Salesforce Pardot Blog

If you’re looking for a suitable marketing automation platform, you can’t avoid Salesforce Pardot. The automation of marketing activities is the trend par excellence. With Salesforce Pardot, these processes can be designed either with or without the Salesforce CRM.

If you are involved in B2B marketing and want to make the associated sales activities more efficient, you should take a closer look at Pardot in conjunction with the Salesforce CRM. These two platforms offer real added value in the area of lead and customer acquisition. By the way, the counterpart for the B2C sector is the Salesforce Marketing Cloud.

Lead generation with Salesforce Pardot

With the marketing automation Salesforce Pardot, companies can generate sustainable leads and forward them to Sales. Targeted marketing activities enrich potential customers (known as prospects) with relevant information and qualify them as leads. A prospect is simply a visitor whose e-mail address is known to the Pardot system. As soon as the visitor fills out a form, for example, he is classified as a prospect in Salesforce Pardot.

The e-mail address is queried or assigned on the basis of content that is linked to forms, landing pages or drip campaigns, for example. Through a scoring and grading defined in advance, prospects and, in the further course, specific leads can be quantitatively classified for the sales team.

This approach means that the sales team only receives pre-qualified leads, so-called Qualified Sales Leads (QSL or SQL). This means that only those leads that are really relevant or promising for the company are processed by the sales team. The criteria for an SQL are defined individually for each company that uses Salesforce Pardot in conjunction with the CRM.

Regular marketing campaigns are used to constantly increase trust in the potential customer and to establish a relationship. For example, email campaigns that are perfectly tailored to the prospect are designed and dynamic content on specific topics is provided in order to pick up the prospect with the right content at any time.
These processes make marketing activities and ultimately sales processes in the B2B sector much more efficient and successful.

The 5 stages of the Salesforce Pardot Funnel

If we now look at the lifecycle pipeline or funnel in detail, there are of course very different stages, whereby we have already become familiar with the prospect and the qualified sales lead (so-called SQL).

Overall, the sales funnel can be broken down into five stages:

• Visitors
• Potential customer whose e-mail address is known (Prospects)
• Marketing qualified lead (MQL)
• Sales-qualified lead (Qualified Sales Lead – SQL)
• Won customers or closings (Closings)

The entry point from an online marketing point of view is initially the website, on which an unknown visitor initially moves from a Pardot point of view.
If a visitor is now interested in a service or a lead magnet, such as an e-book (so-called gated content), webinar or download, and fills out a corresponding form in which the e-mail address must be entered, this is a prospect from Salesforce Pardot’s point of view.

In the next step, the marketing activities mentioned at the beginning of this article enrich the prospect with further information. Now we are dealing with an MQL, i.e. a qualified lead from a marketing point of view.

Based on the scoring and grading, the MQL is then transferred between marketing and the sales team from an individually defined value or a certain level. From Salesforce Pardot’s point of view, this is now an SQL. As soon as a deal is closed by Sales, it is a won customer.

The functions and prices of Salesforce Pardot in detail

Salesforce Pardot can be booked in different editions. Currently (as of August 2019), there are three editions of the popular B2B marketing automation:

• Growth Edition
• Plus Edition
• Advanced Edition

Prices start from €1,250 with the standard version. Those who need more details on Salesforce Pardot’s pricing model will find them here.

Basically, the Salesforce Pardot platform offers me as a marketing automation manager a variety of features.

Looking for tips around Salesforce Sales Cloud and Salesforce Pardot? Are you one of those advanced users who think outside the box when it comes to Salesforce Pardot? Then you’ve come to the right place. Because we’ve compiled what we think are the top 5 Pardot Influencer blogs for you to access expert knowledge directly.

While there are a lot of experts on the Salesforce Sales Cloud side, the market of Salesforce Pardot experts is very clear. While there are many Pardot consultants and Pardot solution architects in the market who already have very good expert knowledge in the field. But the crème de la crème in Salesforce Pardot is very rare.

There are a handful of experts on an international level who not only see Salesforce Pardot as a marketing automation tool, but also have very good background knowledge of interfacing with Pardot and have expert knowledge in HTML, CSS and JavaScript and can therefore offer very individualized solutions.

Among them are also some Salesforce Marketing Champions. These are experts who regularly share their Salesforce Pardot knowledge with the community and thus encourage others to use it.

When making our selection, we made sure that the blogs are constantly updated and have their finger on the pulse. If we have left out someone you would like to recommend, we would be happy to expand the list of Salesforce Pardot experts, consultants or solutions architects. Please feel free to send us a message.

thespotforpardot.com by Andrea Tarell

This blog belongs, run by Andrea Tarell, is one of the top 5 Pardot Influencer blogs. Andrea, a Pardot consultant herself really has very clear and easy to understand tutorials on how to use Salesforce Pardot.

From our point of view, she is one of the startups in the Pardot scene that always has the latest Pardot news.

kevinschilling.de by Kevin-René Schilling

Kevin-René Schilling is one of the few Pardot consultants for Salesforce Marketing Automation in German-speaking countries. In addition, he is one of the speakers of the Pardot User Group DACH. In 2021, Kevin Schilling was awarded as Salesforce Marketing Champion.

As an online marketing and digitalization expert, he has been working on the opportunities that online marketing – especially marketing automation.

As a Certified Pardot Specialist and Certified Pardot Consultant, Kevin-René Schilling advises B2B companies on an international level and shares his knowledge in presentations at the Pardot User Group, in Pardot trainings and within projects. Always on the pulse of time, he is therefore one of the specialized Pardot experts at Content moves in Düsseldorf, where he works as Head of Pardot and Senior Business Consultant.

jennamolby.com by Jenna Molby

Jenna Molby is one of the most well-known bloggers in the Salesforce Pardot space. She offers her readers countless resources with absolute added value around Salesforce and Pardot. One of her most popular tools is her Pardot Form CSS Generator, which has certainly helped one or the other Pardot user many times in practice.

Her tutorials are legendary – especially in the area of Pardot asset handling, but also the handling of UTM parameters for tracking. A look at Jenna Molby’s Pardot blog is definitely worthwhile.

Unfettered Marketing by Bill Fetter

Bill Fetter – the man with the bow tie. He’s known as Unfettered Marketing. Always a welcome sight – even at Salesforce events. He is a set expert in the industry in the field of digital marketing.

Bill is one of the bloggers who presents complex Salesforce Pardot topics in a very simple and understandable way. That’s what makes him and his years of experience in B2B marketing stand out.

Greenkey by Jen Kazin

Who is Jen Kazin? She is one of the brains in the Pardot scene who regularly publishes very interesting blog articles that offer real added value. Topics, such as Pardot Lightning Email Builder, Campaign Structure, but also Pardot Preference Center Best Practices, are among those that are highly appreciated by the community.

Under Greenkey, Jen Kazin is active as a Pardot consultant and trainer and is 6x certified. She also belongs to the illustrious circle of Salesforce Marketing Champions.