know when we open ParDreamies Pardot Award submissions in 2022.

The post Announcing the 2021 ParDreamies Pardot Award Winners appeared first on The Spot For Pardot.

By |2021-11-01T20:28:23+00:00November 1st, 2021|Categories: Career, Content Marketing, Email Marketing, Events, Non-Traditional Use Cases, Salesforce|
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How to be Successful with the Pardot Drag-and-Drop Landing Page Builder

In the Salesforce Winter ’22 release, Pardot launched the new drag-and-drop Landing Page builder, which allows users to create nativey responsive landing pages and control when pages are published and/or removed. This builder uses the same integration as the drag-and-drop email content builder, so if you are already using that feature there is nothing new to set up!

This post will cover a few things you can do to ensure your users are successful with this new builder. For a great demo of this new feature, check out the Pardot Release Readiness Winter ’22 Webinar (The landing page builder demo starts around the 14-minute mark).

Requirements and System Usage

Before you get started with the landing page builder, you’ll need to ensure:

You’ll also want to take a look at your landing page usage and limit. Landing pages published with the new drag-and-drop experience plus landing pages published with the classic experience will both count toward your account’s limit. 

To check your usage and limit, navigate to Pardot Settings > Usage and Limits

pardot landing page builder

Ensure consistent use of naming conventions

Good naming conventions are going to be especially helpful when using this new builder. Naming conventions will allow users to quickly and easily locate the correct campaign, images, and form while building a new landing page. 

If you are using multiple Pardot Business Units (PBU) it will be even more important to have good naming conventions. When you create a new landing page, you will need to associate it with a connected campaign. The campaign you select determines which PBU the landing page belongs to as well as which forms can be used on this landing page (the landing page can only use Pardot forms that exist in the same PBU as the page). To make sure your users can determine which PBU a campaign or asset belongs to at a glance, I highly recommend adding your PBU name to the naming convention. 

To ensure naming conventions are used correctly on Salesforce Campaigns, check out our previous blog post on how to automate Salesforce Campaign Naming Conventions.

Vanity URLs

You’ll also want to make sure you have a good policy around using vanity URLs and ensure your users know how to check if a vanity URL is already in use before attempting to publish their new landing page. Vanity URLs are not validated until the landing page is published, meaning a team may center their marketing materials around the URL being www.sercante.com/really-cool-awesome-stuff only to find out upon publishing that this URL is already in use for another marketing initiative. More considerations for vanity URLs can be found here. 

Salesforce Navigation and Page Layout Edits

Make sure your users know where to find this new feature by adding the Landing Page tab to the Pardot Lightning App navigation.

  1. Navigate to Setup >  App Manager
  2. Locate the Pardot app (ensure the App Type says “Lightning”)
lightning experience app manager
  1. Select the dropdown arrow and click Edit
  2. Select Navigation Items
  3. Move Landing Pages over to the Selected Items pane, click Save
navigation items - landing pages

Also edit your Landing Page layouts to include the new Publication Details section:

example landing page

You can edit this page layout by navigating to Setup > Object Manager > Landing Page > Page Layouts

Create New Landing Page List Views

With more granular control over when Pardot Landing Pages are published and unpublished, as well as additional tracking of changes, creating a few list views will help you easily audit your pages. 

You can create new landing page list views by navigating to Landing Pages, clicking the Action wheel, and then New.

all landing pages

Configure a “Published Landing Page” view to keep an eye on metrics

  • This view is filtered to only show “Status equals Published”
published landing pages

Configure a “In Progress Landing Pages” view to monitor which pages are unpublished but in progress:

in progress landing pages
  • The “Content Last Saved” fields are updated anytime the landing page name, campaign, content, search engine indexing, and/or vanity URL are changed. Publishing and unpublishing a landing page does not update these fields.
  • This view is filtered to only show “Status equals Draft”

Finally, configure a list view of landing pages that have a status of “Published (Changes Pending).” Unlike the classic landing page builder, new and updated pages will need to be pushed to “published” when they are complete. Landing pages will not auto-publish upon saving. This new change in functionality may cause some users to leave their page in the “Published (Changes Pending)” state and a list view can help you keep on eye out for these. 

For this list view, clone your “In Progress Landing Pages” view but change the filter to only show “Status equals Published (Changes Pending)”

published pending landing pages

Automate Reminders to Publish

Since users will need to publish landing pages when changes are made, you can set up a flow to remind landing page owners that their pages are not published. I set this up with a flow. My flow looks for landing pages with a status of “Published (Changes Pending)” and a Content Last Saved date of three days ago or less. My Flow will send an email reminder to the user who last updated the landing page for up to three days after their edits were made (unless the page is published). 

automate reminders to publish landing pages

What excites you about the new Pardot Landing Page builder? Tell us in the comments!

The post How to be Successful with the Pardot Drag-and-Drop Landing Page Builder appeared first on The Spot For Pardot.

By |2021-10-22T11:01:21+00:00October 22nd, 2021|Categories: Content Marketing, Design, Release Notes, Salesforce|
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5 Ways to Standardize Your Pardot Business Units

Are you embarking down the Pardot Business Unit (PBU) path with your org? There are a number of considerations when choosing if multiple business units are right for you. Once you make that decision, it’s a great next step to standardize what you can in preparation for the implementation. Standardization across your business units will make your life as a Pardot admin easier, both in implementation and in future maintenance across your business units. 

Already using business units? Use these recommendations to audit your current setup and work towards improving your standardization and org documentation. 

Benefits of Standardizing your Pardot Business Units

These five standardization tips come from working with a variety of clients who wanted to see the following benefits: 

  • Easy for users in multiple business units to switch between orgs and navigate a similar organization and performance setup
  • Improve the ability for the Salesforce Administrator to manage related functionality among the business units with fields, record types, sync behaviors, and corresponding automations
  • Consistency on training material and resources, as well as org documentation
  • Reduce effort and costs associated with implementing multiple business units

Pardot highly recommends enlisting a Salesforce Consulting Partner when implementing multiple business units. Standardizing your business unit(s) is something you can get started on right away and will ensure your project moves smoothly, but it is not a good substitute for partner support with this complex project. 

Top Five Pardot Business Unit Standardizations

Here are our top five favorite standardizations that we’ve guided clients through for successful multi-business unit implementations.

1. Document Your Field Mappings 

In any Pardot implementation, you’ll need to map fields from Salesforce to Pardot. You should verify fields are consistent in name, type, and function among Pardot Prospects, Salesforce Leads, and Salesforce Contacts. Keeping those mappings synchronized ensures qualified prospects get created in Salesforce without sync errors and ensures no data is lost in the conversion process of a lead to an account and contact. 

Remember, fields in one PBU are not connected to fields in another PBU. The only way to make that connection is through Salesforce. If data from one PBU should be represented in another PBU, you’ll want to make sure that field is established in both PBUs and mapped to the same Salesforce field. Of course, you’ll want those fields’ type to be the same across all systems, too!

It’s also smart to track the sync behavior — for each field — and determine which system is the source of truth. When you set up your fields in Pardot, you’ll select this for each field. This sync behavior is critical to track and communicate to your users. 

How are you going to keep track of it all? On our team, the first thing we do is create a field mapping spreadsheet that tracks all the mapped fields, their types, the sync behavior, and what system is using which fields. 

Field mapping spreadsheet example

A good field mapping spreadsheet includes: 

  • Field Name and API Name
  • Field Type
  • Sync Behavior 
  • Which PBUs utilize the field 
  • Input Values
  • Default vs. Custom 
  • Notes on how the field is used

For admins, this document becomes invaluable to quickly reference what PBUs use which fields when updates need to be made or troubleshooting is needed. Your end users across PBUs can also use the map to understand what the field is for and how to use it, which establishes congruence across the PBUs.

Understand Marketing Data Sharing Do’s & Don’ts

Setting up Marketing Data Sharing is a simple task in reality, however it often causes a slew of confusion and questioning once implemented. For your implementation, you’ll need to select or create one field to manage MDS across all BUs. That field should only be used for this purpose. When you work on this strategy, consider the following:

  • Using a single-select picklist field if the Lead/Contact will only ever exist in 1 PBU
  • Using checkboxes for each PBU if the Lead/Contact will be in more than 1 PBU
  • Setting the field as read-only
  • Hiding the field for end users 
  • Activating an automation to maintain the field value on new records (i.e. Flow)
  • Ensure your Pardot connector user (or B2BMA Integration User) has visibility to the MDS field 

3. Enable “Manage Users with Salesforce”

This feature is not yet a requirement in orgs, but if you’re setting out to implement PBUs, we suggest working this into your implementation project. User Sync connects your Salesforce Profiles to Pardot Roles so it’s easier to manage who gets access to Pardot, which business unit they get access to, and which Pardot Role they are assigned. This puts the management of users in Salesforce’s hands, which means you’ll also need to work with your Salesforce admin in its implementation. 

Any time you wish to add new users to a PBU, you’ll manage that in Salesforce instead of setting up their individual user record in Pardot. With the “Manage Users in Salesforce” functionality, it’s easy for an admin to add users directly to a business unit based on either their user record, their role, or their public group association. 

You’ll control the profile to role mappings in Pardot. Remember, one Salesforce Profile can only map to one Pardot Role. If you have custom roles in your Pardot org, you’ll want to do your best to standardize these across PBUs as well so there’s no confusion in access.

This tends to be a tricky thing to catch on to, but once enabled, the long-term maintenance becomes much easier and more in line with regular user activation processes. 

4. Agree on Folder Structure & Naming Conventions — Bonus Points for Campaign Hierarchies!

Setting an org-wide default for naming conventions and folder structure is an amazing priority to set for your team. When implemented well, we’ve seen clients have a much easier time supporting their users and maintaining organization in the long term. 

Especially since features like connected campaigns sync back to Salesforce, it is critical to have consistent naming conventions on key records like: campaigns, folders, templates, automation rules, lists, and forms. 

One thing to include in your naming convention? The Pardot Business Unit it belongs to. That way, in a glance, you can see what assets are associated with each PBU. This will be even more important with the coming of the new drag-and-drop landing page builder. 

We’ve seen massive enterprise clients with 25+ brands be able to standardize folder structure and conventions, so we challenge you to try as well as part of your implementation.

Nothing is worse than logging in to different PBUs of the same org and seeing polar opposite naming conventions, hierarchies and foldering. We’ve also seen this standardization support internal folder and naming convention changes that better align teams overall. 

Looking for naming convention tips? This is my favorite blog post on it.

5. Email & Landing Page Templates

It’s important to remember templates are unique to each business unit. That is, they can’t be shared across PBUs. However, with the new Lightning email experience, you can share templates built there. 

This functionality is relatively new, yet it may be worth considering if this functionality is right for your project. If so, there is additional setup to include in your implementation to work through the sharing and visibility requirements.

Standardization Ensures an Efficient Pardot Business Unit

Following these five recommendations is a great start to ensuring your Pardot Business Unit implementation is efficient and well-documented. Taking the time to standardize relieves a lot of confusion throughout the project and in the long-term maintenance of your org.

Reach out to Sercante for guidance with your Pardot Business Units, or tell us what standardization tactic you’ll use first in the comments section.

The post 5 Ways to Standardize Your Pardot Business Units appeared first on The Spot For Pardot.

By |2021-10-21T15:12:30+00:00October 21st, 2021|Categories: Data Management, Pardot Business Units, Salesforce|
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Implementing Pardot External Activities Natively in Salesforce

Pardot is delivering a whole new way to leverage your prospect data in the Salesforce Winter ‘22 release. Our earlier blog post covers this new feature and how to set up the Pardot External Activity in Salesforce so any third-party service can begin sending these activities to Pardot via API. This post explains what third-party services need to do to send these activities to Salesforce using Salesforce declarative solutions (Flow/Process builder). 

At a high level, we need to:

  • Configure Salesforce to allow our solution to call the Pardot API
  • Implement Salesforce APEX code to handle the Pardot API request
  • Add an action to a Flow to make use of our new code
  • Test

This solution is a little more technical than our post on Zapier. Once you are done, you will end up with a Flow like this:

Start Record-triggered flow

Configure Salesforce

Any time we want to work with the Pardot API, we need to “authenticate” with Salesforce in order to get an Access Token. 

First, follow the steps in our earlier blog post Connecting to Pardot API from APEX. By the end, you should have:

  • A brand new Connected App (to avoid issues, don’t re-use previously created Connected Apps unless they were created using the instructions above) 
  • Named Credential for connecting to the API 

Salesforce APEX code

To build this capability, we need to create an @InvocableMethod so that our Salesforce declarative automations can see it and call it to do our bidding.As with any code solution, there are a variety of ways that we can tackle this. The code sample below will work for readers with one Pardot Business Unit. The original code file (and APEX Tests) can be found in our GitHub repository: export-activities-sfdx

public with sharing class PardotExternalActivityPublisher {
    public static final Integer HTTP_REQUESTS_PER_BATCH = 50;
    public static final String ONLY_ONE_BUSINESS_UNIT_ID = '0UvB00000004000AAA';
    public static final String NAMED_CREDENTIAL = 'APEX_Pardot_Credential';

    public class ExternalActivity {
        // @InvocableVariable(label='Business Unit Id')
        // public String businessUnitId;
        @InvocableVariable(label='Extension' required=true)
        public String extension;
        @InvocableVariable(label='Type' required=true)
        public String type;
        @InvocableVariable(label='Value' required=true)
        public String value;
        @InvocableVariable(label='Prospect Email' required=true)
        public String email;
    }

    @InvocableMethod(label='Send Activity to Pardot')
    public static void sendActivityToPardot(List<ExternalActivity> activities) {
        //Very quickly pass this request into the ASYNC Queue, eliminating delays for Users
        System.enqueueJob(new QueueablePardotCall(activities));
    }

    /**
     * Handles Asynchronously firing each Activity to Pardot
     */
    public class QueueablePardotCall implements System.Queueable, Database.AllowsCallouts {
        private List<ExternalActivity> activities;

        public QueueablePardotCall(List<ExternalActivity> activities) {
            this.activities = activities;
        }

        public void execute(System.QueueableContext ctx) {
            //depending on how many Activities we are processing, 
            //we might hit the APEX limit of 100 Web Callouts
            List<ExternalActivity> remainingActivities = new List<ExternalActivity>();
            Integer processedCount = 0;

            for(ExternalActivity activity : activities) {
                if(processedCount < HTTP_REQUESTS_PER_BATCH ) {
                    HttpRequest req = new HttpRequest();
                    req.setHeader('Pardot-Business-Unit-Id', ONLY_ONE_BUSINESS_UNIT_ID);
                    req.setHeader('Content-Type', 'application/json');
                    // req.setHeader('Pardot-Business-Unit-Id', activity.businessUnitId);
                    // activity.businessUnitId=null;

                    req.setEndpoint('callout:'+NAMED_CREDENTIAL+'/v5/external-activities');
                    req.setMethod('POST');
                    String body = System.JSON.serialize(activity, true);
                    System.debug('Submitting: ' + body);
                    req.setBody(body);
                    Http http = new Http();
                    try {
                        http.send(req);
                    }
                    catch(Exception e) {
                        //we fire it off and don't do anything if there's an error
                        //probably not the best approach for Production, though it will
                        //be up to you how to handle it
                        System.debug('There was an error submitting the External activity');
                        System.debug('Message: ' + e.getMessage() + '\n' +
                                        'Cause: ' + e.getCause() + '\n' +
                                        'Stack trace: ' + e.getStackTraceString());
                    }
                    processedCount++;
                }
                else {
                    //we will process this in the next batch of Payloads
                    remainingActivities.add(activity);
                }
            }
            if(!remainingActivities.isEmpty()) {
                System.enqueueJob(new QueueablePardotCall (remainingActivities));
            }
        }
    }
}

To use this code, make sure you replace the Business Unit ID at the top of the code with your Business unit ID (to find this, navigate to Salesforce Setup > Pardot Account Setup).

For readers with multiple Pardot Business Units, remove the constant ONLY_ONE_BUSINESS_UNIT_ID and then uncomment the businessUnit lines throughout. You will need to either specify the Business Unit ID in your Flow, or you could write additional APEX to iterate through your Pardot Business Units by working with the PardotTenant object in Salesforce.

You might also want to specify how you want to handle any exceptions you get from making the Pardot API call. In our example, we simply write exceptions to the debug log.

Our APEX code does assume that the Contact has synced over to Pardot already. If you can’t make this assumption, you may consider calling a Pardot Form Handler to make sure that the prospect is in Pardot already. We have an APEX example for that too (which follows a very similar pattern, so it should be easy to merge them).

Adding an Action to a Flow

Once the APEX has been deployed, you will now be able to use it declaratively.

In our example, we have a Zoom Webinar Member (which is a Junction Object between a Zoom Webinar and a Contact).

To set this up in a Flow:

  1. Navigate to Setup > Flows
  2. Select “New Flow” or edit an existing Flow
  3. Select the + symbol to add a new Element, select “Action”
  4. In the “Search all actions” window, locate “Send Activity to Pardot”
  5. Provide a meaningful Label and Description
  6. Set your input values
    1. Extension: Enter the name of the Marketing App Extension you created in Salesforce
    2. Prospect Email: Source the email from one of the fields/variables in your flow
    3. Type: Enter one of the activities you set up and associated with your Marketing App Extension in Salesforce
    4. Value: Enter (or source from a field/variable) the unique value to identify this Activity, event IDs work great here
  7. Click “Done”
Send activity to pardot

Test

Once all elements of your Flow are ready, testing can begin. Activate your Flow and perform the action you are using to trigger the Flow. After a couple of moments, check the Pardot prospect you are testing with, and you should now see all the information you passed through.

prospect activities

Testing is a little bit tricky, for two reasons:

  1. We are executing this functionality asynchronously, meaning a problem won’t show up in Salesforce like you are used to seeing. Debug logs will be your friend here. But don’t worry, there isn’t too much to sort through.
  2. If the Named Credential or anything else isn’t quite set up right (from step 1), Salesforce and debug logs aren’t very helpful in troubleshooting. You will have to painstakingly go through the instructions again to make sure that nothing was missed / done incorrectly.

Considerations

  • The Export Activity API call only works for known prospects, and it will not work if the email address is not already associated with a prospect in your Pardot Business Unit (this is why we have the form handler in our example).
  • If you have multiple Pardot Business Units, there is no intelligence of “choosing the right one.” You need to target the right one with your APEX solution, which assumes all prospects going through this code are from the same Pardot Business Unit. As we mentioned in the APEX section, you have the flexibility to code whatever you need to handle your business case. 

 For assistance with this or other Pardot External Activities, reach out to Sercante!

The post Implementing Pardot External Activities Natively in Salesforce appeared first on The Spot For Pardot.

By |2021-10-20T19:06:34+00:00October 20th, 2021|Categories: Content Marketing, Data Management, Email Marketing, Engagement Studio, Integration, Release Notes, Salesforce|
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