SaaS marketing automation •  Webinar

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.

It’s no secret that I love Pardot. So, naturally, when I was presented with an opportunity to join Senior Salesforce Cloud Specialist, Paul O’Leary as a guest speaker as part of the ‘Perfect Marketing Automation for Software Businesses’ webinar, I gladly accepted.

If you’re a business that operates under a Software as a Service (SaaS) model, then this webinar will be of particular interest to you. We cover the technical applications of setting up and maintaining lead capture and prospect nurture journeys, and how to use this information to make better decisions for your business based on real-time data and insights.

And the best part is that you get to see how it’s all done through a live demo! I walk you through how we use Pardot for MarCloud Technologies so you can put everything into context.

Jump to the relevant sections below:

• Capturing leads and tracking activity
• How to nurture and convert your prospects
• Making data-driven decisions
• Watch the webinar

SaaS marketing automation: an overview

1. Lead capture and tracking prospects

As I explain in the webinar, the first thing you need to remember before going full steam ahead with any of your digital marketing activity, is that it’s crucial to understand all the possible data entry points and lead sources of your prospects – be it through social media, ads, or your website. Having a solid understanding of all possible lead sources is the first step to mapping out the prospect journey ahead.

The second important thing to remember is to track everything. First-party cookies are the way we are heading, so this is important to keep in mind as part of the tracking process. Everything from forms, email opens, interactions and engagement on your website should be tracked – and you can see how I’ve done this in the live demo.

2. Nurture and convert your prospects

The easiest way to think about your prospect activity is that each action they take is like a piece of a puzzle. When you put all the pieces together, you will have a bigger picture view of a prospect’s needs and intentions. Technically speaking, of course, this is essentially what we gauge through scoring and grading.

Using this information, you can then easily assess the most suitable way to nurture your prospect towards conversion, whether it’s through an automated nurture journey, or a personalised follow-up email from an account manager or sales representative – if the lead score is high enough to warrant this of course.

Or, you may gauge that a prospect is stuck at a certain touchpoint. This is where the tracking and scoring really comes in handy because you can then assess their previous interactions and work out what it is they’re looking for and any potential barriers from moving them along the journey to conversion.

3. Data-driven insights and planning

Pardot’s visualisation of data and its intuitive functionality means you can further optimise your marketing efforts. At the end of the day, taking the time to set up your Pardot lead sourcing, tracking, scoring and grading, and nurture activity will make your life that much easier when it comes to reporting and planning.

The webinar live demo also shows you how to uncover insights from the data to inform your decision-making process, as opposed to just gleaning a general sentiment.

If you have more than one iframe form on a page, it is crucial that you give each iframe a new ID. An example of the full landing page code for an iframe with the ID of ‘newsletter_form’ is shown below:

Watch the webinar

Whether your business runs under a SaaS model or not, the webinar is a great opportunity to see all of this information put into context – so get stuck in!

Of course, if you have any questions along the way or you’d like further guidance for your own business, the team is happy to help.