Pardot B2B Marketing Analytics Archives

Pardot and Salesforce Marketing Reporting: A 101 Guide

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

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

Pardot Reporting Basics

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

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

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

When could I use these built-in Pardot reports?

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

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

What Pardot reports are available?

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

A full list of Pardot reports can be found here.

Are there any prerequisites for built-in Pardot reports?

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

Salesforce Reports and Dashboards

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

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

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

When could I use these reports?

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

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

Are there any prerequisites?

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

Connected Campaigns for Salesforce and Pardot

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

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

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

Difference between Pardot and Salesforce Campaigns

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

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

Pardot Connected Campaigns

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

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

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

When could I use Connected Campaigns reports?

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

Are there any prerequisites?

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

BONUS – Engagement History Reporting and Campaign Influence Reporting

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

Salesforce Engagement History

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

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

Campaign Influence Reporting

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

When could I use these reports?

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

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

Are there any prerequisites?

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

Pardot B2B Marketing Analytics (B2BMA) and Tableau CRM

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

Pardot B2B Marketing Analytics

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

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

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

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

Tableau CRM and Pardot

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

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

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

Grouped Datasets

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

Types of data included in datasets.

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

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

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

What is a use case for creating a dashboard?

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

Are there any prerequisites?

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

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

More on Pardot and Salesforce Reporting

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

Learn more about these reporting tools with these resources

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

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

Recipe for success: Pardot B2BMA columns to rows

Change your data columns to rows in Pardot B2B Marketing Analytics/Tableau CRM

Has this ever happened to you? You wish you could change your Pardot B2BMA data from columns to rows.

You have all the Pardot B2B Marketing Analytics data you want in a single column, but you need to create B2BMA reports that show the data as rows.

For Example:

Your data looks like this.

But you want the data to look like this.

So you can make visuals like this!

And you want to do this without using a complicated query on the front end of your dashboard that could limit the ability to filter and sort the data…

There are many ways to accomplish this. But one of the simplest and most manageable methods is through a data recipe using the Append (UNION) and transform filters. This approach allows you to tweak your rules and data without code on the front end so you can keep your dashboard creation options flexible.

Changing Pardot B2BMA Data Columns to Rows

Step 1: Figure out what fields and filters to add.

The first step is to identify the rules.

What determines each type?
Which fields are needed for the data visual?
What filters do you want to include?

In our example, we know the MQL (Marketing Qualified stage) has been reached if the “Date__Qualified” date is greater than 1971-01-01’. Each stage has its own rules.

To create our dataset, we need to determine what fields and filter to add:

MQL Status (rules fields) and MQL Date
SQL Status (rules fields) and SQL Date
SAL Status (rules fields) and SAL Date

Filters: Country, Account name

When creating your dataset, be sure to document what fields are needed. Keep the field list as small as possible (you can always add more fields later if needed). Less is more for performance and useability in this case.

Step 2: Choose the fields you need.

Open your data recipe and select the dataset. Choose only the fields you need. This will keep the dataset manageable. You should pick all the fields needed to create the rules and the fields you will use to filter. Document everything you select as you will be repeating this process for each row type.

Step 3: Attach a transform to the dataset.

In this next step, you’re going to attach a transform to the dataset. Select the ‘custom formula option.’

In our example, anywhere the qualified data is after ‘1971-01-01’ we flag the type as MQL, otherwise we leave it blank.

Step 4: Add your rule and create a new field.

Use the “CASE” function to add your rule and create a new field. This will create a new field (BusinessStage) that will indicate ‘MQL’ where the qualified data is valid. Set the field type as text and Make sure to rename the field

Code Sample:

case
when Date_QualifiedMQL__c >’1971-01-01′
then ‘MQL’
else ‘’
end

Step 5: Attach another transform.

Attach another transform to populate the correct date using the custom formula. We are essentially creating a date field that will be the “main” date for our dataset and allow the aggregate on the dashboard.

Code Sample:

case
when Date_QualifiedMQL__c >’1971-01-01′
then Date_QualifiedMQL__c
else Date_QualifiedMQL__c
end

Step 6: Add a filter.

Add a filter to whittle your dataset down to just the “MQL” data.

Now your dataset looks like this with “SQL” as a FunnelStatus and the SQL Date as the FunnelDate.

Step 7: Repeat steps 1 through 6.

Repeat steps 1 through 6 to create the next row type. For each, make sure your CASE statement reflects your rules.

Step 8: Append the dataflows.

Append the two dataflows together with the Append connector. Each dataset must have identical rows to connect them as one (unioned) dataset.

Now your dataset looks like this. Your SALs and MQLs have gone from columns to rows!

For each remaining variable, repeat steps 1-7 with correct transformation rules and add append to the dataset as you go.

Step 9: Create an output object.

Once you have added all your types in filtered “sub” datasets, create an output object.

Once you run the data flow, you will be able to use the FunnelStage and FunnelDate to do summaries without complex code. If the rules change for creating the FunnelGroups, change the Transforms in the recipe or add new ones.

Now you can use your new dataset to create visuals by date and type or create a summary table.

Further considerations for reformatting Pardot B2BMA data

Here are a few things to keep in mind as you’re getting started.

You can use joins to add other datasets to your recipe – note they have to exist for all “streams”
Verify all desired variables have been accounted for (in our example after you filter SQL, SAL and MQL are there rows that are not brought in that you might need in your analysis? )
You can bring in as many columns as you need for filtering. Since we are turning each “column’ into its own row, each new column can contain the same data it had before, making all filters in the original dataset available.
Make sure you do a reality check on the data including:
- Expected row counts
- Expected amount totals
- Missing values
Note that when you create rows from columns, you need to decide if you want ALL data converted or just the data that meets the rules you set. If in doubt, create an additional data stream that filters out all records that don’t meet any of the criteria and make sure to review those. What’s not there might be important too!

Further reading:

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