Pardot - good for drip campaigns and lead segmentation
Updated June 16, 2015

Pardot - good for drip campaigns and lead segmentation

Jeremy Snyder | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Software Version

Professional

Modules Used

  • drip campaigns
  • lead sets
  • filters

Overall Satisfaction with Pardot Marketing Automation

Pardot was used to manage groups of inbound leads. The general approach we had with Pardot was as follows:
  • Inbound leads from our website were stored in Pardot
  • We used different factors, such as page views, actions taken on our website, etc, to score the leads and classify them as moderate, warm or hot.
  • Depending on score, they were then assigned to different lead queues.
  • Sales people could then decide which leads to engage with directly, and which to assign to drip campaigns.
  • Our drip campaigns were primarily emails. Scores were added to the leads based on opening emails, clicking links, etc.
  • From the drip campaigns, leads that increased in score (warmer leads) were then picked up by salespeople again.
  • Email drip campaigns
  • Lead queue assignment
  • Mass emailing
  • Scoring was difficult to understand
  • Tuning the way leads were managed or classified took a long time to understand. Part of this is natural (how warm does a lead need to be to _really_ qualify as a warm lead for YOUR company?); another part was complicated UI.
  • Increased salesperson efficiency; we suffered from an overload of low quality leads, and Pardot helped us filter them well.
  • Best mass emailing tool we had in the organization
  • HubSpot,Eloqua,Marketo Marketing Automation
Pardot was primarily chosen for simplicity and price in our organization. On those criteria, I think it provided the best ROI for our budget. With unlimited budget, I would have spent more time on upfront evaluation of longer-term needs. However, it was difficult to make that assessment during the buying cycle, as it's hard to anticipate in what way our needs were to evolve over time.
  • Email marketing
  • Lead nurturing
  • Lead scoring and grading
  • List segmentation
  • Social marketing
  • Surveys
I think Pardot is particularly well suited for SaaS companies and organizations that rely on inbound leads. For qualifying leads and making leads "jump through hoops", Pardot is pretty good.

I don't think Pardot is well suited for large enterprises that rely on a lot of personal interaction in their sales cycle. Pardot is kind of geared towards minimizing the amount of human contact during the sales phase.

Using Pardot Marketing Automation

Replacement cost would be high for us. We have a history of leads, scoring, emails, and actions taking by leads in Pardot. Our sales history shows that a lot of these leads will be reactive in the future, perhaps when project needs bring our product back to mind, or when they have budget, etc. So switching costs would be really high for us. With that said, if we could find a product that integrated better with other parts of our organization, we would look at it.