Platform Spotlight | November 2019
Target customer
SMBs to enterprise-level organizations across all verticals and geographies.
Company overview
- Salesforce acquired Pardot in July 2013 as part of its $2.5 billion acquisition of
- ExactTarget.
- Salesforce offers numerous cloud-based product suites, including Sales Cloud,
- Service Cloud, Marketing Cloud, Commerce Cloud, and Einstein Analytics.
- Salesforce has more than 30,000 employees and 150,000 customers globally. It does
- not disclose employee or customer count by product line.
- Salesforce has offices in more than 30 countries.
Product overview
- Salesforce Pardot is a B2B marketing automation solution, which includes lead management, lead generation, sales alignment and ROI reporting.
- Pardot Engagement Studio allows marketers to build, visualize, test and improve campaign effectiveness.
- 35 pre-designed templates available, including mobile-optimized templates.
- WYSIWYG editors, templates and wizards to create campaigns without code.
- Visual email editor features template customization.
- Program locking prevents multiple users from editing the same engagement program at the same time.
- Versioning in Engagement Studio allows users to edit their existing programs to accommodate changes to specific steps within the program flow.
- Einstein ABM is an account-based marketing solution, powered by artificial intelligence (AI).
- Uses both lead scoring based on prospect actions and lead grading based on demographic fit to determine lead quality.
- Automated campaign engine provides automatic marketing actions based on pre-set rules.
- Mix-and-match criteria such as site search queries, software demos and video viewing can be set to trigger lead scoring, notifications and routing prospects to content that corresponds to their interests.
Social media integration
- Integrations with Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.
- Marketers can schedule and track prospect interaction with social campaigns and use social profiling to unlock new insights.
Reporting and analytics
- Provides analytics and reporting for both account and individual levels, including forms, pageviews, content downloads, emails and social interactions.
- Provides reporting for webinar metrics, video metrics and paid search through LinkedIn, Facebook and Google.
- Also enables third-party data sources, helping users get a single view of their data on a single platform.
- Specific reporting and analytics provided include:
- Engagement (forms, landing pages, emails),
- Marketing influenced pipeline & revenue, Campaign ROI, Days to close, Multi-Touch Attribution (first, even, last touch).
- In addition to included Pardot reports, customers can also create an unlimited amount of their own customized reports/dashboards.
- Email reporting includes information on delivery rate, opens, clicks, bounces, forwards and spam complaints.
- Closed-loop reporting with CRM allows marketers to filter reports within the CRM and create custom reports for trend analysis, cohort reporting and marketing ROI forecasting.
- Add-on B2B Marketing Analytics, consolidates Pardot, Sales Cloud and third-party data sources (such as Google Analytics, HG Data and Bombora) enabling users to instantly view and report on metrics.
- B2B Marketing Analytics is included in Salesforce Pardot Plus & Advanced Editions with Salesforce Professional and above.
- Comes with four out-of-the-box dashboards:
- Marketing Manager, Engagement, Pipeline and Multi-Touch Attribution.
- Analyzes multiple data sources to improve campaign performance and marketing ROI.
- B2B Marketing Analytics app for iOS and Android.
- Add-on Salesforce Engage helps build tailored campaigns with marketing curated content and close deals faster.
- Salesforce Engage enables sales reps to see real-time prospect engagement and know exactly when to reach out.
Third-party software integration
- Pardot is an out-of-the-box solution, connected directly to Salesforce.
- Native integration with Salesforce and SalesforceIQ.
- Contact data is bi-directionally synchronized and deduplicated.
- Salesforce Engage, a Pardot addon, enables sales teams to connect with prospects by integrating marketing automation and CRM platforms.
- Additional third-party integrations (which, can be found here) include:
- WebEx, GoToWebinar and
- ReadyTalk; connector available for
- EventBrite.
- Google AdWords and Google Analytics,
- Wistia and Vidyard for video tracking
- WordPress blog
- SurveyMonkey
- SnapApp (interactive content) and
- Microsoft Outlook (Pardot has plugins for Outlook and Gmail for Salesforce Engage customers out of the box)
- Twilio (telephony) and
- Olark (live chat)
- Open REST API for custom integrations with other applications. Integrations are available via Pardot’s Connectors tab, prebuilt connectors via third party apps (SnapApp), or segmenting from Salesforce custom objects (SurveyMonkey, Vidyard) for marketing purposes in Pardot. The Salesforce AppExchange can vastly expand this list, as there are many AppEx apps that record data in Custom Objects (where Pardot can read and action from).
- Pardot has plugins for Outlook and Gmail (for Salesforce Engage customers) out of the box.
Pricing and support
- Three pricing tiers:
- Growth: $1,125/month for up to 10,000 contacts.
- Plus: $2,500/month for up to 10,000 contacts.
- Advanced: $4,000/month for up to 10,000 contacts.
- Add on:
- Salesforce Engage priced at $50/user per month.
- B2B Marketing Analytics is included in Salesforce Pardot Plus & Advanced Editions with Salesforce Professional and above.
- All packages include access to best practice and strategy experts, support desk, live training webinars, email and online forums.
- Pardot Premier and Premier+ support packages available at a fee based on client requirements.
- Additional resources include Pardot consultative engagements, 24/7
- technical phone support, and configuration services.
Contact Sharon Herrnstein, Chief Marketing Officer at sharon.h@vglobalinc.com today for a FREE and no obligation consultation call. We can help ensure your investment in marketing automation truly supports your organization’s goals whatever platform you’re working with.
Source: Martech Intelligence Report 2019
