Pardot has a lot of features! If you’re reading this, you’re probably familiar with the more commonly-used features (if not, start with this getting started guide … it’s full of good stuff) – but what about all the goodness you can do in Pardot you may not be taking advantage of?
Tagging
Tagging is an incredibly easy practice to implement and use … but is very frequently overlooked! Before we dive into all the reasons you should start using tags today, let’s take a step back and talk about what a Pardot tag actually is.
- Pardot tags are lightweight, flexible, user-driven taxonomy that can be applied to marketing assets such as list emails, email templates, campaigns as well as prospects.
- Tags have a one-to-many relationship in Pardot, so you can apply as many tags as your heart desires. In other words, you pick the tags that make the most sense for you and your organization and can tag just about anything and everything you build in Pardot.
Arguably the number one reason you should use tags on assets is to make your life easier to search and find them. You can use tags to organize by year, channel, region, department, and other standard reporting categories.
Speaking of reporting, tags are quite valuable as a search feature for Pardot reports. Did you know you can pull reports based on the tags you set? Pretty cool (and convenient)!
In addition to being a useful tool for organization and reporting, tagging can also be used to trigger automation rules. As a best practice, you’ll want to use tags that are applicable to your company and use them consistently. A few tag ideas include date range (ex: Quarter, Year), location or business unit (ex: EMEA, NA, APAC), product or service line, event types (ex: webinar, roadshow, tradeshow).
Once a tag is created, you can modify it later. For example, you create a tag called “marketing world,” but your coworker creates a tag called “marketers world.” In this case, marketing world is the correct tag for your company, so you want to update the other tag to prevent confusion or misuse.
All you’ll need to do is navigate to Marketing > Segmentation > Tags, locate the tag you want to modify, select the gear to the far right and from there you can Edit, Merge or Delete it. In this case, we would likely want to merge “marketers world” with “marketing world” so we don’t lose any assets they may have been improperly tagged.
Integrating Salesforce campaigns with Pardot list emails
If you aren’t already taking advantage of this feature, now is the time to start. At the most basic level, this integration is especially helpful with segmentation and reporting.
Integrating Salesforce campaigns with Pardot list emails allows you to create segmentation based on actions a customer/future customer did within an email. If you link your Pardot list emails to Salesforce, you can track in both systems if the email recipients opened the list email, clicked a link in the email, or unsubscribed … and create segmentation based on those actions!
Read more in-depth on connecting Pardot lists and Salesforce campaigns, but the main takeaway here is this integration empowers you to create more targeted segmentation as well as creates visibility in Salesforce on customer/future customer level of engagement with your Pardot emails.
Archiving
Why is archiving so important? Bottom line – it helps keeps your Pardot instance clean.
Archiving enables you and your company to “hide” anything outdated or irrelevant to present day, but doesn’t permanently delete anything, so you can always access it later should you need to, creating a more efficient Pardot environment.
Another major bonus: with proper archiving, you can help minimize reaching your Pardot account limits. How, you ask? The answer is simple: Archived items do not count towards your Pardot account limits. This can help save you and your team form either
- scrambling to delete old “stuff” to keep below you account limits, or
- spending unnecessary money to increase your account limits.
With anything, there are pros and cons to archiving items in Pardot. At the end of the day, archiving is a necessity to keep your database healthy, but it is important to understand how assets react once archived. You can check out a high-level overview below:
| Archive Item | Pro | Con |
| Lists | Cleans up the number of lists displayed in your List table; Automations using archived lists will continue to work as expected | Unable to modify archived lists; Cannot use it for list emails |
| Campaigns | Limits the number of campaigns displayed to only those that are active | With Pardot’s newer feature of connected campaigns, it’s not as simple as selecting an archive date like before. Instead, it requires a bit of technique and troubleshooting to archive.* |
| Landing Page | Helps maintain a clean database of Landing Pages by only displaying those that are active and currently relevant | Unable to modify archived Landing Pages |
*One method that seems to work is to set the end date of the campaign in Salesforce to be in the past AND set the Campaign Status field to Completed, triggering the Campaign to display as archived in Pardot.
So, What Next?
While you and your company might not have a need to use each and every Pardot feature, there is something to be said about tagging, integrating list emails with Salesforce campaigns, and archiving assets. All three are fairly easy to implement and incorporate into your daily Pardot activities and can yield big results, but they’re often barely-used by marketers!
The ability to quickly navigate reporting and setup automations via tags, create segmentation based on engagement from your Pardot list emails and maintaining a clean asset database all serve a simple purpose – they all help make your life a little easier (at least while you’re on the clock).
Want more Pardot resources?
- Take a course on improving email deliverability or master the Pardot basics
- Learn how to ramp up your marketing performance and optimize resources with our Pardot consulting services
- Connect with me on LinkedIn!