In 2021, Pardot underwent a name change to Marketing Cloud Account Engagement (MCAE), in an effort align itself more closely with Salesforce Marketing Cloud. Throughout this post I refer to Marketing Cloud Account Engagement as Pardot out of habit, but also in an effort to be more concise in my writing.
It’s a phrase that technology sales reps recite regularly, and I’m sure you’ve heard it before: “maximize your investment with [insert marketing technology]”. Ironically, I catch myself using it frequently when discussing Pardot with both prospects and clients.
In this post, let’s take a deeper dive into what this expression actually means and explore actionable tactics that can help anyone unleash the full potential of Pardot.
Demystifying Pardot Costs: How much does unleashing its power really cost?
When it comes to pricing, Pardot offers four tiers that are billed annually: Growth ($15,000), Plus ($30,000), Advanced ($48,000) and Premium ($180,000). In comparison, HubSpot presents its customers with three pricing tiers as well: Starter ($216), Professional ($9,600), and Enterprise ($43,200).
These tiers in both products come with variations in functionality, contact limits, and usage allowances. It’s important to note that the pricing tiers are not directly comparable between Pardot and HubSpot. Rather, they reflect the investment an organization is making in these specific marketing automation software solutions.
While most marketing (and hopefully sales) teams using Pardot likely have a healthy marketing budget, it’s equally important for them to be purposeful with their expenditures.
With the abundance of options available in the marketing technology landscape, showcasing a return on investment becomes crucial in justifying the renewal of subscriptions for these valuable (and costly) tools.
Unlocking the Full Value: Maximizing your investment with Pardot
Here’s the million dollar question… How do you maximize your investment with Pardot? Knowing that it is expensive and that you’re trying to show value, most likely to an executive or someone making budget decisions, what are the main areas to focus on?
It’s important to keep in mind that every organization utilizes Pardot differently. Some have already embraced its key features, while others may require some fine-tuning to reach their full potential with the tool.
If you are evaluating your own Pardot instance, it’s essential to view these recommendations through that lens. Even if you have a lot of work to do, showing executives that you are improving in key areas and that you have a plan, is usually more than enough to justify the spend for another year.
Now, let’s dive into the areas where most companies can significantly enhance their utilization of Pardot…
1. Reporting
Pardot native reporting is notoriously not very customizable, especially considering the flexibility you have within Salesforce reporting. That said, there are a number of valuable existing Pardot reports that many marketers don’t even reference.
For instance, the Lifecycle Report gives you a high-level view of revenue that Pardot assisted with, broken down by sales stage and average time spent in each. This can be useful to understand how long prospects are taking from browsing your website (visitor) to becoming a lead or prospect.
The Conversion report shows any prospect created from a form, form handler or landing page. I use this to look at which point of entry is most common, and in turn what my most effect lead generation tactic is.
There are also Campaign and Marketing asset reports that will help identify areas for improvement with Pardot. You can see which emails are performing best or which files have been accessed most (hosting files in Pardot can be a great way to automate nurture flows).
Using this data is helpful in optimizing and focusing marketing efforts. Being able to quickly see reports on where most of your qualified leads are coming from, or where your most effective outreach is, certainly provides valuable.
I would remiss to not mention B2B Marketing Analytics. For those who have it available, it’s a fairly straightforward implementation process. You get a handful of valuable, pre-built reports including a Pipeline Dashboard, Engagement Dashboard, Marketing Manager Dashboard, Account- Based Marketing Dashboard and the Multi-touch Attribution Dashboard.
2. Website Integration
I’ve come across companies who didn’t even have the tracking code on their site. The tracking code is an integral component of implementing Pardot. I recommend putting it on every web page. Side note: This is totally in the weeds but worth noting. Documentation suggests only placing the tracking code on web pages that are key to your marketing efforts where tracking activity is valuable. I would argue that tracking activity and the opportunity to cookie prospects on every page, is more valuable then limiting to certain pages.
With the tracking code on the site, you can track visitors (unknown prospects) interaction with your site, and append that to their record when they do eventually convert. You can also use functionality like Page Actions, which allow for automations based on specific page views.
Here is what the tracking code looks like, which can be placed using Google Tag Manager or directly in the <head> tag of your website.
I also highly recommend integrating your website forms with Pardot to streamline prospect management. You have two options to achieve this: using native Pardot iframe forms or leveraging Form Handlers. Both approaches ensure seamless integration, allowing prospects to flow automatically into Pardot.
In some cases, organization roadblocks may hinder the implementation or alteration of form solutions. If completely transitioning to native Pardot forms poses challenges, then consider Form Handlers, as they are a great solution, sometimes better. They enable you to maintain your existing form tool while seamlessly integrating with Pardot, providing the best of both worlds.
3. Automations
In Pardot, ‘completion actions‘ serve as the mechanism to automating tasks. These actions can be triggered through various means such as forms, form handlers, files, custom redirects, emails, page actions, and automation rules.
When it comes to extracting the full potential of Pardot, automations reign supreme. They enable the seamless execution of repetitive marketing tasks based on predefined rules. For instance, imagine an automation that automatically adds prospects to a list whenever they click a specific link in an email. This list could then be utilized to identify engaged or high-intent prospects.
The possibilities with completion actions are endless. You can assign prospects to a Salesforce User or Queue, send notifications to Slack, facilitate webinar registrations, update field values, send personalized emails, and so much more.
To ensure you’re making the biggest and best impact, I highly recommend engaging a Pardot consultant or solution architect when crafting these automations. Proper configuration is paramount, as a misstep can lead to significant downfalls. Conversely, a well-constructed automation has the potential to make a substantial impact on critical areas of your business.
4. Personalization
The power of personalizing marketing content is backed by numerous statistics (you’ll just have to believe me). With features like Dynamic Content and Merge Tags, you can do just that.
By utilizing these features, you have the ability to display tailored content to people across various assets like websites, landing pages, forms and emails. This can be extremely effective when you’re trying to do things like upsell another product or show specific content to known and unknown prospects.
One interesting application I’ve seen is involves displaying contact information on the Contact Us page, which dynamically updates based on the assigned user in Salesforce for a lead or contact. This type of thinking and level of customization can foster a much better browsing experience and ultimately boosts key performance indicators related to customer satisfaction.
5. Campaign Management
Part of maximizing your investment with a marketing tool like Pardot is understanding how it’s contributing to your overall sales. This can be accomplished though effective campaign management, and I believe it’s a huge key to success with Pardot.
By assigning marketing assets such as emails, forms and landing pages to Salesforce campaigns, you create the opportunity for proper attribution to specific tactics like an ad campaign or webinar. When correctly configured, you can trace revenue back to the initial conversion of an unknown visitor into a prospect, lead or contact.
With this level of visibility, you can accurately assess the contribution of Pardot in driving tangible results throughout the sales process.
6. Lead Assignment and Routing
Pardot is meant to serve as a place where unqualified prospects live before being handed off to sales for further evaluation. You can even take advantage of assignment queues already setup in Salesforce to insure sales territories are honored.
Lead assignment can be triggered through various methods, but typically occurs upon a form submission or when a scoring threshold is reached. The idea behind this approach is to allow Pardot to route marketing qualified leads (MQLs) to the appropriate sales representatives when the timing is right.
That is how Pardot is supposed to be used. However, many companies fail to fully utilize this functionality and instead do something else, like automatically creating leads or contacts for anyone they deem a prospect.
If all of your leads are being directly entered into Salesforce without undergoing any form of qualification, it may be worthwhile to reevaluate this process. By revisiting your approach, you can ensure a more effective lead management system, that utilizes a tool you already have, Pardot.
7. Sales Adoption Training
Aligning sales and marketing is typically a challenging task. Each department is focused on their own priorities and often times neglect areas where their responsibilities diverge, resulting in overlooked areas of collaboration.
Nevertheless, it is highly beneficial for both teams to foster sales’ proficiency in utilizing Pardot in their daily operations. There’s a number of reasons why, to name a few…
- With a little legwork, sales can leverage dynamic marketing-approved email templates to effeicianly send out bulk communications.
- Pardot empowers sales to setup their own alerts that notify them when assigned prospects are active on your website.
- Insights can be gained into the prospect’s journey and all of their interactions with various marketing assets are tracked.
Enabling sales with these capabilities not only streamlines their workflow but also enhances their ability to effectively engage with prospects.
8. Database Hygiene
Maintaining a clean Pardot account yields long-term benefits for your work. Regularly attending to tasks such as actively monitoring the Salesforce sync queue and error log, rectifying misspellings and capitalizations, deleting spam records, and completing missing data on records can make a significant impact.
While seemingly minor, these day-to-day activities are crucial for effective Pardot management and should be diligently upheld by those responsible for overseeing the platform. By consistently prioritizing cleanliness and organization, you set the stage for improved efficiency, data accuracy, and overall performance in your Pardot operations.
In Conclusion…
Maximizing your investment in Pardot, or Marketing Cloud Account Engagement, is not just about utilizing its features and functionalities, but about understanding its full potential and aligning it with your marketing and sales strategies.
Throughout this post, we explored various tactics and areas where organizations can improve their usage of Pardot. From optimizing campaign management and leveraging personalization to integrating with Salesforce and keeping the account clean, each step contributes to unlocking the true power of Pardot. By implementing these strategies and continuously adapting to the evolving marketing landscape, you can pave the way for enhanced lead generation, improved customer engagement, and ultimately, better business outcomes.
So, go forth and make the most of Pardot, seizing every opportunity to maximize your investment and drive remarkable results in your marketing endeavors.