Solid all around. Not best in class at any one thing.
Updated March 28, 2020
Solid all around. Not best in class at any one thing.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Software Version
Professional
Overall Satisfaction with Pardot
As an agency, we assist a SaaS client with using Pardot for marketing automation. It solves the need for email marketing, website forms, landing pages, reporting, list management and segmentation, and more. We are able to trap leads with forms and landing pages, capture their lead source, report on campaigns, send email blasts, and do drip campaigns to our contact base.
- Forms and landing pages. These are fairly simple to set up but also provide a lot of customization and capability. You can trap leads and automatically track a lead source for most of them from online sources.
- Integration with Salesforce. Coupled with Salesforce, Pardot becomes a powerful tool. Two-way integration means contacts the sales team is adding are immediately available for marketing campaigns, and new inbound leads can easily be sent to Salesforce to manage through a pipeline.
- Reporting. Pardot can report very well on email blasts, forms, landing pages, marketing campaigns, and even other things like Google paid search campaigns, webinars, or even search engine rankings vs. competitors.
- Email builder. At an agency where we've used plenty of email tools, Pardot is the farthest behind. While their testing functions are robust, the builder itself is behind the times. The templates are often not mobile responsive and requires a decent amount of HTML hard coding. There's no modern block editor either.
- List management is more cumbersome than other tools. It's difficult to manage a big group of contacts all at once. There's only ever a few options like removing/adding to list or tagging. There's not an easy way to mass update contacts.
- Contact search and segmentation is not great. Other tools have advanced search filters that make it easy to narrow in on contacts and see how many fit a certain criteria. Pardot doesn't really have that. The only way to do such a thing is to make a dynamic list, but the list of lists can get cluttered real fast.
- Positive in terms of lead generation via web forms and landing pages for Google Ads
- Positive in terms of reporting and figuring out where to refine marketing initiatives and campaigns
- Positive in terms of being able to email our contacts and do drip campaigns to turn leads into opportunities
As a user of Infusionsoft and SharpSpring, I wouldn't say that Pardot is the best. Infusionsoft is better overall. Pardot is used by one client of ours. Pardot's lack of good email builder is what puts it lower on the totem pole. It is a bit stronger with reporting and connections.