11 Useful Pardot Tips   •   Support

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.

I’m a huge fan of useful, snappy and actionable content. Who isn’t? When it comes to marketing automation, that’s exactly what you need! But you also need to get the right content in front of the right people at the right time – and in the right way.

Pardot has a massive range of features and tools to optimise customer journeys and drive engagement. Here are 11 Pardot tips that will keep you at the top of the automation game:

*Some of these features are available in Pro and Enterprise editions of Pardot, and available in Standard for an additional cost. Drop us a message if you have any questions about this and we’ll be happy to discuss whether you might need the features or not.

1. Dynamic content isn’t just for emails

Dynamic content can really level up your website. Instead of a generic web page which summarises a product or service in a generic way, you can display a highly personalised brochure that focuses on the prospects industry, their interests or can even be based on previous conversations you’ve had with them. Change the products, message and downloads to suit their wants and needs.

Bonus tip: If you have a piece of information across several pages on your website that you have to change manually every month, make it dynamic. You’ll only have to change it once within Pardot to see the effects in multiple locations and you’ll save yourself loads of time. This is especially useful for date-related things. I set this up for a crowd-lending Fintech company who needed to update their statistics every month on the website, so using dynamic content to say ‘As of XX/XX/XX’ saved a lot of time and ensured nothing was missed!

2. Retargeting, the Pardot way

A huge benefit of using landing pages that are hosted on Pardot is the ability to include certain logic into your Engagement Studio. Let’s say a prospect views one of your landing pages but doesn’t fill out the form. Why not add some logic into your program so they receive an email a few days later with an exclusive offer? Watch your conversion rates and sales increase with Pardot’s own method of retargeting. Read more about Retargeting in the Engagement Studio.

3. Segmentation rules are your best friend

Want to impress your colleagues and gain better insight? Segmentation rules give you access to incredibly detailed information which provides a snapshot in real-time, so you can drill down into user behaviour, gain in-depth understanding and create insightful reports on specific audiences. Very useful if you need to pull a quick report with a specific criteria e.g. the number of new customers who came from a specific campaign and how much they spent this month.

4. Simplify onboarding and CRM integration

This is dynamic content’s second mention but it’s too useful to skip over. This time we’re talking about forms.

Did you know you can embed forms within dynamic content which means you can show different forms to different prospects depending on a certain criteria?

This is a makeshift way of enabling A/B testing on forms if you manage the data well enough. One half would receive form A, the other form B and you can make a decision on the optimal form by comparing form submissions!

You can also show forms based on the prospect’s Grade or Score. Maybe you would want to show a really short form for those prospects with a low score, as a way to provoke engagement. Maybe you want to show a form offering an account audit or free review of some sort to your high-grade prospects to initiate a conversation!

5. Scoring Categories tell a story

A clear strategy for your Scoring Categories can do you the world of good. For a company that sells multiple products or services, categories give a clear indication as to what a prospect is interested in.

As an example, imagine a technology company which offers broadband, mobile contracts and even TV. Let’s say your customer accumulates 100 mobile points and only 10 broadband. No prizes for guessing what they want!

But that’s only half the story. By setting up Scoring Categories for each brand of phone, you’ll know the exact product they want and can send them an offer they can’t refuse at exactly the right moment.

6. Associate your assets for better insights

This is closely related to tip 5 because forgetting this can impact your scoring category system. If you don’t associate your assets to the right folder, you’ll miss out on a tonne of useful insights and it could even interfere with some of your Automation Rules. Remember to change the Folder when you save and make sure everything is at home.

Whilst we’re here, it’s worth mentioning that sensible naming conventions can save you a whole load of time and it’s worth using a coherent and logical structure when creating new Campaigns too. New Pardot users, trust me on this one, it’s worth the time.

7. Pay attention to email client reports

Ever wondered how many people are viewing your beautifully responsive emails on mobile? Wonder no more. This is where you’ll see a breakdown of who is using what device.

With new devices like the Google Pixelbook, which is a laptop and a tablet, and with mobile usage at an all time high, mobile responsiveness is a big deal. It’s crucial that you take the device and browser into consideration. What’s more, if you can see a large chunk of your audience are using mobile, why not start to add some really engaging mobile-specific content into your emails?

8. Dependant fields can sneak in some added value

Dependant fields make it easier to capture more information from the right people and help keep forms short. If you’re targeting a really specific group of people then it’s a no-brainer that when they identify themselves on a form, you should be thinking about the next steps. Asking where they heard about you, if they’re interested in receiving your newsletter or if they’d like to schedule a call are all good ways of using dependant fields.

9. Link Automation Rules to landing page views

As marketers, we are the first to know when prospects lose interest, but we rarely know when they become interested again and come back. Automation Rules can fix this for you.

Use Automation Rules and Tags to pick up returning prospects by linking them with landing page views, and jump on the opportunity straight away by notifying their assigned user and sending them straight into a tailored nurturing program.

10. Give your sales team insights with key page visits

Take a trip to Admin > Automation Settings > Page Actions > Add Page Action. Here you will not only be able to set up automation for when a prospect visits a certain URL, but you’ll be able to mark it as a ‘Priority Page’. This means that in the prospect activity overview page, this page view activity will be called out separately. Have they viewed detailed product specs or spent time with the FAQs? Your sales team will know exactly what they’re interested in.

11. Use Salesforce active assignment rules

For many, assignment rules will already be in place in the CRM prior to implementing Pardot. Conveniently, instead of rebuilding these rules from scratch you’ll be able to simply add Completion Actions to your Automation Rules, forms, page actions etc. that push prospects into the active lead assignment within Salesforce. It’s quick, easy and you won’t have to change your current lead distribution process.