Salesforce is one of the largest SaaS, cloud-based companies that offer CRM (Customer Relationship Management) solutions to clients, along with a comprehensive array of enterprise applications that are designed to simplify marketing automation, analytics, application management, and development, and improve customer service.
Salesforce now offers an array of additional that is designed for sales professionals and customer service professionals to help manage leads and clients in a better manner. Salesforce Pardot is one of their best offerings.
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Introduction to Salesforce Pardot
Image Source: www.pardot.com
Salesforce Pardot is built on the Salesforce platform and at its core, it is a marketing automation platform that helps users manage their leads and customer relations with ease. Pardot is designed to help businesses streamline their lead management and improve marketing effectiveness.
It also allows businesses to track and measure the effectiveness of their campaigns through a centralized dashboard, thus allowing companies to figure out the marketing impact of different campaigns, and get a closer view of how their marketing campaigns are working. It works seamlessly with B2B marketing analytics and helps businesses engage buyers through a range of lead generation campaigns. Pardot offers an array of different features that businesses can take advantage of in order to maximize the effectiveness of their lead generation and marketing efforts.
Before we talk about how to create and manage campaigns on Salesforce Pardot, it’s important to highlight some key features of the platform. Official documentation of Salesforce Pardot can be found here.
Key Features of Salesforce Pardot
Salesforce Pardot offers several amazing features that businesses can use to manage their campaigns in a more effective manner and increase their marketing ROI. Here are the best features that Pardot has:
- Simplified Automation
- No-Code Friendliness
- Deep and Insightful Reporting
- Real-Time Edits
1. Simplified Automation
One of the best features of Pardot is that it allows for greater automation. Now, you no longer have to worry about going through a checklist before you send an email to your marketing list. Pardot doesn’t just allow for email scheduling, but it also offers additional control via:
- Dynamic Lists: You can build targeted lists of segmented audiences.
- Set Automation Rules
- Define Page Actions: This allows you to automate certain tasks based on actions taken.
- Custom Redirects
- Dynamic Content: You can also personalize the content that a prospect shall see.
To learn more about Data Automation, you can find the guide here.
2. No-Code Friendliness
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One of the best features of Pardot is that it doesn’t require you to have any prior knowledge of CSS or HTML in order to really take advantage of the platform. Considering the fact that marketers will be using Pardot more than developers, this makes a great deal of sense.
Similar to WordPress, Pardot allows users to edit different template drafts within the Content Editor instead of searching for the appropriate sections in HTML.
3. Deep and Insightful Reporting
Pardot has an array of reporting tools that you can use to gauge the effectiveness of your marketing campaigns. The List Email Reports feature is also incredibly helpful, giving users clear insights about how their sent emails are faring. There are three main tabs through which you can get more data about the performance of your emails:
- The Reports tab shows open rates, bounced, and unopened email rates.
- The Interaction tab shows engagement activity on how your emails performed, including how many people skimmed, glanced, or read your emails.
- The Email Clients tab shows the devices that your recipients use to view your emails.
A guide to understanding Digital Marketing and Sales Reports can be found here.
4. Real-Time Edits
Salesforce Pardot allows you to view your landing page in real-time and make edits simultaneously in order to see how the changes look. This can save you a great deal of time and effort because all the changes will show up live on the page. You can also run extensive A/B testing in order to see what works and what needs to change.
Now that you know the main features that set Salesforce Pardot apart, it’s time for our comprehensive guide on how to create and launch your marketing campaigns on Salesforce Pardot.
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Procedure to Launch a Marketing Campaign on Salesforce Pardot
These are the steps that you need to follow when creating a marketing campaign on Salesforce Pardot:
- Creating a Campaign
- Creating a Form
- Creating a Landing Page
- Setting an Autoresponder Email
- A/B Testing and Previews
- Sending the Email
1. Creating a Campaign
Image Source: Self
The first step is fairly simple. All you have to do is to enter the details of your campaign. You can also add tags and select a folder for the campaign. More importantly, you need to define a cost for the campaign. Once you have filled out all the fields, as shown above, click on “Create Campaign.”
2. Creating a Form
Image Source: Self
Once you have created a campaign, the next step is to create a landing page and some opt-in forms to go along with it. Pardot has a dedicated form builder that you can use. Just click on “Next,” and then click and drag the fields around in the order that you would like to view them.
Once you are done, click “Next.” Now, you can choose from completion actions, which are essentially actions that will trigger once a person submits a form. For instance, if someone fills out the form, you can set the completion action to start downloading a lead magnet.
Pardot has an extensive list of completion actions that you can choose from. There is a dropdown menu as shown below that you can use to define your actions.
Image Source: Self
Now, once you have selected the actions, you can click “Next” and save it. Now that you have created a form using Salesforce Pardot, the next step is to build a landing page.
3. Creating a Landing Page
Image Source: Self
Pardot uses a WYSIWYG landing page builder that keeps things simple and allows you to move elements around without requiring any kind of deep HTML language. You can click on different elements in order to change the header text, and click on different images to replace or keep them. You can also resize them if you want.
Once you are done editing the page, you can “Confirm and Save.” Your landing pages can be published with just one click.
4. Setting an Autoresponder Email
Image Source: Self
By now, you know how to create forms and landing pages with Salesforce Pardot. But, what happens when you capture an email? You will want to set an autoresponder email so that the lead magnet is delivered to the recipient’s email immediately.
The best thing about Salesforce Pardot is that it allows you to create these custom templates using its WYSIWYG builder. You need to select from one of several email templates and then use the email builder (very similar to the landing page builder) in order to customize it.
Once you have customized the images and the text, the next step is to test it.
5. A/B Testing and Previews
Image Source: Self
You can choose from two options from the top right: A and B. Then, you can run A/B testing and go through the range of on-screen tips that the platform offers to optimize your mails for maximum effectiveness.
Salesforce Pardot also allows you to preview emails depending upon how they are going to be shown on different devices and email clients. This makes it easy for you to identify any rendering issues in their early stages and fix the issue before the email is sent. There are several options available, as shown below:
Image Source: Self
When you select iPhone 6 for instance, you’ll get a preview of how the email is going to appear on the recipient’s device. If you think something’s off, you can always tweak it according to your liking.
6. Sending the Email
Image Source: Self
Now, we are the final step. You can choose your email list and select the From address as highlighted in the screenshot above. Once you have filled this out, just click Save, and you are good to go!
Additional Useful Features of Salesforce Pardot
Salesforce Pardot isn’t just suitable for campaign execution. You can also use the platform in order to view prospect profiles and track information about how prospects interact with your forms and landing pages.
1. Prospect Profiles
Image Source: Self
In the screenshot shown above, you can see how a prospect, Jeremy Jones, interacts with the website. You can see the emails they have interacted with, the forms they have filled out, and also get more information about their contact details. Pardot also assigns a grade to each prospect.
If you click on any of the actions, such as “Visit: 5 page views,” you can see the pages that they viewed, and the time they spent on each of these pages.
2. Guided Lead Nurturing Programs
Image Source: Self
Unlike other tools, Pardot uses a heavily visualized lead nurturing campaign in order to encourage engagement amongst prospective leads. Using a simple flowchart of sorts, you can add actions and nurture leads accordingly. You can define actions, triggers, and rules to maximize the effectiveness of each lead.
Once you are done, your campaign will look something like the image shown above. You can also do a walk around in order to really step into the customer’s shoes and see how they will interact with it. As mentioned above, you can also see extensive information about the performance of your campaign. Such programs can be implemented effectively using Cloud Business Intelligence, the guide for which can be found here, and by using Cohort analysis, the guide for which can be found here.
Conclusion
In this article, you learned about Salesforce Pardot, its key features, and the process of launching a marketing campaign using Salesforce Pardot. You also learned about additional useful features like Prospect Profiles and Guided Lead Nurturing Program on the platform. If you are interested to learn about HubSpot Marketing Automation, you can find the guide here, and if you want to learn about Amazon Kinesis, you can find the guide here.
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Share your experience of learning about Salesforce Pardot in the comments section below!