We all know constant changes are inevitable in the realm of marketing technology. So, having a pulse on what’s coming and what we know to be true is essential.
ICYMI – Sercante Founder and CEO Andrea Tarrell recently joined the UpperRight team on the NextThingNow podcast to share her thoughts on the future of MarTech and the next big things coming to the Salesforce marketing community.
Here’s a quick preview of the podcast episode.
Words of Wisdom from Special Guest Andrea Tarrell
We all know constant changes are inevitable in the realm of marketing technology. So, having a pulse on what’s coming and what we know to be true is essential.
In this episode of the NextThingNow podcast, you’ll learn what the future looks like for marketers on the Salesforce platform from Andrea’s perspective.
With the pandemic in the rearview mirror and big Salesforce Marketing Cloud platform changes on the horizon, Andrea covers the major themes she’s following to stay ahead of the curve. She also talks about her career progression, how Sercante came to be, and what’s in store for Sercante clients and friends in the coming months.
The MarTech landscape is complicated. NextThingNow podcast aims to demystify the craziness by talking to experts from across the ecosystem.
Hosts and co-founders of UpperRight Adam Levelle and Alan Schulman ask questions that go beyond stock answers to real solutions to benefit listeners who work in the marketing technology space.
Adam LavelleAlan Schulman
Listen to the episode and tell us what you think
Go give it a listen while you churn out your marketing magic. And then tell us about your greatest takeaway from the podcast episode in the comments section below.
Your Marketing Automation Platform (MAP) doesn’t exist in a vacuum. And neither do we.
The Spot for Pardot is following a natural evolution we’re seeing in the marketing technology industry. As demand for integrations with MAPs increase and Marketing Operations Professionals (MOPs) are finally finding voices among the big players, we’ve shifted our focus to the MarTech stack as a whole.
We’re still The Spot for Pardot. But now we’re so much more.
Moving forward, you’ll find community resources for ALL marketers who use the Salesforce platform. The ones who use Pardot. Or Marketing Cloud. Or both. Or some other MAP they’re integrating with Sales Cloud.
We’ll share what we know about using marketing technology and the Salesforce platform together.
A new focus for “The Spot” (and a new name)
It started as a personal blog sharing quick tips and solutions from one Pardot user. Then others joined to share their knowledge. And more readers followed. Now it’s a community hub for marketers on Salesforce who work together to reach their goals.
Here’s a message from the original The Spot blogger, Andrea Tarrell, to share how we got here.
A message from Andrea, OG blogger at The Spot
I am thrilled to announce a fully revamped, reimagined, relaunch of “The Spot.” Shout out to the amazing marketing team at Sercante — especially Sarah, Ambre, and Christina — for bringing this to life.
The new site looks infinitely better than the old WordPress site I hacked together in 2017.
But it’s much more than a face lift. The content, authors, categorization, and overall focus are evolving to better serve you, dear reader — and I couldn’t be more excited about it.
Where The Spot got its start
I started The Spot for Pardot in August of 2017.
It was a side project.
Actually, if I’m being honest — it was a bit of a stall tactic.
I was thinking about starting a business, but I was scared. So, I started the blog instead.
As a marketer, I wrote hundreds of blog posts for various clients and employers, on everything from insurance best practices, to architecture, to industrial printing, to trucking firms, and more.
But I had never had a place to write about things that mattered to me.
I created The Spot as a place to express myself and share learnings, hot takes, and the occasional war story. I half expected no one to read it.
But it picked up steam shockingly quickly. Turns out that a lot of other marketers had been grappling with the exact same problems that kept me up at night. And before I knew it, the blog became a magnet for my PEOPLE — the kinds of marketers that I want to work with, both as team members, clients, and community members.
The authors on The Spot: More insights from the best minds in MarTech
For the first two years of The Spot, it was just me penning posts.
But today, it is supported by authors from the Sercante team, and across the entire martech community. (Shout out to Brittany Rhyme for being our first ever “guest post” back in 2018 and opening the flood gates!)
Do you have a perspective you’d like to share? We welcome guest posts and paid, long-term contributor gigs.
The Name: Welcome to “The Spot”
To reflect our new focus, we’re dropping the word “Pardot” from our blog name. Instead, you can just call us “The Spot.” (And actually, most people called us that anyway.)
We’re keeping thespotforpardot.com as the URL right now for SEO juice, and will be phasing that out over the next 12 months.
What’s not changing: Our relentless zeal for learning & sharing
To recap — in addition to a new look for The Spot, you’ll now see:
When I started The Spot back in 2017, I had no idea what it would grow into. Thank you for being here, for sharing this content with your friends and colleagues, and for constantly challenging my team and I to bring our best to this community.
Cheers to the next chapter!
Content on The Spot: Hello Marketing Cloud, martech & more
The Spot started out as content about Pardot with the goal of sharing insights to help marketers be successful on the Salesforce platform.
To meet that goal, we’ve branched out beyond Pardot. We’re covering topics and platforms like:
Expect to see a wave of new content covering all kinds of martech — especially other parts of Salesforce Marketing Cloud that we see growing in relevancy for savvy digital marketers.
We’ve also added a categorization system to our posts. Now, it’s easier to browse and find what you’re looking for:
Why marketers on Salesforce need third-party resources
Yes, we realize Salesforce has Trailhead. And product-specific blog posts. And webinars. And all kinds of other resources. But you’re only getting information from the Salesforce perspective.
You’re a real marketer with real-life challenges. And you know your tech stack includes more than just Salesforce products.
The Spot has resources to find solutions and better utilize all of your technology tools — all from the perspective of a marketer who uses the Salesforce platform.
On a mission to mobilize marketers
Our mission is simple — to provide an online home for marketers on Salesforce to learn and collaborate. It’s a central location to find Pardot resources across all levels — from getting started guides to launch an org to expert tips for advanced integrations that extend marketing technology stacks.
We want marketers to realize “what could be” and feel empowered to take their marketing campaigns and lead generation efforts to the next level.
Get involved and claim your spot
Contributors from around the world represent all kinds of digital marketing specialties on The Spot. It’s filled with easy-to-digest (and sometimes cheeky) content for marketing professionals who use Salesforce and want to automate all the things.
Join us by getting involved and connecting with the community.
I think we need to do more to celebrate the work that Pardot and Marketing Operations pros do. I’ll explain why.
But first, a random story.
A mysterious package
One day a large brown box from Crystal Cave showed up at my door. It was addressed to me.
“I didn’t order this,”
I grumbled to myself, kicking it to the corner of my foyer. I assumed it was my hubby’s or something. Maybe a gift? I didn’t think too hard about it.
After a week of tripping over this thing, I finally opened the box. It was lined with dark blue satin and held a large crystal prism with the words “B2B Marketing Partner of the Year” etched into it.
I had so many questions.
What is a B2B Marketing Partner of the year?
How did we get nominated?
Who were the judges?
Who did we compete with?
Whatever the source of this mysterious sparkly object, I was excited, so I posted it in Slack to show the Sercante team:
I patiently waited to hear the backstory from the anonymous awarder.
But no one said anything.
Someone suggested saying the engraved part in Latin in hopes the incantation would reveal its purpose and unleash its power.
That did not prove effective.
So I reached out to our Partner Account Manager. No clue, had never heard of it.
I reached out to Pardot. Also had never heard of it.
In the absence of an actual documented reason for the trophy, I turned to introspection.
“Maybe the best trophy is the one we give ourselves.”
“Maybe the real trophy is the friends we made along the way.”
I briefly considered mailing people I respect in the ecosystem unsolicited trophies for “best hair” or “most likely to sleep through a Dreamforce keynote” and other such superlatives.
Anyway, it’s been 10 months now. I still have no idea who sent me this thing, but sometimes I do curls with it on calls because it weighs at least 10 pounds.
The recognition gap in marketing operations
The strangeness of this aside, one of the things this random trophy got me thinking about is that this is a hard field to find recognition in.
The role of Pardot Admin is weird in that if you’re doing everything right, a lot of times no one will notice anything. If your automations are firing behind the scenes, data is getting cleaned, leads are getting routed, opportunities are getting nurtured… it’s kind of just business as usual. When someone notices it’s often because something bad happened.
It’s also tough to be a solo admin and not have someone to share successes with. There aren’t many places to say “I built this!” and celebrate what worked.
That’s one of the reasons the ParDreamin’ team has decided to include an award show in this year’s ParDreamin’ conference. We’re calling it the ParDreamies. And yes, there will be crystal trophies.
About the ParDreamies, the first-ever Pardot awards
People do really cool stuff in Pardot, and we want to recognize them for it.
The ParDreamies Awards will honor Pardot community members for finding creative and thoughtful methods to reach business goals using the power of the Pardot platform.
Please consider submitting your work or nominating someone that you know that’s crushing it on the platform. Here are the most important things to know:
Deadline to enter
You have to submit your entry before the deadline for a chance to win. The deadline for entering is October 15, 2021.
Eligibility
The competition is open to all individuals, companies, and organizations involved in producing any marketing and communication materials utilizing the Pardot platform for external or internal audiences.
To be eligible, an entry must have been produced after January 1, 2020.
Entry Fee
The ParDreamies inaugural event is launching with FREE submissions.
2: Social Impact: Creating positive change through Pardot
3: Grassroots Innovation: Scaling small business with Pardot
4: Extending Pardot: API-driven solutions
All entries will also be submitted into the Best In Show category. See who will be crowned the overall winner of 2021.
When you’ll see the winners
We’ll announce the winners of the ParDreamies Awards during the VIP After Party taking place October 28, 2021 @ 4 p.m. ET – 6:30 p.m. ET.
Be sure to sign up for a VIP pass to ParDreamin’ so you can cheer for the winners during the live event!
Submit your entries for the Pardot Awards!
What better way to recognize a client or someone you know from the community who is crushing it? Or to celebrate your own hard-earned wins on the platform?
The entry form is quick and easy… so get yours in!
This funding opens new opportunities to amplify our partnership with Pardot and gives us the ability to expand our team across all departments, increase investment in R&D, and continue to grow our international footprint.
“This additional funding comes at a pivotal time to fuel our accelerated growth plans, deepen our product development efforts with Sercante Labs, and overall support our clients as they navigate digital transformation, Pardot, and Salesforce.”
– Andrea Tarrell, CEO & Founder of Sercante
As we look back, when Sercante was a small Pardot-focused blog and a handful of brilliant minds, we never imagined we would be here three short years later. We have now grown to over 40 full-time consultants, developers, designers, and architects spread across the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom to support businesses globally. See Our Journey This Far
Words can’t describe how much we appreciate the awesome people that have chosen to give their time and talents to Sercante, the amazing clients that continue to push this limits of the platform, the team at Salesforce who cultivate a strong ecosystem… and of course, the amazing Pardot community who constantly cheers each other on and has each other’s backs. You all have a part in Sercante’s growth and we know that we would not be receiving this honor without your support over the years. So we want to thank you and let you know that we are as dedicated as ever to making marketing & sales teams are wildly successful on the Salesforce platform.
Bonus Points – We’re Hiring!
We’re on a mission to grow. The most important ingredient in that is awesome people. This is an exciting time to join the team and embark on this journey with us as this is just the beginning of plenty more awesomeness to come. We are currently looking for talented individuals to join our team in various roles to help man our ship including Pardot Pros, Salesforce Developers, Copywriters, and Technical Leads. We’re moving really fast and have a pretty unique culture. It’s not for everybody — but for those that fit, it’s a growth opportunity like no other. So, if you’re a Pardot pro who’s looking for a career shakeup… We’d love to chat.
Interested in joining the team but not seeing a role that calls to you? We are also non-specifically hunting for awesome people anywhere we come across them. So… let’s talk. Best way to get in touch is [email protected].
A virtual community event focused on all things Pardot
I love the Dreamin’ Events. I’ve met fantastic people, learned a lot, and even have had the honor of presenting at a few. And, like most of you, I am currently distraught at all of the connections and lessons that I’m missing this year. Also like a lot of you, I have been somewhat disappointed at the lack of Pardot content in many of the standard Dreamin’ events.
A few of us at Sercante were wallowing in our self-pity one day when we stopped and thought, “Well, if we can’t meet up face-to-face with people to talk about Pardot, let’s do what the local user groups are doing, but on a bigger scale. Let’s have a worldwide, virtual, Pardot-focused Dreamin’ event!”
And that’s exactly what we’re going to do.
I’m excited to announce the first ever Par-Dreamin’ Virtually-Live Event!
Event Date: December 9-11, 2020 Audience: Marketing automation pros and Pardot users across the globe. Session Tracks: All things MarTech! Expect content on Pardot, conversational marketing, analytics, Sales Cloud, career and change management best practices…and more! Call for Speakers: Now through October 16th! Submit your session today, https://pardreamin.com/call-for-speakers/.
Want To Get Involved?
We’re actively looking for speaker submissions. Submissions are open now through October 16th. Do you have a talk you wanted to present at Dreamforce? Did you learn something new in the recent months? Share it with the world!
Become a sponsor! Join us in creating a great event, and show off your Pardot awesomeness throughout our 3-day virtual event. ParDreamin’ 2020 is a great opportunity for your organization to be represented in front of hundreds of Pardot Admins, Developers, End Users, and Executives from across the United States and beyond. Submit a request today and one of our team members will contact you.
Be a volunteer! The Salesforce & Pardot community is strong and we can use your help. Contact our team to be a volunteer and help with promotion, planning, and more!
Get on the list today to catch the latest announcements and be the first to register!
We’re excited for you to join us for this exciting event! Follow along on twitter by following @ParDreamin’ and using the event hashtag #ParDreamin’2020
