Today at Salesforce Connections during one of the afternoon breakout sessions, we got a “behind the scenes” look at how Salesforce uses the Marketing Cloud to create 1:1 customer journeys. That got me thinking. Customer engagement strategies continue to evolve as new channels, devices and marketing technologies are introduced to help the most innovative brands understand and engage their audiences. We’re in a age where change is constant and digital marketers are constantly tweaking messaging and exploring new digital tactics to optimize campaign effectiveness. The Salesforce Connections conference has been all about helping the Salesforce community learn from others’ successes with their products. So, I thought I’d shed some light on how Perficient uses Pardot for B2B marketing automation to provide the digital marketing community with some real world experiences on how you can use marketing automation within your business to drive value.
Below are some great quotes from a few of my fellow marketing teammates (and me) highlighting our success with Salesforce’s marketing automation tools:
“Pardot allows me to dig into the effectiveness of each marketing campaign, seeing which activities are driving what kinds of leads. The instant notifications give me a quick view into how a campaign is performing at any given
moment and if it is resonating with our target audience. As marketers, we must be nimble and to respond quickly when changes need to be made to the messaging. Pardot is a tool that can make it happen.” – Liza Sizler, Partner Marketing Director at Perficient
“Our industry team produced a Healthcare Industry Trends Guide featuring the top 10 technology trends impacting healthcare. I wanted to target c-suite executives within large integrated health systems and health plan organizations. I was able to leverage Pardot to build a segmented marketing campaign that generated high-quality leads so our healthcare sales team could have the right conversation with the right client at the optimal time.” – Kate Tuttle, Healthcare Industry Marketing Manager
“As a digital marketer I eat, sleep and breath Pardot. I use Pardot to create relevant web forms and landing pages targeted to specific audiences. At Perficient, we have multiple business units that have diverse marketing needs and the pace of doing business is fast! Using Pardot landing pages, I am able to easily create customized, mobile-ready landing pages that provide the right audience, the right message at the right time and in a format that is easily digestible.” – Sharon Suchoval, Digital Marketing Manager
“Our company has been exploring the use of video marketing and how best to incorporate this new digital tactic into our marketing mix. We recently developed a series of Community Cloud videos to support a Salesforce campaign I’m running targeting sales, service, marketing and IT roles. These videos live on Pardot landing pages and were also part of a four-part email marketing series I developed. Using Pardot, I was able to first do A/B testing with multiple email subject lines to determine the “winning” email subject to increase the effectiveness of my email campaign. I was also able to monitor what recipients were clicking on within the body of the email and tweak the call-to-action (view a video vs. download an e-book) in order to optimize conversion rates.” – Elizabeth Dias, Salesforce Marketing Manager
Pardot Features We Love and Use Daily
My team runs multiple marketing campaigns at any given time. With Pardot’s calendar function, I can see at a glance where we may have scheduling conflicts and suggest an alternate timeline in addition to being able to drill down to specific detail around send data, open rates, registrants for events and more. – Liza Sizler
The reporting tools within Pardot provides insight into which marketing initiatives are working for me within the healthcare practice. In an industry where competition is cutting-edge it is important to have the right tools in place to analyze and measure the effectiveness of each component of an integrated marketing campaign. – Kate Tuttle
The most valuable Pardot feature for me as a marketer has been the “Activity” field within the contact record. Before Pardot, we had no idea how many “touches” or interactions we’ve had with our customers or prospects. Sometimes this means uncovering the good, bad and the ugly, but it helps me to become a more effective B2B marketer. With Pardot I can drill down to uncover valuable details to determine the appropriate level of frequency for marketing communications, how different types of content I’m delivering are performing and how engaged my audience is. – Elizabeth Dias
There’s a lot more that Salesforce’s marketing automation tools have to offer! Salesforce just unveiled its next generation of Marketing Cloud at Salesforce Connections. The expanded Journey Builder product will allow marketers to track a customer during every stage of the buying cycle and through every interaction from the brand. As marketers, the potential to interact with our customers doesn’t end simply after they make a purchase. There are new sales opportunities and service experiences that could trigger a marketer to deliver a specific message. Why does this set Salesforce apart from other marketing automation tools? Marketing Cloud is tightly integrated with the Salesforce platform keeping CRM at the core of your business – something that many other point solutions simply cannot do without some extensive back-end integration.
