Cattle Dog Digital

5 Golden Rules for the Greatest Pardot ROI

by Ying Hu

July 13, 2020

Whether your organisation has just implemented Pardot or has been using Pardot for some time, you’ve experienced the amazing capabilities Pardot has to offer. How do you use this powerful B2B marketing tool to perform at its best and get the most out of your Pardot investment? The answer is, know the 5 golden rules for the greatest Pardot ROI. 

#1 Keep Good Database Hygiene

We have been talking about practising good personal hygiene since the start of the pandemic to protect ourselves and everyone around us. The same rule applies when it comes to using Pardot. Bad database hygiene affects email deliverability, quality of target audience, as well as the level of engagement with prospects. Do a database cleanse: 

  • Set aside some time with your team to do a quick audit of your database. 
  • Identify and segment the inactive prospects and decide whether you want to re-engage with them or perhaps put them in the recycle bin. *Remember: Deleted prospects in your recycle bin don’t count toward your database limits.

#2 Talk to Your Sales Team

Two of the key things we aim to achieve as part of the Pardot and Salesforce implementation is; to bring marketing and sales together and to have a better understanding of the customer life cycle process. In reality, we all know that this can be challenging from time to time. As a Pardot user (most likely the marketing expert of your organisation), consider taking the initiative to draft a simple list of ‘customer lifecycle’ questions and review them with your sales team every sales quarter or season. Some of these questions may include: 

  • What do your current MQL and SQL thresholds look like? 
  • Is the sales team happy with how the new leads are routed? 
  • Are there any high-value user activities the sales team would like to be notified about?  

The feedback from your sales team can help guide you with your Pardot execution and planning. After all, who doesn’t like an automated solution that brings efficiency and value to the business?

#3 Connect Campaigns with Salesforce 

If you haven’t enjoyed the benefits of connected campaigns yet, you should definitely give it a go. It makes the campaign management process much more effective, as it combines great functionalities from both Pardot and Salesforce. Consider the Salesforce campaign as a high-level running machine and Pardot is the smart engine that feeds fuel into it. WIth connected campaigns, your campaign structure is much more aligned with your marketing initiatives and the reporting is much more streamlined. By enabling the ‘Engagement History’ feature in Salesforce, your sales team can also have a clear view of the engagement metrics of each of the marketing assets.

#4 Personalise Your Assets

Is the ‘First Name’ field in your email template the only place you have personalised content in Pardot? There are a few other ways you can personalise your Pardot assets. The ‘Handlebars Merge Fields’ in Pardot emails can be used for personalised content based not only on the recipient’s information but also on ‘account’ and ‘sender’ levels. For a full list, check out this article. Also, don’t forget to explore ‘Dynamic Content.’ There are up to 25 variations per piece of Dynamic Content you can create. You can add it to your email, landing page, and even your email subject line to provide your target audience with a highly personalised customer experience.

#5 Utilise Connectors 

Salesforce isn’t the only system Pardot can connect with. There are many other connectors that can be integrated with Pardot to help you manage different marketing channels more effectively. For example, webinar services like Webex and GoToWebinar for virtual events. If your organisation is planning to switch many in-person events to online webinars, these connectors can facilitate your webinar registration and attendance processes by capturing the data through Pardot forms. After each webinar, you can easily report on event attendance and execute a re-engagement plan in Pardot. For a full list of useful connectors, check out this article.

As you look to optimise your Pardot to get the best ROI, consider these 5 golden rules as part of your action plan. Still have questions? Not sure where to start? If you need help assessing your Pardot for Salesforce instance, we are running a special offer this month. Have our experts run a complimentary health check on your CRM! Learn more about what’s included here. 

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