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.

ParDreamin’ 2021 Demo Jam Recap: Products to Extend Pardot

The final day of ParDreamin’ 2021 kicked off with the second annual Demo Jam, which highlighted sponsors’ products by showing how Pardot customers can extend the capabilities of their technology stack through integration. 

Each participant had three minutes to present their product demo. Then, demo jam attendees weighed in with their votes at the end of the session. We crowned the Demo Jam Champion at the end thanks to everyone’s votes and sent a trophy to the winner.

This year’s Demo Jam winner was Feedotter, which was presented by Feedotter Founder Andy Thiemer.

ParDreamin’ Demo Jam Rules

Each participant had 3 minutes to demo their product and wow the audience. Then at the end of the Demo Jam, the audience voted for their favorite product. Since Sercante won the 2020 Demo Jam, Adam Erstelle had 5 minutes to present but was not eligible to win the 2021 competition.

2021 ParDreamin’ Demo Jam Participants

Sercante’s own Richard Feist and Courtney Cerniglia shared Demo Jam hosting duties and provided welcome comic relief while giving away swag to attendees throughout the competition. 

Here’s who presented their products to compete for the best Pardot solution:

SaaScend

SaaScend empowers go-to-market teams to hit their ultimate revenue potential by combining revenue operations domain expertise with cutting-edge go-to-market technologies so teams can focus on scaling revenue. With over 300 clients in the last four years, SaaScend is creating a SaaS-plus-services platform for revenue operations, partnering with clients to guide, coach, and manage their go-to-market technology stack for years.

Craig Jordan is the Founder of SaaScend, the RevOps Consulting Firm partnering with SaaS startups to scale and grow their businesses with systems, data, strategy, and people. A revenue operations expert who has worked with over 300 companies, his background includes over 10 years of experience as a marketing leader, entrepreneur, coach, and a technology strategist. Craig is fueled by his passion for guiding go-to-market teams to success and has been a guest speaker for several industry webinars, conferences, and events.

Qualified

Qualified is the conversational sales and marketing platform for revenue teams that use Salesforce. Leading B2B brands like Adobe, Bitly, SurveyMonkey, ThoughtSpot and VMware trust Qualified to grow their pipeline by tapping into their greatest asset — their corporate website — to identify their most valuable buyers, understand their intent, and instantly start a sales conversation. Qualified runs natively on Salesforce and is ranked #1 in its category on the Salesforce AppExchange.

FeedOtter

FeedOtter allows you to create personalized email newsletters and send automated blog emails from Pardot. With built-in templates for newsletters, blog digests, and employee emails, and easy-to-use interface, you can create and send emails in less than 15 minutes.

Andy Theimer is the founder of FeedOtter and enjoys building tech companies, marketing strategies, and anything radio-controlled. Specialties: tech, seo, saas, content marketing, influencer marketing, and marketing automation.

GetFeedback

GetFeedback is an agile CX platform for Salesforce that enables your team to start fast, and think big, so they can focus on what matters most — your customers.

Alan MacDougall is an engineering manager on the GetFeedback platform team handling their most high-value integrations. 

Sercante

Sercante offers Pardot and Salesforce consulting, support, and development services. We support growth-minded companies with strategy, technology and execution across every step of the lead-to-revenue process.

Adam Erstelle has 20 years of software and development team leadership experience and a knack for diving into new technologies and learning them quickly. At Sercante, he is the driving force behind all product development initiatives and works with Pardot, Sales Cloud, and Heroku, among other platforms.

ParDreamin 2021 Demo Jam Full Video Replay

You can relive the ParDreamin’ 2021 Demo Jam and all of Rich and Courtney’s regional colloquialisms by watching the full video replay below.

Learn More About Extending Pardot

Watch the Demo Jam Replay to see the demos and learn more about using integrations to extend Pardot functionality. However, the ParDreamin’ 2021 Demo Jam includes only a small portion of the seemingly endless ways you can get Pardot to do more so you can reach your goals. 

Here are more resources to learn about extending Pardot through integrations:

Have something in mind that you wish Pardot could do but you haven’t found the solution yet? Tell us about it in the comments below or reach out to Sercante Labs to see if we can help.

The post ParDreamin’ 2021 Demo Jam Recap: Products to Extend Pardot appeared first on The Spot For Pardot.

By |2021-11-23T21:28:34+00:00November 23rd, 2021|Categories: Events, Integration|

ParDreamies Best In Show Pardot Award Winner: Destined

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

ParDreamies Categories

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

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

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

Best in Show with Destined

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

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

Quick Facts:

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

About the Award-Winning Solution

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

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

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

Challenge the team wanted to solve

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

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

Hurdles they overcame during the project

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

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

Results after implementing the solution

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

Learn more and keep it going

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

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

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

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|

ParDreamies Personalization Perfection Pardot Award Winner: Restaurant 365

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

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

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

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

Personalization Perfection Pardot Campaign with Restaurant 365

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

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

Pardot Campaign Solution Summary

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

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

Hurdles to Implementing Campaign Solution

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

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

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

Landing Page (Dynamic Content + Custom Fields)

Pardot Campaign Results

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

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

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

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

OKR Achieved: 79 quiz completions/50 goal

Learn more and keep it going

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

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

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

By |2021-11-11T11:42:44+00:00November 11th, 2021|Categories: Campaigns, Email Marketing, Events, Integration|

Get On Board with the New Pardot and Slack Integration (Beta)

Included in the Salesforce Winter ‘22 release is a beta feature that highlights the beginning of an integration between Pardot and Slack.

Salesforce officially acquired Slack on July 21, 2021, and the company is already looking to push out new features to integrate Slack with your Salesforce instance. The newest announcement regarding the integration between the two systems went into detail about how every company should have a digital headquarters and what features will soon be available.

Here is what you need to know so you can understand how Slack will work with Pardot.

Connecting Pardot with your company Slack workspace

What does the beta service include?

This beta feature allows your marketing and sales teams to receive updates in their Slack workspace when a prospect engages with your marketing assets. Through a completion action on your marketing asset, a new post will be shared within your Slack workspace informing your team of what asset the prospect interacted with and their basic contact information. When setting up the completion action, you are able to select which Slack channel you want your team to receive the notification.

Push notifications from Pardot to Slack via Pardot completion action

How do I enable the Pardot and Slack integration?

Before enabling the Pardot Slack connector, you will need to create a Slack app that will be installed in your Slack workspace so you can connect Slack to Pardot. If you are like me and have never heard of a Slack app, that’s fine! A Slack app should be created when you need to use Slack APIs to connect your workspace with a third-party service through an integration.

It’s recommended to create an app from an app manifest when setting up the basic Slack app, but it is possible to create your own. The Salesforce documentation for this integration includes JSON code for you to use in the manifest file. 

Slack provides an easy-to-navigate article that helps you create your Slack app for whichever Slack workspace you want to integrate with Pardot. By following the steps shown through the “Create a new Slack app” button, you will be able to create your own app within a couple of minutes.

Pardot Slack Integration basic app setup

Once your app is created, you will have to install it in your Slack workspace. This is so the Pardot and Slack integration is connected and ready to be used. Finally, you will have to generate a token and scope through your Slack app to add your workspace to the Slack connector in Pardot.

Enable the Pardot Slack Connector

Now that we have everything set up on the Slack side of the integration, you should navigate to your Pardot settings through the Pardot Lightning App to enable the Pardot Slack connector. Once you have enabled this setting, Slack will be available as a Connector through your connector settings through the Pardot Settings tab.

Enable the Pardot Slack Connector
Pardot Slack Integration create connector

When you choose the Slack connector, you will be prompted to add a Slack workspace to integrate with Pardot. To connect to your workspace, you will have to use the bot token provided when you generated the token and scopes for your Slack app. Once your workspace is added to the Slack connector, you can then choose up to 10 channels from that workspace to connect to Pardot. 

You will need to copy the channel links in order to set them up through the connector. You can find these by right clicking on the designated channel within your Slack workspace.

Configure Slack Notification Completion Actions in Pardot

Now that you have your Slack workspace and channel(s) set up through the Slack connector in Pardot, you can use the “notify Slack channel” Completion Action on your marketing assets. When setting up your completion action, you are able to select which channel you want to post to as well as customize the message that is posted in the Slack channel. With each post, Pardot will also include the following fields for the prospect so your teams can easily identify them in Pardot:

  • Name
  • Job Title
  • Company
  • Email
  • Phone

These fields will show as blank values if they are not populated for the prospect who has completed the particular action you have set up.

Pardot Slack Integration sample message

Upcoming Features

Salesforce announced Slack-First Marketing in mid-September and emphasized how the initiative will enable marketing teams to be able to collaborate through a shared digital workspace in Slack. 

Pardot Automation for Slack is the newest feature available for Pardot users to integrate with Slack. Although there is not much information on this new feature yet, we know it is expected to be available with the Spring ‘22 release and provides a shared view of your customer in Slack while streamlining notifications for the sales department.

Important things to know

Here are a few considerations you should keep in mind when you enable the Slack integration in Pardot.

  • You will need to work with your Slack workspace admin to create an app for the workspace you want to integrate with Pardot.
  • The Pardot Slack Connector is a beta feature and is only available in English.
  • The Pardot Slack Connector is not available through Pardot Classic, so you will need to install the Pardot Lighting App to use this feature.
  • You can only create the completion action to notify a Slack channel through a Pardot form, form handler, file download, custom redirect, page action, and Pardot Classic emails.
  • At this time, you are only able to connect one Slack workspace to Pardot and add up to 10 Slack channels for the integration.

Learn more about the Slack integration with Pardot

Remember to reach out to Sercante if you want to know more about setting up these features in your Pardot org. Or, comment below to let us know your thoughts.

The post Get On Board with the New Pardot and Slack Integration (Beta) appeared first on The Spot For Pardot.

By |2021-10-26T17:09:41+00:00October 26th, 2021|Categories: Integration, Release Notes|

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.

How to Implement Pardot External Activities with Zapier

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

In an earlier blog post, we describe how to set up the External Activity in Salesforce so a third party can begin sending activities to Pardot via API. This post will detail how to actually send the activities with Zapier. Similar approaches can be done with other meta-services. If you want hands-on help, we’d love to work with you.

Pardot External Activities Zapier Solution

Before we get started, it is important to note that Zapier doesn’t actually support this Pardot API request. Zapier only supports four of the many API requests possible, so we will be taking advantage of the Zapier Webhook capability to build our solution.

At a high level, we need to:

  • Configure Salesforce to allow our Zap to make API requests to Salesforce and Pardot
  • Create a new Zap which listens for a third-party event (such as registering for a Webinar)
  • Enhance the Zap to submit prospect information to a Pardot Form Handler
  • Enhance the Zap to get an OAuth token from Salesforce
  • Enhance the Zap to publish the External Activity (which works well as the Form Handler has ensured the Prospect exists already)
  • Test

Now I realize this is a lot, but don’t worry, we’ll walk through it all. Once you are done building this Zap, you’ll end up with something like this:

Configure the Salesforce Connected App

Anytime we want to work with the Pardot API, we first need to “authenticate” with Salesforce to receive an Access Token that can be used with the Pardot API. To do so, create a new Salesforce Connected App for Zapier. We highly recommend creating and testing this new Connected App by following the steps in our earlier blog post, Pardot API and Getting Ready with Salesforce SSO Users.

Once you have created your new Connected App, you should have a new Salesforce and Pardot User for the Zapier connection. Keep the user’s username, password, and security token handy for later.

In our example, we will be creating a Zap for a Zoom Webinar Registration. Due to the way Zoom Webinars are integrated with Zapier, you will need to create a Zap for each webinar, as well as creating automations in Pardot for each webinar. This may vary depending on which App you are using in Zapier.

Create a new Zap in Zapier

  1. Log in to your Zapier Account
  2. Create a new Zap and give it a name
  3. Find the third-party app that will trigger this Zap. For our example, we’ve chosen Zoom.
  4. Select your Trigger event. For our example, we have chosen “New Registrant”.
  5. Choose the Zoom account for your connection. If you haven’t already connected the app, now will be your chance!
  6. Next, (and this might differ based on your app), select the upcoming webinar you wish to integrate.
  7. Click “Test trigger”
    1. This often works best if you have a recent “event.” For Zoom webinars, it helps if you have at least 1 person who has already registered for the webinar via the Zoom registration page. In doing so, you will see sample fields and values, making the process a bit easier. 
  8. Finally, click “Continue” and you should have a nice clean “trigger.” Zapier will prompt you to make your first Action.

Enhance Zap to submit the Pardot Form Handler

Zapier now has a handle on prospects registering for the selected webinar, now we need to send this information to Pardot. 

In this first Action, we are going to send details about the person who registered for the Zoom webinar to a Pardot Form Handler. This allows us to create/update a Pardot prospect with the right field values.

Why are we using a Form Handler instead of API calls? 

  1. This approach greatly simplifies the integration by natively handling new prospect creation.
    1. Reduces sync errors for new prospects who have not interacted with a Pardot form yet
    2. More cost effective and efficient than using the Read API to create new prospects
    3. Ensures duplicates are not accidentally created
  2. The action that the person took will actually show up as Prospect Activity. This is good since they took real action and submitted a form.
  3. You can apply Completion Actions, which are not available in the API.

Make sure you have the Pardot Form Handler created and that you have the field names and the https URL handy.

  1. Continuing from the previous section, create a new Webhook Action by selecting “Webhooks by Zapier.”
    1. This step is important to establish who is registering and to make sure we associate the External Activity with a prospect. 
  1. For the Action Event, choose POST.
  2. Set up the action by filling in the following fields:
    1. URL: The https URL of your Pardot Form Handler
    2. Payload Type: form
    3. Data: Enter the Pardot Form Handler field name, and the values coming from the trigger setup earlier. Add new “rows” for each field you wish to populate in the Pardot Form Handler based on your trigger data available.
  3. Once you have finished setting up the Action, test the action, check that the Pardot Form Handler was called, and verify that the data is where it should be.
  4. Rename the Action to “Send Registration Info to Form Handler” so that it’s clear what this Action is accomplishing. 

Enhance Zap to get OAuth token from Salesforce

Now things start to get a bit tricky. Since we can’t leverage the Pardot app in Zapier, we need to do things manually. This is where we will use the Salesforce and Pardot User we set up with the Connected app in the first section.

  1. Create a new Webhook Action by selecting “Webhooks by Zapier”
  2. For the Action Event, choose POST
  3. Set up the action by filling in the fields:
    1. URL: https://login.salesforce.com/services/oauth2/token
    2. Payload Type: form
    3. Data -> grant_type: password
    4. Data -> client_id: Enter the Consumer Key from your Connected App
    5. Data -> client_secret: Enter the Consumer Secret from your Connected App
    6. Data -> username: Enter the Salesforce Username of the Pardot user we will use for API calls
    7. Data -> password:  Enter your Salesforce user’s password followed by the Security Token
  4. Once you’ve provided all the values above, Test and Review. A successful request should show values like access_token and instance_url for your Salesforce org.
  5. Rename this Action to “Get Salesforce OAuth Token” so that it’s clear what this Action is accomplishing. 

Enhance Zap to publish Pardot External Activity

Finally, we will send the External Activity to Pardot

  1. Create a new Webhook Action by selecting “Webhooks by Zapier”
  2. For the Action Event, choose POST
  3. Set up the action by filling in the fields:
    1. URL: https://pi.pardot.com/api/v5/external-activities
    2. Payload Type: json
    3. Data -> extension: Enter the name of the Marketing App Extension you created in Salesforce
    4. Data -> type: Enter one of the Activities you set up and associated with your Marketing App Extension in Salesforce
    5. Data -> value: Enter a unique value to identify this Activity, event IDs work great here
    6. Data -> email: Enter the email address that was used in step 3 of the “Enhance Zap to submit the Pardot Form Handler” section
    7. Headers -> Authorization: This one is a bit tricky to fill out. First, when you click in the text box, type “Bearer “ (with the space) and then select the Access Token.
    8. Headers -> Pardot-Business-Unit-Id: Enter the ID of the Pardot Business Unit that is associated with the Marketing App Extension. You can find the Pardot Business Unit ID by navigating to Salesforce Setup >Pardot Account Setup. (Detailed instructions here).
  4. Once you’ve provided all the values above, Test and Review. Check the Pardot Prospect for the new Activity record. This activity will appear between the Prospect Activities and Custom Fields section of the prospect page.
  1. Rename this Action to “Send External Activity” so that it’s clear what this Action is accomplishing. 

Test

Now it’s time to test our Zap end-to-end. 

Activate your Zap and perform the action that you are capturing in the Zap’s Trigger (i.e. register for the Zoom webinar). After a couple of moments, check the Pardot prospect that you are testing with. You should now see all the information you passed through the Zap!

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 Zap, which assumes all prospects going through this trigger are from the same Business Unit. Proceed with caution and test rigorously when attempting more advanced solutions with business units.
  • Salesforce only allows five access tokens to be issued at a time. With high volumes of a triggering event, it is possible that Zaps may fail due to Salesforce Access tokens getting recycled before they can be used in the following actions (this is due to us manually getting an Access Token with the second Action).
  • Any time the user’s password and/or security token changes in Salesforce, each ZAP that uses it will also need to be updated.

These considerations are best addressed by writing your own code, which can properly address the edge cases, etc. For assistance with this or other Pardot External Activities, reach out to Sercante!

The post How to Implement Pardot External Activities with Zapier appeared first on The Spot For Pardot.

By |2021-10-15T18:27:46+00:00October 15th, 2021|Categories: Data Management, Integration, Pardot Business Units, Release Notes, Salesforce|

Pardot External Activity: What it is and how to use it

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

Pardot external activities

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

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

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

Register the External Activity types in Salesforce

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

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

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

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

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

Integrate third-party systems with Pardot External Activity

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

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

Leveraging the new External Activities inside Pardot

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

rules prospect external activity

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

trigger external activity

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

rule match all

Keep in mind

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

rules match all

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

Requirements

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

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

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

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

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

Using the Pardot Integration from Zoom App Marketplace

Integrating Pardot with Zoom webinars allows you to not only collect prospect activity in real time, but also track attendance, handle communications, and send sales new leads quickly and easily. Using the Zoom-native Pardot App simplifies sharing data between these two systems by allowing you to capture Zoom webinar registrants, attendees, and absentees within Pardot lists. 

In this post we’ll cover the pros and cons of this integration as well as walk you through the setup process for a webinar. 

At a high level, to integrate Zoom and Pardot you will need to:

  1. Install and set up the Pardot App from the Zoom App Marketplace.
  2. (Optional) Configure Custom Zoom Registration Fields to go to Pardot.
  3. Start creating Zoom webinars.
  4. Prepare your email notifications.

Considerations for Using the Pardot App from Zoom App Marketplace

Before we dig in, there are a few things to consider when using this native integration:

  • The integration works best when using the Zoom registration form. 
    • There is an option to use a Zoom Post URL (similar to how we think about Pardot Form Handlers). However, this option relies on the Thank You page of the Pardot Form having an additional hidden form that changes per webinar. This hidden form must be completed and requires JavaScript for a behind-the-scenes submission. That makes this option prone to human error and/or browser issues. 
  • Both email solutions leave something to be desired. You can choose between: 
    • Emails styled in Zoom with prospect-specific URLs to join the webinar. With this option you’ll lose out on Pardot tracking and personalization capabilities.
    • Your beautiful Pardot email templates with all the benefits of Pardot data, tracking, and personalization, but no Zoom webinar details or prospect-specific URLs to join the webinar. 
  • This process will not connect prospects with the associated Salesforce campaign. You’ll need additional automations if that’s part of your strategy. 
  • Each webinar requires its own setup and configuration. These take between 1-3 hours each, depending on how granular you get with automations. As a result, this integration is better suited for companies that have a low volume of webinars.
  • There is no mechanism to pull in questions and answers from webinar polls.

Install and Set Up the Zoom Integration App 

  1. Navigate to the Pardot App on the Zoom App Marketplace and sign into your Zoom account. 
  2. Select “Install” from the top right of the Pardot App listing page.
  3. Once installed, you’ll see a prompt to enter your Pardot credentials. If you are not redirected to this screen, click “Manage” from the left-side navigation, scroll down, and click “Configure”). Select “Use Salesforce SSO.”
    Use Salesforce SSO
  4. Next, install a very tiny managed package provided by Zoom. This package creates a connected app to allow Zoom to connect to your org. Click “Install Package” and install this for Admins only.
  1. While the package is installing, create a Salesforce and Pardot user for your Zoom integration. Having one user per integration helps in the event that you need to troubleshoot your Pardot org and/or integrations. Once the user is set up, log in as this user to authorize and approve the app.  
  2. Next, provide Zoom with the Pardot Business Unit ID. You can find the Pardot Business Unit ID by navigating to Salesforce Setup > Pardot Account Setup (you can access detailed instructions here).
    Enter credentials
  3. Select “Save”

Zoom and Pardot are now connected, and they are ready to work together!

(Optional) Configure Custom Zoom Registration Fields Sync to Pardot

Zoom automatically passes most of the common fields directly into Pardot. This includes: 

  • Email
  • First Name
  • Last Name
  • City
  • State/Province
  • Zip/Postal Code
  • Country
  • Phone
  • Job Title
  • Organization
  • Industry
  • Questions & Comments
  • Employees

You can also create new fields in Pardot to sync Purchasing Time Frame and Role in Purchase Process from Zoom. 

Depending on what information you are looking to capture in Pardot, you may decide you want to have Zoom pass more fields into the prospect record. A good example of a field you may wish to connect is “Join URL.” This field is a prospect-specific URL that will allow the prospect to join the webinar. 

To add this field, simply:

  1. Navigate to Pardot Settings > Object and Field Configuration > Prospect Fields. Select “+Add Custom Field.”
  2. Complete the required info and select “Create Custom Field.”
  3. Once created, go back to the Pardot App in the Zoom Marketplace and select the “Custom Field Mappings” tab.
  4. Map the Zoom Registration Field “webinar_join_link” to the Pardot Custom Field that you created. Click “Add.”

Your new custom field is now connected. Future registration captured by Zoom will pass the Zoom Webinar Join URL to your Pardot prospects. But please note, the prospect record will only have values from the latest registration.

Start Creating Zoom Webinars

You will need to configure the Pardot integration for every webinar you create in Zoom. 

  1. First, create three static lists in Pardot so Zoom knows where to send the data. You will need a:
    • Registration List
    • Attendee List
    • Absentee List

Make sure you use naming conventions so these lists are easy to find in Zoom and any Pardot automations. 

  1. Next, create or locate the webinar in Zoom. Select the webinar name to view details. 
  2. Select the “More” tab and then select “Configure” within the Integration section.
    create a zoom webinar
  3. Provide Zoom with the static lists you created in Pardot. All three lists are required.
    Provide zoom with pardot static lists
  4. Click Save

Now your lists will be kept current with the right prospects!

Prepare Your Zoom Webinar Email Notifications

Getting prospects to register for a webinar is only half the battle. Now we need to get them to attend! Registration and reminder emails are key here, and getting the right message delivered at the right time will make all the difference.

Both Zoom and Pardot can be used to send these emails, each having their own considerations.

Considerations for Using Zoom Email Notifications

Zoom email settings can be configured at a Zoom Account level (i.e. for your entire company) and at a webinar level. You can customize email templates only at the Account level, and you can’t have webinar-specific templates.

  • Registration emails can include the prospect-specific Join URL and are sent immediately after registration.
  • Reminder emails can include the prospect-specific Join URL and can be sent 1 hour, 1 day, and/or 1 week prior to the webinar.
  • Follow-up emails can be sent 1-7 days after the webinar ends.

Considerations for Using Pardot Email Notifications

With Pardot, create an Engagement Studio program or Automation Rules to automatically send out your registration, reminder, “thank you for attending” and “Sorry we missed you” emails. These automations should look for Prospect that join the webinar’s three static lists.

  • If you configured your integration to send the Zoom Webinar Join URL to Pardot, this value can be included in registration emails sent from Pardot. 
  • Reminder emails can also include the Zoom Webinar Join URL, however if the prospect registered for multiple webinars in close proximity, the Zoom Webinar Join URL on the Prospect’s record may not match the webinar you are reminding the prospect about!
  • Follow-up emails can be sent whenever you like. You can even choose to send a different email template to those who register and attend versus those who register and are absent.

Try the Sercante Connector for Zoom Webinars and Pardot

As mentioned above, if you have a low volume of webinars, this process may not be an issue, especially since the integration is the low-low price of free. However, if you’re hosting one webinar per week (or more), then this process is pretty daunting. 

If you need to scale up your Zoom-Pardot integration, check out the Sercante Connector for Zoom Webinars and Pardot

What other tools or webinar platforms are you looking to integrate with Pardot? Tell us in the comments!

Special thanks to Erin Duncan for contributing to this post.

The post Using the Pardot Integration from Zoom App Marketplace appeared first on The Spot For Pardot.

By |2021-09-23T16:49:58+00:00September 23rd, 2021|Categories: Email Marketing, Event Management, Events, Integration, Zoom|