You know you’re realllllly into Salesforce when you mourn that you “have to” go to Croatia and Austria on vacation and miss Dreamforce.
I’ve already warned my hubby that I will be streaming the keynotes live in the middle of the night European Central Time. He has accepted this compromise.
In the meantime, I’m watching in envy as event updates are posted to Twitter and the Success Community. For those of you who ARE planning to attend the annual bash, the Dreamforce Agenda Builder now live.
The Pardot line-up at Dreamforce
There are some gems in this line-up. If you’re going, I’d highly suggest checking out:
1. Amazon: How We Built the World’s Biggest Pardot Instance
Description:
How do you deploy governance in a Marketing Automation platform at a global Enterprise scale? Join Elliot Pearl-Sacks, Amazon Product Manager, as he talks through how Amazon Seller Services navigated complex business requirements, multiple business units, and detailed reporting needs while deploying Pardot in under three months.
Why I Dig It:
As your business grows, so does the complexity involved in your Pardot configuration. My main client at the moment is a Fortune 500 company with 30+ brands – so I’m navigating a similar challenge and am excited to hear how Amazon has tackled it.
2. Dream Team: Uniting Sales and Marketing with Salesforce and Pardot
Description:
Close the collaboration gap between sales and marketing, improve customer experience, and unify branding. Mizuho OSI united their sales and marketing teams with Pardot and Salesforce, optimizing trust and collaboration. Join us to learn how to drive higher qualified leads, improve the sales funnel, and deliver a streamlined and quicker customer journey from start to finish.
Why I Dig It:
Sales and marketing alignment is the elusive promise land most companies are still chasing. I love hearing real world, “in the trenches” perspectives on how teams have tried to solve this.
3. Managing Pardot as a Team of One
Description:
When you’re a team of one, it can feel like the fate of the universe rests on your shoulders. Enter Pardot, the marketer’s secret weapon for deploying campaigns at scale. Join us for tips and tricks that help you harness the power of Pardot and become a marketing superhero.
Why I Dig It:
The struggle is real for the lone admin – “marketing superhero” is a very accurate term to describe these folks! Teams of all sizes could probably benefit from this session, though. We all need ideas on how to do more with less, amirite?
4. Hands-on Training: Optimize Your Pardot and Salesforce Integration
Description:
Pardot’s Salesforce connector allows you to manage all of your disparate sales and marketing data within the Pardot instance. This connector ensures data passes between Pardot and Salesforce CRM so that marketing and sales data can be in sync, and allows you to create automations which make your life easier. During this hands-on, expert-led session, you’ll learn how to optimize this integration through CRM visible lists, user assignments, and custom object mapping. This session is ideal for those with a basic understanding of the relationship between Salesforce and Pardot.
Why I Dig It:
Book this one now!!! The Hands-on Training sessions (aka HOTs) are the BEST and they fill up super fast. Seriously, stop reading and go book this now.
5. Pardot + Salesforce = <3
Description:
Join us to get an inside view of how Pardot is fully integrating with Salesforce as Adam and Chrisitina give an in-depth overview of the latest Pardot has to offer. Featuring everything offered as part of the Edge pilot, which includes: a whole new way to navigate Pardot right from within Sales Cloud, a tightly integrated Campaigns experience like never before, Engagement History on all connected Campaigns, access to Engagement Programs like you’ve never seen, and an Email experience built on top of the Salesforce platform that will blow your mind.
Why I Dig It:
If you’ve read my blog before, you know I’m salivating over the Edge pilot. This sounds like it will be show and tell on steroids…
6. Managing Multiple Business Units in Pardot
Description:
Does your company have separate business units with distinct marketing paths and sales cycles? Join us for a session that covers how to tackle this scenario in Pardot! We’ll cover tips, tricks, and strategies for effective organization, segmentation, and automation by business unit.
Why I Dig It:
Scaling Pardot for the enterprise is not for the faint of heart. Governance, general organization, and security are critically important in this type of scenario – and I’d love to see more on how other companies are navigating this.
7. Outward Bound: Outbound Selling with Pardot and Salesforce
Description:
When initiating a successful outbound sales strategy, the man hours required can be overwhelming and the process unreliable – particularly when left up to the whims of each individual sales rep. Facing this obstacle, Covideo implemented an automated outbound sales strategy that allowed them to take back control of their pipeline and drive sales like never before. Join us as Covideo’s President and Co-founder, Jason Price, details how you can do the same by using their proven method.
Why I Dig It:
Pardot pairs oh-so-well with an inbound marketing strategy, but outbound sales is still the lionshare driver of revenue for most businesses. I think we’re going to see marketing increasingly taking ownership of the top of the sales funnel – so this session may cover something that will be part of all our job descriptions sooner rather than later.
What Are You Most Excited About?
Fortunately, the session recordings do get posted to YouTube every year. Post-Dreamforce I’m going to buy some extra buttery popcorn, a Diet Coke, and settle in with my larger-than-life-sized Astro doll to catch up on what I missed…
Are you headed to San Fran to soak up all things Salesforce, or watching from home too? What types of product announcements are you hoping for? Any sessions or networking opportunities at the top of your to do list?
Sound off in the comments!
