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Pardot: aesthetically and financially satisfying.
Updated October 14, 2016

Pardot: aesthetically and financially satisfying.

Sean Marsh | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Software Version

Professional

Overall Satisfaction with Pardot

Pardot was implemented to address sales leads leakage and to replace our in-house built CRM. Additionally, we needed to automate the majority of our marketing tasks (EDMs, webinars, white paper and case study landing pages) and gain the ability to leverage our content multiple times, which is something we hadn't been able to achieve previously.
  • Simple and intuitive user interface, which enhances user experience.
  • WYSIWYG editor for both landing pages and EDM building are quite easy to use.
  • Form building is very straight forward with the ability to go from simple to complex fields, great for gathering additional details from return visitors.
  • Sales love the indepth reporting they now receive from leads' activities and enables tighter teamwork between marketing and sales.
  • Loading speeds can be horrendously slow at times. We've lost business (leads and enquiries) as a result of forms and pages taking minutes to load / process.
  • Viewing the activity of a prospect (visitors per website) is quite easy, but reporting on the reverse (website vs prospects) is difficult.
  • Being in Australia, loading speeds can take a very long time. This affects our productivity with the platform.
  • Knowledge Base is a very handy resource but only caters to beginner-intermediate level. Help on using Pardot for experience front end developers is limited.
  • Implementation was third party and didn't consider our specific business requirements. It was a cookie cutter approach and we were left trying to put the pieces together after our implementation period was terminated. It was only much later down the track that we realised our system had been set up correctly, but now it's far too late to fix.
  • The file/content library needs image thumbnails. Without this you're required to add long descriptions to each file in order to find the right one each time. Cumbersome.
  • We experienced faster lead conversion almost straight away after utilising Pardot tracking. It gave us insight we'd never had before.
  • More information about a lead's activities means Sales can have far more targeted conversations.
  • We've begun using Pardot for helpdesk and support communication on top of our marketing and sales. It's a game changer in this respect.
I would recommend a platform such as this for businesses with a staff of over 30 that wish to increase their sales pipeline and fast track sales cycles through leveraging their content. A knowledgeable prospect/lead is 400% more likely to purchase your goods/services than one who isn't. Pardot has helped us see this first hand.

However, you will need a Front End Developer if you're to fully leverage the most of Pardot's features. Luckily I know how to code.

Salesforce Marketing Cloud Feature Ratings

5.9
WYSIWYG email editor
8
Dynamic content
6
Ability to test dynamic content
Not Rated
Landing pages
4
A/B testing
4
Mobile optimization
2
Email deliverability reporting
8
List management
7
Triggered drip sequences
8
8.3
Lead nurturing automation
7
Lead scoring and grading
9
Data quality management
8
Automated sales alerts and tasks
9
7.0
Calendaring
7
Event/webinar marketing
7
7.5
Social sharing and campaigns
7
Social profile integration
8
9.0
Dashboards
9
Standard reports
9
Custom reports
9
7.0
API
7
Role-based workflow & approvals
Not Rated
Customizability
6
Integration with Salesforce.com
8
Integration with Microsoft Dynamics CRM
Not Rated
Integration with SugarCRM
Not Rated

Using Pardot

Luckily for us Pardot was a perfect fit and is very easy to use. However, the most likely reason we'll renew is because of our initial investment, time and effort spent plus all of our data is now hosted within the Pardot platform, not to mention our business now relies on connectivity with webinars, website tracking and so on.

I would strongly recommend to potential buyers to spend a lot of time understanding your potential vendor, because once you've signed up you'll struggle to move on if it doesn't work out.

Pardot Training

Pardot's online training touches on all topics briefly and vaguely without much indepth exploration into how a final outcome could look, such as Nurturing Campaigns, Email templates, landing page templates, etc...

The only true way to uncover Pardot's full capabilities is to have Front End design and coding experience. Without this key skill set, I would not recommend Pardot to another business.