Conditional Completion actions are coming to Marketing Cloud Account Engagement (Pardot)! And they’re a game changer for adding complexity to completion actions on your marketing assets.
This has been a long awaited request in the IdeaExchange. So, we’re ecstatic to see it finally come to fruition.
Note: This feature is not currently available in production. Conditional Completion actions will be rolled out during the Summer ’22 release (May 21st – June 11th) and this blog will be updated as we get access to this feature. Stay tuned!
What are Marketing Cloud Account Engagement (Pardot) completion actions?
Pardot Completion Actions allow you to add follow up automations to most Pardot assets such as forms, landing pages, files, custom redirects, etc.
These actions trigger after someone interacts with the asset such as a click or form fill. Pardot Admins and Marketing Users can configure which actions they want Pardot to trigger after the fact.
Completion actions include:
- Add Tags
- Add To List
- Add to Salesforce Campaign
- Adjust Score
- Adjust Score For Scoring Category
- Assign Prospect via Salesforce Active Assignment Rule
- Assign To Queue
- Change prospect custom field value
- Change prospect default field value
- Create Salesforce task
- Increment prospect field value
- Notify assigned user
- Notify user
- Notify user via Twilio (phone)
- Register for webinar
- Remove from list
- Remove tags
- Send autoresponder email
- Set profile
- Set prospect’s first touch campaign
Currently, you can add as many of these as you see necessary. But keep in mind, they trigger on ALL Prospects that interact with the asset. Conditional completion actions are changing that.
As Pardot stands today, other automation features, such as Engagement Studios and Automation Rules, can provide ways to conditionally process prospects. However, these automations have limits, and using multiple assets per form fill, link click, etc., can bog down your system.
With Conditional Completion actions, you will be able to perform all the desired actions right from the asset setup page.
What are Pardot conditional completion actions?
Welcome conditional completion actions!
Conditional completion actions add complex logic to your existing or new completion actions on your Pardot assets.
Essentially, you are able to create logic similar to dynamic lists or automations rules (or Salesforce Reports) that follow this pattern:
Before: Upon engagement (click/form fill), then trigger Y
New: Upon engagement (click/form fill) look to see if X = Value; then trigger Y
You can still do regular completion actions that apply to ALL Prospects who engage with the asset in specific ways, but now we will be able to create conditional actions as well.
Below is an example of what you can expect to see in your account when the feature is released later this summer:
This feature will be available on Lightning list emails, forms, form handlers, files, custom redirects and page actions.
You can read more about it here and watch a quick demo, courtesy of Salesforce, here.
How are conditional completion actions different from normal completion actions?
In terms of functionality, there isn’t much of a difference between regular and conditional completion actions — they look at an action and then apply the necessary follow-up actions.
However, in terms of usage, conditional completion actions add complexity to the existing completion actions by allowing for criteria in addition to a click or form fill to decide if the action should be completed or not.
This allows marketers to create branches and manage different types of Prospects differently in Pardot.
Are there any limits or requirements to conditional completion actions?
Lucky for everyone, these actions will be available to everyone upon its release date.
We have identified the following limitations (that could change with further releases):
- No conditional actions based on list membership
- No conditional actions on classic email builder list emails (only available in the new Email Lightning Builder)
- Limit of up to 6 conditional groups per asset (plus your standard completion actions)
- Limit of up to 15 conditional group actions across all conditional groups per asset
We won’t have a concrete list of limits until this feature goes live, so stay tuned for updates!
What Pardot conditional completion use cases that I can look forward to?
First things first, this particular section will be updated post-release with additional information and screenshots. For now, we are basing these scenarios on existing completion action functionality. So, proceed with caution!
UTM-Based Lead Sources
Reporting on where your online website traffic is coming from is more important now than ever. For many organizations, being able to distinguish between sources of ads and beyond continues to be a hot topic.
At Sercante, we support our customer’s UTM tracking via custom hidden fields on their forms. Now with conditional completion actions, leveraging these UTM’s real-time to update Lead Source should be easier than ever!
Standard Lead Routing
Nothing magical here, aside from the fact that you can fit multiple territories/region/product assignment criteria into a single form. Previously, this would require multiple automations or a little support from Salesforce to route accordingly.
If you are interested in learning about how to manage Lead Routing in Pardot, check out my presentation from ParDreamin’!
Block Competitors
For those in industry segments with few players (we know everyone in the ocean), you may find it difficult to exclude competitors currently in Pardot (before they enter Pardot).
If you have a field that identifies your Prospects as a competitor (email or company for example) you can decide not to send them the email with your latest e-book or asset. This would save you time and effort from setting up individual automation or even using JavaScript.
Streamlined Campaign Management
During ParDreamin 2021, I discussed how you can streamline your asset delivery processes by creating custom fields and leveraging HML, Dynamic Content, and Snippets in the process. Although this is great to reduce the number of assets in the overall process of delivering content, you still need 1 automation rule per asset to update campaign membership.
By capturing the page title or asset name into a hidden field, you can then leverage this field to add the person to the correct Salesforce Campaign on each form — up to 6 branches (conditional groups).
This would reduce the number of forms you need to set up overall.
Multiple Link Click Options For List Emails
One of the most frustrating experiences currently is having an email with more than one CTA and having to pick between “any link” or “specific link” clicks. This feature would allow you to do this with up to 6 different links (we have not seen conditional actions on list emails yet).
This function would only be available in the Lightning Email Builder and not for the Classic Email Builder.
Extending The Power of Webinar Connectors
This directly speaks about WebEx and GoToWebinar products.
Many B2B organizations have webinar series where they would love for people to register for multiple webinars at the same time. As of today, you either had to use (3) automation rules and a custom field, or (3) separate forms as Pardot does not allow for multiple registrations (using Pardot forms).
An alternative to creating multiple automation rules is to use Javascript here, but the hope is that conditional completion actions provide a no-code alternative.
With this conditional completion actions feature, you can skip setting up the automation across the platform, thus requiring less work and a central location for it all!
Supercharge Your ABM Strategy
Leverage account types or build a new field called “Account Tier” to signal which accounts need the “white glove treatment.”
Using conditional completion actions, then create custom Slack notifications, User notifications, or User tasks immediately after these Prospects complete their forms.
In addition, you can also update a custom field such as “Prioritization” to increase their prioritization in Views in Salesforce. This would be an excellent companion to the Einstein Key Account Identification feature for those on Pardot’s Advance tier or higher.
Imagine the possibilities for conditional completion actions
As a consultant, I am very much looking forward to streamlining automations for my customers by leveraging conditional completion actions in their organizations in the near future.
If you need to strategize how to leverage this feature in your organization, or you just want to brainstorm ideas, contact us here!
