ParDreamies Grassroots Innovation Pardot Award Winner: BrandEd Holdings

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

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

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

Perhaps the greatest side effect of the awards is the opportunity to share the winning solutions so others can replicate them in their own Pardot instances. Here’s the solution that won the ParDreamies 2021 Pardot award for the Grassroots Innovation category, which recognizes small teams with a big impact using Pardot.

Grassroots innovation with BrandEd

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

Quick Facts: 

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

Challenge the team wanted to solve

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

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

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

Hurdles they overcame during the project

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

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

Results after implementing the solution

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

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

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

Learn more and keep it going

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

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

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

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

5 Ways to Standardize Your Pardot Business Units

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

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

Benefits of Standardizing your Pardot Business Units

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

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

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

Top Five Pardot Business Unit Standardizations

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

1. Document Your Field Mappings 

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

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

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

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

Field mapping spreadsheet example

A good field mapping spreadsheet includes: 

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

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

Understand Marketing Data Sharing Do’s & Don’ts

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

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

3. Enable “Manage Users with Salesforce”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

5. Email & Landing Page Templates

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

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

Standardization Ensures an Efficient Pardot Business Unit

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

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

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

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

Preserving Prospect Email Preferences After the New Pardot Mailability Upgrade

The Salesforce Winter ‘22 release made the Pardot Prospect Mailability upgrade permanent for all orgs. And it also introduced four new user abilities that allow for more control over which Pardot user roles can edit the new Prospect Mailability fields.

New Fields

  1. Update Opted Out Field
    • Allows the user to edit the “Opted Out” field from the Prospect Overview page
    • Replaces “Toggle Opt-In Status” 
  2. Update Do Not Email Field
    • Allows the user to edit the “Do Not Email” field from the Prospect Overview page
  3. Reset soft bounce count
    • Allows the user to reset the soft bounce count for a prospect. When soft bounces are detected, a “reset” option will appear.
  4. Reset hard bounce count
    • Allows the user to reset a hard bounce for a prospect. 

“Update Opted Out Field” will be enabled for the Pardot Administrator role by default. The other three abilities will be enabled for the Administrator role and the Marketing role by default. Users will only be able to manually toggle these abilities on and off within a Custom User Role

When should you reset soft and hard bounces?

You should reset a prospect’s soft or hard bounce if the bounce(s) only resulted from a system issue, such as:

  1. The mailbox is temporarily unavailable or busy
  2. The mailbox is full
  3. An issue similar to when Barracuda incorrectly blocked vendor IPs including Pardot 

If the bounce(s) resulted from the email address not existing, the email or sender being blocked, or due to a bad sending reputation, you should not reset the bounce(s). Continuing to email prospects who have received a hard bounce for these reasons can have a severe impact on your send reputation! You can learn more about bounce codes and meanings here

What to watch out for

Removing a user role’s permission to “Update Do Not Email Field” and/or “Update Opted Out Field” only removes the ability to update these fields on the Prospect Overview page. Users will still be able to edit these fields via Automation Rules, Completion Actions, and Engagement Studio Programs. Due to this, I would highly recommend you read the “Ensure these new features are used correctly” section of our first Mailability Upgrade post as well as Lindsey Mark’s post about how to align your data after the upgrade.

What questions do you have about the new Mailability Upgrade? Tell us in the comments!

The post Preserving Prospect Email Preferences After the New Pardot Mailability Upgrade appeared first on The Spot For Pardot.

By |2021-10-20T18:40:08+00:00October 20th, 2021|Categories: Compliance, Content Marketing, Email Marketing, Pardot Business Units, Release Notes, Salesforce|

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|

Planning for your Pardot Business Unit Implementation

Implementing Pardot Business Units (PBUs) is like putting together a very intricate puzzle where you have to analyze each piece before putting it into place. There are a lot of moving pieces in a PBU implementation, so understanding how PBUs work and planning each step of the implementation is vital to success. This post will give you an overview of how PBUs work and point you in the right direction for your PBU planning. It is highly recommended that anyone considering implementing PBUs work with a Partner with experience in this area.

What are Pardot Business Units?

Pardot Business Units are multiple Pardot instances that connect to the same Salesforce instance. Essentially it is a way to partition your Pardot databases say for different Regions, Products, Brands, Industry Verticals, etc. Pardot Advanced comes with 2 PBUs and Pardot Premium comes with 5, however users can purchase access to additional PBUs as an add-on. 

How do they work?

Each PBU has its own Prospects, Marketing Assets, Segmentations, Automations, Settings and Configuration. Each PBU also has its own Salesforce Connector, but the integration user can be the same across your Business Units. 

Syncing

Typically, Leads, Contacts, Opportunities, and Custom Objects can only sync to one PBU at a time. You can control which PBU these objects sync to by either configuring SFDC Sharing Settings for your connector user, or by implementing Marketing Data Sharing. If a Pardot Prospects moves from one PBU to another, the Prospect’s activity history does not come with them. In fact, the only Prospect data that will move from one PBU to another is fields that are synced to SFDC.

With the typical setup, If you need a Lead or Contact to be in multiple PBUs at the same time, you will need to have duplicate records in SFDC. However, in Spring ‘21 Salesforce added a path to allow Lead and Contacts to sync to multiple business units without the need for duplicates in SFDC. This option prevents Pardot from syncing typical managed package fields (last activity, score, grade, etc.) and requires you to create a custom object that would pull these managed package fields back in. This is a sophisticated configuration with it’s own set of considerations, so I would not attempt this without someone who has a thorough understanding of the Pardot API. 

Finally, Campaign PBU syncing is controlled by Campaign Record Types. Each Record Type can only sync to one PBU.

Users

Before implementing PBUs, I highly recommend implementing Salesforce User Sync. User Sync aligns your SFDC Profiles and Pardot Roles so it’s easier to manage who gets access to Pardot, which BU do they get access to, and which Pardot Role are they assigned.

The users for each PBU needs to be defined in the Pardot Account Setup (Setup > Pardot Account Setup > Manage Users). Here you can assign users to your PBU by User, Role, Role and Subordinates, or Public Groups.

Any users who have access to multiple PBUs will be able to switch between them by using the Business Unit Switcher. 

The Business Unit Switcher is only available in Pardot Lightning. 

No matter how you prefer to manage Pardot users, make sure this is something you think through and discuss with you SFDC Admins before PBU implementation because this can get tricky!

Considerations

  • If you are consolidating SFDC orgs, do this BEFORE moving to BUs
    • Once created, a PBU cannot be deleted, it cannot be pointed at another SFDC instance, and its name cannot be changed in SFDC
  • Tracker domains cannot be shared. The Root domain can be the same, but the sub-domain must be different. 
    • For example, PBU #1 could use the tracker domain www1.sercante.com while PBU #2 can use www2.sercante.com
  • Dedicated IP addresses cannot be shared, and if you are using a shared IP address, Pardot cannot guarantee your PBUs will be on the same shared IP. 
  • PBUs can share the same sending domain, but Pardot Support will need to enable this for you
  • Pardot Assets cannot be shared between PBUs but Platform assets can be 
    • I.e. Emails built in the old email builder cannot be shared, but emails built in the new Lightning email experience can
    • Sharing Platform Assets between PBUs adds complexity as to who can see/share the assets and should be included in the PBU implementation strategy

Implementation Recommendations

Here are some of the things I’ve learned to ensure Pardot Business Units implementations go smoothly. These of course are completely optional, but may help you avoid some roadblocks while you’re setting up your new PBUs. 

Standardize your Pardot orgs first

Standardizing your Pardot orgs before you implement PBUs is not only going to make it easier for new users to switch back and forth between BUs, but it will also make things easier to manage for your Admins. Areas I recommend standardizing are: 

  • Custom User Roles
  • Fields, field values, and fields syncing to SFDC
    • Mapping this out will also help users understand which data travels with Prospects from one PBU to the next
  • Connector version and settings
  • Naming Conventions and folder structure
    • Consider adding your PBU name in the conventions so it is always clear which PBU the asset belongs to
  • Connected Campaigns

I’d also recommend doing a general feature adoption audit to ensure the Pardot teams for each PBU are using all the available Pardot features.

Enable Pardot Lightning for all Pardot users

The Pardot Business Unit Switcher is only available in Pardot Lightning, so I like to ensure all Pardot users have access to Pardot Lightning before PBUs are implemented.

Clear/Review your Sync Errors

Once PBUs are set up, Prospects will be able to move to their correct PBU. However, if the Prospect has a sync error, SFDC cannot re-sort them. So, try to resolve as many sync errors as possible before PBUs go live to avoid any issues. 

What are your plans for implementing Pardot Business Units? Or, if you have already gone through this process, what other tips or learnings would you share? We’d love to hear it in the comments!

The post Planning for your Pardot Business Unit Implementation appeared first on The Spot For Pardot.

By |2021-04-01T18:42:36+00:00April 1st, 2021|Categories: Pardot Business Units|

Planning for your Pardot Business Unit Implementation

Implementing Pardot Business Units (PBUs) is like putting together a very intricate puzzle where you have to analyze each piece before putting it into place. There are a lot of moving pieces in a PBU implementation, so understanding how PBUs work and planning each step of the implementation is vital to success. This post will give you an overview of how PBUs work and point you in the right direction for your PBU planning. It is highly recommended that anyone considering implementing PBUs work with a Partner with experience in this area.

What are Pardot Business Units?

Pardot Business Units are multiple Pardot instances that connect to the same Salesforce instance. Essentially it is a way to partition your Pardot databases say for different Regions, Products, Brands, Industry Verticals, etc. Pardot Advanced comes with 2 PBUs and Pardot Premium comes with 5, however users can purchase access to additional PBUs as an add-on. 

How do they work?

Each PBU has its own Prospects, Marketing Assets, Segmentations, Automations, Settings and Configuration. Each PBU also has its own Salesforce Connector, but the integration user can be the same across your Business Units. 

Syncing

Typically, Leads, Contacts, Opportunities, and Custom Objects can only sync to one PBU at a time. You can control which PBU these objects sync to by either configuring SFDC Sharing Settings for your connector user, or by implementing Marketing Data Sharing. If a Pardot Prospects moves from one PBU to another, the Prospect’s activity history does not come with them. In fact, the only Prospect data that will move from one PBU to another is fields that are synced to SFDC.

With the typical setup, If you need a Lead or Contact to be in multiple PBUs at the same time, you will need to have duplicate records in SFDC. However, in Spring ‘21 Salesforce added a path to allow Lead and Contacts to sync to multiple business units without the need for duplicates in SFDC. This option prevents Pardot from syncing typical managed package fields (last activity, score, grade, etc.) and requires you to create a custom object that would pull these managed package fields back in. This is a sophisticated configuration with it’s own set of considerations, so I would not attempt this without someone who has a thorough understanding of the Pardot API. 

Finally, Campaign PBU syncing is controlled by Campaign Record Types. Each Record Type can only sync to one PBU.

Users

Before implementing PBUs, I highly recommend implementing Salesforce User Sync. User Sync aligns your SFDC Profiles and Pardot Roles so it’s easier to manage who gets access to Pardot, which BU do they get access to, and which Pardot Role are they assigned.

The users for each PBU needs to be defined in the Pardot Account Setup (Setup > Pardot Account Setup > Manage Users). Here you can assign users to your PBU by User, Role, Role and Subordinates, or Public Groups.

Any users who have access to multiple PBUs will be able to switch between them by using the Business Unit Switcher. 

The Business Unit Switcher is only available in Pardot Lightning. 

No matter how you prefer to manage Pardot users, make sure this is something you think through and discuss with you SFDC Admins before PBU implementation because this can get tricky!

Considerations

  • If you are consolidating SFDC orgs, do this BEFORE moving to BUs
    • Once created, a PBU cannot be deleted, it cannot be pointed at another SFDC instance, and its name cannot be changed in SFDC
  • Tracker domains cannot be shared. The Root domain can be the same, but the sub-domain must be different. 
    • For example, PBU #1 could use the tracker domain www1.sercante.com while PBU #2 can use www2.sercante.com
  • Dedicated IP addresses cannot be shared, and if you are using a shared IP address, Pardot cannot guarantee your PBUs will be on the same shared IP. 
  • PBUs can share the same sending domain, but Pardot Support will need to enable this for you
  • Pardot Assets cannot be shared between PBUs but Platform assets can be 
    • I.e. Emails built in the old email builder cannot be shared, but emails built in the new Lightning email experience can
    • Sharing Platform Assets between PBUs adds complexity as to who can see/share the assets and should be included in the PBU implementation strategy

Implementation Recommendations

Here are some of the things I’ve learned to ensure Pardot Business Units implementations go smoothly. These of course are completely optional, but may help you avoid some roadblocks while you’re setting up your new PBUs. 

Standardize your Pardot orgs first

Standardizing your Pardot orgs before you implement PBUs is not only going to make it easier for new users to switch back and forth between BUs, but it will also make things easier to manage for your Admins. Areas I recommend standardizing are: 

  • Custom User Roles
  • Fields, field values, and fields syncing to SFDC
    • Mapping this out will also help users understand which data travels with Prospects from one PBU to the next
  • Connector version and settings
  • Naming Conventions and folder structure
    • Consider adding your PBU name in the conventions so it is always clear which PBU the asset belongs to
  • Connected Campaigns

I’d also recommend doing a general feature adoption audit to ensure the Pardot teams for each PBU are using all the available Pardot features.

Enable Pardot Lightning for all Pardot users

The Pardot Business Unit Switcher is only available in Pardot Lightning, so I like to ensure all Pardot users have access to Pardot Lightning before PBUs are implemented.

Clear/Review your Sync Errors

Once PBUs are set up, Prospects will be able to move to their correct PBU. However, if the Prospect has a sync error, SFDC cannot re-sort them. So, try to resolve as many sync errors as possible before PBUs go live to avoid any issues. 

What are your plans for implementing Pardot Business Units? Or, if you have already gone through this process, what other tips or learnings would you share? We’d love to hear it in the comments!

The post Planning for your Pardot Business Unit Implementation appeared first on The Spot For Pardot.

By |2021-04-01T18:42:36+00:00April 1st, 2021|Categories: Pardot Business Units|