Pardot - Easy, but not too simple.
Updated April 29, 2015
Pardot - Easy, but not too simple.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Software Version
Enterprise
Overall Satisfaction with Pardot Marketing Automation
We use it for both inbound and outbound marketing. The corporate marketing function uses it as well as the field marketing people globally. It allows us to use a single data store and create templates for our field marketing staff. The management of prospects over time is probably the most critical function.
- Data loading. The ability to load a largely unstructured file, while selecting fields (as well as whether or not to update a given field) is a godsend. Trying to get a global field marketing staff to all use the same file format is generally a failure.
- Integration with Salesforce.com; prior to SFDC buying them, they were exception in this regard. Now, the integration is amazing.
- The embedded reporting, if you can get external data into it, is easy to understand.
- End user training is phenomenal!
- The WYSIWYG editor is a little wonky at times. It has improved immensely over the past year or so, but it could still be tweaked.
- Some marketing operations functions would be nice. You can add custom fields for contact & accounts, but not for campaigns. Tags aren't used in reporting, since they are so unstructured.
- Selection criteria could be more advanced, maybe as an option at the user level. Selecting subsets of long lists of attributes (e.g., countries) gets tiresome.
- This was our first tool for communicating externally, since we bought from another company, and had no tools, so it enabled us to communicate.
- It allowed us to quickly assess interest based on prospect activity. Rapid assignment of prospects to field management also took pressure off of marketing operations.
Pardot's ease of use and native integration with SFDC was key to the selection. HubSpot didn't quite measure up from a global capability, while Unica was too complex. Eloqua was the next choice by a narrow margin.
Evaluating Pardot and Competitors
- Price
- Product Features
- Product Usability
- Analyst Reports
I would keep it narrowed to pure marketing automation players, and exclude more enterprise scale campaign management tools.