This is a curated list of awesomeness for the Pardot diehards attending DF18. If you’re NOT attending the Superbowl of Salesforce, I apologize in advance for the crippling FOMO you may feel if you continue reading.
After reviewing the full session list, these are my top 10, must see, camp outside the door, consider stampeding, Pardot agenda items.
1. Announcing the Pardot Lightning App
The elevator pitch:
“An in-depth look at Pardot’s new home in Lightning experience…with standardized navigation, Lightning becomes the one-stop shop for all your critical customer data. Join us for an introduction to the most deeply integrated Marketing Automation solution in the industry.”
Why I’m Pumped:
Pardot on Platform is something users and admins have DREAMED of… and this is an important step to bringing that vision into reality. And, as icing on the cake, this session features the amazingly talented Bailey Wilson.
2. Enterprise-Level Marketing Automation with Pardot
The Elevator Pitch:
“Join [Amazon] for an in-depth look at how Pardot supports Enterprise growth across multiple business units with our forthcoming Workspaces feature.”
Why I’m Pumped:
Ummm what? New feature alert. I want to hear more about Workspaces.
They tucked this little product teaser into the description, and left it out of the title — sneaky sneak.
3. Use Heroku, Pardot, & Amazon Redshift to Scale your Go-To-Market Operations
The Elevator Pitch:
“The goal of this session is to help individuals understand how Heroku products (Postgres and Connect) can be paired with other Salesforce products (Salesforce.com and Pardot) and Amazon Redshift… and enable the sales, marketing, and product teams to make a greater impact.”
Why I’m Pumped:
Sounds geeky as all get out. I’m there.
4. Better By Design: Using B2C Creative Strategies For Better B2B Marketing
The Elevator Pitch:
“You’ll learn how to harness the power of thoughtful B2C creative design to execute an exciting and engaging B2B campaign, and how Pardot can help you do it.”
Why I’m Pumped:
I really admire the agency that’s speaking at this session, Launch. They built the super slick interactive ROI calculators that Salesforce uses to promote the benefits of the platform. Very interested to hear their insights.
6. Underutilized Pardot Features
The Elevator Pitch:
“Go beyond your Pardot Quick Start and score big points with your Sales team with these underutilized features included with your Pardot org, including making the most of the seamless connection with Sales Cloud.”
Why I’m Pumped:
It’s easy get swept up in day-to-day priorities and forget to tap into some of the more… shall we say “obscure?” features of the platform. Stacey Cogswell is a super savvy user/admin/consultant and Salesforce MVP who will bring an awesome perspective to this topic.
7. Hands-on Workshop: Explore your Data with B2B Marketing Analytics
The Elevator Pitch:
“Dive deeper into the capabilities of the B2B Marketing Analytics. During this hands-on, expert-led session, you’ll learn about the datasets, dashboards, and lenses. This session is ideal for customers who have some experience with B2B Marketing Analytics.”
Why I’m Pumped:
The hands-on training sessions are consistently some of my faves sessions. They are extremely hard to get into — so bookmark it and show up early!
8. Data Transparency in the Age of Intelligent Marketing
The Elevator Pitch:
“Marketers have a… responsibility to create trusted relationships with customers and partners. We’ve seen several examples in the news of how not to do this… but what steps can marketers take to ensure you’re balancing personalized marketing campaigns with customer-centricity, governance, and compliance?”
Why I’m Pumped:
This is such a thorny topic, and very timely with Europe’s recent rollout of GDPR, along with California’s swift move to follow suit. How marketers responsibly collect, use, and disclose customer data is a debate that has only just begun.
9. What to Expect When You’re Expecting… Pardot
The Elevator Pitch:
“Did your organization just join the Pardot family? Not sure where to start to get the most out of marketing automation? This session will teach you how to standardize, systemize and analyze digital activities throughout your org by using Pardot.”
Why I’m Pumped:
I mean, this says it all:
9. One Team, One Dream: Align Sales and Marketing with Marketing Automation
The Elevator Pitch:
“Marketing thinks Sales isn’t following up on their leads, and Sales thinks Marketing’s lead gen strategy could stand improvement. Toss in widely different metrics, goals, and processes, and you have a recipe for a nearly unparalleled rivalry. But what if you could go from frenemies to… actual friends?”
Why I’m Pumped:
This is a pain I’ve felt so many times as a user/admin, and a challenge I now help my clients navigate in their organizations. It’s a topic that people keep talking about because it continues to be relevant.
10. Swipe Right: 3 Lessons Marketers Can Learn from Speed Dating
The Elevator Pitch:
“To avoid a breakup, you’ve got to woo your customers and prospects with some old-school dating advice: Just listen. What else can you learn about marketing from the Tinder approach? Join us as we illustrate how a bit of understanding can reignite the spark with current customers and entice future ones.”
Why I’m Pumped:
I hope someone says: “If you love Pardot so much, why don’t you marry it?” at least once.
In all seriousness though — B2B marketing is not all that different than building a long term relationship. And in a world of snap judgement and limited time, a solid and differentiated strategy is everything.
Come hang IRL at Dreamforce!
In addition to attending these awesome sessions, I’ll also be speaking at / supporting:
- Unleash Your Salesforce Superpowers to Support a Cause – Thursday @ 4:30 PM
- The Pardot Genius Bar – Throughout the week
- Marketing Birds of a Feather Roundtable – Tuesday @ 8-10 AM
- Marketing Birds of a Feather Roundtable for Financial Services – Thursday @ 3 PM
I’d also love to grab coffee (or a stronger beverage) with any blog readers… so if you’re going to be there, please ping me at [email protected]!
5 and 7 are already on my agenda! Love Cliff Seal. Going to have to check out all your other recommendations.
See you soon, Becka 🙂