How to Create Responsive Landing Pages in Pardot – Without Code!

7 January 2019January 17, 2019Cloud on TapLeave a comment

As we enter 2019, customers are more and more likely to view your website from a mobile device than from a computer browser. That’s right: it’s time to start imagining your content in the palm of someone’s hand. This means it’s more important than ever to use responsive design so your site to renders well on any device — computer, tablet, phone, etc.

For a while, it’s been possible to create responsive landing pages in Pardot, but you needed developer-level knowledge of code. No longer!! Now you can create a responsive landing page in Pardot with just a few quick clicks – even if you’re not familiar with HTML or CSS.

I’m talking about the Layout Template feature that allows you to import a premade responsive template! This helpful secret has hiding in plain sight for months, but for some reason I can’t find any documentation about it. Let’s see how it’s done in 3 easy steps.

1. Create Layout Template

The first thing you’ll want to do is navigate to Marketing > Landing Pages > Layout Templates. Give your template a name, and remember that Layout Templates for landing pages and forms are all stored in the same place, so make your name as specific as possible for future reference. Choose a Folder and Tags if you want.

Next, scroll down to Import Layout. You can still import ‘From a URL’, which is handy if you want to use existing HTML from your website to create a frame for your landing page. However, this option requires coding knowledge, so we’ll skip past that.

Below that option, you’ll see several Responsive Templates to choose from! Choose one, then click Preview Responsive Template to get an idea of what your landing page will look like. Remember it’s responsive, so stretch and shrink the preview window to see how the page will react on different devices.

Once you’ve decided on a layout, click the blue Import Now button and click “OK” on the pop-up. You should see your responsive code populated by Pardot! Be sure to Save before leaving the page.

This code is editable of course, but you’ll be able to edit the content (without code!) in upcoming steps.

2. Create Landing Page

Now we’ll create the landing page! Once your layout template code is saved, go to Marketing > Landing Pages > New Landing Page. Fill out all the necessary fields. If you need guidance, check out Pardot’s helpful documentation.

On Step 3, Content Layout, choose My Layout Templates and find and select the layout template you just made. This will automatically move you to Step 4, where you can edit your new landing page. All you need to do is point and click! If you chose a form, you should see that populated on the landing page too.

When you’re happy with your landing page, move to Step 5 where you can confirm your Landing Page Details and, more importantly, click the button to Confirm and Save. If you miss this step, your landing page might not be saved, and your coworkers won’t be able to access the landing page for edits.

3. Go Live

There you have it! Once you save your landing page, you’ll go to the overview page where you can view all the details and access your landing page link. You can edit the landing page and layout template as much as you want, and when you’re ready, it’s time to go live. Share your landing page link far and wide. Consider offering exclusive gated content. Hopefully you can score some new leads!

Have you made a responsive landing page in Pardot? How was your experience? Let us know in the comments!

Interested in a Pardot or Salesforce onboarding so you can take full advantage of your CRM or marketing platform? Fill out the form below and we’ll be in touch.

Nurture in the New Year with Engagement Studio

18 December 2017December 20, 2018Cloud on Tap

By now, you probably know about Engagement Studio – Pardot’s latest tool to engage clients with your brand. Customers journey down a path customized just for them, with personalized messages along the way. Once the program is created, you don’t need to lift a finger! Your prospects will receive scheduled emails without the effort of individual sends.

The beautiful thing about engagement programs is that they’re actually a breeze to create! At Cloud on Tap, we like to tell our clients the hardest part about the process is creating the content. Remember in Pardot you’ll need to make Email Templates for anything automated.

Here are five tips to help you nurture your prospects in the New Year:

1. Copy your templates
Save time and keep your design consistent by copying your email templates. First, create a beautiful email template, then copy and edit it for the rest of the emails in the program. This way, you’ll save a lot of time and effort. Plus, you’ll get consistent branding and style your customers recognize.

2. Consider your logic
Tackling this step early on will make the rest of the process easy as pie. Ask yourself what you want to accomplish: Are you creating a re-engagement program? Want to welcome new customers? Maybe you want to introduce them to a new product or service.

There are all sorts of paths you can take with triggers, actions and rules. Or you could keep things simple. One of our Cloud on Tap engagement programs sends an email every week, regardless of the prospect. We love this uncomplicated program because our prospects are nurtured automatically. All we had to do was create the content!

3. Make multiple programs
Jumping off the last point, you might decide that it’s easier or more impactful to make several programs. For instance, let’s say you’re creating an upsell program. You could use a trigger to check if the prospect clicks a link in your email. The follow-up action might be to add that prospect to a list.

In Pardot, lists are directly tied to email sends and engagement programs. So adding someone to a list could get them started on another engagement program! This is a handy way to hop a prospect from one program to another, or have them in multiple programs at once.

4. Target your lists
Lists of course depend on the type of engagement program you’re creating. You can use static lists or dynamic lists, and don’t forget to designate suppression lists if there are prospects you don’t want to include.

It’s also a good idea to make sure all these prospects are opted in and up-to-date, so cleaning your database is a good idea before you start your program.

5. Test!
Last but certainly not least, test your program! This is an important step to ensure your logic is entered correctly. Head to the Test tab in the Engagement Studio builder and follow the prompts.

Get Started

Hopefully these tips will help you get started on your next marketing push. Engagement Studio is a wonderful way to stay top of mind with your clients.

Your program won’t begin until you click the “Start” button in the upper right corner. So get into Pardot and create your next lead nurturing solution!

Pardot Wave for B2B Marketing Webinar Guide

Pardot Wave for B2B Marketing [Webinar and Guide]

4 April 2017December 21, 2018Cloud on Tap

We’re back with more goodness from presenting for Pardot’s Advocate Hours- Pardot Wave for B2B Marketing webinar and guide. This goes much deeper than any demo you’ve seen!

Here’s a link to the webinar recording in case you missed it: Pardot Wave for B2B Marketing Webinar

Fill out the form below and we’ll send you the Pardot Wave for B2B Marketing Guide!

As with all of our training, we start by getting everyone on the same page with the basics (terminology, flow, functionality) and then we dive in with training in the application and real examples.

The webinar received 4.8/5 stars from Pardot clients using Wave for B2B Marketing!

“Very detailed walk through of the tool, best practices, etc. “

Pardot Form Styling [Webinar and Guide]

26 October 2016December 21, 2018Cloud on Tap

This month we had the opportunity to present a Pardot Form Styling webinar for Pardot’s Advocate Hours.

In case you missed it: Pardot Form Styling Webinar and Pardot Form Styling Guide

The webinar and guide will walk you through how to use HTML, CSS, and Javascript to style a Pardot form from scratch. The best part is- you don’t have to know code to do this! Seriously!

The webinar and guide will enable a beginner-expert to copy/paste the code like you’re a pro. 🙂

The webinar received 4.6/5 stars from Pardot clients! Here are some comments from the live attendees:

“Definitely, information that I can use. Thank you.”

“The presenter was awesome!”

“This was awesome. Super helpful. Having these CSS classes will really speed up development.”

Keep up with our Pardot and Salesforce magic:

Don’t Forget: People Buy From People

20 September 2016September 20, 2016Cloud on Tap

“People buy from people.”

I was first introduced to this concept at this year’s Salesforce Connections conference and haven’t stopped thinking about it since.

Of course it seems obvious when you think about it. Every transaction takes place between two people – but it’s common to dehumanize customers and brands, especially when all your interactions are online.

Somewhere along the way, we forgot one of the most important aspects of marketing: personality.

When Cliff Seal taught us at #CNX16 that nobody cares about our content, it was a HUGE wake-up call. And the perfect opportunity to focus on posts that offer utility for our clients, or anybody who uses Pardot.

At this point, our team was already underway with a huge project (actually inspired by Dreamforce!) and Cliff’s presentation motivated us to kick our gamification program into high gear! Now we’re the only Pardot partner to offer a self-guided training program like Ascent, and we’re so excited to fill the gap for a huge client need: training available 24/7.

We also took the advice literally and started injecting more personality into our emails and Tweets. Not only do we now have more unique content, but we also have more fun writing it.

As Cliff says, consider your online presence as a conversation. Remind potential prospects what makes your company special and don’t forget to have some fun! Break up the work-related monotony and share a funny story or quote – fun content now and then can make you more accessible and relatable.

What is different about you or your brand that nobody else has?

Maybe it’s your customized offerings or exceptional customer service. Perhaps your company has an excellent developer or is on the forefront of the latest technology. Whatever is your best asset – use this to promote and personalize your brand. And don’t forget to have fun!

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Email Marketing Data to Drive Your Next Campaign [Infographic]

30 August 2016August 30, 2016Cloud on Tap

Email Marketing Data? Data Driven Campaigns???

That sounds kind of daunting. Can’t we just keep on coming up with whatever fun subject lines we feel like that day and send when it’s best for us and rejoice that we got a few clicks?

Sure, but you really shouldn’t. Aligning your hard work with proven email marketing data will help you boost email open rates, click through rates, and ROI. We give you the data and advice to make it happen in our “Data to Drive Your Email Marketing Strategy” download.

“In God we trust; all others must bring data.”
– William Edwards Deming

Click here to download “Data to Drive Your Email Marketing Strategy” and begin aligning your efforts with proven expert advice!

If you are a Pardot user, the Email Reporting table will show you how your emails match up with these statistics very easily. Keep in mind that the size and familiarity of your list will affect your open and click rates.

Once you have a handle on how close your marketing efforts are to what is expected, you can begin implementing small changes to test and find the mix that works best for your company and prospects/leads.

We recommend using A/B testing for the majority of your emails (Pro and Ultimate Pardot) or split your lists into your own A/B lists (Standard Pardot). A/B Testing is a a great way to test out different subject lines, sending times, and senders. We like to have fun with our subject lines and make it a competition to see whose email wins!

“If we have data, let’s look at data. If all we have are opinions, let’s go with mine.”
– Jim Barksdale, former Netscape CEO

Don’t forget to download – “Data to Drive Your Email Marketing Strategy”

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#CampCloud Summer Playlist

12 August 2016August 12, 2016Cloud on Tap

Our Summer #CampCloud Campaign has come to an end and we feel like having a little fun on our way out so we created the #CampCloud Summer Playlist that you can listen to while you catch up on any posts you may have missed…

Turn up your #CampCloud Summer Playlist and make sure you didn’t miss any of the amazing content on the 3 main 101 topics we covered:

Don’t forget to get your #CampCloud Summer Playlist –

An hour of new and old songs to end Summer on a high and fun note. 🙂

I’m incredibly proud of the Cloud on Tap marketing team for all they did this summer. Still keeping up with our regular cycle of Pardot Onboarding and Support clients, social media, and launching Ascent, I challenged the team with an almost 1 post per day blog schedule. In some ways it’s content overload, but I truly can say it’s GOOD content. We cycled the schedule so no one had 2 difficult posts to write back to back and we all worked together to get each out on time. It was a great exercise in teamwork, writing skills, and expanding our Pardot Knowledge even more.

As Summer winds down, we begin to take on more clients and this frequency of posting will go way down. But don’t go! – We have some really exciting new projects in the works for this blog and I hope you take a moment to sign up below and not miss out.

Thank you for joining us at #CampCloud!

_____________________________________

Alison McConoughey is a Sr. Project Implementation Coordinator and Team Lead at Cloud on Tap. She has a special place in her heart for marketing automation, Charleston, and the oxford comma.

3 Reasons We LOVE Pardot Variable Tags

11 August 2016August 10, 2016Cloud on Tap

Using Pardot’s marketing automation can make your job so much easier. And it’s not just the obvious tools – there are other features right under your nose that can help make your content stronger and more personal, with hardly any effort on your part.

Today that feature is: PARDOT VARIABLE TAGS

Customers are more likely to respond to your messaging when your email is personalized. Inserting basic dynamic content (or variable tags) in an email template is a simple way to personalize your message to a specific customer. – Pardot KB

Why do we love Pardot Variable Tags? Let us count the reasons…

Create custom emails

Study after study shows that customers respond very well to personalized content – in some cases, it pushes open rates and click rates up over 50% higher! But right now, the vast majority of marketers aren’t using variable tags or any form of personalization. This is an opportunity for you to really stand out with custom greetings and information that your prospects will appreciate.

Shortcuts

Pardot Variable tags can be a handy way to save time, too. Pardot and CAN-SPAM laws require every email contain a way for your prospects to unsubscribe. Use %%unsubscribe%% and %%email_preference_center%% and the required links will autofill.

You can also save time with one email template for many users by entering a “User HTML Signature” that will populate a sign-off from the sender(s).

Subject lines

Most often, people sprinkle in Pardot Variable Tags throughout their email. If you really want to grab their attention, consider using them in the subject line! People love the surprise of seeing their own name in their inbox.

Bonus: You can also use Pardot Variable Tags inside of URLs. Read more about how to do this on the Pardot Knowledge Base.

For more tips (and memes) on Pardot and marketing automation, follow us on Twitter and Instagram!

Have questions about this article? Interested in Pardot onboarding? We’d love to help – call or send us an email anytime.

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5 Pardot Custom Redirect Use Cases

10 August 2016August 9, 2016Cloud on Tap

We tend to nerd-out a little when there’s a case to use a Pardot Custom Redirect.

You don’t want to go overboard creating them for every link, but occasionally creating a Pardot Custom Redirect comes in handy:

1. Banner Ads

Use a Pardot Custom Redirect to track your traffic from banner ads. Bonus: Custom Redirects can have completion actions run for Prospects who click on them- consider notifying their assigned user, sending a special email specific to the product/service they expressed interest in, or adding the Prospect to a Segmentation List.

2. Social Media

If you are like us and use other platforms beyond the Pardot social connectors (examples: Salesforce Success Community, Linkedin Groups, Instagram), you can gain better insight into the traffic from these platforms by creating a Pardot Custom Redirect for each link you share. Each Custom Redirect has its own bitly automatically created by Pardot.

3. Emails

I thought Pardot tracked link clicks in my emails?!?!?! No worries- they do! However, if you use the same URL multiple times in an email, the reporting is for how the URL performed as a whole, not on the individual link placements. Your emails should have a clear CTA (call to action) and often that CTA is to get a Prospect to click on one specific link (file, landing page, video, white paper, etc…). If you design the email with multiple link placements to the one CTA (buttons and hyperlinked text), then a Pardot Custom Redirect can help you report on which was clicked the most. These are very useful analytics for designing future emails.

4. Files

If you link to a file that is not hosted by you or to another 3rd party link, create a Pardot Custom Redirect for it. This allows you accurate reporting on the traffic to that link, as well as the ability to act on it (completion actions) within Pardot.

5. Offline Marketing

Business cards, direct mail, billboards, and flyers can seem far from our minds in the world of digital marketing, but they are still used by many businesses. Our Cloud on Tap business cards include a Pardot Custom Redirect to a form where you can sign up to see Pardot’s marketing automation in action. Bonus: If you setup your tracker domain in Pardot, custom redirects can be customized with a vanity url so it will include your company name and a simple description of the link.

Click here if you are interested in reading more about the benefits of using a Pardot Custom Redirect.

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4 Pardot Integrated Apps We Love

9 August 2016August 8, 2016Cloud on Tap

There are many Pardot Integrated Apps to choose from but these are our favorites.

Pardot Integrated Apps are similar to the native Pardot Connectors (i.e. Salesforce.com, Wistia, Google Analytics, Facebook) you already use, except these connect outside of Pardot.

Pardot Integrated Apps complete a thorough review process and must show that multiple clients are already successfully using Pardot and their app together. These apps are meant to make your life easier as a marketer, always focused on solving a problem not creating them!

Although there are many to choose from, these are our 4 favorite Pardot Integrated Apps:

1. Zapier

Zapier uses what they call “zaps” to connect multiple apps together. Easy to setup, you’ll be sharing data between all your apps with just a few clicks. The Zapier connection can be triggered when a new Prospect is created in Pardot and it can also create a new Prospect in Pardot. Popular zaps we recommend connect Pardot with Gravity Forms, Unbounce, Slack, Google Sheets, MailChimp, RSS, and SurveyMonkey.

2. iCapture

It’s easy to build Pardot forms to use at your trade shows, but sometimes they internet connection isn’t very reliable. In addition to iCapture’s ease of use on phones and tablets and ability to scan badges, it can also work offline- no internet required. Hallelujah! If you have a big show coming up, this Pardot Integrated App is a must.

3. SnapApp

From SnapApp’s website- “In 2014, DemandGen Report found that just 5% of buyers would provide detailed contact information in exchange for a white paper. […] 91% of buyers are looking for more visual and interactive content.” SnapApp is an easy to use platform providing the interactive content that buyers want. You can add SnapApp’s to Pardot emails and landing pages. Not sure if this is the real deal or just another thing for your to-do list? Consider their reported 30% click-through-rate and 45% form submission rate. That’s serious!

4. WordPress

Last on our list but first in our hearts. The WordPress plugin takes care of your Website Tracking (no coding skills required!) and makes adding a form and dynamic content to your pages as easy as it gets. This is our most often recommended Pardot Integrated App.

Not seeing an app that interests you? Checkout Pardot’s resource page for all integrated apps. If you are using one, we’d love to hear about it! Tweet us by clicking here.

We’re in our last couple weeks of #CampCloud and have a new post for you almost everyday! Sign up below so you don’t miss out-