Why Should You Clean Out Your Pardot Account?
From our experience working with clients of different sizes and in different industries, we’ve learned that there are three reasons why a Pardot account needs to be kept tidy:
- Pardot has storage limits
- Coordinating information across teams
- It helps you attain your desired results
Pardot Has Storage Limits
While most Pardot features are unlimited, there are some really important features, such as automation rules and engagement programs, that have a fairly low limit. Understanding these limits and their usage is essential to helping you prioritize these features, determining what is necessary and what isn’t.
If you are in an administrative role, you can go to Admin > Settings > Usage & Limit, and see all of the features available in your Pardot account. Here you can track the usage and limits for each feature and use this information to determine what tools are important, and which ones don’t really matter for your company and team.
Coordinating Information Across Teams
Most of the people who use Pardot don’t work alone. You might work with a large group of people or even with multiple teams. Without organization, project management can be a disaster and with so many hands-on decks, diversification is essential. Each person has their own role and each team must achieve their own objectives.
Pardot is a powerful tool that can be used to help everyone achieve those goals. However, it can become a problem when your account is disorganized. For example, individuals from one team could be unaware of what features the members from another team are using. Team A might attempt to manage campaigns and prospects with a set of desired outcomes different from what Team B set objectives and goals for. Situations like these can cause serious disruptions in productivity and ultimately turn into a waste of time and money.
Teams, especially large ones, should communicate with each other and with all their team members to make sure everyone is on the same page. The only way to achieve that is through thorough organization systems, making sure everyone uses the same terminology and that there is cross-team communication. Unfortunately, a messy Pardot account might be the telltale sign that teams and team members are working in silos.
Attaining Desired Results
If you noticed that your ROI isn’t at the level you expected it to be, or if your marketing assets are not producing the results you intended, it could be due to the disorganization of your Pardot account.
If you don’t actually know what assets exist in your Pardot account and what features are being used, it will be difficult to understand how your marketing efforts are working towards a greater goal, and it will make it difficult to achieve the results you are looking for. Pardot has in-depth reporting tools, however, if you don’t interconnect the different things that you have, you won’t be able to visualize your growth nor measure your success. In other words, disorganization in your account leads to holes in your analytics, making your results suffer.
Why Should You Clean Out Your Pardot Account?
Step 1: Know What Exists in Your Account
Picture your Pardot as a closet. When organizing any type of closet, whether it’s full of clothes or full of generation tools, you should always start by taking inventory. You need to fully understand what exists in your account. What tools do you have access to? What information or files have been uploaded? What integrations have been used? Take a full inventory of what is inside your Pardot closet.
Step 2: Prioritize Your Tools
Now that you know exactly what exists in your account, you need to determine which of those items are essential and which are simply in the way. Take a close look at your tools like mailable database, automation rules, engagement programs, file storage, page actions, SEO keyword monitoring, competitor monitoring, and tracker domains. It’s a good idea to prioritize the tools that have limits. Those particular features require close attention and tend to be more urgent.
Step 3: Prioritize Your Tools
After prioritizing, you’ll be able to easily see which features and tools are working for you and which aren’t depending on your goals. When you’ve figured that out, you can delete or modify them to better serve you.
Pardot’s automation tools, for example, tend to overrun accounts. There are dozens of automation capabilities like automation rules, orientation rules, you have dynamic lists, you have completion actions, page actions, each with their own objective. Yet, if you are unsure of what any of these tools do, odds are they’re not working for you and simply adding to the clutter. You can completely do away with them, or take the time to understand the tool and modify it so that it helps you reach your goals.
Also, you want to make sure these tools are still relevant to your marketing efforts. Let’s say, for example, you enable specific automation tools for a particular webinar last year. That tool worked well for you at the time, but you haven’t used it since. If this is the case, it’s a good idea to delete that automation rule.
The same can be said for the interaction between your prospects and automation. Pardot has made it easy to determine if your prospects are still interacting with certain automation or assets. Simply click the drop-down menu corresponding to certain automation and see if it is inactive or active. The system automatically sets automation to inactive when your prospects have not interacted with it in two or more months. It’s also wise to check custom fields and if the source and destination are all still relevant.
*NOTE* Nothing in Pardot truly gets deleted. Anything you delete is moved to your recycle bin. So, if at any point you wish to retrieve any deleted automations, you can easily restore them from the bin.
Step 4: Implement Improvements
At Centrico Digital, we are constantly looking for ways to improve systems and functionality. We have seen major success with a number of clients thanks to the implementation of both small and large improvements.
One improvement, in particular, is the implementation of a coherent scoring and grading model. We encourage you to sit with your sales teams to determine what profiles you are looking for and which you have to nurture most.
Another small improvement you can make is saying no to uncategorized. When you create any asset in Pardot, you can categorize it in a folder. If you don’t, it will all go to “uncategorized”. In order to find things easily, it’s a great practice to always categorize. Sit down with the people that are managing the account and see what folder categories works for your organization.
Something as simple as setting dates for a particular project can go a long way in keeping your Pardot closet organized. This will be the fastest way to see when a tool is no longer relevant.
You can also take the time to properly name conventions. With this, you and your team will easily be able to find what you’re looking for.
Step 5: Conduct Regular Maintenance
Organizing your Pardot closet may have been the hard part, but the true test is whether or not you can keep it organized. The only way to ensure your Pardot account is functioning smoothly for you and your team is to have regular checkups using the above methods. Every so often (preferably quarterly), give your account a once over to keep everything in line. Be sure to train new employees on how to keep Pardot organized.
Making The Most Out of Your Pardot Account
Now that your Pardot account is tidy, you can focus on what really matters, getting the best ROI for your team. It’s easy to get lost in a sea of old tools, files, and automations and ultimately forget how Pardot can truly help you manage your sales and marketing strategies. That’s why it’s important to follow these five steps to organize your Pardot account. Not only will you see an increase in productivity, but you will also see a return of investment from the software itself. So, ask yourself, “Is keeping a messy Pardot account worth losing potential leads over?” If the answer is no, then take a moment to follow these simple steps and clean out your Pardot closet today.
