I have used Pardot at three different companies now and I love it. It's been one of my most reliable and useful tools in my Marketing Stack over the years and it's continued to get better thanks to the aggressive roadmap put in place by Salesforce. Great for business ranging from small business up to Enterprise.
Pros
The number one thing that I love about Pardot is how easy it is to use. If you're on a small marketing team, one person can easily handle the system. If you have a larger team, the functionality scales extremely well - and you can bring in as many users as you need into the system without needing to pay for any additional seats.
The software is extremely consistent and reliable. Pages load quickly and properly. The WYSIWYG editor for emails is awesome! The amount of automation you can do in Pardot is fantastic - especially with their more recent addition of repeating automations and drip programs.
Awesome update releases thanks to being a Salesforce product.
Cons
The positioning of all of the various functionality can be a little confusing at times. There are a LOT of menu items that lead to the various different features. Some cleanup/re-organization of these might help new users.
The out-of-the-box Marketing templates, while serviceable, could use a reboot. For a startup they're likely sufficient, but if you're running a lot of email campaigns you might want to invest in having a developer custom-build a modular email template for your ongoing use.
The built-in mail testing using Litmus is terrible. Often half of the renderings fail to load, and a number of the renderings included are not super relevant any more. I actually never use this feature any more as I prefer to send test emails to an actual mail client rather than trust the renderings.
Rating breakdown
Likelihood to recommend: 10/10
Pardot has fit our needs especially in working with Salesforce. However, if I had an option I would use a different tool (such as Hubspot). It feels like a dated product that needs some updates to the user experience. Keep in mind it is VERY powerful (a ton of features) but finding them is irritating. For example, you have email templates and email drafts. The differentiation is not clear and you have to look through their knowledge base to figure that out.
Pros
Pardot has a huge number of features that allow you to control, split and quickly view your customer lists. It is also awesome being able to get this information into Salesforce.
Another feature I love is the customer behavior tracking. It makes it simple to get an understanding of what a prospect is interested in. We can then tailor our message to this prospect. For example, if we identify someone is from a specific State (in the U.S.A) then we can share a link in an email that is information only about that State.
The scoring feature is also great because you can quickly see the interest of a current prospect and then notify the correct sales agent to reach out.
Cons
There are 2 things that frustrate me about Pardot. The learning curve and intuitiveness is very poor. It takes a long time to figure out what pieces are where. On top of that, I have used Pardot for almost 2 years and I still figuring stuff out.
It has a ton of features but figuring them all out is mind-boggling.
The other thing that is irritating is the email builder. It just isn't intuitive. You have a tiny screen to make any edits and adding things (like custom information) is hard to find most times.
Then you have to sync this email to the HTML version. Every time I have clicked that button the email syncs but I have to spend 5-10 extra minutes fixing the syntax issues that come about from the sync. I feel that process should work much more seamlessly.
Rating breakdown
Likelihood to recommend: 7/10
Before, we were treating email like it was direct mail. Just send out a high enough quantity and you’ll get enough donations. However, this was treating our donors as pocketbooks and not individuals with unique interests and hearts. Using Pardot means we can tailor what we share to each individual and tell a story they can relate to. Transformational rather than transactional. Donations have increased but that’s a byproduct of involving unique people in the story of our organization. Once you learn the UI, it’s very simple to use as long as you have even a bit of html and css experience or if someone on your team has made some great templates. We love the reporting on the individual level and the integration with Salesforce.
Pros
We love engagement studio and how easy it is to build out automated campaigns and dynamic lists. The ease of automation has meant less time spent uploading csv’s and more time developing great content.
Cons
We wish it had a drag and drop editor. Not everyone on our team can code and it makes it difficult when we have a heavy season for deploys. The good news is, they’ve announced a beautiful drag and drop editor for the 20 winter release.
Rating breakdown
Likelihood to recommend: 10/10
Overall its been a good experience (if you / your client doesnt mind the cost of using it). If choosing to use Pardot, ALL Salesforce CRM licences need to upgraded to the highest cost level (Enterprise), even if its only small teams / individual groups that require the Pardot element. This seems a bit unfair.
Pros
It's a perfect 'marketing output' tool for Salesforce, which has been adapted to natively fit without having to use 3rd party marketplace plugins for marketing output. Pardot has been a gamechanger for outputting Marketing directly from Salesforce.
Cons
It doesnt integrate Social Media management (scheduling, Ads, etc.) - so you still need to use a Social Media tool such as hootsuite. So, while it's the most 'integrated marketing tool' for Salesforce, it's not a complete integrated marketing solution.
Rating breakdown
Likelihood to recommend: 7/10
We were able to update designs for emails and landing pages (with limited selection) but deliverability suffered greatly.
Pros
There's some good features like email drip campaigns, landing pages and forms but they all have their drawbacks. The drip campaigns we found were never getting delivered and going to spam, no one ever opened the emails. The landing pages only provide 4 or 5 designs and only one of them is even possibly usable. You'll need to code your own. The forms are extremely complicated, I've been using for a few years and I still have no idea how to customize them to improve the designs. Basically just too complicated all around. I don't have any pros really, anything good I can find a con for. Don't get fooled into buying this software.
Cons
We purchased Pardot on a three year contract expecting much more than we were given. We are a news publication that sends out daily alerts that our customers pay for and were told by their sales team this was the best email delivery software out there - obviously we know they all say that but this software isn't even close. Pardot purchased Exact Target and sends out of their email. Exact Target is one of the most filtered spam filters no so it's almost impossible to get emails sent through to any customers if they have even a shred of spam filtering set up. We have had to work with hundreds of subscribers to mark our emails as a safe sender through IP and Domain whitelisting and sometimes that doesn't even work. That and they fact that the reporting and features in many ways have no flexibility make this software very frustrating for us. In the beginning we were provided a chat function to contact support and found that there wasn't really much they could do for us other than redirect us to links that did not fix our problems - this would end up turning into a ticket that would rarely be resolved. After about a year they did away with the chat function altogether and told us if we want it back we need to pay an extra per month. This is already an EXTREMELY expensive software so for them to turn their back on us for another money grab was a spit in the face. We're done with them and looking forward to the contract expiring early next year.
Rating breakdown
Likelihood to recommend: 0/10
GROWTH
Standard marketing automation
$1,250/month/up to 10,000 contacts
PLUS
Advanced marketing automation
$2,500/month/up to 10,000 contacts
ADVANCED
Customizable marketing automation
$4,000/month/up to 10,000 records
All plans are billed annually.
Sales teams are always looking for more strategic ways to nurture leads. Pardot is a B2B marketing platform that automates this process, providing organizations with the ability to grow their pipelines, generate better leads, and improve their close rates from within Salesforce.com.
SMBs, B2Bs, and sales firms that are looking to improve their email marketing strategies, improve the quality of their leads, and gain more insight into their sales funnels can utilize Pardot’s tools to create, execute, and track their marketing campaigns. The solution helps professionals in the sales and marketing fields connect with customers through paid search, webinars, and video. It also automates lead nurturing behind the scenes, and shows professionals where they can improve their targeted efforts.
Pardot is a B2B marketing automation platform that simplifies lead management and makes email marketing much easier for its users. The solution offers tools for building email templates, custom forms, and landing pages. It also understands where its users are working and how they can improve their efforts for maximum output.
As far as lead nurturing and lead growth are concerned, Pardot offers tools such as lead scoring and real-time alerts to let its users know when their prospects are ready to buy. It also prioritizes leads automatically, and quickly assigns leads to the best representatives based on the relative importance of each individual lead. As a result of using Pardot, organizations should be better able to accelerate their pipelines and increase the return on investment (ROI) they see from digital marketing campaigns.
Pardot was designed for SMB and B2B companies with between 10 and 500 employees. Within those organizations, it is used most frequently by professionals in the marketing and sales departments.
Pardot offers a powerful email marketing solution that helps marketers reach prospects through personalized, targeted emails. Marketing automation and scheduling tools help professionals send the right messages to the right prospects at the right time. Meanwhile, Pardot uses custom email authentication, SPAM analysis, and multivariate testing to optimize delivery rates.
Use Pardot’s intuitive email builder, with a WYSIWYG editor, to design your first email. You can choose from one of Pardot’s pre-designed templates, or use HTML code to create your own email from scratch. Schedule the message you’ve designed to go out at the optimal day and time, and set up auto-responder emails to welcome new prospects to your mailing lists or confirm event registrations.
Lead nurturing helps to ensure that the best leads are being sent to the best sales reps at the optimal times. Pardot has developed a blended lead scoring and grading model to increase lead quality.
Creating “smart” lead capture forms makes it easier for you to collect the right information from sales prospects and run more targeted campaigns. By automating this process through Pardot, you can reduce instances of human error and decrease the amount of manual work for yourself and your fellow sales colleagues.
More than 40 canned reports make it easier for sales and marketing teams to measure their overall effectiveness and ROI. A campaign ROI calculator ties CRM sales opportunity data together with search results, which means marketers are better able to associate prospects with campaigns. This is useful for reporting and calculating the costs of campaigns.
Get a better understanding of your own campaigns by running closed-loop reports with Pardot. Through these reports, you’ll be able to tell where your best and worst leads are originating. This information may be useful for prioritizing which channels should be your focus in the coming weeks and months. You can also create custom reports thanks to Pardot’s partnership with GoodData.
The web page a visitor reaches after clicking on a link or an online advertisement is typically called a landing page. With Pardot, sales teams can design custom landing pages that display content specific to the advertisement that brought the visitor in.
With Pardot’s landing page builder, you can use pre-existing HTML or you can create landing pages from scratch with stock templates. If you’re comfortable using Pardot’s drag-and-drop builder, then the company recommends building landing pages with its tools. Once a landing page has been activated, a URL will be automatically created and that URL should be added to any associated PPC or email campaigns.
Pardot includes certified CRM integrations with Salesforce.com, NetSuite, Microsoft Dynamics CRM, and SugarCRM. It also offers email plugins, a Google AdWords connector, webinar and video integrations, and an Eventbrite connector.
Pricing for Pardot ranges from $1,000 to $3,000 per month. The company’s most popular option is its Pro plan, which offers advanced marketing automation for up to 10,000 contacts. The Pro plan costs $2,000 per month, billed annually.
Provides businesses with the ability to grow pipelines and generate better leads
Helps professionals in the sales and marketing fields connect with customers
Easy-to-use solution for non-technical marketers
Tools for creating, executing, and tracking marketing campaigns
Automates lead nurturing behind the scenes
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