Pardot Review
March 31, 2015

Pardot Review

Matt Bohar | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Software Version

Professional

Overall Satisfaction with Pardot Marketing Automation

Pardot is being used for marketing automation for sales/marketing campaigns, drip email programs, automated online request and feedback forms, reporting, SEO/SEM reporting and social media reporting.
  • Drip programs are automated and very easy to set-up and monitor on an ongoing basis.
  • Email blasts are relatively easy to set-up and execute for email sales/marketing campaigns.
  • SEM/SEO tracking is available for cookied users, including what pages they visit on your website(s) and social media sites.
  • Connectors are available for other vendors like GoToWebinar, Wistia (videos), and Data.com (helps gather unknown information about a prospect).
  • Email templates can be difficult to use at times (we use HTML editors to import our email creatives).
  • Navigation can be difficult, as well as knowing exactly what some functions actually do.
  • Exporting a contact's activities is not available, just the generic and custom fields you create (you can usually work around this by setting up several completion actions).
  • Some of our sales offices have seen an 80% increase in business that they attributed to using Pardot on a more hands on basis. It has a lot of very helpful tools that aid in the sales process and for lead generation purposes (including the lead scoring and grading functions).
  • The automation part has made our drip email programs very easy. Just set it and check on it once a week or even less. The reporting functions make it easier for management to see the results too.
  • Our email campaigns (including doing A/B testing) are easy to set-up and execute, saving us time for other projects. Plus its easy to train new employees on.
We chose Pardot because it was priced in the middle of the other marketing automation softwares we tested and demonstrated. We thought that they all had the same capabilities and most of the same functions. We also thought that Pardot looked easier to navigate. Some of the other products were also more suited for larger companies.
We are happy with Pardot. It has made our jobs easier and installed some reporting functions that have increased our ROI with the company. We have worked hard to set-up the functions in Pardot and it has taken time, but paid off.
Pardot is NOT a CRM software, its marketing automation. I think that a lot of people confuse the two (including some of my colleagues). Pardot has some CRM type functions in it that can be very helpful and of course it does have the ability to connect to your CRM (as some of our offices do). So you would need to purchase the CRM and the marketing automation program like Pardot together, which can be expensive.

Salesforce Marketing Cloud Feature Ratings

WYSIWYG email editor
5
Landing pages
8
A/B testing
9
Mobile optimization
8
Email deliverability reporting
10
List management
9
Lead nurturing automation
8
Lead scoring and grading
10
Data quality management
9
Automated sales alerts and tasks
9
Calendaring
9
Event/webinar marketing
10
Social sharing and campaigns
8
Social profile integration
7
Dashboards
8
Standard reports
9
Custom reports
7
API
8
Role-based workflow & approvals
8
Customizability
9
Integration with Microsoft Dynamics CRM
8