If you’re already using Salesforce as an outstanding CRM and sales tool, there’s no reason not to take advantage of its marketing automation counterpart Pardot. The systems are built for bidirectional information syncing. You update a record in your CRM and your marketing system automatically updates. The same works in reverse. Your sales team and marketing team keep up to date and on the same page. Salesforce/Partdot integration gives both sales and marketing teams valuable insight into prospect activities, and increases the efficiency of the lead management process.
When we begin to talk about marketing automation, one of the first topics everyone emphasizes is ROI. Who doesn’t want to see their client base build as quickly as possible with the help of a system like Pardot? But while it’s important to talk about the revenue-generating potential of an automation tool (and we do in THIS article), equally important are the cost-savings benefits. It’s not as glamorous, but this may be where you see the most benefit when you first begin using an integrated Salesforce/Pardot system.
Pardot smooths out kinks in the sales pipeline that can cause leads to drop out of the sales process entirely. According to the Harvard Business Review, companies that reach out to potential customers within an hour of receiving queries are nearly 7 times as likely to have meaningful conversations with key decision-makers as firms that reach out even an hour later[1]. Pardot marketing automation in conjunction with Salesforce can help you turn those potential customers into actual clients that much faster and efficiently.
Many small businesses and non-profits have marketing “departments” consist of one or two staff members who are spread thin between several diverse systems. And let’s be honest, some of those “systems” are entirely made up of spreadsheets. Streamlining your marketing process with your sales process and getting all of the information in once place saves both time and resources. This may not decrease the number of lanes your marketing team has to swim in, but it will make it easier for your staff to find and work with the resources they need. E-mails can be more focuses and get out quicker. Social media can be updated on the spot. And direct marketing will be targeted on point. Maybe that marketing team will even be able to get to some of those dream project that have been put off with their freed-up time!
Marketers can empower their sales team colleagues by sharing information on contacts that have been actively engaging with marketing assets in real time. They can identify – among other things – when someone most recently clicked a marketing link, visited the company web site, or downloaded a file hosted in Pardot. A lead already engaging with marketing is more likely to be responsive to a sales call that one who hasn’t. This up to the minute knowledge can provide sales reps with a strategic head start and make their cold lead outreach strategy a little more structured and effective.
Pardot can also help you cut back on outsourced tasks and the time and expense that goes with them. No more waiting for designs to go back and forth with an outside designer before collateral goes out. With Pardot’s marketing automation’s WYSIWYG landing page and email editors, you can design and create marketing collateral in house and without any HTML or Adobe Illustrator knowledge! Your logos, in house photos and verbiage are all at the tips of your fingers.
Marketing automation can also handle much of the heavy lifting and time-consuming work associated with content distribution. Host your files in your automation tool, set up landing pages for prospects to download assets and submit their information, and use email to distribute content to targeted lists. A 1:1 Pardot email is a GREAT way for marketing teams to enable sales users to send personalized emails to their contacts that are on brand and trackable. Plus, they reduce the effort required by a sales rep to stay in touch with their clients and prospects while offering greater personalization than a list email.
When you consider the ROI and the back-end cost savings of Pardot there is really no reason not to be using it as part of your Salesforce sales strategy.
Need help with set up or training. We’re here to help you. Get in touch with us today to evaluate your needs and get started on your time and money saving journey to better automated marketing. We can help take your marketing to the Next Level.
[1] https://hbr.org/2011/03/the-short-life-of-online-sales-leads
