A big thanks to John Follett and the team at Demand Metric for participating in our latest client testimonial video. Demand Metric, a management advisory firm, has had amazing success with Pardot. One tidbit they shared with us? Before marketing automation, 1 in 12 product demos would result in a sale. With Pardot, that number is now 1 in 3.
Our Segmentation Wizard is a great new tool that simplifies dynamic list building. It allows you to quickly and easily create predefined lists of prospects for targeted campaigns. The Segmentation Wizard runs much faster than automation rules and should become your go-to method for most list-building actions.
Unlike automation rules, which run continuously, segmentation rules allow you to generate a one-time list of prospects that is tailored to your exact specifications. Setting up segmentation rules is simple: Use data fields and list membership to create rules that define the new list’s membership and the desired actions, and then run the wizard to set it all in motion. Say you want to target only marketing executives located in New York City–the Segmentation Wizard does it in a flash. But what if you’re dealing with an even more complicated set of criteria? Rule groups allow you to base a rule on different combinations of multiple criteria, so creating complex rules with multiple parts is a snap. Read more about how to create segmentation rules here.
You can also add and remove prospects from these lists. The wizard shows you a preview of affected prospects before you finalize and save the list. It’s as easy as that!
We’ve already gotten rave reviews from customers who have tried out the Segmentation Wizard and are impressed with the speed and ease of use of this tool, as well as the added value it provides. Future releases will enable segmentation based on more dynamic categories such prospect activities, so that you can make lists based on who has viewed a landing page or filled out a form, for example.
We invite you to give it a try and see for yourself what kind of magic you can make with the Segmentation Wizard.
A great article by Christopher Wallace on Search Engine Land gave some tips for increasing your B2B conversions, a frequent challenge for marketers. For those of you that are using forms and landing pages to convert visitors into prospects, review these tips on making the most of your efforts:
Read the full article on Search Engine Land.
There are lots of different marketing automation solutions out there. How did our current clients decide to go with Pardot? What made our product stand out from the rest? Here’s why our customers think we’re exceptional:
Our customers are a smart bunch. They did their research, and they chose Pardot over other options because Pardot best fit their needs. But they also like us because we’re not quite like the other guys, and because we truly stand by our Brand Promise. This is what makes Pardot a one-of-a-kind choice among marketing automation solutions.
LeadDeck runs in the background and doesn’t interrupt your workday until there’s something new to report. All of this happens with virtually no effort from you, and you don’t even have to do a separate login!
More than anything else, the value of LeadDeck comes from the personalization of communication that it makes possible. Prospects appreciate prompt responses, and they are even more impressed when you personalize your interactions with them. It makes them feel special — like a potential valued customer, not just another sale. Let me give you an example: One of our own salesguys was testing out LeadDeck for himself when a pop-up alerted him that one of our current clients had done a search for “leaddeck.” Our salesguy immediately sent the just-released app to the client, who was extremely impressed. Lightning-fast responsiveness with relevant information is one of the keystones of building a successful relationship with future customers.
The B2B Lead Generation Blog brought to my attention some new data from MarketingSherpa that compares the effectiveness of natural search and paid search. The chart, a part of the 2009 B2B Marketing Benchmark Survey, shows both quality and quantity of leads for four different areas of search engine marketing: natural optimization, Google, other popular engines (Yahoo!, MSN, AOL, and Ask) and vertical search engines.
The results showed that marketers collect more leads overall from SEO than from any paid search tactic. More importantly, those taking the survey felt that the quality of leads from natural search was much higher than than paid search. In fact, natural search actually produced as many high-quality leads as all of the paid sources combined. This is great news for marketers, since, in theory, natural search comes at a lower cost (but requires a lot more elbow grease).
Another interesting, though not surprising, fact was that highly relevant ads and landing pages (as opposed to generic messaging) increased click-through and conversion rates.
Pardot reporting can help you determine the quality of leads coming from your paid and natural search efforts. If you’re looking to improve your lead generation through paid search, try revamping your ads and landing pages for a more targeted approach or experimenting with new keywords. On the natural search front, your options include optimizing your website and focusing on content creation through your corporate site as well as blogs, social media, news, and link building.
Check out this awesome client testimonial video we just got from Pardot customer IAG Consulting. A very special thanks to Keith Ellis, the star of the video (and apparently one of our biggest fans!), for putting together this glowing testimonial.
This video was produced by Pardot partner Flying Penguin.
Forms are your lifeline to your prospects. They’re valuable tools that let you collect crucial data so that, once qualified, you can funnel those prospects into the sales pipeline. Typically, prospects visit a website and can only look around so long before they’re confronted with the dreaded form requesting their information before they’re allowed to proceed. This is a make-or-break moment in that if the prospect doesn’t yet see enough value, s/he won’t be persuaded to divulge such details and will abandon the form (and probably your website, too).
Think about the last time this happened to you. You Google something and click on what looks like a promising link, only to encounter a daunting form asking for a whole lot of info after you’ve clicked through just a few pages on the site. Either the form is too long and tedious to bother filling out, or it asks for more information than you’re comfortable providing. “Why is it asking for my mother’s maiden name?!” you ask incredulously, promptly clicking back to try another search result. You make a quick calculation that the tradeoff (your mother’s maiden name in exchange for a view of the page you want) isn’t worth it, and you abandon the form and navigate away from that site, possibly forever.
You obviously don’t want the same outcome with visitors to your own site. You want them to come in and have a look around, be dazzled by what you have to offer, and gladly give up a few bits of personal data in exchange for the myriad of benefits your site so clearly provides. Don’t lose them at this critical juncture!
Remember that, just like you, your prospects are also prone to form abandonment. But you can help them work through their abandonment issues by designing simple, un-intimidating forms that they don’t mind filling out. A recent ReadWriteWeb article gives some helpful tips:
Show them what’s in it for them. Let ‘em have a look around before they’re asked to sign up. Lay out your value proposition — the What’s-in-it-for-me? that’s in the back of all of our heads as we check out new websites.
Take things one step at a time. Follow LinkedIn’s lead and let visitors fill out their profile in bits and pieces.
Minimize your request. Use tiered profile requests. Ask for the most crucial information first (name and email address), and collect other useful tidbits (company and job title, phone number, etc.) one by one at a later stage. Using the progressive profiling feature on your forms allows you to set up the tiers in advance so that each time a prospect returns, they will be asked the appropriate questions.
Don’t waste their time. Don’t make them repeat themselves, and don’t ask them for the same info more than once. Whenever possible, use time-savers like drop-downs and checkboxes that don’t require visitors to craft their own response. This also makes it easier for you to aggregate data and automate processes on the back end.
Sending HTML emails can be a gamble. Spam filters don’t like them, and unless they’re designed properly, they’re destined for your intended recipients’ Junk folder and may not ever get read. Don’t waste your time designing the greatest email ever until you’ve mastered the wealth of tips in David Greiner’s recent article, Rock Solid HTML Emails.
This article offers great tips on:
The overall takeaway is that the simpler you keep things, the better. Complicated HTML emails have a nasty habit of getting mangled by picky email clients. Better to keep things simple and streamlined so you don’t run into problems after sending. Follow these tips to make sure your HTML emails render properly before sending, and you’ll be headed down the road of marketing automation success!
A recent blog from marketing guru Seth Godin got me thinking about the concept of eating your own dog food. Dogfooding (as it is sometimes called) is when a company uses its own product internally, with the implication being that what’s good enough for the customer is good enough for the company. Originally the idea came from Alpo dog food commercials, in which spokesman Lorne Greene earnestly assured us that Alpo is so good, he feeds it to his own dogs. Since then, and one famous Microsoft memo later, the term has become common among software companies that feel it beneficial to use their own product internally.
Pardot uses our own product internally for the same basic reason our customers do: to enhance our Sales team’s efficiency and maximize ROI. Just as you do, we use Prospect Insight to identify visitors to our website, track prospect activity, and score and grade leads. Our Marketing team can then pass on the most qualified leads to our Sales team so that they concentrate their efforts accordingly, while Marketing can continue to nurture other promising prospects until they’re ready to be handed over to Sales. Prospect Insight’s real-time sales alerts help the Pardot Sales team stay constantly updated on new prospect activity, and our Marketing team uses it to manage and qualify tradeshow leads for targeted follow-up. It’s a great set of tools that suits all of our marketing automation needs.
But there are other reasons as to why we eat our own dog food here at Pardot. Using our own product:
