You got Pardot Set up…Now What?
This is part 4 of 4 in our series on how to have a successful Pardot implementation. If you missed the first 3 posts you should read the 3 Things to do Before a Starting a Pardot Implementation, the First 4 Steps to Starting a Successful Pardot Implementation and the Final 5 Steps to Finish Your Pardot Implementation.
This also assumes that you were able to finish all the recommend steps in the 24 page Pardot implementation guide. If so, continue reading because you are ready to start using Pardot to automate your marketing!
Now that you are up and running it’s time to rev up that marketing automation engine with this checklist of 3 things to do after you implement Pardot:
1. List Imports and Clean Up
Have you collected thousands of email addresses from various sources and added them to your mailing list without properly verifying if they actually want to be subscribed to your list? If you send out an email to bunch of people that have never heard of your company you run the risk of being blacklisted by ISPs and spam filter systems.
You need to verify those people are actually interested in receiving email.
How can you fix this problem?
Send a Permission Pass email to rid your list of addresses that should not be on there. A permission pass is a one-time email you send to prospects on an out-of-date list. Recipients who click an opt-in link are added back to your list. You can use a permission pass one time per list.
Please note that you should never use a permission pass on a purchased list. If you’re sure you’ve got some purchased lists, you’ll need to run an external calling or emailing campaign on that list (outside of Pardot) to obtain the necessary permission to send marketing email. Once they’ve told you it’s okay, you are clear to start emailing those prospects through Pardot.
An alternative to sending a permission pass email is to use an email verification service to cleanse your database and tell you which emails are good/bad/unverified/duplicate. Neverbounce has a Salesforce Pardot integration that allows you to easily import your lists and syncs the validation results back to Salesforce Pardot.
2. Make Your Email Templates Responsive…and Test Them!!!
It really bugs me when I open an email marketing campaign on my phone and have to pinch and expand to see the text.
It probably bugs your customers and prospects too. As a result, they might not care to do business with you.
With over half of all email now opened on a mobile device, looking good on mobile is essential to delivering a quality message to your customers and subscribers.
A lot of people rely on their phones to check email. It’s important to keep this in mind and adopt responsive email design so that your message gets across clearly regardless of device type and screen size.
Maybe you think your business is different. You suspect that your clients and contacts are more likely to open an email on their desktop making responsive email design a low priority for you… Maybe you are right, but to make sure let’s check… You can easily see exactly how many people are opening your emails on mobile versus desktop within your Pardot Email Reports.
Whenever you are creating a new responsive email be sure to test your email before saving it as a template or sending the email to a list of people.
If you need help with assessing your current email template portfolio and designing responsive emails, Invado Solutions can help.
3. Gated Content and Autoresponders
Gated content requires visitors to submit a form to access resources like white papers. It’s a great way to convert visitors to prospects. You can gate Pardot-hosted content and content hosted elsewhere.
Upon successful completion of the form a prospect can be taken to a page to view/download the content. Or they can be shown a success/thank you message telling them to check their email with a link to download the content.
This extra step of having your prospect jump through another hoop to get your content might make them mad, but it will help you out in the long run.
Using gated content on forms, combined with autoresponders in the completion actions will help you increase your email open rates, reduce fake leads and prevent bad data from getting into your Pardot and Salesforce systems.
If someone fills out a form and gives you a fake email address, they will not be able to access the information.
If they really want the information they will give you a real email address, then immediately go to check their email, to download the content.
People that go through multiple steps to access your content indicates a higher level of engagement. Anyone that is that excited about reading your content is probably a good prospect that should either be passed on to sales or placed on a nurture campaign that continues to send them valuable content based on their previously indicated interest.
By now you have, hopefully, been able to do some of the steps we as Pardot Consultants recommend to our clients to get the up and running with Pardot.
If you tried to get thru the implementation guide but ended up skipping over a few, (or a lot), of the steps, don’t worry, we can help: Learn about our marketing automation and Pardot consulting services. If it looks like we are a good fit for what you need, you can contact us.
