Overcoming the 3 Common Barriers to Successful Marketing Automation

1. LACK OF EFFECTIVE MARKETING AUTOMATION STRATEGY

Without an effective strategy, automating your marketing is almost impossible. 58% of the survey respondents from the Marketing Automation Trends for Success report, find this as their toughest barrier.

Whether you are already using marketing automation or not, rethinking your strategies is never a bad idea. Pardot created a Marketing Automation Success Plan Template that you can download and personalize to help map out your plan for success. If you need help setting this up, please visit our Salesforce Marketing Cloud page to learn more.

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4 Lead Nurturing Campaigns You Should Try Today

In our previous blog post we discussed the benefits of Lead Nurturing. In this article I will dive into 4 Lead Nurturing campaigns that you can try today. These 4 campaigns are allocated to specific stages in a customer’s lifecycle, from the welcome campaign to the customer retention campaign. 

Connecting

The Welcome Campaign

They say the first impression upon meeting someone is critical and this applies to marketing content as well. When someone fills out a form they usually are expecting something in return, more information on a product, email updates, or specific type of content. By converting these autoresponder emails into a lead nurturing campaign, the prospect will begin their journey through your sales cycle. Your initial autoresponder should inform the recipient of the conversion point, speak about the nurture campaign they are on, and confirm their subscription to your marketing material. After some time, start to supply them with high-level information regarding the information they signed up to receive. Keep your educational and interesting and always provide them with targeted content based upon the information they requested to receive.

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Five Reasons Why B2B Marketers Should be Taking Blogging Seriously

5 Reasons B2B Marketers should Blog

Blogging has become a crucial part of content marketing strategy. If you haven’t been regularly nurturing your relationship with prospects and customers with the help of a blog, you’ve been missing out! Recent industry surveys by The Content Marketing Institute estimate that 86% of B2B companies are currently blogging, along with 77% of B2C companies (source).

Blogging

So, why do you want to be with the majority on this?

1. More Leads

According to recent data, B2B businesses that blog achieve 67% more monthly leads than those that do not (source). Blog posts that can help solve customer pain points will naturally attract quality leads. Make sure your content is relevant to a problem that your company solves well, which leads me to reason #2…

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3 Must-Haves Before Implementing Pardot

Are you struggling with your Pardot implementation? I’ve completed hundreds of Pardot projects and I can say the biggest concern customers shared was preparation.

Here are the three things you actually need to be concerned with when it comes to your pardot implementation. 90% of the time, these are all you need to begin using the platform successfully:

  • Document Top Current Clients – Identify the criteria that your top clients meet to easily reveal future prospects with matching criteria, using Pardot’s Grading feature. Criteria can be Title, # of Employees, Annual Revenue, and more.
  • Organize Your Assets – Pardot’s Folders allows you to score prospects based upon a product, department, or even something else. This gives users insight into what content their prospects are interacting with.
  • Prepare Your Content – Why buy a Ferrari if you’re not going to fuel it with the best gas? Getting your content ready to bring into Pardot also allows you to review it and make any necessary updates.

With these three must-haves prepared and ready, you will be off to a strong start with your Ferrari,  Pardot system. Successful Pardot implementation is a lot easier than it looks. If you would like to learn more about Pardot, please visit our Salesforce page.

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5 Must-See Events at Dreamforce 2016

Dreamforce

1. Marc Benioff Speech “Become a Customer Trailblazer”

 

dreamforce

The talk everyone is waiting for at Dreamforce. Marc Benioff, CEO of Salesforce, and other industry giants come together to share how the most innovative companies are using amazing new technologies to engage and interact with customers.

TIME & LOCATION

Wednesday, October 5, 1:00 PM – 3:00 PM

Moscone North, Moscone North Hall D

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10 Ways to Increase Sales and Lead Generation

Lead generation is important to every business, but sometimes companies can get in a sales rut. We have compiled a list of the top 10 ways your company can supercharge your sales and increase lead generation!

1. Make Calls-to-Action Matter 

Place your CTA where your viewer won’t have to scroll to see it. Don’t let it be generic either, make it specific to what you are offering.

2. Make your Call-to-Action Stand Out with Images Rather than Text

This is a given, pictures are worth a thousand words (and are a thousand times less boring). Try using colors in the picture that contrast with the main colors on your site so that it doesn’t blend in.

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Action Required: Assign Pardot Permission Sets

Pardot Permission Sets Required


What’s going on

Pardot is releasing security updates as well as eliminating a small number of Salesforce API calls that were being counted for things such as the ability to view a Lead or Contact’s Pardot Activities section when not logged into Pardot. This update will automatically be pushed to your Salesforce org on Wednesday, October 26th, 2016.

What you need to do

Make sure that users who need to access or use Pardot data in Salesforce have the Pardot permission set assigned to them. It’s a quick and easy process to be completed by your Salesforce Admin. If you need help setting this up, please visit our Salesforce services page to learn more.

Permission Set pardot

What’s changing? 

Pardot is making security changes to the following Pardot functionality in Salesforce:

Want to receive updates when similar updates are being made? Fill out our form below to stay connected. If you would like to learn more about Pardot, please visit our Salesforce page.

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Sales and Marketing Automation…Let’s Work Together

You’ve heard it many times before and we’ll say it again now, Sales and Marketing need to be on the same page. Marketing automation makes the connection simple because both departments have a shared common database where marketing insight is provided to the Sales team. Thus, making it easier for them to coexist efficiently. This will then allow them focus on more important tasks, like prospect conversion, instead of each other. Sales isn’t worried about unqualified leads because the marketing automation system is only handing them off when they are qualified.

Tracking data through marketing automation has never been easier. With that data you can determine the strengths and weaknesses in your sales funnel, allowing you to make any necessary changes for the better.  You can also track team member efforts within the sales and marketing departments…(hello incentive to do better).

The data you’ve collected (email clicks, content downloads, website visits) gives you insight into what the prospect/customer is thinking and ultimately what interests them. Knowing what they like and dislike gives you the upper hand to customize everything to them, creating a superior experience. In most cases, a customers mind sees experience > price.

With that being said, marketing automation helps sales by bringing them only qualified prospects and marketing will be able to attract new prospects. Win-Win for both departments. If you would like to learn more about marketing automation, please visit our Salesforce page.

Better Experience = More Loyal Customers

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Pardot’s Shortcuts!

Taken from the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, a shortcut is considered ” a method or means of doing something more directly and quickly than and often not so thoroughly as by ordinary procedure.” Based upon that definition, why wouldn’t you use shortcuts? With Pardot shortcuts, you will be able to navigate through the tools a lot easier!

So let’s get to it.

In Pardot, hold down the Shift button and press the “?” key and the following window will pop up:pardot shortcuts

Memorize these and impress your fellow associates!

If you would like to learn more about Pardot, please visit our Salesforce page.

The Benefits of Lead Nurturing

Why Should I Nurture My Leads?

Lead nurturing requires thoughtful communications, not the copying and pasting of generic sales emails in attempt to receive a reply back. When a lead nurturing program is functional, your prospects are receiving targeted content based upon their actual activities and interests, which ultimately provides them with what they want to see. If a prospect has visited a specific product page of yours for about 5-10 minutes, why shouldn’t an email automatically be sent to that prospect with further information and a notification go out to a sales rep? 

The statistics

26% of today’s marketers receive a 10% – 20% greater response from their lead nurturing campaigns than those who use standardized email campaigns. On top of that, more than a quarter of marketers receive a 20% – 30% greater increase in responses using automatic lead nurturing campaigns in comparison to marketers who do not use a nurturing campaign. (Demand Gen Report, 2015)

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