The possibilities for building automated campaigns in Pardot are virtually endless. So where do you start in your quest to build marketing and sales efficiency?
I’d suggest you begin with these four questions:
1. What processes does your team actually add value to?
There are some tasks your marketing and sales reps do better than anyone else, where they bring tremendous domain knowledge and expertise to the table. Other tasks…. not so much.
What is truly the highest and best use of your team’s time? How many minutes or hours are spent slogging away at things like:
- Filling in missing lead and account information
- Moving information from one system to another
- Manual lead assignment and deduplication of records
- Excel backflips to manage campaigns and account assignments
- Narrowing down call lists for reps
This is the “grunt work” of lead management – and the perfect place to explore automation and process improvement.
2. Where might I be re-inventing the wheel?
Templatize simple communications for your sales reps so that they don’t need to write and re-write the same basic email over and over.
Set up templates in Pardot so that with a couple of clicks they can send (and customize):
- First intro message
- Post-voicemail email
- Thanks for the meeting follow up
Ask your reps what would be useful here. They may even have some boilerplate copy of their own!
(Pssst – this is a common misconception, but you don’t even need the Engage add-on to get started with this. Templates for 1:1 email sends in Salesforce are available even in the base product.)
3. What else could you do if you DID have more time?
Are there sales and marketing tasks that SHOULD be completed, but just aren’t getting done? This is another fantastic opportunity to put marketing automation to work for you.
One example of this is following up with Closed Lost opportunities. Many reps will tell you that they would like to (or even plan to) go back to the lost account 3 months, 6 months, 12 months later to see how things are working out with the other vendor. But reality hits and it’s hard to remember to do this — and your reps will likely move their attention to hotter prospects. So automate it, baby!
Win back campaigns, door opener drips for lukewarm prospects you team probably won’t get to, triggered asks for referrals – these are great “if I had the time, I would” things where marketing automation can help uncover new opportunity.
4. What low-risk experiments can you run?
If you’re just getting started with Pardot and automation, don’t try to eat the whole elephant. Bite off small projects you can chew to learn the system and start generating ideas.
Could you partner with a junior rep to test out some campaign or industry-specific messaging? What about partnering with HR to build a drip program for onboarding new hires?
What Pardot project are you tackling next?
How have you leveraged marketing automation in your organization? What functionality are you eager to try out? Anything you’re getting stuck on? Let me know in the comments!
