Pardot Email Builder: How Knak Works With Pardot
Tania Blake
Director of Marketing
Knak builds Pardot emails outside the native builder and pushes them to Pardot in a single click, with brand modules, reviews, and approvals handled before the sync. Knak is the agentic production layer for enterprise marketing, and Pardot is one of the marketing automation platforms it produces for.
Build in Knak, send with Pardot
Pardot clients are nothing new at Knak, and Knak makes it easy for anyone, on the major marketing automation platforms, to create and send beautiful, on-brand emails quickly.
Salesforce Marketing Cloud Account Engagement (Pardot) is Salesforce's B2B marketing automation platform, and Salesforce describes Pardot as the legacy product name for the same product. Its close integration with Salesforce makes it an intuitive choice for SFDC clients.
Knak's module-based builder simplifies the build process for teams and individuals, keeps brand standards intact, and reduces the time needed to get campaigns out the door.
The great news here (in addition to all the time being saved) is that Knak is platform-agnostic, so whichever supported MAP you use, Knak makes building incredible emails a whole lot easier.
What should a third-party Pardot email builder support?
A third-party Pardot email builder should sync finished emails into Pardot without copying code between tools, support Pardot's personalization strings, generate the plain text version, work with your Pardot forms, and respect who is allowed to schedule sends. Those are the checks to run on any option, including Knak, against your own Pardot setup.
If you run one brand with a small team, Pardot's own builder may be enough; a separate production layer earns its place when several brands, many builders, or a formal review process share the work.
What to check | Why it matters in Pardot | How Knak handles it |
|---|---|---|
Sync to Pardot | Moving HTML between tools by hand invites errors | One-click push of the email HTML to Pardot folders and Content Files, with the subject line, from and reply-to values, and email type |
Personalization strings | Pardot personalizes with its PML and HML merge languages | PML and HML personalization strings work in Knak |
Plain text version | A plain text version is one more thing to build for every send | Knak generates the plain text and pushes it to Pardot automatically |
Pardot forms | Your Pardot forms should match the rest of your brand | Pull in your Pardot forms and style them in Knak |
Scheduling | Teams need control over who sends, and when | Schedule sends directly from Knak; access roles decide who on your team can view, access, and sync |
How does Knak work with Pardot?
Knak works with Pardot in four steps: brand standards are built into the modules, marketers build the email from those modules, reviewers comment and approve inside Knak, and the finished email syncs to Pardot in a single click, ready to send or schedule.
Brand
Brand guardrails are built into the modules, so no matter which department is building emails in Knak, brand standards (including fonts, colors, headers, footers, etc.) remain intact. This is ideal for organizations managing multiple brands, and it means that amazing, on-brand communications are no longer limited to the marketing department.
Build
Knak emails are built using brand-approved modules. The builder makes it easy for anyone to put the correct modules in place and edit as needed. Emails are built completely in Knak, so your builders don’t need to learn the Pardot platform to get campaigns to market. Plus, you can fully use dynamic content inside the brand-approved modules, so emails stay on-brand.
Collaborate
Knak’s editor replaces back-and-forth email chains: it allows users to establish a workflow, assign access roles, and collect feedback (from approvers and non-approvers) within the platform.
Approvals run inside Knak, so it’s easy to see where the email is in the process, and access controls mean you decide what can be viewed, accessed, and synced by your team.
Sync and send
Once emails are finished, Knak pushes them to Pardot in a single click, with the plain text version and send settings covered in the table above. If a send goes wrong, Knak's guide on how to troubleshoot Pardot emails covers what to check.
The process is a win-win for your team: builders don't need to learn the entire Pardot platform, brand guardrails hold across brands and departments, and campaigns get to market faster. Vanguard saw a 59% reduction in time to market with Knak.
The assets you create in Knak can also be used in many other sending platforms. Plus, it’s simple to move assets between MAPs, so if you move to Pardot from another platform or away from Pardot to something else, the emails, modules, and brand standards you’ve created will move with you. This is great news for anyone running Pardot and another MAP simultaneously while you ramp up one and dismantle the other. With Knak, you don't rebuild your emails for the new platform. If your team is new to the platform, start with how to learn Pardot.
We’d love to show you how Knak makes it easy for anyone to create incredible, on-brand Pardot emails quickly. Schedule a demo today, and see how Knak produces on-brand Pardot emails for your team.
Not ready to talk? See how the Knak Pardot integration works.
