Introducing the New Business Card Scanner App for Pardot

This blog was written before Pardot was renamed to Marketing Cloud Account Engagement. You can read more about the name change and what it means here.

For years, entering business card information and managing event attendance for the prospects we meet at in-person events into Pardot has been a manual process, or skips Pardot and goes straight into Salesforce… until now.

Pardot users can now import prospect information to their account instantly with the Pardot Business Card Scanner app from MarCloud Technologies, keeping them aligned with best practices.

This app also has QR scanning functionality which means we can check-in prospects at an event and feed this information back into Pardot. Your very own Pardot event management solution!

Add prospects straight to Pardot lists and campaigns, directly from your mobile.

Before I share all the powerful features of the app with you, let’s discuss why it’s even needed.

Business Card Scanner App for Pardot:

• Life without the Pardot Business Card Scanner app
• Life with the Pardot Business Card Scanner app
• Design features of the app
• Download the app today

Life without the Pardot Business Card Scanner app

Meet Mark

It’s 6pm and Mark is sitting down for the first time in 8 hours. 

As the Sales Director for his company, he’s spent the day at a high profile networking event. It’s been a successful one, with plenty of ideal prospects in the room. There are some tough targets for Mark and his team to hit this year, so every single lead counts.

Shrugging off his suit jacket, Mark pulls out his wallet, which threatens to rip open thanks to the bulk of business cards he’s collected. 

He’d really love nothing more than to take a shower and relax in front of the TV right now but the last time Mark didn’t enter new business card details into Pardot straight away, he accidentally spilled coffee on them and lost half of the email addresses. 

So, with a sigh and rubbing his tired eyes, Mark fires up his laptop and prepares to manually add thirty new prospects, one by one…

You might be thinking that during COVID times, offline events are a rare occurrence and right now they might be - but they definitely are not obsolete.

Face-to-face, physical events will resume, be it trade shows, networking events, seminars or simply meeting a stranger on the train who happens to be a potential new customer.

And when the time comes, you don’t want to be like Mark.

With the Business Card Scanner app for Pardot, collecting prospect details will be much simpler, less time consuming and more accurate. 

Life with the Pardot Business Card Scanner app

Purpose-built for Pardot and its users, the mobile app will allow you to simply scan a prospect’s business card and add them as a prospect instantaneously.

As you upload a new prospect, you can add comments so you know exactly what you talked to them about and instantly add them to specific Campaigns and Engagement Studios.

You don’t even need wifi to upload the business card as you’ll be able to use 4G/5G phone signal!

Doing so means you can:

• save time at networking events and in meetings by quickly adding prospects then and there rather than manually adding them later.
• add prospects directly to a List so that they are immediately segmented within Pardot.
• send emails immediately to those you just had a conversation with - striking while the iron is hot!
• ensure all leads start their journey in Pardot - not Salesforce, so you have better campaign tracking, revenue attribution and transparency over who spoke to who.
• declutter dozens of business cards from your life - scan and return the card there and then (which helps the planet too!).
• remain GDPR compliant by digitizing prospect details securely.
• never lose a business card and, as a result, an opportunity.
• initiate fast lead follow-ups, which lead to higher conversion rates and sales: “Nearly half of all sales are made by the person who gets in touch with a lead first.” - Capterra.
• make sales more efficient, “Salespeople spend 20% of their time on data entry activities, such as inputting lead information, adding notes, and attaching documents” - HubSpot.
• bridge the gap between offline and online lead generation and nurture by quickly providing the lead source at the time of import.
• justify the time and cost of offline events by tying prospects from this source directly to revenue generated.

I should mention here, that the app is brought to you by a team of Pardot experts who have either experienced the hassle of manual data entry themselves or have clients who repeatedly have to do so.

Using our combined experience, we have ensured that the Business Card Scanner app for Pardot ticks all of the boxes users could need. Read on for more about the app design!

Design features of the app

Given the app is built specifically for Pardot, there is very little integration needed and we’ve designed it to match the look and feel of the Pardot import process.

Other unique features of the app include:

• Designed to be used on-the-go with a clean and easy-to-use interface.
• Works with different languages.
• Scan QR codes to check people in to an event
• Add to Pardot lists and connected campaigns
• No limit to the number of scans for those on the Advanced’ license.
• Immediate import without delay and even if you have no mobile signal the scan will save to the app so that you can complete the upload when you’re back online.
• Made for Android and iOS.
• Edit data before uploading to Pardot
• Card scanning doesn’t require WiFi in order to work, simply use mobile data to import.
• Automatically keeps a record of all previously saved cards.
• Scan multiple cards in one go to save time.
• Add customised notes about your prospect at the time of import.

Download the app today

The Business Card Scanner app for Pardot is free to download and comes with 10 free monthly scans for those who want to try before they buy.

To really reap the rewards of the app though, you’ll want to purchase one of our three licenses; Standard, Plus, and Advanced. The plan you choose will determine how many scans you are able to make and for how many months.

Download the Business Card Scanner app for Pardot today.