Analytics & Reporting

Are you embarking down the Pardot Business Unit (PBU) path with your org? There are a number of considerations when choosing if multiple business units are right for you. Once you make that decision, it’s a great next step to standardize what you can in preparation for the implementation. Standardization across your business units will make your life as a Pardot admin easier, both in implementation and in future maintenance across your business units. 

Already using business units? Use these recommendations to audit your current setup and work towards improving your standardization and org documentation. 

Benefits of standardizing your Pardot Business Units

These five standardization tips come from working with a variety of clients who wanted to see the following benefits: 

• Easy for users in multiple business units to switch between orgs and navigate a similar organization and performance setup
• Improve the ability for the Salesforce Administrator to manage related functionality among the business units with fields, record types, sync behaviors, and corresponding automations
• Consistency on training material and resources, as well as org documentation
• Reduce effort and costs associated with implementing multiple business units

Pardot highly recommends enlisting a Salesforce Consulting Partner when implementing multiple business units. Standardizing your business unit(s) is something you can get started on right away and will ensure your project moves smoothly, but it is not a good substitute for partner support with this complex project. 

Top five Pardot Business Unit Standardizations

Here are our top five favorite standardizations that we’ve guided clients through for successful multi-business unit implementations.

1. Document your field mappings 

In any Pardot implementation, you’ll need to map fields from Salesforce to Pardot. You should verify fields are consistent in name, type, and function among Pardot Prospects, Salesforce Leads, and Salesforce Contacts. Keeping those mappings synchronized ensures qualified prospects get created in Salesforce without sync errors and ensures no data is lost in the conversion process of a lead to an account and contact. 

Remember, fields in one PBU are not connected to fields in another PBU. The only way to make that connection is through Salesforce. If data from one PBU should be represented in another PBU, you’ll want to make sure that field is established in both PBUs and mapped to the same Salesforce field. Of course, you’ll want those fields’ type to be the same across all systems, too!

It’s also smart to track the sync behavior — for each field — and determine which system is the source of truth. When you set up your fields in Pardot, you’ll select this for each field. This sync behavior is critical to track and communicate to your users. 

How are you going to keep track of it all? On our team, the first thing we do is create a field mapping spreadsheet that tracks all the mapped fields, their types, the sync behavior, and what system is using which fields. 

A good field mapping spreadsheet includes: 

• Field Name and API Name
• Field Type
• Sync Behavior 
• Which PBUs utilize the field 
• Input Values
• Default vs. Custom 
• Notes on how the field is used

For admins, this document becomes invaluable to quickly reference what PBUs use which fields when updates need to be made or troubleshooting is needed. Your end users across PBUs can also use the map to understand what the field is for and how to use it, which establishes congruence across the PBUs.

2. Understand Marketing Data Sharing do’s and don’ts

Setting up Marketing Data Sharing is a simple task in reality, however, it often causes a slew of confusion and questioning once implemented. For your implementation, you’ll need to select or create one field to manage MDS across all BUs. That field should only be used for this purpose. When you work on this strategy, consider the following:

• Using a single-select picklist field if the Lead/Contact will only ever exist in 1 PBU
• Using checkboxes for each PBU if the Lead/Contact will be in more than 1 PBU
• Setting the field as read-only
• Hiding the field for end users 
• Activating an automation to maintain the field value on new records (i.e. Flow)
• Ensure your Pardot connector user (or B2BMA Integration User) has visibility to the MDS field 

3. Enable “Manage Users with Salesforce”

This feature is not yet a requirement in orgs, but if you’re setting out to implement PBUs, we suggest working this into your implementation project. User Sync connects your Salesforce Profiles to Pardot Roles so it’s easier to manage who gets access to Pardot, which business unit they get access to, and which Pardot Role they are assigned. This puts the management of users in Salesforce’s hands, which means you’ll also need to work with your Salesforce admin in its implementation. 

Any time you wish to add new users to a PBU, you’ll manage that in Salesforce instead of setting up their individual user record in Pardot. With the “Manage Users in Salesforce” functionality, it’s easy for an admin to add users directly to a business unit based on either their user record, their role, or their public group association. 

You’ll control the profile to role mappings in Pardot. Remember, one Salesforce Profile can only map to one Pardot Role. If you have custom roles in your Pardot org, you’ll want to do your best to standardize these across PBUs as well so there’s no confusion in access.

This tends to be a tricky thing to catch on to, but once enabled, the long-term maintenance becomes much easier and more in line with regular user activation processes. 

4. Agree on folder structure & naming conventions — bonus points for campaign hierarchies!

Setting an org-wide default for naming conventions and folder structure is an amazing priority to set for your team. When implemented well, we’ve seen clients have a much easier time supporting their users and maintaining organization in the long term. 

Especially since features like connected campaigns sync back to Salesforce, it is critical to have consistent naming conventions on key records like: campaigns, folders, templates, automation rules, lists, and forms. 

One thing to include in your naming convention? The Pardot Business Unit it belongs to. That way, in a glance, you can see what assets are associated with each PBU. This will be even more important with the coming of the new drag-and-drop landing page builder. 

We’ve seen massive enterprise clients with 25+ brands be able to standardize folder structure and conventions, so we challenge you to try as well as part of your implementation.

Nothing is worse than logging in to different PBUs of the same org and seeing polar opposite naming conventions, hierarchies and foldering. We’ve also seen this standardization support internal folder and naming convention changes that better align teams overall. 

Looking for naming convention tips? This is my favorite blog post on it.

5. Email and landing page templates

It’s important to remember templates are unique to each business unit. That is, they can’t be shared across PBUs. However, with the new Lightning email experience, you can share templates built there. 

This functionality is relatively new, yet it may be worth considering if this functionality is right for your project. If so, there is additional setup to include in your implementation to work through the sharing and visibility requirements.

Standardization ensures an efficient Pardot Business Unit

Following these five recommendations is a great start to ensuring your Pardot Business Unit implementation is efficient and well-documented. Taking the time to standardize relieves a lot of confusion throughout the project and in the long-term maintenance of your org.

Reach out to Sercante for guidance with your Pardot Business Units, or tell us what standardization tactic you’ll use first in the comments section.

Integrating Pardot with Zoom webinars allows you to not only collect prospect activity in real time, but also track attendance, handle communications, and send sales new leads quickly and easily. Using the Zoom-native Pardot App simplifies sharing data between these two systems by allowing you to capture Zoom webinar registrants, attendees, and absentees within Pardot lists. 

In this post we’ll cover the pros and cons of this integration as well as walk you through the setup process for a webinar. 

At a high level, to integrate Zoom and Pardot you will need to:

1. Install and set up the Pardot App from the Zoom App Marketplace.
2. (Optional) Configure custom Zoom registration fields to go to Pardot.
3. Start creating Zoom webinars.
4. Prepare your email notifications.

Considerations for using the Pardot app from Zoom App Marketplace

Before we dig in, there are a few things to consider when using this native integration:

• The integration works best when using the Zoom registration form.
  • There is an option to use a Zoom Post URL (similar to how we think about Pardot Form Handlers). However, this option relies on the Thank You page of the Pardot Form having an additional hidden form that changes per webinar. This hidden form must be completed and requires JavaScript for a behind-the-scenes submission. That makes this option prone to human error and/or browser issues. 
• Both email solutions leave something to be desired. You can choose between:
  • Emails styled in Zoom with prospect-specific URLs to join the webinar. With this option you’ll lose out on Pardot tracking and personalization capabilities.
  • Your beautiful Pardot email templates with all the benefits of Pardot data, tracking, and personalization, but no Zoom webinar details or prospect-specific URLs to join the webinar. 
• This process will not connect prospects with the associated Salesforce campaign. You’ll need additional automations if that’s part of your strategy. 
• Each webinar requires its own setup and configuration. These take between 1-3 hours each, depending on how granular you get with automations. As a result, this integration is better suited for companies that have a low volume of webinars.
• There is no mechanism to pull in questions and answers from webinar polls.

Install and set up the Zoom Integration App 

1. Navigate to the Pardot App on the Zoom App Marketplace and sign into your Zoom account. 
2. Select “Install” from the top right of the Pardot App listing page.
3. Once installed, you’ll see a prompt to enter your Pardot credentials. If you are not redirected to this screen, click “Manage” from the left-side navigation, scroll down, and click “Configure”). Select “Use Salesforce SSO.”
   
   
4. Next, install a very tiny managed package provided by Zoom. This package creates a connected app to allow Zoom to connect to your org. Click “Install Package” and install this for Admins only.

5. While the package is installing, create a Salesforce and Pardot user for your Zoom integration. Having one user per integration helps in the event that you need to troubleshoot your Pardot org and/or integrations. Once the user is set up, log in as this user to authorize and approve the app.  
6. Next, provide Zoom with the Pardot Business Unit ID. You can find the Pardot Business Unit ID by navigating to Salesforce Setup > Pardot Account Setup (you can access detailed instructions here).
   
   
7. Select “Save”

Zoom and Pardot are now connected, and they are ready to work together!

(Optional) Configure custom Zoom registration fields sync to Pardot

Zoom automatically passes most of the common fields directly into Pardot. This includes: 

• Email
• First Name
• Last Name
• City
• State/Province
• Zip/Postal Code
• Country
• Phone
• Job Title
• Organization
• Industry
• Questions & Comments
• Employees

You can also create new fields in Pardot to sync Purchasing Time Frame and Role in Purchase Process from Zoom. 

Depending on what information you are looking to capture in Pardot, you may decide you want to have Zoom pass more fields into the prospect record. A good example of a field you may wish to connect is “Join URL.” This field is a prospect-specific URL that will allow the prospect to join the webinar. 

To add this field, simply:

1. Navigate to Pardot Settings > Object and Field Configuration > Prospect Fields. Select “+Add Custom Field.”
2. Complete the required info and select “Create Custom Field.”
3. Once created, go back to the Pardot App in the Zoom Marketplace and select the “Custom Field Mappings” tab.
4. Map the Zoom Registration Field “webinar_join_link” to the Pardot Custom Field that you created. Click “Add.”

Your new custom field is now connected. Future registration captured by Zoom will pass the Zoom Webinar Join URL to your Pardot prospects. But please note, the prospect record will only have values from the latest registration.

Start creating Zoom webinars

You will need to configure the Pardot integration for every webinar you create in Zoom. 

1. First, create three static lists in Pardot so Zoom knows where to send the data. You will need a:
   • Registration List
   • Attendee List
   • Absentee List

Make sure you use naming conventions so these lists are easy to find in Zoom and any Pardot automations. 

2. Next, create or locate the webinar in Zoom. Select the webinar name to view details. 
3. Select the “More” tab and then select “Configure” within the Integration section.
   
   
4. Provide Zoom with the static lists you created in Pardot. All three lists are required.
   
   
5. Click Save

Now your lists will be kept current with the right prospects!

Prepare your Zoom webinar email notifications

Getting prospects to register for a webinar is only half the battle. Now we need to get them to attend! Registration and reminder emails are key here, and getting the right message delivered at the right time will make all the difference.

Both Zoom and Pardot can be used to send these emails, each having their own considerations.

Considerations for using Zoom email notifications

Zoom email settings can be configured at a Zoom Account level (i.e. for your entire company) and at a webinar level. You can customize email templates only at the Account level, and you can’t have webinar-specific templates.

• Registration emails can include the prospect-specific Join URL and are sent immediately after registration.
• Reminder emails can include the prospect-specific Join URL and can be sent 1 hour, 1 day, and/or 1 week prior to the webinar.
• Follow-up emails can be sent 1-7 days after the webinar ends.

Considerations for using Pardot email notifications

With Pardot, create an Engagement Studio program or Automation Rules to automatically send out your registration, reminder, “thank you for attending” and “Sorry we missed you” emails. These automations should look for Prospect that join the webinar’s three static lists.

• If you configured your integration to send the Zoom Webinar Join URL to Pardot, this value can be included in registration emails sent from Pardot. 
• Reminder emails can also include the Zoom Webinar Join URL, however if the prospect registered for multiple webinars in close proximity, the Zoom Webinar Join URL on the Prospect’s record may not match the webinar you are reminding the prospect about!
• Follow-up emails can be sent whenever you like. You can even choose to send a different email template to those who register and attend versus those who register and are absent.

Try the Sercante Connector for Zoom Webinars and Pardot

As mentioned above, if you have a low volume of webinars, this process may not be an issue, especially since the integration is the low-low price of free. However, if you’re hosting one webinar per week (or more), then this process is pretty daunting. 

If you need to scale up your Zoom-Pardot integration, check out the Sercante Connector for Zoom Webinars and Pardot. 

What other tools or webinar platforms are you looking to integrate with Pardot? Tell us in the comments!