Last week was ParDreamin’ 2020, the first Pardot specific conference ever. The event brought together 3600+ members of the Pardot community from 65 countries for 4 days of content. Day 1 hosted five deep dive paid workshops led by Sercante experts. The free portion of the event took place on days 2 – 4 and comprised over 40 different types of sessions, including keynotes, panels, breakouts and (we believe) the first Pardot demo jam ever.
Community event
It has been a crazy year, but without its unique challenges ParDreamin’ may never have happened. We at Sercante were missing a sense of community and one of the places we often find it is at the Dreamin’ events.
We wanted to create a space for those connections and learnings again and end the year in a positive place. After all, it has been a transformative year for digital marketing and there’s always so much more to learn about Pardot.
Keynote highlights
One of the best things about ParDreamin’ was how much positivity the speakers brought.
In the opening keynote Mike Kostow, SVP and GM of Salesforce Pardot, spoke with Carrie Pena from BuildOn and Gail Moody-Byrd from Noodle.ai about dealing with multiple crises at once and confronting problems that were never considered before. Both highlighted how their companies are using Pardot as a problem solving tool to forge connections that they previously would have made in person and relying on it for sharing information in an efficient and engaging way. They also talked about how Pardot can help bridge the gap between development, sales, and marketing teams, and prevent those groups from working in silos.
Meeting your customers where they are
The importance of meeting your customer where they are was another big theme of ParDreamin’ and in the year 2020 we were reminded about the importance of bringing empathy to your marketing.
Jill Carpenter reminded us of this during the Marketing’s Role in Digital Transformation Panel when she said, “marketing is empathy for the consumer’s situation matched with whatever your company is offering.”
The panel members all talked about how the digital transformation offers new opportunities for marketers to expand the definition and role of marketing across the entire customer lifecycle.
2020 was also a lesson in the importance of breaking out of the mold. It’s very easy to rinse and repeat ideas in digital marketing, but it’s essential to try new things and not be afraid to fail.
Fireside chat with Salesforce team
Friday’s closing Keynote with Neha Shah, Director, Product Marketing at Salesforce and Meredith Brown, VP Product Management at Salesforce Pardot, discussed ABM and the Power of the platform and included a Fireside Chat with Adam Blitzer, EVP & GM, Salesforce Digital.
They all reflected on the things we’ve learned about digital marketing this year that will help us going forward. In Q1 of this year businesses were paralyzed and not taking any chances, and at first there was the concern that would continue into Q2 but the opposite actually ended up happening. Businesses began to realize the potential longevity of the pandemic situation and knew they had to act and act decisively.
The result was a huge amount of digital transformation crammed into a very small period of time. With no other way to get in touch with customers, companies had to amp up their digital presence and try new channels and techniques to foster connection.
Digital transformation in 2020
As we enter the final stages of the pandemic and look to 2021, it is obvious that while some things will return to normal, other significant changes will be enduring. The myth that people would be unproductive while working from home has been disproven and companies are much more accustomed to it now. Consumer patterns have changed forever which means digital marketing has changed forever as well. This year forced everyone to look at their marketing differently and forced digital transformation to center stage and we think this is just the beginning of our ParDreamin’ conversations.
Check out our most popular breakout sessions:
Benchmark your Pardot database health – Matt Lincoln
A hands-on session where we look at key health metrics of your Pardot database, why they matter and follow along click-by-click to see the performance of your own org.
Deliverability vs. Mailability – Nightclub Guide for Pardot Marketers – Lucy Mazalon
Email deliverability is a universal challenge, or concern at the very least, for all marketers, however, it can become mixed up with another measure: mailability. In this talk, Lucy shares her favorite analogy for explaining the differences between deliverability and mailability: the upscale nightclub.
Leads in Salesforce: And why you may be doing it wrong – Erick Mahle
This session goes over the proper definition for the Leads object in Salesforce, what it’s there for, and discusses how it aligns with Pardot and a Lead Nurturing Process (including Marketing Qualified Leads and Sales Qualified Leads).
11 Key Insights About the New Pardot Email Builder – Jen Kazin
What is the new Pardot Email Builder? How does it work? This session will teach you powerful and interesting tips that will give users a better experience.
How to Show Marketing’s Influence on Pipeline with Salesforce Campaigns – Ben LaMothe
This session gives an in depth look at campaign naming conventions, member status values, influence reporting in Pardot and Salesforce campaigns, campaign influence models in Salesforce, a demonstration of the Campaigns with Influenced Opportunities report type in Salesforce and a demonstration of how data can be used in a Salesforce dashboard effectively.
Designing Pardot and Salesforce solutions that track ROI off all your online channels – Kristina Alexandra
This session tackles designing Pardot and Salesforce solutions to make sure you are working as efficiently as possible.
We want to say a final huge thank you to our sponsors, we couldn’t have done it without them! A few of them shared their final thoughts on ParDreamin’:
From Salesforce Pardot:
From Marketing Chats to #wherespardragon to ParDreamin’ together, we are so grateful for our Pardot Community.
Special thank you to the ParDreamin’ community for helping raise funds for BuildOn to help build a school.
From FormAssembly
FormAssembly had a great time interacting with attendees at the ParDreamin’ event! There was an abundance of great sessions to learn from along with an interactive chat area to mingle with others in the field. And we can’t forget our personal favorite – the demo jam! Overall, this event was a great way to virtually connect.
From Workato
The Workato team had a great time meeting other Pardot practitioners and sharing how users can leverage Pardot and other Martech stack to achieve successful metrics. Creating valuable connections and sharing insights with others in this field, is the reason ParDreamin’ is a huge highlight for our team.
In fact, Workato aims to empower marketing professionals to make their lives easier with integrations and workflow automations when using Pardot and the rest of your tech stack.
To allow marketers to enjoy the holidays without facing a backlog of tasks, on December 16th join RevOps leaders as they discuss how they’ve automated manual tasks which helped them stay up to date and prepare themselves to fully enjoy their holidays!
Register to get the secrets on how RevOps leaders are automating their tasks for the holiday here:https://bit.ly/36Q1Zk5
From LeanData
ParDreamin’ reminded us that common to all B2B companies is the investment of an extraordinary amount of organizational resources – time, energy and money – into creating demand for products, solutions and services. However, in too many instances, go-to-market strategies to connect those buyers to revenue teams unravel into siloed efforts across Marketing, Sales, and Customer Success, leading to ineffective and inefficient processes, and a sub-optimal customer experience.
Winning in the space requires seamless coordination among all go-to-market functions, and it all starts with leads and the pipeline, the very lifeblood of all revenue operations teams. Holistic lead management strategies require end-to-end processes that include consistent data cleansing and unification, effective campaign execution, timely and accurate data routing, actionable insights and meaningful performance metrics. Fortunately for today’s go-to-market professionals, technology stacks and automated solutions empower revenue teams to deploy customer-centric, customer-first motions and, in turn, drive increased productivity, optimized conversion and reduced time-to-revenue.
Did you attend ParDreamin’ 2020? We want to hear from you! Please take 5 minutes to take our survey to help us improve and deliver even better events to you in the future.
Ready for more Pardot? Sercante is hosting Mini Bootcamp: Pardot Basics Workshop
- January 18, 2021: 1pm – 5pm ET (US, East Coast)
- February 1, 2021: 1pm – 5pm GMT (UK)
- February 15, 2021: 11am – 2pm PM AEDT (APAC)
Learn more at sercante.com/pardot-training/
