Pardot

Pardot delivers on promises

Comments: Pardot has made it easy to understand how our marketing is working, know who is a hot lead versus a disengaged one, and to create content that is easy to share and delivers good ROI. It’s built in many safeguards to keep you from getting in trouble with spam rules and avoid sending emails multiple times.

Pros:

The software is great for staying in touch with prospects and clients. It makes it easy to set up emails, create content, measure and report on results, and build stronger relationships. It’s fun to use, once you understand how it works.

Cons:

There’s a long learning curve for adopting Pardot, and if I hadn’t had a consultant to hold my hand through the integration and kick off, I’d be struggling. I find Pardot and Salesforce training to be overly confusing and it’s really hard to find what you’re looking for. It’s a knowledge based system and continually adds more and more information, and it’s not always clear if the instructions apply to you or apply to a different level of service. Other than that I highly recommend it because of all the functionality and way it can dramatically improve your digital marketing.

Alternatives Considered: ActiveCampaign and Marketo Engage

Reasons for Choosing Pardot: Greater functionality and alignment with Salesforce

Switched From: ActiveCampaign

Reasons for Switching to Pardot: Alignment with Salesforce

Integrates well with Salesforce but lacks features of competitors

Pros:

The fact that it integrates natively with Salesforce is Pardot's best feature. The engagement studio automation product is great as well, making it really easy to create drip campaigns and other conditional flows.

Cons:

The email builder is 10 years behind competitor's builders. To get things to behave, you have to code emails in html. The WYSIWG builder is poor, but asset management of images and files is even worse. Competitors like MailChimp and ActiveCampaign have much better platforms for designing beautiful, responsive emails.

Powerful tool

Comments: I would say this is a very powerful tool because it's integrated with the CRM. One really useful tool is the Engagement Studio, you can create email flows and know their results.

Pros:

I like that the leads are syncronised automatically with salesforce including the source where the lead came from. When this leads is converted (he/she buys) we can know where it came from.

Cons:

The UX still needs to improve. The graphic design of the platform looks a little bit old but nothing too bad. After using it for a couple of months you get use to it and you can move fast in the platform.

Alternatives Considered: HubSpot Marketing Hub

Not the easiest to implement or maintain for startups, not worth the high cost

Comments: Overall, we didn't get the most use out of it mainly because its ease-of-use didn't turn out to be as advertised and sold. When you buy salesforce and pardot together, you're sold on the premise that it's 'one system', but at the end of the day they're still two separate systems that sync back and forth just like any other marketing automation tool. It just didn't turn out to be worth the heavy cost.

Pros:

Form handlers, automation/workflow builder, not much else.

Cons:

The need to pay extra for detailed add-ons, particularly a dedicated IP (a basic need for email marketing), is really annoying (only available in their higher tiers). We didn't like not being able to relate marketing email activity to einstein activity sync. User interface could use some work as well; just not there yet overall.

Alternatives Considered: HubSpot Marketing Hub

Reasons for Switching to Pardot: Because we were sold on the premise that Salesforce and Pardot are essentially one system, which would be easier for a small startup like us to implement and maintain.

Boosting a business with Pardot

Comments: Overall, I found Pardot great support for our business and it is helping us grow the leads with great marketing tools. Its algorithms are unique in capturing leads and working strategically with different businesses.

Pros:

I found Pardot a great utility and Platform for Campaign Managment, Email Marketing, Marketing, Marketing Analytics, Marketing Automation and Sales Force Automation. It has helped our business grow strategically and Marketing just went so easy.

Cons:

Pardot is quite expensive and really advance to manage.

Alternatives Considered: Keap and Mailchimp

Reasons for Switching to Pardot: I found Pardot to be more advanced than other platforms in terms of functionality, marketing campaign and automation tools.