Pardot review
Get top marketing automation tools with Pardot…period
You don’t have to be a marketing guru to know that marketing automation is one most sought-after features when it comes to email marketing. Automation allows you to reach more contacts faster and more dynamically throughout various stages of the customer development process. When it comes to selecting an email marketing service that offers industry-leading automation, you will be hard-pressed to find a better service than Pardot. As Salesforce’s B2B marketing automation solution, Pardot delivers simple email marketing plus a plethora of options to help you create a campaign that fits your marketing strategy. On the other hand, Pardot is very expensive, starting at $1,000 for month for the basic package, which allows you to create a send list of up to 10,000 contacts. If you are considering adding Pardot to your marketing strategy, take look at some of the great and not so great features below.
Pros
User-friendly dashboard—Dashboard is neat, organized, and easy to navigate. It’s similar to what you’d expect from a Salesforce product.
Analytics integrations—Depending upon which plan you purchase, Pardot includes Google AdWords, Salesforce, and custom integrations to help make your email marketing experience as expansive as possible.
Add-on functionality—Pardot offers analytics and engagement add-ons that give you increased insights into your data and productivity. Though dynamic and powerful, add-ons can be pricey (starting at $50).
Prospect tracking—Pardot lets you track interactions with contacts, so you can reshape your messaging and send lists to be more specific. You can add notes to contact profiles, see click through rates, means of contact, which emails are deleted, and assign contacts to others within your organization.
Email template—You can use a simple What You See Is What You Get (WYSIWYG) email template that allows you to copy and paste HTML, text, and images. You can also use one of the nearly 40 prebuilt templates or create your own.
Email preview—Once an email is created, it can be viewed for how it will look across all browsers and devices.
Automation—As mentioned earlier, Pardot has unparalleled automation. A campaign can be built and sent through several filters based on sequencing. You can add actions, triggers, or rules at virtually any step along the process then test them before they are deployed. You can even create your own automations. The automation capabilities here are seemingly endless. And best of all, they’re easy to use.
Social media integrations—Pardot makes it easy to send campaigns to various social media platforms in real time. You can even see user interactions with your posts such as who has been reading or sharing your messages.
Cons
Pricing—At $1,000 for the basic plan, Pardot is probably one of the most expensive services on the market. That said, it does include a host of special features such as lead nurturing and scoring, and lets you build landing pages and forms.
Mobile access—Pardot is not mobile accessible unless you are also using other Salesforce tools.
Conclusion
Pardot is one of the more expensive services, with a starting price of $1000, but it also has the most fully-functional automation tools on the market. So essentially, you are getting what you pay for. If you can afford it, Pardot will be a great tool in helping your email marketing strategy to flourish, but small businesses beware—you might be in over your head with this one, so stick to services that are not as grandiose. Also keep in mind that Pardot does not have mobile access unless you use other Salesforce solutions that include it if working on the go is important. Overall, great service. Worth a look— but only for larger organizations.
