Since the Salesforce acquisition of ExactTarget and Salesforce Account Engagement (Pardot) in June 2013 there has been little improvement to how Salesforce Account Engagement (Pardot) reads and uses a lot of your existing Salesforce data. Just because Salesforce Account Engagement (Pardot) is a tab in your Salesforce Sales Cloud it doesn’t mean all data is coming over to be used in marketing automation, you still have to manage a separate database.
At Macro, we are dedicated to help our clients succeed with B2B marketing. So it’s our duty to look up for their best interests. We work with Salesforce Account Engagement (Pardot) customers worldwide, so wanted to share how the the integration actually works.
I can't believe in so many years Salesforce did not improve the sync
Here is what you need to know: Salesforce Account Engagement (Pardot) syncs with Leads, Contacts, Accounts and Opportunities from your Salesforce Sales Cloud.
- Salesforce Account Engagement (Pardot) - Prospects, Accounts, Opportunities
- Salesforce - Leads, Contacts, Accounts, Opportunities
Here is what you need to be aware of
Salesforce Custom Fields need to be manually mapped
Why is this important?
You'll need to double check how data fields come over every-time you add another data field. This becomes too complicated for the average marketer who just needs to get a campaign out the door.
Here is a common use case: Let's say you focus on different verticals and you want to create a Vertical (vertical__c) picklist with the values Financial Services, Manufacturing and Software Development. You’ll need to do double the work in both systems and make sure they match.
Every time you need to create a new field in SFDC, you’ll need to do the exact same thing in Salesforce Account Engagement (Pardot) and make sure it matches. This is called mapping custom fields.
Salesforce Custom Fields values do not sync right away
Why is this important?
Lets say you want to email everyone who is in your Financial Services vertical. That means that first time you’ll have to manually export the field values from Salesforce and import into Salesforce Account Engagement (Pardot) to be able to use the values and email people accordingly. Alternatively you can also have a field value change in Salesforce which will trigger the value to come over. This requires a gain a manual process and its very prompt to human error.
Once you do the mapping, Salesforce Account Engagement (Pardot) will read the field but not the actually values of the data. Basically, it will know that you use a Vertical, but won’t know who is in what vertical until you sync the data.
Salesforce Account Engagement (Pardot) Campaigns vs Salesforce Campaigns Confusion
Same name, different stories. Salesforce Account Engagement (Pardot) Campaigns are different from Salesforce Campaigns. This has been a big confusion for a long time. Salesforce Account Engagement (Pardot) Campaigns are an original source for your leads generated by forms or list imports. If you are using Salesforce Campaigns you will have to have an extra step to add Campaign Members.
Why is this important?
As of September 2017, it can be quire confusing to wrap your head around these campaigns and it will make your reporting a bit challenging. Salesforce Campaigns can be used for multi-touch attribution, while a Salesforce Account Engagement (Pardot) Campaign can only be used for first-touch attribution.
This is something which might be solved with the upcoming releases announced at Dreamforce 2017,but is yet to be seen how it really works.
Salesforce Users are not also Salesforce Account Engagement (Pardot) users
Why is this important?
If you want to launch a personalized email campaign from the respective sales rep owner, you will have manage the ownership of your records separately in Salesforce Account Engagement (Pardot). This can cause a whole lot of trouble to keep everyone’s ownership consistent between the two and you’re very prompt to manual errors.
In Salesforce your Leads,Contacts and Accounts must have an owner, who is usually someone in sales working on that prospect or client. Salesforce Account Engagement (Pardot) is not able to recognize who owns that record.
Salesforce Account Engagement (Pardot) Lead-to-Account fields are not merged
Fields that map over from Lead to Contact at conversion are recognized as two different fields in Salesforce Account Engagement (Pardot). You need to check how they connect with Salesforce in two different places. Prospect and Account fields are managed differently in Salesforce Account Engagement (Pardot).
Why is this important?
You need to check one field in two different places. Let say you use the Vertical Field described above. If you want to build a Dynamic List to capture prospects who are in Financial Service, you will have to use both fields. This can be very easily over looked and you might be missing a lot of people in your campaign.
These are all on our wishlist for Salesforce and Salesforce Account Engagement (Pardot) integration improvements. Is it too much to ask? We look forward to your thoughts and experiences with Salesforce Account Engagement (Pardot) and Salesforce. Talk to us!