Coming to Pardot as a new user was rather daunting, there is a great deal of functionality and navigating the mine of information available to a new user through the plethora of training videos, documents and other eLearning materials was the first challenge.
Personally, I found there was too much to take on-board initially so I began getting into the system and using it, then referring to these resources as and when I came to use or further explore each of the different functions.
Tracking, traffic and alerts
I was struck first and foremost by Pardot’s ability to track individual prospect activity. Both in terms of engagement with marketing materials such as emails, document downloads etc and also individual website page visits and activity.
This functionality is very powerful, offering insight into the individual prospects journey and their interaction with the brand, as well as into the sales process when partnered with Salesforce.
Complimented by automated alerts that can be triggered when a particular action is taken such as:
- Adding (or removing) the prospect to a particular marketing list
- Increasing or Decreasing their prospect score
- Assigning to prospect to a user or sales person within a team for follow-up
- Create a task within salesforce
- …and many others
This automation can save so much time and be much more tailored case by case than simply passing a lead/s to the sales team based on one response or marketing activity interaction.
Email Design & Build
An area I was less blown away by was the functionality to design and build emails and templates. Having worked with various platforms in the past I was surprised that this was very basic in comparison. It essentially relies on the user:
- Using one of the few email templates, which of course are not fit for every purpose and concept a marketer may have in mind for an email.
- Being (or hiring) a designer to create the final HTML for the campaign which can then be used within the system for sending.
From past experience and with such a powerful system in other ways, I would have expected a WYSIWYG email builder allowing for responsive emails to be created by any user from scratch. Pardot support and chatter groups have both acknowledged and discussed this limitation so hopefully it is an area Pardot will look to develop in the future.
I had a similar experience of the landing page functionality of the system but was lucky to have the internal resource I could lean on for the technical assistance needed to make it usable.
Content & Custom URLs
The ability to save files for online access and update them without having to change the URL, and therefore update it in any source, was also very useful. Serving to avoid the use of out-of-date documents by our internal team and from them otherwise being seen or found online.
Also part of the Content functions of Pardot is the Custom Redirect URLs which I found invaluable in being able to track the source of a visit to particular webpages etc. Helping identify activities which were proving more or less effective in driving the activity and responses we were looking for.
A careful naming convention or similar does need to be decided on internally from the start. This will ensure the source and destination of each Custom Redirect is clear and therefore offers useful data.
Engagement Studio
Although it takes a bit of getting used to, the benefits of using Engagement studio are clear. It combines the prospect or customer journey, sending relevant emails or material and taking automated actions or triggering manual actions to reach the desired result.
Initially, my best advice is to keep it simple though, with so much possibility it is easy to get carried away and build the Engagement out so far it can become difficult to monitor effectively and therefore follow-up if necessary. Once you have some effective processes within the studio, then develop them from there.
A great piece of functionality from Pardot that helps visualise automation and take it to the next level.
Overall Pardot offers some very strong tools which are even stronger when paired with Salesforce.
Pardot does take some careful set-up and management – or audit of you are inheriting from a previous user – to fully understand how it is or should be working.
It takes time to get used to but the potential is there, so take it step-by-step, don’t be overwhelmed and if needed talk to a Pardot Partner for help and advice.
Join the conversation
- Are you new to Pardot, what are you experiences?
- Are you a long term Pardot user, any hints and tips?
- Any other thoughts or questions – please comment below
