Salesforce Marketing Cloud Account Engagement (formerly Pardot) is an excellent choice for Salesforce customers that are looking for B2B marketing automation tool. Not only is it tightly integrated with all Salesforce core objects, but Pardot’s has a reasonable price point also makes it accessible to many organizations and is appealing to new users also as an intuitive tool with a minimal learning curve.

While working as a Pardot Specialist/Consultant, I am always prepared to answer these questions about Pardot/MCAE. What I noticed was that the same questions were asked by clients, marketing, and IT professionals who were curious about Pardot/MCAE. That’s why I have decided all list down all the most frequently asked Pardot questions and with their proper answers, this blog is prepared by a certified professional who is Pardot certified with on-ground experience of end-to-end Pardot implementation. So let’s begin with a list of questions.

• What is Pardot and how does it work?

Pardot is a powerful marketing automation tool that enables marketers to identify prospective customers that are most likely to convert. And also enables communicating with prospects in the right way, at the right time. This Marketing automation aims to treat each prospect as an individual, as they make their way through getting familiar with your product or service, at their own pace using only one automation that works automatically as per the selected time interval.

• Can Pardot be used for B2C?

Before Salesforce revised the messaging, Pardot was known as a B2B marketing automation tool for many years. Pardot is most suited for businesses with “considered” sales cycles, which are frequently associated with B2B transactions, as mentioned in the prior response.

Yes, Pardot can be used for B2C marketing. If B2C marketers have a high-value product or service with a “considered” sales cycle then they will gain value. I have worked with B2C organizations that have used the Pardot tool successfully because they tick the criteria I have listed here.

• What is Pardot used for?

Depending on the requirements of the business, Pardot can be used for some or all of the following:

1. Email marketing – one-to-one or list emails to the particular selected list of prospects records, automated email journeys. Email automation can be based on specific actions, event triggers, and ‘wait’ periods. We can customize these all features as per our business requirements and their needs.
2. Forms: capture new data and creates new prospects, or enrich existing prospect records
3. Segmentation: multiple options are available to split our prospect database into different lists of audiences for more targeted marketing. All custom functionality is possible here.
4. Scoring: score of any prospect will depend on their engagement behavior. That will measure here as a value, using this value we can conclude how much our customer is interested in our business/ services.
5. Grading: grade of prospects is based on how closely their data aligns with our ideal customer profile.
6. Lead qualification: Pardot score and grade combined identify prospects and then the sales team should focus on that selected prospect records only.
7. Social media marketing: used to post to LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook, then we can track post engagement. If a prospect is known and tracked in your Pardot database, activity will appear on their Engagement History of Pardot.
8. Engagement History: is a compiled log of all activity prospects make across your online assets (website, landing pages, etc). All collected information will be displayed here.

• Is Pardot owned by Salesforce?

Yes now Pardot is owned by Salesforce, which acquired Pardot in 2013 as part of the $2.5B ExactTarget acquisition, Salesforce decided to retire all Pardot connectors to other CRMs, to double down on the Salesforce-Pardot connector. Pardot is part of Salesforce due to the acquisition and the Pardot Lightning App.

• How does Pardot work with Salesforce?

Pardot and Salesforce both work closely together to leverage all of the data the two platforms gather in real-time. Here is a specific example of real sync

Bidirectional data sync: A big thanks to the Salesforce-Pardot connector, Pardot data is synced to Salesforce and vice versa and two platforms exchange multiple types of data. In an organization’s setup, Pardot gives Salesforce new lead information and engagement data/reports, whereas Salesforce feeds Pardot with all that the sales teams are doing whether leads are qualified or disqualified, how opportunities are progressing, and also which products or services the prospect purchased. All related information will be synced between Pardot and Salesforce in real-time.

So, here is a list of all questions is finished and I hope all questions and their answers will find you helpful.

Also,you can add campaign members from the Campaign Members related list on the campaign