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Marketing Cloud Account Engagement (Pardot) USE CASES

This article is prepared by our Salesforce Certified Marketing Cloud Account Engagement Consultant Veronika Klimova.


Use Case 1: Engagement program in Pardot

Problem Statement

The client had a process of booking training courses, which implied the interaction between Pardot and Salesforce.
Initially, the client requested the creation of an Engagement Program entirely in Pardot, but it was impossible to do this in one system.
Solution

After analyzing the existing functionality we proposed to split the process between Pardot and Salesforce depending on data required for specific purposes.

Determining the training course date and checking related records for the course assignment (based on client’s architecture) were developed in Salesforce by creating flow.

It was linked to Pardot using Automation Rules and creating an Engagement program for email sendings and reminders.
Results

With this solution we achieve:

  • fully implemented Engagement Program for booking training courses in Pardot,
  • stable and predictable work of Pardot without data overload,
  • predictable and limited Pardot cost only for the data we required,
  • transparent structure of Pardot and Salesforce automations,
  • optimized usage of Salesforce and Pardot automations.


Use Case 2: Zoom webinar registration

Problem Statement

The client is hosting webinars on Zoom. Since registration for the webinar is carried out through a link from the email , there is no problem with adding this link. However, the client asked for a report with data about the webinar: how many participants joined, how many did not, how long they were at the webinar.
Solution

Zoom has a connector to Pardot, but without analytics. This connector only allows you to add participants to the webinar and work with custom fields.

After communicating with the client, we found out that everyone who needed analytics about webinars were in Salesforce. Therefore, it was proposed to make a free connector between Zoom and Salesforce and create several reports.

This solution to the case was not only easier to implement, but also much easier to manage for the client.
Results

As a result, we received webinar registrations through Pardot mailing list, and all analytics after the webinar came to Salesforce and were displayed in the report.


Use Case 3: Several Business Units

Problem statement

A client wants to create the second business unit (BU) to split prospects by a degree: a bachelor and a graduate student.

Pardot has Marketing Data Sharing rules which help to split prospects by criteria. But the main feature is that the client wants to move prospects from one business unit to another while preserving all the activities and analytics on the previous one. And the most important thing for the client is to have the same prospect in both business units.
Solution

The client was asked to save 1 BU and create a clear folder structure in it, which allowed the client to easily find the necessary automations and perform actions with prospects.

If the 2nd BU had been created, the client would have experienced in the future the fact in Pardot that finding prospect in the 2nd BU at the same time would have led to cyclic updating of fields in Salesforce or critical errors. Prospect can only be located in one BU and move between them in accordance with Marketing Data Sharing Rules.
Results

The client was satisfied with the new structure. The teams interacted with their automations and avenues, and did not overlap. The client avoided critical errors on the part of Pardot.

Do you actually need Pardot Business Units?

  1. You have multiple brand marketing teams or regional offices which operate largely independently. There are a few perfect use cases for Pardot Business Units. If your organization has distinct geographic regions, industry verticals or product & service lines, Business Units may be a great option for you.
  2. Your Salesforce Lead and Contact data are kept in separate segments for operational or compliance purposes. Some industries, such as financial services, have to keep customer data separate for legal reasons. Other organizations may keep data partitioned to avoid competition between brands under the same parent company. Whatever your reasons, if you have strict data visibility settings, Pardot Business Units could help structure your marketing data in the same way.
  3. Marketing campaigns or assets should not be shared or visible across all areas of the business. As well as separating your prospect data, you may also separate your marketing content across business lines. You can use Pardot Business Units to segregate campaigns that shouldn’t be shared with other teams.
  4. You already have multiple Pardot instances connected to the one Salesforce instance. Before Business Units, some organizations operated out of multiple, separate Pardot instances to solve some of the problems listed above. If you have more than one Pardot account connected to the same Salesforce account, definitely start looking at Business Units!


Use Case 4: Double Opt-In

Double Opt-In (DOI) is a fairly common task in Pardot for which there are several solutions. Let's figure out what it is. DOI is the email confirmation process. After filling out the form on the website, the client will receive a letter asking him to confirm his email.
What is necessary to do first:

1. Create a "Thank you" Landing page that will appear after confirming the email.

2. Create 2 static lists (Confirmed Opt-in and Unconfirmed Opt-in).

3. Create the "Double Opt-In" field (checkbox) in Pardot and Salesforce (don’t forget to connect them).

4. Create a Completion action with:

  • a redirect on the "Thank you" page,
  • filling in the "Double Opt-in" field,
  • add to the “Confirmed Opt-in” list,
  • remove from the “Unconfirmed Opt-in” list as an action.

5. Create an email template that the client will receive after filling out the form and attach the Completion action to the confirmation button.

6. Create a form / form handler. Add the action "send auto response email“ and add to the “Unconfirmed Opt-in” list.


Use Case 5: Problems with email bots

This is the most common problem for customers. Many companies face the problem of prospects unsubscribing from their mailing list and they do not understand why. A large number of unsubscribes may be caused by the activity of email bots.
There are 4 solutions to this problem

1. Pardot Visitor Filters

Leveraging the existing Pardot Visitor Filters functionality, they were able to package up filters for the most common bots, and deploy these filters to every Pardot account. Plus, you can also set up your own Visitor Filters if you notice a strange activity caused by a specific IP (you only need the IP address or hostname to add it as a Visitor Filter).
2. Metrics Guard

Metrics Guard watches for an email activity that isn’t prospect-initiated. Built-in to all Pardot accounts, this service monitors email clicks and opens to identify patterns that are clearly bot-based. These activities aren’t recorded in Pardot, and thereby prevent reporting skews.

Just like bots guard the recipient inbox against troublesome emails, Metrics Guard protects your Pardot account against troublesome the prospect activity.

It’s important to note that Metrics Guard hasn’t replaced the packaged Visitor Filters:

  • Some activity that would have been caught by Visitor Filters now gets caught by Metrics Guard.
  • Both work together: Visitor Filters are for IPs that are problematic for you. You may want to add these as Visitor Filters in your org but they’re not common enough to show up across all Pardot customers (i.e. it’s an isolated issue).
3. Two-click Unsubscribe

How could Pardot prevent unsubscribes caused by bots? Two-click unsubscribe asks you to re-confirm the unsubscribe request. By adding the second step, another ‘hoop to jump through’ will keep bots from clicking the second link on the unsubscribe landing page.
4. Create custom redirect to collect email bots

Create a custom redirect with “add to list” action and hide this custom redirect in the email template. Only a bot can click on a hidden link.