How to Learn Pardot

Marketing operations may be one of the fastest-rising career paths in marketing today. Marketing ops professionals are benefiting from the explosion of marketing technology, the need to integrate it, and the need to create measurable impact from using that technology.

Pardot is one of the premier solutions in the marketing automation space. Learning how to use Pardot isn’t just beneficial to your team in accomplishing tasks—it can also be a great career move. It helps you acquire in-demand skill sets that are increasingly valuable in today’s job market.

In this article, we’re going to walk through the basics of what you need to learn in Pardot.

Getting Started with Pardot Fundamentals

Pardot fundamentals start with setting up your Pardot environment and ensuring all the key components are in place. This includes essential tasks like installing your tracking code on your website, creating test forms and landing pages, and successfully sending an email.

Early wins are crucial when beginning with Pardot. Focus on quickly setting up content and leveraging the platform’s basic automation and campaign management features. By doing so, you can demonstrate immediate value and build a strong foundation for more advanced functionality down the road.

Resources

• Pardot Docs: Account Engagement Setup Implementation Guide
• Pardot Docs: Implement Tracking Code
• Pardot Docs: Build Customized Dashboards
• Pardot Docs: Get Started with Account Engagement

Mastering Core Pardot Features

By this stage, you’re starting to get comfortable with lead management and campaign management, and you’re likely looking to do more with your contact database. This is the time to master essential features like static versus dynamic lists and visitor tracking on your website.

Data management becomes increasingly important here. Ensuring the data you collect is clean and reliable allows you to use it effectively for segmentation, dynamic content, and other advanced marketing efforts down the road.

You’ll also want to start refining your email and landing page templates. Make sure they are visually sharp, aligned with your branding, and optimized to enable your marketing team to rapidly create and send campaigns. A well-organized process for handling these templates can significantly enhance efficiency.

Basic automation rules start to play a vital role now. Gaining a solid understanding of how these rules work will allow you to set up automation for tasks such as data management, lead nurturing, real-time alerts, and lead scoring. This ensures your marketing efforts are streamlined and impactful.

Resources

• Pardot Docs: Create a Form
• Pardot Docs: Create an Email Template in Account Engagement
• Knak Guide: Guide to Email Templates in Pardot
• Pardot Docs: Draw in Visitors with Account Engagement Landing Pages
• Pardot Docs: Static and Dynamic Prospect Lists
• Pardot Docs: Create an Automation Rule

Advanced Pardot Implementation

As you start to push the features of Pardot more, you’re going to want to make sure that you’re leveraging all the powerful features that Pardot has to offer. One of the core benefits of Pardot is using automation workflows with Engagement Studio. This can help you build automated, multi-channel, and rule-based workflows.

Key concepts you should understand include how triggers, rules, and actions work:

• Triggers evaluate behavior, such as when someone opens an email or submits a form.
• Rules check attributes, like job title or industry.
• Actions determine what happens next, such as sending an email or changing a prospect’s score.

As you become more advanced, you’ll want to use branching logic to create paths that account for different types of prospect behavior. This ensures you’re covering all your bases and tailoring your campaigns effectively.

Lead scoring and grading are also valuable for your campaign operations. Lead scoring involves assigning numeric values based on actions, like email opens, clicks, and form submissions. Lead grading evaluates attributes, such as job title, industry, or company size, helping you align your database with your ideal customer profile. These tools ensure that you’re not just sending out marketing information but also providing valuable insights to your sales team for follow-up.

Account-based marketing (ABM) strategies are useful for identifying high-value accounts and creating strategic follow-ups for those accounts. Customized campaigns, including nurture tracks designed specifically for these accounts, can help you maximize your marketing efforts.

Dynamic content and personalization add another layer to the prospect experience. Combining these with advanced segmentation lets you create highly tailored marketing. By building dynamic lists and static lists, you can segment prospects and customize your messaging to improve the effectiveness of your campaigns and overall efforts in Pardot.

Resources

• Pardot Docs: Engagement Studio Overview
• Pardot Docs: Einstein Lead Scoring for Account Engagement
• Pardot Docs: Create Dynamic Content
• Pardot Docs: Segmentation
• Knak Guide: How to use Handlebars Merge Language

Analytics and Reporting in Pardot

Analytics and reporting is a foundational feature of any marketing operations platform. It provides you with the insights needed to make data-driven optimizations to your campaigns. Pardot supports B2B analytics by tracking metrics such as website visitors, engagement with assets like landing pages and emails, and syncing all that information with your Salesforce instance.

Pardot campaigns serve as buckets where marketing assets for a specific campaign are grouped together. Prospects are associated with Pardot campaigns based on their touchpoints, which allows you to include them in analytics reports. Setting up campaigns in Pardot is straightforward and enables direct syncing with Salesforce campaigns. You can define entry requirements using tools like UTM parameters or specific interactions with assets. Pardot’s completion actions, such as Add to Salesforce Campaign, help track engagement and ensure seamless integration between Pardot and Salesforce.

This close synchronization enables you to map campaigns and see how your marketing efforts influence opportunities and revenue. Understanding and leveraging this mapping is critical for optimizing campaigns. It’s also a key component of attribution, allowing you to measure campaign costs and the opportunities generated for each campaign.

Pardot dashboards are essential for ensuring that everyone in your organization can access relevant insights from the system. When setting up these dashboards, it’s important to consider which attribution models best suit your needs. Each model has its strengths:

• First-touch attribution assigns 100% of the credit to the campaign that initially generated the prospect.
• Last-touch attribution credits the campaign responsible for the most recent marketing interaction.
• Custom multi-touch attribution uses Salesforce Campaign Influence to assign weighted credit across various touchpoints.

Resources

• Pardot Docs: Analytics for Account Engagement
• Pardot Docs: Multi-Touch Attribution Dashboard
• Pardot Docs: B2B Marketing Analytics
• Pardot Docs: Engagement History Dashboards

Pardot Professional Development and Certification

Mastering Pardot is a great decision for your career development. It’s an in-demand skill set, and the tool-specific knowledge you learn will directly help your career in your current organization. Much of the knowledge you pick up is also transferable to other platforms.

There are numerous ways to continue your education with Pardot. You can explore the Trailhead community for training and certifications. The Trailblazer community is another excellent resource where you can contribute and learn from others.

If you have the opportunity, attending user groups or office hours is a great way to deepen your understanding. User groups allow you to learn from your peers, connect with others in the industry, and pick up tips and tricks you may not find online.

Resources

• Pardot Training: Getting Started With Pardot: For Training
• Pardot Training: Prepare for your Pardot Specialist Exam
• Pardot Training: Marketing Cloud Administrator
• Pardot Training: Marketing Cloud Consultant