Pardot was a game changer for us!
February 01, 2016
Pardot was a game changer for us!
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Software Version
Enterprise
Overall Satisfaction with Pardot
We use Pardot across our Sales and Marketing Departments. Although, our senior leadership is also involved in the process. Pardot has given us a crystal ball to look into how our website visitors are engaging with us like we never had before. We are also able to start to qualify our visitors for our sales team.
- The email templates are easy to set up and allow us to automate our marketing efforts very effectively.
- The ability to segment our lists has proven very valuable. List segmentation allows the right message to get to the right vertical markets at the right time.
- The marketing calendar gives the whole team an outline of what marketing initiatives are hitting on any given day.
- The reporting through GoodData is a bit cumbersome. It takes some getting used to to use effectively.
- The ability to have custom opportunity close / won choices. As a company who uses parent/child opportunities to track large projects where we could be submitting several bids for the same project through different customers we are not able to use any of the opportunity reports within Pardot. As we can't exclude any lost "children" from the formulas.
- Need the ability to add custom filters for adding prospects to lists. For example being able to say do this AND this, OR this AND this. Right now you only get the option of all ANDs or all ORs.
- As a global company with office hours in the US, the back-end automation has allowed us to respond to customer inquires 24/7 - 365.
- We are now able to send out links to a product questionnaire to help better qualify leads for our sales reps. Giving them laser focus on which leads to follow up on instead of chasing rainbows and puppy dogs that might not be "real" leads.
- Real time alerts for the sales team via the Lead Deck allow an account executive some x-ray vision into what an important client is doing right now on our website.
We didn't test any other products. Pardot was a given when I joined our team as the marketing manager. Once Salesforce acquired the software / technology, it was an even bigger slam dunk on why we should purchase Pardot for our company. I don't know of any other software out there that is so focused on the SMB B2B market. They make us look a lot bigger than we actually are. That was a big selling point for us.
10,000 to 25,000
Salesforce Marketing Cloud Feature Ratings
Using Pardot
19 -
- Marketing team which consists of one marketing manager who is the main admin for the software.
- Along with an outside PR agency vendor who helps coordinate messaging and delivers content through the social channels.
- Sales support acts as back up admin for the site. Sales team along with the sales manager who manage incoming leads and follow up via internal sales processes.
2 - Sales support is responsible for making sure LinkedIn social connectors are working and in place for each of our account executives. They are also responsible for creating automation rules and monitoring lead queues. The marketing manager is responsible for creating email templates and deploying various email marketing campaigns. The third party vendor social media expert is responsible for adding various social campaigns to the marketing calendar and launching any press releases via email.
- Automation of website inquires (web to lead forms).
- Allowing gated content to be accessed by website visitors.
- Delivering better marketing qualified leads to the sales team.
- By combining a link to a GetFeedback.com survey we call "Solution Builder" we are able to gather additional details about a customer's project. Freeing up qualification time for our sales team.
- By delivering gated content to our website visitors we are able to do progressive profiling on a website visitor. By understanding which of our documents the visitor is requesting we can better service them internally.
- By allowing an outside vendor like our PR agency to have access to the system without taking up a Salesforce license has been a big time saver for our internal marketing team of one.
- Developing out drip campaigns
- Re-engage our "cold" leads
- Develop a monthly vertical specific newsletter.
Evaluating Pardot and Competitors
- Price
- Product Features
- Existing Relationship with the Vendor
We were a really hard sell for the Pardot team. We were in the midst of a website re-design and kept putting off the purchasing decision until we made it through the re-design and launch process. Once the Pardot / Salesforce merger happened it become a no-brainier for us to purchase Pardot.
I am not sure that we would do anything different in our evaluation process. We probably should've had more content ready to go, but that falls squarely on our shoulders as to when we made the purchase. The demonstrations and sales team from Pardot did an excellent job presenting to all our stakeholders including our outside PR firm.
Pardot Implementation
- Implemented in-house
Yes - Since it has been over a year since implementation, I really can't recall the various phases of implementation. I know we had several calls with the Pardot team. We also worked with our outside website developer to get forms integrated into our newly (at the time) re-designed website.
Change management was a major issue with the implementation - Change management is still in progress, over one year later. As with most sales teams, they are not always quick to adapt change. We are still adding functionality in the background and slowly introduce the processes to the sales team.
- For someone who likes to move processes forward quickly, it was hard for me to adhere to the pace of the implementation. It seemed a little slow to me.
- Having outside vendors for our website development, that was a bit of a challenge making sure they were on the same page with what we needed and how the Pardot forms could be utilized. This wasn't a direct Pardot issue.
Pardot Support
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
Quick Resolution Good followup Knowledgeable team Problems get solved Kept well informed No escalation required Immediate help available Support understands my problem Support cares about my success Quick Initial Response | None |
I was struggling with a way for Pardot to check in Salesforce for account ownership before assigning a lead to an account executive. A customer's for life success team member worked to find a solution for me by figuring out that we need to get an apex trigger written to check for account ownership. I haven't had a chance to get this trigger written, but I know that it can be done with a little outside help.
Using Pardot
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
Like to use Relatively simple Easy to use Technical support not required Well integrated Consistent Quick to learn Convenient Feel confident using Familiar | None |
- Adding completion actions to emails is very easy and intuitive.
- Mapping customs fields between Pardot and Salesforce
- Building out drip campaigns
- At times the email editing can get a bit challenging
- Learning how to create custom reports through GoodData
Yes, but I don't use it