If you are setting out on your journey in the marketing automation land, then congratulations for your decision on deciding to make the right move towards the effective and more advanced way of marketing.
Prior to proceeding, let us first understand what Pardot is!
What is Pardot?
Pardot happens to be a Salesforce marketing automation software. This one comes with a variety of features that makes running and measuring marketing campaigns from a single place supereasy.
Some marketing automation tools just offer social media scheduling and email marketing campaigns. But Pardot enables you to do much more like –
- Execute segmented and trigger-based email campaigns
- Connect to the CRM for proper management of data
- Create submission forms for content
- Build the landing pages which include the dynamic content
- Report on KPIs and other ROI
- Score the lead data on the basis of demographic information and behaviour
So with Pardot you can turn people from prospects to leads for qualified sales without spending hours together for manually conducting follow-ups, disparate systems and with complete visibility from the sales and marketing.
The link between the sales and marketing is most essential in this case.
There are very few software for marketing automation that syncs so intentionally with the sales by providing real-time sales alerts and that is one of the reasons why Pardot is one of the best marketing automation software.
Research reveals that marketing effectiveness enhances by 37% and sales revenue gets boosted by around 35%.
So once you have decided that you are going to get Pardot, here begins the search for the correct consultant of implementation.
But before that you should know what to expect and not skip the Pardot implementation. Here is a list of the implementation phases that you need to cover.
- Phase of Discovery
- Phase of Technicality
- Automation
- Handcuff and Training
To help you out here are the 7 most essential components. Take a look.
- Workshop of Requirements – This phase is also said to be the Discovery Phase and this is mainly dependent on how you along with your organisation and team define success. The initial consultation involves sharing the overall marketing KPIs, business objectives, and what you already have and from that what has to be achieved in the project can be discussed. At this stage, on the basis of this consultancy, some utilise the session as the key part of project scoping (which means estimation of effort and cost) while others prefer to have you committed as the customer first.
- Integration of Website – The first and foremost action is linking the website with the Pardot. This includes setting up the campaign for website tracking and adding the tracking code into the HTML code for the website. Once this is done you will be able to track both the yet to convert (visitors) and the ones who are already converted (prospects) who move around the site and use the features like Page Actions.
You can also link the Pardot forms with the existing ones through the form handlers. This implies that no matter what information people fill in the form like Contact Us Form, the prospect fields will be updated automatically with the fresh info.
You also have to take care of a few other technical pieces like creation of CNAME and authentication of email. These are complicated steps which can delay the process.
- Emails and Landing Pages – Part of the project must include creating a few landing pages and emails. This way you can get going at the earliest. This one involves the legally required pages. You will have to provide the contents (images and texts) and also the HTML code if you want to steer clear of the standard layouts.
- Import of Prospect Database – Getting the existing Contacts database into Pardot is not a simple task. There are a variety of other aspects like dealing with the import errors, mapping the fields, creating the custom fields etc. in the beginning you will have to offer clean data in .csv but the consultant can suggest on what to bring over to the Pardot. They should make sure that the outputs recorded in the old system are restored in Pardot as well.
- Salesforce Connector Setup – If you are using the Salesforce as the CRM, the connector setup is an area where you will want the best consultant. This will save you the potential sync errors and a lot of headache. There are 6 stages including Salesforce permission set, defining the behaviour of sync and implementation of SSO (Single Sign On).
- IP Warming – The IP acts as the identifier for the sender. When you will be sending emails the email client on the recipient will elect whether the email passes to the inbox or gets rejected. The way they do is based in the reputation of sending represented by the IP. You can either choose Shared or the Dedicated IP. You should opt for IP warming if you want complete control over the sending reputation through the Dedicated IP.
- Automation – The consultants usually come with the mental automation bank which they have encountered. This also includes the Completion Actions and Rules of Automation. You can also adjust the scoring model that comes with account and implement the grading structure. You can also consider the segmentation cases and the consultant can suggest how these can be automated.
These are some of the things that you can expect from the Pardot implementation. You should hire an experienced professional of Pardot form development who has been in the industry for quite some time now and knows how to make the best of this.
Author Bio:
Sawoni Chowdhury is an aficionado of writing. She is an expert writer and blogger and shares her views and opinions on a range of topics such as Lifestyle, Business, Entertainment and lot more.
