Adaptive Pardot Cookie Consent Solutions

Is your cookie consent management compliant?

Based in Europe, or a part of the world with strict data privacy laws in place? If you’re solely using the Pardot consent opt-in banner on your website whilst injecting other non strictly necessary cookies (i.e. enabling the correct display of your website or functioning of an ecommerce service), such as Google Analytics, Google Ads, Facebook/Meta pixel or Linkedin pixel, Hotjar, Bombora and more, we are sorry to inform you that you are not compliant with cookie consent legislation or widely accepted best practice.

What does it mean to be compliant with tracking cookies?

Not to worry, we have a solution to quickly resolve cookie compliance issues with Pardot! Remember that visitors should be able to see exactly which cookies they are accepting or rejecting, and change their preferences at any given time. Moreover, said tracking cookies should only be injected on their web browsers when accepted and immediately removed when rejected, unless they only exist to log their opt-in status (just like one of Pardot’s own: the pi_optin cookie)!

Pardot’s cookie consent opt-in is a sophisticated self-serve system

As part of the Salesforce Spring ’22 release, there is a new Javascript Consent & Tracking API launched by Pardot to manage website tracking cookie opt-in and opt-out, and enable technical marketers to align it with third-party tools like cookie consent banners (OneTrust, CookieBot, Iubenda and the like) that most large websites and big website portfolios use to manage all of their cookie compliance and preference management in one place. In non-technical terms, it means we now have the means to manage this process fully ourselves, with a little bit of code, but without relying on Pardot support and tinkering with Google Tag Manager.

Build a new Pardot tracking code for your website(s)

To rely on the JS Consent & Tracking API, a new version of the Pardot tracking code needs to replace the out-of-the-box one you find in your instance’s Domain Management section. Fear not, this is a relatively simple process.

Customise Pardot code for an existing cookie consent banner or build a new one

This is the most adaptable part, depending on your current setup, flexibility to change, and number of cookies to be treated on top of Pardot. The idea is that we need to either slightly customise the Pardot code managed by your current banner to align the opt-in mechanisms, or to build a banner script from scratch that will align with the Pardot cookie opt-in and your other key third-party tracking systems with cookies whose consent needs to be managed too.

If you opted for the brand new banner, add a preference management script

If you are using our free script for a banner rather than one of the many paid consent management tools, we have a final step to align the cookie preference management centre with the rest of the banner and, ideally, put it behind a “sticky” button, so that your user can get back to it from any web page and at any time they would like.

Add-ons to gain insights from your cookie consent tools

Many paid consent management tools offer this service in their highest tier subscription — to be consulted within their platforms — but we offer to log this information all the way in Pardot and Salesforce for you: tracking prospect and contact cookie opt-in status on each of your web assets with timestamps and more.

Imagine leveraging this information alongside Mailability fields in Pardot both for Data Privacy compliance and to improve website UX and performance for your visitors. Several other geolocalisation or local privacy law specificities compliance are also on offer.