Getting Started Archives - Page 2 of 5

Boost Conversions: Best Practices for Landing Pages

With Marketing Cloud Account Engagement (Pardot), you have the power to drive conversions through Landing Pages. This is a crucial tool in your marketing toolbox to help drive sales goals, but it needs to be used effectively in order to be successful. Providing a great first impression to win over your customer begins with you ensuring specific qualities are in place to drive expected performance and engagement.

What is a landing page?

Landing pages are targeted web pages built by marketing teams to drive traffic from campaigns, including email links, social media posts, or digital ads. The key difference between a landing page and a standard website is that a landing page focuses on a single action with the end goal of generating new leads through targeted confersions.

Website vs. Landing Page

Key differences, in addition to the call-to-action, between a website page and a landing page include:

Single CTA – Websites have multiple points of navigation and include several points of conversion, whereas a landing page often has no navigation and focuses on one singular point of action.
Focused message to convert – Websites tend to be content heavy and filled with information from a multitude of channels, including company details, business offerings, careers, etc. A landing page uses a single persuasive message to convert a specific subset of your target audience to do something.
Keep visitors on the page – Websites link to additional pages, social sites, or sign ups for email communications. Landing pages typically don’t have standout links that would potentially drive traffic off its page.

Why use a landing page?

A landing page is used to convert new leads in exchange for them receiving something they find valuable. Such valuable items could include:

Offer Codes or Discounts
White Papers or Articles
Newsletter Registration
Webinar or Event Attendance
Free eBooks, Blogs, or Infographics
Free Software Trials
Online Course Enrollment
Pre-Orders or Interest Levels

Best Practices

Now that we have a better understanding of what a landing page is and how it can be used to drive conversions, let’s review a few best practices when it comes to building a landing page.

Focus on One Point of Conversion

A landing page should have one singular focus or goal for the visitor to take action on. When you have more than one item to focus on, the chances of hitting a conversion drops. That’s why we recommend:

Limited, if any navigation on your landing page
Social icons should be reserved for the footer rather than called out in copy
Your conversion point, whether that be a button or a form, should be located at the top of the page to draw the visitor’s attention to it from their initial landing.

Use Consistent Language

When driving traffic from an outside source to your landing page, you want to keep mirroring that language in both locations.

What you promise with your ad, should be delivered on the landing page. Without consistency and not keeping your “promise,” you may lose trust and a potential customer.

Use Inspiring Calls to Action

Ensure that your CTA button is obvious to your visitors by putting it in a well-placed position, using contrasting colors to make it stand out, and by using action words. Remember, visitors are seeking a solution to their problem and the CTA should be that solution!

Not only should the words be clear and concise, but you should ensure the CTA is above the fold of the page. Here’s a blog post that dives deeper into CTA best practices.

Consider Interactive Elements

Entice your visitors and drive them to a central point of action using interactive elements, which include:

Videos
Illustrations
Gif images
Bright colors
Quizzes
Polls
Calculators

These offer engaging content, eye-catching art, and allows you to collect additional insights about your audience, all while showing off your organization’s unique personality.

Design for All User Experiences

As of November 2022, studies have shown that 59.5% of all web traffic is coming from mobile devices. Despite this, several organizations are still not building their websites and landing pages to be responsive. This results in a very poor user experience.

Instead, take the time to build responsive landing pages that adapt automatically to each user. If not, you will lose valuable leads.

Pardot user? Use these templates to build your landing pages.

Be Considerate of Forms

Let’s say you get traffic to your landing page and the page looks great, but the form has 6+ required fields with invasive questions. This will drive that traffic OFF of your page.

Instead, you should aim to have your form have no more than 5 fields and target more basic details, such as first, last name, company, and email.

From there, enable Progressive Profiling, to continuously ask more questions of your customers. In addition, whenever asking an open-ended question, try to do so using drop-down menus, radio buttons, or checkboxes, rather than open text to create a better experience.

Thank You Content is a Must

Redirecting your landing page traffic to a thank you page not only wraps up the present and puts a bow on the experience, it also allows you, as the marketer, to retarget them and drive additional traffic to like-minded content. For example, you can drive them to additional product pages, resources, engage on social media, or drive them to contact a sales team member immediately.

Need additional help? Contact Sercante today for help with templates or strategy!

Original article: Boost Conversions: Best Practices for Landing Pages

The post Boost Conversions: Best Practices for Landing Pages appeared first on The Spot.

By Cara Weese|2023-01-18T21:48:43+00:00January 18th, 2023|Categories: Forms & Form Handlers, Getting Started, revive, Setup & Admin|

Pardot Multivariate Testing Best Practices

Part of being a great marketer is to always evolve with your audience. Doing this intentionally is the key to an organization’s success. Luckily, Marketing Cloud Account Engagement (Pardot) offers its customers Multivariate Testing, which measures the landing page performance over a period of time to determine the best variation.

What is Multivariate Testing?

The answer to this question is in the name. Multivariate Testing looks at multiple variables applied to several variations of Pardot Landing Pages to determine which version performs best. Once you have created your variations, they are randomly assigned to visitors to assess and track performance.

How does Multivariate Testing Work?

To begin, you will want to determine which variables are most important to you and the team to measure. We recommend no more than three variables change per landing page. For example, some of the more popular variables may include the page layout, headline, call to action, form fields, colors, and logos.

Build Your Pages to Test

Once you determine the variations, you will want to build a minimum of two landing pages. Remember to name your Landing Pages in a way that will differ them from one another for reporting at a later date.

You will want to make your landing pages using the differing variations prior to enabling the Multivariate Test. Once you have created your Landing Pages, take the steps below to complete the Multivariate Testing process.

Navigate to Marketing > Landing Pages > Multivariate Testing
Name your test, including the purpose or end goal
Select your Salesforce Campaign
Provide a unique vanity URL
Select the Landing Pages you wish to use and their weight percent (50/50 for two, or 33/33/33 for three)
Click “Create Multivariate Test”
Use the link generated to direct users to the landing page

Check the Reporting

For reporting, you want to ensure that the multivariate test runs long enough to receive a measurable sample size. Once you have reached an optimal size, you can go to Reports > Landing Pages to see the multivariate statistics, including page views, conversions, conversion rate, and the winning page.

Don’t be surprised if you go through multiple variations and manipulations of the landing pages or specific elements on those landing pages in order to pinpoint the most ideal version.

Multivariate Testing is a highly effective tool at the disposal of all Pardot users, and should be used routinely to measure performance and improve your audience targeting. This will likely result in a higher conversion rate and will show that you can grow with your audience.

Original article: Pardot Multivariate Testing Best Practices

The post Pardot Multivariate Testing Best Practices appeared first on The Spot.

By Cara Weese|2023-01-13T20:22:20+00:00January 13th, 2023|Categories: Emails & Templates, Getting Started, Pardot, revive, Strategy|

Pardot WYSIWYG Editor Icon Glossary

The Pardot WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) Editor Icon Glossary saved me SO much time and energy when I was first learning how to build email in Pardot. Recently, I noticed this page had been archived and no good replacement could be found, so I thought I’d recreate this asset so new and experienced users can still reference it as much as needed.

The Icon Glossary

These buttons and icons are universal across Pardot, wherever you may add content (classic email builder, forms, landing pages, etc.). These buttons and icons are available to help you style your copy.

Icon	Function
	Bold text.
	Italicize text.
	Underline text.
	Strikethrough text.
	Additional formatting options such as font size and line height.
	Remove existing formatting.
	Insert a link.
	Remove a link. This icon is grayed out unless an existing link is selected.
	Insert an Anchor. This is a hyperlink that will take you to another section of the email.
	View the source code. This button is helpful when manually entering or editing HTML.
	Insert an image.
	Insert a merge field to personalize the content for the recipient.
	Set your text color.
	Set your background color.
	Insert a numbered list.
	Insert a bulleted list.
	Left align content.
	Center align content.
	Right align content.
	Justify content.
	Paste as plain text. This strips all formatting from the text.
	Paste from Word. This retains some formatting from Microsoft Word, but strips out superfluous code. See Copying Content from Word for more info.
	Insert an HTML table.
	Insert a horizontal line.
	Insert a special character.
	Insert AddThis to allow recipients to share your email.
	Insert Dynamic Content to personalize the content for the recipient.
	Insert emojis.
	Change or set your font name.
	Change or set your font size.

I hope this makes building emails go a little more smoothly for you! If I missed any icons or if you have any questions, let us know in the comments!

Original article: Pardot WYSIWYG Editor Icon Glossary

The post Pardot WYSIWYG Editor Icon Glossary appeared first on The Spot.

By Erin Duncan|2023-01-13T20:09:09+00:00January 13th, 2023|Categories: Emails & Templates, Getting Started, Pardot, revive, Setup & Admin|

The Basics of A/B Testing in Pardot

Marketing A/B Testing is far from being anything new. In fact, it’s been around for quite some time.

A/B Testing as we know it today first came about in the 1990s and has been evolving ever since, while still staying true to the same core concepts — comparing two versions of something to figure out which has the best performance.

In this post, we’ll cover the basics of marketing A/B testing and how you can use it in your Marketing Cloud Account Engagement (Pardot) instance to optimize your marketing assets.

What is Marketing A/B Testing?

As previously stated, A/B Testing compares one email to another and via algorithms, decides which version performed best. More specifically, you want to change a single variable between the two emails, keeping everything else the same.

For example, does “Learn More” or “Download Now” drive more traffic via your call-to-action? Or, perhaps you want to determine whether a subject line that reads “Urgent: Read Now” is more appealing to your audience or “Time is running out” is the better way to go.

How does A/B Testing Work in Pardot?

By testing your audience’s responses, you are able to customize your content based upon email performance as well as user preferences to personalize their experience.

Within Pardot, you can easily apply marketing A/B testing to your emails to configure a variety of variations based upon:

Imagery
Subject lines
Call-to-actions
Image placement
Image content
Email send time

The thing about A/B Testing is that you can always be using it because your audience is always evolving, and as a marketer, it is your responsibility to remain responsive to that customer base. Luckily, Pardot’s A/B Testing functionality is fully automated and easy to use.

Within the automation platform, you need to start by determining which variable you wish to test — headline, banner image, subject line, etc. From there, you need to choose your metric — opens or clicks. Finally, you decide what percent of your audience you want to test these emails on (up to 50% of the segmentation). Once these factors are decided, it is time to run the test.

For example, let’s go with subject line as our variable and opens as our metrics. Based upon which version had the most opens, Pardot will automatically deploy the “winning” email to the remaining audience — the email with the most opens.

You’ll find the checkbox to enable A/B testing in the Basic Info menu within your email draft.

How can your company use A/B Testing?

This simple automation innate to Pardot can help businesses of all sizes to better target their audience and increase actionability on their part. As our world becomes more and more digital, A/B Testing easily lends itself to marketing teams worldwide to evaluate marketing’s effort and effectiveness.

The important thing to note is that one test is never enough. Always keep testing and changing with your audience so you are not left behind.

A/B testing is one of the most powerful tools Pardot offers its users, and it should be taking full advantage of. With that said, be mindful that you are choosing only one criteria and one metric for each A/B test that you run to see the most effective results.

Let us know your thoughts on using marketing A/B testing in the comments section.

Original article: The Basics of A/B Testing in Pardot

The post The Basics of A/B Testing in Pardot appeared first on The Spot.

By Cara Weese|2023-01-11T22:17:33+00:00January 11th, 2023|Categories: Emails & Templates, Getting Started, Pardot, revive|

How to Add Calendar Links to Pardot Emails and Landing Pages

If you run virtual or in-person events, including an ‘add to calendar’ link in your emails and landing pages can be a great way to ensure your guests actually show up. While there is currently no feature in Pardot to create ‘add to calendar’ links within the editor, there are two options to add them yourself. The first option is to create the files manually and link to them within your Pardot assets. The second option is to use a tool to generate the links, files and buttons for you. In this post, I’ll show you how to use each one of these options to create ‘add to calendar’ functionality within your Pardot emails and landing pages.

Choose which calendars to target

There are two common calendar file types; a calendar link and a calendar (ICS) file. The first step is to figure out which calendars you want to target. That way, you know what files need to be generated to add them to your Pardot email or landing page.

Here’s the breakdown of which email client accepts which ‘add to calendar’ method.

Image source: Litmus

Option 1: Create calendar links & files manually

The first option is to create the calendar links and files manually. Upload the files into Pardot and link to them in your email or landing page.

Hot Tip: The easiest way to create calendar links is to use this handy tool.
• Google Calendar Link Generator
• Outlook & Apple Calendar (.ICS) Link Generator

Enter the information for your event, select the email client you want to target and add the link to your email or landing page.

Upload the calendar link to Pardot

If you want to target an email client that supports ICS files, you will need to generate the file and upload it into Pardot. Using the same generator, click on the download ICS button to download the file. Upload the file into Pardot (Marketing > Content > Files).

Link to the ICS file within your Pardot landing page or Pardot email.

Example

Here’s an example of a button that will work within an email and a landing page.

ADD TO CALENDAR

Outlook.com | Office 365 | Google

Option 2: Creating a calendar links with a tool

The second option is to use a tool that will create the files, links and buttons for you. My favourite tool is the AddEvent.com, which has a free ‘hobby plan’ that will allow you to generate up to 50 calendar links a month. With this method, the ICS file is hosted for you, so you don’t need to upload any files into Pardot.

Email example

Here’s an example of what an ‘add to calendar’ button looks like in an email.

Add event to calendar

Landing page example

Here’s an example of what an ‘add to calendar’ button looks like on a landing page.

Add to Calendar

Taking it a step further

If you are up for a challenge, you can try to show/hide different calendar links based on what email client the prospect is using. Find out more in this article by Litmus.

Questions?

Send me a tweet @jennamolby, or contact the Sercante team for help.

Original article: How to Add Calendar Links to Pardot Emails and Landing Pages

The post How to Add Calendar Links to Pardot Emails and Landing Pages appeared first on The Spot.

By Jenna Molby|2023-01-07T10:35:00+00:00January 7th, 2023|Categories: Emails & Templates, Getting Started, revive|

How to Add Calendar Links to Pardot Emails and Landing Pages

If you run virtual or in-person events, including an ‘add to calendar’ link in your emails and landing pages can be a great way to ensure your guests actually show up. While there is currently no feature in Pardot to create ‘add to calendar’ links within the editor, there are two options to add them yourself. The first option is to create the files manually and link to them within your Pardot assets. The second option is to use a tool to generate the links, files and buttons for you. In this post, I’ll show you how to use each one of these options to create ‘add to calendar’ functionality within your Pardot emails and landing pages.

Choose which calendars to target

There are two common calendar file types; a calendar link and a calendar (ICS) file. The first step is to figure out which calendars you want to target. That way, you know what files need to be generated to add them to your Pardot email or landing page.

Here’s the breakdown of which email client accepts which ‘add to calendar’ method.

Image source: Litmus

Option 1: Create calendar links & files manually

The first option is to create the calendar links and files manually. Upload the files into Pardot and link to them in your email or landing page.

Hot Tip: The easiest way to create calendar links is to use this handy tool.
• Google Calendar Link Generator
• Outlook & Apple Calendar (.ICS) Link Generator

Enter the information for your event, select the email client you want to target and add the link to your email or landing page.

Upload the calendar link to Pardot

If you want to target an email client that supports ICS files, you will need to generate the file and upload it into Pardot. Using the same generator, click on the download ICS button to download the file. Upload the file into Pardot (Marketing > Content > Files).

Link to the ICS file within your Pardot landing page or Pardot email.

Example

Here’s an example of a button that will work within an email and a landing page.

ADD TO CALENDAR

Outlook.com | Office 365 | Google

Option 2: Creating a calendar links with a tool

The second option is to use a tool that will create the files, links and buttons for you. My favourite tool is the AddEvent.com, which has a free ‘hobby plan’ that will allow you to generate up to 50 calendar links a month. With this method, the ICS file is hosted for you, so you don’t need to upload any files into Pardot.

Email example

Here’s an example of what an ‘add to calendar’ button looks like in an email.

Add event to calendar

Landing page example

Here’s an example of what an ‘add to calendar’ button looks like on a landing page.

Add to Calendar

Taking it a step further

If you are up for a challenge, you can try to show/hide different calendar links based on what email client the prospect is using. Find out more in this article by Litmus.

Questions?

Send me a tweet @jennamolby, or contact the Sercante team for help.

Original article: How to Add Calendar Links to Pardot Emails and Landing Pages

The post How to Add Calendar Links to Pardot Emails and Landing Pages appeared first on The Spot.

By Jenna Molby|2023-01-07T10:35:00+00:00January 7th, 2023|Categories: Emails & Templates, Getting Started, revive|

Everything You Need to Know About the Pardot and Salesforce Integration

The Marketing Cloud Account Engagement (Pardot) and Salesforce integration can be used to pass data back and forth between Pardot and Salesforce. In this article, learn everything about the Salesforce connector including what objects are synced, what happens if the prospect already exists in Pardot and how Pardot, and how to map Salesforce users to Pardot users.

Two different sync methods

All Records
Select Records using Marketing Data Sharing

Objects that sync from Salesforce to Pardot

Leads
Contacts
Accounts
Opportunities
Campaigns
Custom Objects (Available in: Pardot Advanced Edition and Available for an additional cost in: Pardot Plus Edition)

Synced but requires mapping in Pardot

Users
Custom Fields

Syncing prospects from Pardot to Salesforce

A prospect is synced to Salesforce when the record has been assigned to a user. A user can be assigned using a completion action or by using an automation rule.

Since Pardot uses email address as its unique identifier**, Pardot will check to see if there’s a contact in Salesforce with the same email address and then check if there’s a lead with the same email address. If there’s no email address that matches the prospect in Salesforce, Pardot will create a new lead in Salesforce. This can be illustrated with this flow chart.

You can also navigate to the connector settings and run a full sync. Learn more about what causes a prospect to sync from Pardot to Salesforce here.

** If your Pardot account allows for multiple prospects with the same email address, there are some requirements for the record to sync to Salesforce.

Syncing Prospects from Salesforce to Pardot

By default new leads and contacts within Salesforce will not sync over to Pardot automatically. There are 3 ways to sync new leads and contacts from Salesforce to Pardot:

By clicking the send to Pardot button on the lead or the contact record in Salesforce.
By manually uploading the lead or contact’s email address into Pardot.
Enable the option in the Salesforce connector to ‘automatically create prospects if they are created as a lead or contact in Salesforce.com’. This feature is not retroactive so you will need to upload a CSV into Pardot that includes the CRM ID and email address to trigger Salesforce records to sync.

Run a full sync (Pardot Settings > Connectors > Gear Icon > Sync All Prospects)

Once the Pardot prospect and the Salesforce lead/contact are connected, Pardot will check for changes in Salesforce every 2-4 minutes.

Hot Tip: Learn more about Salesforce and Pardot sync behavior in this blog post.

Connected Campaigns: Salesforce Campaigns and Pardot Campaigns

The launch of Connected Campaigns in 2019 streamlined how Salesforce and Pardot campaigns are used, allowing management of campaigns to be managed within Salesforce. Plus, if you enable Campaign Member Sync your prospects will be added to campaigns as campaign members.

Prospects can be added to a Salesforce campaign using the following methods:

When you set up a rule using one of these methods you will be able to see the action criteria to add to Salesforce campaign.

Mapping Fields Salesforce Fields to Pardot Fields

When you verify your Salesforce connector with Pardot, the default fields for leads/contacts and accounts are set up automatically. Any custom fields will need to be created in Pardot and mapped to the corresponding Salesforce field.

Mapping Salesforce Users to Pardot Users

Each Salesforce user will need to be created in Pardot as well, so you can assign Pardot prospects to a sales rep. You can create users in 4 ways:

Manage User Sync In Pardot (Pardot Settings > Connectors > User Sync) by mapping Salesforce Profiles to Pardot Roles
Manage User Sync In Salesforce
Create directly in Pardot (Pardot Settings > User Management > Users)

Uploading a CSV file

Troubleshooting

I changed a contact’s email address in Salesforce, but the change isn’t syncing to Pardot.

This is the expected behavior of the Salesforce connector unless you have the setting Automatically change email addresses in Pardot to reflect changes in Salesforce.com enabled under the Salesforce connector settings.

My Prospects aren’t syncing to Salesforce.

First, check to see that there wasn’t an error while syncing the prospects to Salesforce. You can view sync errors by navigating to Pardot Settings > Connectors > Sync Errors

Fix any errors and try syncing the record with Salesforce again.

If you have no errors, make sure the record is assigned to a user. You can check this by clicking into the prospect in Pardot and looking for an assigned user under the Insight table.

Have other questions about the Pardot and Salesforce Integration? Ask in the comments!

Original article: Everything You Need to Know About the Pardot and Salesforce Integration

The post Everything You Need to Know About the Pardot and Salesforce Integration appeared first on The Spot.

By Lauren Hosimer|2023-01-06T16:03:03+00:00January 6th, 2023|Categories: Getting Started, Pardot, revive, Setup & Admin|

Everything You Need to Know About the Pardot and Salesforce Integration

The Marketing Cloud Account Engagement (Pardot) and Salesforce integration can be used to pass data back and forth between Pardot and Salesforce. In this article, learn everything about the Salesforce connector including what objects are synced, what happens if the prospect already exists in Pardot and how Pardot, and how to map Salesforce users to Pardot users.

Two different sync methods

All Records
Select Records using Marketing Data Sharing

Objects that sync from Salesforce to Pardot

Leads
Contacts
Accounts
Opportunities
Campaigns
Custom Objects (Available in: Pardot Advanced Edition and Available for an additional cost in: Pardot Plus Edition)

Synced but requires mapping in Pardot

Users
Custom Fields

Syncing prospects from Pardot to Salesforce

A prospect is synced to Salesforce when the record has been assigned to a user. A user can be assigned using a completion action or by using an automation rule.

Since Pardot uses email address as its unique identifier**, Pardot will check to see if there’s a contact in Salesforce with the same email address and then check if there’s a lead with the same email address. If there’s no email address that matches the prospect in Salesforce, Pardot will create a new lead in Salesforce. This can be illustrated with this flow chart.

You can also navigate to the connector settings and run a full sync. Learn more about what causes a prospect to sync from Pardot to Salesforce here.

** If your Pardot account allows for multiple prospects with the same email address, there are some requirements for the record to sync to Salesforce.

Syncing Prospects from Salesforce to Pardot

By default new leads and contacts within Salesforce will not sync over to Pardot automatically. There are 3 ways to sync new leads and contacts from Salesforce to Pardot:

By clicking the send to Pardot button on the lead or the contact record in Salesforce.
By manually uploading the lead or contact’s email address into Pardot.
Enable the option in the Salesforce connector to ‘automatically create prospects if they are created as a lead or contact in Salesforce.com’. This feature is not retroactive so you will need to upload a CSV into Pardot that includes the CRM ID and email address to trigger Salesforce records to sync.

Run a full sync (Pardot Settings > Connectors > Gear Icon > Sync All Prospects)

Once the Pardot prospect and the Salesforce lead/contact are connected, Pardot will check for changes in Salesforce every 2-4 minutes.

Hot Tip: Learn more about Salesforce and Pardot sync behavior in this blog post.

Connected Campaigns: Salesforce Campaigns and Pardot Campaigns

The launch of Connected Campaigns in 2019 streamlined how Salesforce and Pardot campaigns are used, allowing management of campaigns to be managed within Salesforce. Plus, if you enable Campaign Member Sync your prospects will be added to campaigns as campaign members.

Prospects can be added to a Salesforce campaign using the following methods:

When you set up a rule using one of these methods you will be able to see the action criteria to add to Salesforce campaign.

Mapping Fields Salesforce Fields to Pardot Fields

When you verify your Salesforce connector with Pardot, the default fields for leads/contacts and accounts are set up automatically. Any custom fields will need to be created in Pardot and mapped to the corresponding Salesforce field.

Mapping Salesforce Users to Pardot Users

Each Salesforce user will need to be created in Pardot as well, so you can assign Pardot prospects to a sales rep. You can create users in 4 ways:

Manage User Sync In Pardot (Pardot Settings > Connectors > User Sync) by mapping Salesforce Profiles to Pardot Roles
Manage User Sync In Salesforce
Create directly in Pardot (Pardot Settings > User Management > Users)

Uploading a CSV file

Troubleshooting

I changed a contact’s email address in Salesforce, but the change isn’t syncing to Pardot.

This is the expected behavior of the Salesforce connector unless you have the setting Automatically change email addresses in Pardot to reflect changes in Salesforce.com enabled under the Salesforce connector settings.

My Prospects aren’t syncing to Salesforce.

First, check to see that there wasn’t an error while syncing the prospects to Salesforce. You can view sync errors by navigating to Pardot Settings > Connectors > Sync Errors

Fix any errors and try syncing the record with Salesforce again.

If you have no errors, make sure the record is assigned to a user. You can check this by clicking into the prospect in Pardot and looking for an assigned user under the Insight table.

Have other questions about the Pardot and Salesforce Integration? Ask in the comments!

Original article: Everything You Need to Know About the Pardot and Salesforce Integration

The post Everything You Need to Know About the Pardot and Salesforce Integration appeared first on The Spot.

By Lauren Hosimer|2023-01-06T16:03:03+00:00January 6th, 2023|Categories: Getting Started, Pardot, revive, Setup & Admin|

Forms Are Great, But Confirmed Opt-In Is Better

Are you spending hours upon hours curating engaging, click-worthy content, only to notice that you have low engagement, high unsubscribes and spam complaints? A list of opted-in prospects is great, but what happens when they input false or incorrect contact information, or sign up on a whim. By setting up Confirmed Opt-In (also known as Double Opt-In), you can be at ease knowing you’re collecting email addresses from a valid and monitored inbox, and of prospects who want to receive and read your content.

What is Confirmed Opt-In?

A Confirmed Opt-In (COI) is a process where a marketer obtains explicit consent from prospects to receive marketing emails.

Setting it up adds a few more steps to the Single Opt-in process but is generally easy:

A contact fills out your form and selects the consent check-box (single opt-in)
They receive the opt-in confirmation email, open it and click the button to confirm.
Their record is updated as an opted-in contact, along with other important details like when they confirmed their opt-in.

It may be a regulatory requirement in certain regions, so make sure you do your research to understand whether your prospects require a COI. It’s currently required in Austria, Germany, Greece, Switzerland, Luxembourg and Norway (source).

Benefits of COI for Email Marketing

While it can take more time to set up, the payoff is worth the effort:

Higher email engagement rates (opens/clicks): Prospects are interested in receiving your marketing emails and are more likely to purchase your products/services.
Lower bounce rates/spam complaints and a better sending reputation: No fake emails entering your database and causing high bounce rates or spam traps that end up harming your sending reputation.
A well-documented record of opt-in: With this auditable trail, if a recipient reports the email as spam, you will have proof to support your list’s opt-in integrity.
And generally a good, clean database.

Setting up Confirmed Opt-In

There are a number of ways to set up COI. Here’s a basic overview of how to set it up in Marketing Cloud Account Engagement (Pardot) instance.

Create two lists to capture opt-ins
- Confirmed Opt-in
- Not confirmed Opt-in
Create a landing page that a prospect is directed to once they confirm their opt-in.
Create a custom redirect link that sends prospects to the landing page above
- Add the following completion actions to the custom redirect:
  1. Remove prospect from Not confirmed Opt-in list
  2. Add prospect to Confirmed Opt-in list
Set up an auto-responder email to capture COI
- Add the custom redirect link (identified in the above step) to the call to action button to capture the COI
Add the following completion actions to the form/form handler that captures consent to receive Marketing Communications:
- Add prospects to the Not confirmed Opt-in list
- Send auto-responder email to capture their COI

Quality or Quantity

COI is a great way to level up your email marketing strategy; ensuring a healthy database full of ‘real’ and engaged prospects. And with sales and marketing always looking for quality over quantity, COI will ensure it gets you there.

What questions do you have about Confirmed Opt-in? Let’s hear it in the comments below.

Original article: Forms Are Great, But Confirmed Opt-In Is Better

The post Forms Are Great, But Confirmed Opt-In Is Better appeared first on The Spot.

By Rana Mansour|2023-01-05T17:28:14+00:00January 5th, 2023|Categories: Forms & Form Handlers, Getting Started, Pardot, revive, Setup & Admin|

How to Integrate Your Blog With Pardot

Your website is one of your most important demand generation assets and a blog is a great way to increase your online presence by making you more visible on Google. It’s also a great way to bring prospects into your database to expand the top of your funnel.

In this tutorial, I’ll show you how to set up your blog with a Marketing Cloud Account Engagement (Pardot) form, how to create a blog welcome email, and tips to automate blog digest emails.

How do you want your blog readers to subscribe?

There are many ways you can get your readers to subscribe to your blog. Some companies use a popup form when you visit a blog post, which has proven to be effective and other companies make it more subtle. Here are some different methods which will give you inspiration on how you should add the form to your blog.

Example 1: In a sidebar

Pardot lets you subscribe to their blog by entering in your email address in the sidebar.

Example 2: At the end of each blog

Hootsuite adds their blog subscription form to the bottom of each blog post. They also only ask for your email address and have some nice icons, so it’s clear what you’re signing up for.

Example 3: In the footer

Engagio has a “sticky footer” at the bottom of their blog page, as well as on each blog post to get readers to subscribe. The bold yellow color also draws your attention to the subscription form without being too invasive and they provide you with a close button to hide the form.

Example 4: With an automation

Asana uses a subscription form that slides out at the bottom when you scroll down about 80%. I like how the animation captures the attention of the readers and how they incorporate Facebook and Twitter buttons beneath the email sign up.

Example 5: In multiple spots

Shopify uses two slightly different methods for capturing their blog subscribers. When you visit their main blog page you can subscribe right from their header.

They also have a subscription form in the sidebar of each post. I like that they include some social proof in the subscription form in the sidebar and it’s clear what I can expect them to send me if I give them my email address.

What fields should you capture?

Standard fields

The shorter the form the more likely you will get your readers to subscribe to your blog. Most blogs only ask for an email address, but some also will ask you for your first and last name for more personalized blog digest emails.

Hidden fields

Your standard source fields should be on your blog subscription form, just like every Pardot form you create.

If you opt to have a subscription form on every blog post, I also like to add hidden fields for blog post title and blog post category. With my blog, for example, I have a subscription form at the bottom of each post and I use custom code in WordPress to automatically populate the hidden fields with the post title and post category. This way I can pull reports in Pardot to see what type of content is generating more blog subscribers and what posts have generated the most blog subscribers.

Here’s an example of populating hidden fields with WordPress blog information. Note: This method is only possible while using Pardot Form Handlers.

<input type="hidden" name="post-category" value="<?php the_category(); ?>" />

<input type="hidden" name="post-category" value="<?php single_post_title(); ?>" />

The Pardot implementation

Now that I’ve given you some examples of what form fields to include in your form and some methods for blog subscription forms, it’s time to show you how to build it out in Pardot.

Pardot Form Handlers vs. Pardot Form embed

There are some advantages and disadvantages for each form method. Embedded Pardot forms allow you to update the form directly in the Pardot form editor and the changes are live on your site as soon as you save the form. However, they also are embedded on your site using an iFrame, which means that certain functionality might not be available. Pardot form handlers are much more flexible and allow you to use your own HTML code to send data to Pardot.

When integrating your blog with Pardot the best form method to use, in my opinion, is Pardot form handlers, for a couple of reasons:

Changes don’t need to be made to the blog form regularly
It’s easier to have the form match your website/blog
Many blogging platforms have plugins you can use for blog subscription forms that will work well with Pardot form handlers

Create a campaign dedicated to blog subscribers

Create a campaign to attribute your blog as a lead source for any new subscribers. Your form and new subscribers should be assigned to the campaign in Pardot and/or Salesforce, depending on your lead attribution processes.

Create a Pardot Form or a Form Handler

In this tutorial, I will be using a Pardot form handler. You can also use a regular Pardot form if you prefer.

Create a Pardot form handler with a descriptive name. I called mine “Blog Subscription Form.” Select your new campaign, map the fields that you want to add to the form and click save. Note: Completion Actions and some other settings will be updated later on.

Add the form to your blog

There are many tools that allow you to add forms to your blog, but it depends what platform you use. Here’s a list of some popular plugins that will help you add your Pardot form to your blog.

PopUp Domination can be used to create a popup subscription form on your blog. You can use any HTML you want, which means it will work perfectly with your Pardot form handler.
Sumo is another option that will work on any type of blog platform. They also offer many different ways to display the subscription form on your blog.

While I’m a big fan of these tools, if you have a developer available the best option is to get them to implement your Pardot form on your blog using custom code. Depending on the method you choose it should be pretty easy for a developer to implement your form and it means you don’t have to pay a monthly subscription fee for using these tools.

Create a Thank You page

The next step is to create a Thank You page that the form will direct to when someone subscribes to the blog. I recommend that you create it on your website (instead of a Pardot landing page), to ensure it has the same look as your blog.

Once your Thank You page is created, copy and paste the URL into the Success location in the Pardot form handler.

Create a blog welcome email

A blog welcome email is a great way to promote more of your blog content. Choose a couple of your popular posts or create a digest of curated content your readers might be interested in.

When a reader subscribes to my blog, I send them a welcome email with some of my top Pardot blog posts. Click here to see what it looks like (and feel free to copy and paste the HTML to create your own welcome email).

Once you have your blog welcome email created add a completion action to your Pardot form to send an autoresponder email.

Emailing subscribers: Automated vs. Manual

Now that your form is set up on your site and your welcome email is ready, it’s time to figure out how you’re going to send notification emails when there’s a new blog post. There are two ways you can send out blog posts:

Automatically using a third-party application, or
Manually, since Pardot doesn’t have an RSS feed integration.

For my blog, I send out all my blog digest emails manually, since I like to have control over what’s sent. However, I only post about once or twice a week, so it’s pretty manageable.

Automated blog posts using Feed Otter

If you opt to go with the automated route, Feed Otter provides a full RSS integration with Pardot. You can quickly build, schedule, and email your blog subscribers notifying them of a new post, a weekly digest, or a monthly newsletter.

Manual blog post emails

Manual blog post emails require you to create an email each time there is a new blog post, or if you post a lot during the week, you can do a digest of all the new posts, once a week. It can be time-consuming, but if you have a good email template setup and a defined process the whole thing doesn’t take very long. If you’re going to go the manual route, here are some tips:

Create a simple, one-column email template, so you don’t have to spend time messing with formatting. This is the template I use for my blog posts.
Create an email that you can copy each time you need to send a blog email. This will contain all the settings (from address, list, etc.) you need to send the blog email.

Questions?

Send me a tweet @jennamolby or leave a comment below.

Note: This post was originally written in November 2016 and updated January 2023.

Original article: How to Integrate Your Blog With Pardot

The post How to Integrate Your Blog With Pardot appeared first on The Spot.

By Jenna Molby|2023-01-04T19:34:16+00:00January 4th, 2023|Categories: Emails & Templates, Forms & Form Handlers, Getting Started, Pardot, revive, Setup & Admin|