1-843-936-7251

Tag: Salesforce

Pardot Wave for B2B Marketing Webinar Guide

Pardot Wave for B2B Marketing [Webinar and Guide]

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.

 

Wave for B2B Marketing

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. “

Wave for B2B Marketing

Don’t Forget: People Buy From People

“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.

people buy from people

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.

people buy from people

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!

Be the first to see our latest posts:

#CampCloud Summer Playlist

#CampCloud Summer Playlist

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:

  1. Pardot

    1. Pardot 101: Pardot or Pardeux? A History of Pardot

    2. Is this a Pardot Campaign or Program?

    3. Difference Between a Pardot Campaign and a Pardot List

    4. Using Your Pardot Recycle Bin in Unexpected Ways

    5. Cloud on Tap Tip Tuesday

    6. Social Posting — How to Use Pardot’s New Social Media Tools

    7. Data Cleansing the Salesforce and Pardot Way – FREE Whitepaper

    8. 4 Pardot Integrated Apps We Love

    9. 5 Pardot Custom Redirect Use Cases

    10. 3 Reasons We LOVE Pardot Variable Tags

  2. Marketing Automation

    1. Marketing Automation 101

    2. How Marketing Automation Makes Your Company 24/7

  3. Gamification

    1. Gamification 101: What is it?

    2. Gamification 101: How Hands-On Learning Promotes Deeper Understanding

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. 🙂

#CampCloud Summer Playlist

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.

data cleansing

Data Cleaning the Salesforce and Pardot Way – FREE Whitepaper

You have Salesforce and you’re getting ready to adopt Pardot. Or, maybe you just need to keep your data organized in Salesforce alone. Either way, data cleansing is crucial to your sales success.

After all, Salesforce associates data cleaning with a 29% increase in sales opportunities!

What does bad/messy data look like? You may have duplicates that need to be merged, missing field data, and/or unverified (and potentially incorrect) data. Any of these issues can prove extremely damaging to your sales process, especially when you start syncing with marketing automation like Pardot, Marketo, or Hubspot.

Our resident Salesforce experts (we offer personalized data cleansing!) recommend completing a Salesforce audit before integrating marketing automation as well as once a year as a maintenance best practice. This ensures that your Salesforce instance is running smoothly, efficiently, and accurately for your sales team.

When cleaning your data, here are qualities to strive for*:

Accuracy

  • The data was recorded correctly

Completeness

  • All relevant data was recorded

Uniqueness

  • Entities are recorded once

Timeliness

  • The data is kept up to date

Consistency

  • The data agrees with itself

Some common data problems to look out for*:

Changes in data layout / data types

  • Integer becomes string, fields swap positions, etc

Changes in scale / format

  • Dollars vs. euros

Temporary reversion to defaults

  • Failure of a processing step

Missing and default values

  • Application programs do not handle null values well

Gaps in time series

  • Especially when records represent incremental changes

With all of the available services out there, choosing the appropriate one for your instance can be tricky, especially if you aren’t familiar with the services available.

That’s why we made a whitepaper of recommended services that we and our clients have used.

Get the free whitepaper today! Just fill out the form below.

*Exploratory Data Mining and Data Cleaning by Theodore Johnson

Cloud on Tap Tip Tuesday

It’s Tap Tip Tuesday!

If you follow us on Instagram then you probably know about #TapTipTuesday. If you’re not following us there, just go ahead and do it now!  And if you don’t know what Tap Tips are then you’re in luck because you’re about to learn!

We don’t want your experience with Cloud on Tap to end after your implementation. We want to be a resource for you to use as you continue navigating through the world of Salesforce and Pardot. With that in mind we created Tap Tips.

Tap Tips are quick videos that are posted to our Instagram every Tuesday.

Simple tricks and tips you may not have known that will help make your life a little easier.

Check out a few below and don’t forget to follow us on Instagram. And let us know if you have any tips that help you in Salesforce and/or Pardot.

 

Don’t forget to follow us on Instagram and subscribe to the blog below:

Pardot 101: Pardot or Pardeux? A History of Pardot

If you are a Pardot user, you’re probably privy to the Par-DOT/Par-deux joke. We can pick up on whether a client is from the North very quickly, based upon how they pronounce the marketing automation service’s name (they tend to say Pardeux).

Fun fact: Pardot’s name isn’t random. According to Pardot’s co-founder, David Cummings:

Pardot is the Latvian (not Latin!) verb meaning “to market” or “to sell.” I liked that it was easy to pronounce and spell, so I headed over to BustAName to see if it was unregistered, and, much to my surprise, it was available. I registered it immediately for $8 and the rest is history.

(source: davidcummings.org)

Here are some other key events in Pardot history:

  • December 2006: Bought the domain name Pardot.com for $8
  • March 2007 : Co-founders started working full-time on the business with the original model being a pay per click bid arbitrage platform to generate leads from potential technology buyers and then sell them to technology vendors (like LendingTree for technology leads)
  • May 2007: Pivoted into marketing automation software using most of the code already written for the original product (they were already 60% of the way to a minimum respectable product) and built the product focused on serving the needs of a 25 person software company
  • December 2007: Signed the first customer, via a partner introduction
  • April 2008: Raised prices from $65/user/month to $325/account/month to encourage more user adoption in the organization and to capture value based on other usage params (number and types of modules)
  • October 2008: Signed 100th customer and knew the business was going to be successful (roughly 1.5 years after starting)
  • January 2009: Added email marketing to the native product functionality after religiously staying away from it (previously would connect with third-party email marketing tools to do email but were too limited in functionality)
  • July 2009: Passed $1M in annual recurring revenue and decided it was time to raise venture capital to significantly accelerate growth (took 2.3 years to get to a $1M run rate)
  • March 2010: Raised prices to $1,000/account/month
  • April 2010: Atlanta Business Chronicle named Pardot the #1 fastest growing technology company in Metro Atlanta with a 42,000% growth rate
  • December 2010: Launched London office through a joint venture
  • December 2010: Passed $5M in annual recurring revenue
  • January 2012: Passed $10M in annual recurring revenue
  • August 2012: Inc. magazine named Pardot to the Inc. 500 as the 172nd fastest growing company in the United States
  • October 2012: ExactTarget acquired Pardot

(source: davidcummings.org)

After ExactTarget acquired Pardot in 2012, Salesforce was quick to scoop up ExactTarget in June of 2013 for $2.5 billion, with Marc Benioff tweeting:

Since acquisition, Salesforce has continued to improve upon Pardot’s features and offerings, including making the Pardot/Salesforce sync the fastest sync available and launching Pardot’s new Engagement Studio.

You can check out a feed of the latest (and previously added) features here.

We are excited to continue to see innovation from Pardot! Stay informed by subscribing to the blog:

Ascent Pardot Gamified ELearning

Announcing Ascent: Pardot Gamified E-Learning

Ascent: Pardot Gamified E-Learning is LIVE and available to all new and existing Cloud on Tap clients.

Learning marketing automation can be like climbing a mountain: overwhelming, discouraging and exhausting. Sometimes new users feel like they’ll never reach the summit. That’s why we created Ascent. It is a self-paced, E-Learning journey through Pardot.

It’s available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week-

Learn Pardot at your convenience.

79% of employees said that they would be more productive if their work was more game-like (Talent LMS)

During your ascent you will learn about:

  • Importing fields, Users, and Prospects
  • Technical Setup- DNS, Tracker Domain, and Website Tracking
  • Forms
  • Landing Pages
  • Email Templates
  • List Emails
  • Segmentation
  • Automation Rules
  • Drip Programs
  • Marketing Best Practices
  • Pardot Pro Tips

Gamified e-learning is the future and we are excited to be the first and only Pardot Partner to offer this to our clients. It’s a fun, effective way to learn all the different areas of Pardot. You will earn badges as you level up from anchor to the summit and your scores will compete with other onboarding teams to get onto our leader board.

To learn more about gaining access to Ascent, complete the form below:

 

5 Exciting Tools in Pardot’s New Engagement Studio That You Don’t Want To Miss

It’s finally here! Pardot has officially released the highly anticipated Engagement Studio.

They should have named it “B2B Marketer’s Dream Studio” … Engagement Studio is a sleek and all-encompassing way to build, visualize, test, and measure 1-to-1 buyer journeys.

Packed with new tools and features, it can be a lot to take in — however, we were a part of both the pilot and beta programs for Engagement Studio and have already helped multiple clients in the pilot stage, so we are ready to go and know our way around! Keep reading for a list of a few of our favorite new tools:

Specific Email Link Click

Pardot’s Drip Program builder allows you to specify whether a prospect clicked on a link in an email, but that’s where the functionality stopped — Engagement Studio is changing the game, allowing you to specify exactly which link the prospect has to have clicked in the email!

Engagement Studio

 

Rules

Pardot has brought together the powers of drip programs and automation rules! You can now set rules within Engagement Studio — the rules available are Assigned Salesforce Queue, Assigned User, Assignment Status, Grade, List, Pardot Campaign, Pardot Custom Field, Prospect Default Field, Prospect Email Status, Prospect Tag, Salesforce Campaign, Salesforce Campaign Status, Salesforce Status, and Score.

Engagement Studio

 

Email Preview

Ever been setting up a drip program and felt frustrated due to having many emails with similar names? Now you don’t have to remember exactly which email is which — you can simply click the photo icon next to the email template drop-down to get a full-screen preview of the email!

Engagement Studio

 

Salesforce Status

What if you only want prospects that are a specific type of record in Salesforce to continue through your lead nurturing track? No fear — you can now specify whether you want a prospect to be a lead, contact, or deleted in Salesforce!

salesforcestatusfinalES

 

Salesforce Campaign Status

Were prospects part of a Salesforce campaign? Did they respond to it? You can now target prospects based on Salesforce campaign activity!

Engagement Studio

 

That’s a wrap for now — however, subscribe to our blog for ongoing tips and tricks!

Engagement Studio training will be included in our Lite, Standard, and Ultimate Pardot Onboardings for new users. Current Pardot users can get help via our Pardot Tune-Ups (hourly rate) — sign up below if you want to get up and running with Engagement Studio (and/or Pardot) as soon as possible!

(Trying to figure out which Pardot Partner to go with? Check out: 9 Reasons Why You Should Choose Cloud on Tap for your Pardot Onboarding/Support)

 

9 Reasons Why You Should Choose Cloud on Tap for your Pardot Onboarding/Support

As a Pardot user, you have an array of options when it comes to your Pardot onboarding and ongoing support/content packages. There are different tiers of Pardot partnership and different offerings.

So, why choose Cloud on Tap for your Pardot onboarding or support?

Here are 9 reasons:

1. At Cloud on Tap, you get a personal, 1-on-1 relationship with your Pardot Project Coordinator. We strive to provide the best personalized support and onboardings and we get to know our clients and their needs. We are lucky enough to have many of our clients, who completed onboardings with us, come back for ongoing support/content work!

pardot onboarding

 

2. Salesforce and Pardot are all we do — they have our complete focus and passion. Unlike many other partners, Salesforce/Pardot is our bread and butter. We work in the two services all day every day, becoming more skilled by the minute.

pardot onboarding

 

3. That being said, we have specialized Salesforce and Pardot admins under one roof. Bringing on Pardot, but have a complex Salesforce setup? Because we have both kinds of experts under one roof, we can work as a team to get you set up and running smoothly as quickly as possible.

group

 

4. ASCENT! After hearing from clients that they could use some guided “homework” between calls, we developed gamified Pardot learning to go along with our Pardot onboarding offerings! Ascent is a fun way to do your Pardot homework, creating forms, landing pages, and emails on your own and competing with others for a spot on our leaderboard/prizes!

pardot onboarding

 

5. We actively participate in pilot and beta programs for Pardot’s latest features. Have you heard of Pardot’s upcoming Engagement Studio? We are very excited, especially after being a part of the pilot program, where we were able to test the features and make suggestions based on our clients’ wants and needs. We also are a part of the beta program! (safe harbor notice)

pardot onboarding

6. We volunteer in the community and offer discounted onboardings to nonprofits! We are proud to be a Salesforce/Pardot partner that also participates in philanthropy. We have volunteered with Habitat for Humanity, local wildlife preservation groups, and the Red Cross!

pardot onboarding

 

7. We have been around since the beginning. Our owners, Mike and Sikes, were a part of the first Pardot training!

pardot onboarding

8. We are always attending classes and events to build on our marketing/communication skills. We have enjoyed attending Salesforce Connections, Dreamforce, Rise of the Rest, and communication classes!

pardot onboarding
9. We are a lot of fun! Our company is full of interesting, fun-loving people — you can catch us having cornhole tournaments, shooting videos, going to the Coastal Carolina Fair, and doing other fun activities! We like to bring the same fun, exciting energy to our onboardings.

 

Whether you are new to Pardot or you’ve already been onboarded, let us know how we can help you with your Pardot instance: