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3 Innovative Ways B2B Content Marketers Nailed It

These days, content is as varied, creative, and effective as ever before…which means it’s even more challenging to stand out in the crowd. In the B2B industry, competition is fierce. There are countless ways to use engaging content to drive your business, but which methods will work best for you?

We have picked out a few particularly impressive examples in the hopes that you’ll find a method that resonates with you and your brand. Let’s take a look.

Customer is King

Obviously, your customers (past, present, and potential) are incredibly important to you. So, why not sing their praises to the world? Drift, a conversational marketing service, has elevated customer appreciation into brilliant content marketing, and everybody wins. Here’s how.

First, they feature success stories with their customers on their blog. They talk about how great the company is, and how they were able to help them achieve such amazing success. This shares social proof with potential customers who are in the consideration phase, and assures them they’re on the right track.

There are plenty of examples of customer testimonials, and the reader gets a comprehensive rundown on how the services work, but in an easy to understand, conversational way. Next, the sharing starts, and both companies link back to the other, exponentially raising the share radius and providing some tasty SEO juice in the process.

Drift’s blog is also full of informational content, and the writing is funny and quirky enough to make all of it easy to read. So, you have a great company that clearly loves its customers, happy customers who are willing to testify how great Drift is while enjoying tons of brand exposure, and potential clients who are reassured they’re onto something good. Like we said, everybody wins.

Educate and Sell

There are so many different marketing experts and industry rock stars out there, and they all have great insight and advice to share. Likewise, there are countless new entrepreneurs and startups that need some guidance. Problem is, you have to search and filter through an enormous amount of unorganized and vague posts before you happen upon some relevant industry content, and then hope that it’s well written and pertains to your pain points.

Enter First Round, a thoughtfully curated collection of digital magazines that cover a variety of industries and let the experts do the talking. You need to find and digest this content quickly and efficiently, and come away with actionable tactics you can consider and employ right away. That’s a stated goal of First Round, along with providing entertaining and engaging content that the experts themselves offer. This is a prime example of how strictly offering education and insight is both impactful and beneficial for everyone involved.

Time is Money

Here at FeedOtter, we are all about content marketing solutions, specifically, automating content digest emails so of course we need to include an example from our own experience!

Trimble had a problem. They are an international company that offers unique positioning products, innovative hardware and software , and complex informational solutions to massive companies on several continents. They had a tremendous amount of helpful content to push out to current and potential clients, and had counted on emails and newsletters to do so.

Problem was, all of this needed to be integrated and organized to be sent in a timely and efficient manner. Oh yeah, and in five different languages. Newsletters were taking all day to curate and compose, and they were trying to write unique code and design entire systems to do so. Yes, email campaigns work, but the effort spent in formatting and translating them was costing a lot of time and money.

Enter FeedOtter, a content management service that was able to provide Trimble with newsletter templates, integration with scheduled automated email services, and translation services right away. Within two years, Trimble’s website traffic from subscribers doubled, monthly conversions increased by 150%, and the creative team was able to focus more on the quality of the newsletters.

The takeaway? Hire the right experts to do what they excel at, and utilize your team to keep the quality up where it should be. If it works for a huge company like Trimble, it can work for you, too.

Do you have any examples of brands who rock at content marketing? We’d love to chat with you about it in the comments below!

 

 

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B2B Content Marketing Strategies That Increase Lead Generation and Conversion

Content marketing is shown to be three times more successful than traditional marketing strategies and can even cost less than doing things the old fashioned way. Knowing this, content marketing can be extremely beneficial for your business when done correctly.

Let’s examine 5 ways you can leverage content marketing to generate more leads and convert those leads into clients.

Gate Your Best Content with a Lead Capture Form

When you create content that is more dynamic and comprehensive than an average blog post (such as an eBook or a white paper), make sure to gate it with a lead capture form. This will help grow your leads exponentially right away. Downloading your content immediately self-identifies these leads as having an affinity for your brand.

When you create a lead capture form, keep it short and sweet. You want to have a balance of getting all the information you need, while only having a few fields to fill in.  If you ask for too much information, the lead may give up in frustration. Key fields include:

  • First and last name
  • Email address
  • Company name
  • Role at company

Send Leads Content Not a Sales Pitch

It’s likely that you have an email marketing campaign all queued up. But, you might want to take a moment to examine your campaigns and make sure that you’re sending your leads thought leadership content as opposed to a sales pitch about your brand.

Of course, you want to present them with a sales pitch eventually, but you want to “warm them up” with resources they will actually find useful. This positions your brand as a trusted source of information and will make the lead more receptive to your sales pitch when it comes time. A good rule of thumb is to drip your leads with 5 emails before sending them an email about your brand and then asking them if they would like a demo or phone call to learn more.

Create a Dynamic Content Strategy

There are many forms of content to leverage that positions your brand as a thought leader. A balance between a stream of blog posts and more thorough pieces of content like eBooks is crucial. This means that multiple channels will be bringing new leads to the table. A sample editorial calendar to use as a springboard may look like:

  • 1 blog post per week
  • 1 eBook per month
  • 1 white paper per quarter
  • 1 infographic per quarter

This balance and steady stream of valuable content will help generate new leads and nurture current leads. You may want to consider a weekly round-up of your brand’s content, and the FeedOtter tool is a great way to streamline this process.

Learn Your Consumer’s Journey

Sit down with a hot cup of tea and draw out on a piece of paper the stages that consumers go through that lead them to your brand, while noting specific pain points they may encounter or different questions they may have. Seeing these stages on paper will help you create the right content that will appeal to those target consumers and help you line up your email drip campaigns.

Case studies are key pieces of content, but need to be strategically dripped. Knowing where your leads are in the buying process is crucial to understanding when and how you should distribute case studies. Theoretically, the lead should be dripped thought leadership resources like blogs and eBooks to establish brand trust. Once that trust has been established, case studies are key to converting that lead into a consumer.

Embrace User Generated Content

Consumers don’t want to hear from a brand itself. Rather, they are more likely to trust the recommendations of their peers. This is where user generated content (UGC) comes in. Content created by consumers and/or influencers is ideal content to promote and share with your current leads and potential leads. Here are some areas where you might want to use UGC:

  • Social media (paid and organic)
  • Weekly or monthly newsletter
  • Blog posts

To earn more UGC, you may want to offer incentives in the form of discounts from your brand or gift cards. Sometimes, clients need a reason to produce content about their experience with your brand, and it’s so worth it!

Additionally, it’s wise to seek out influencers who have an affinity for your brand and explore how you can work together to have them produce UGC in the form of a product review. This earned media adds an extra layer of authenticity surrounding your brand and can generate a lot of new interest. If this type of content is put in front of current leads, it may get them to the finish line and convince them to convert into a client.

Have you tried any content marketing strategies to generate or nurture leads that you want to share? We’d love to hear from you in the comments below!

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How to Improve Productivity in Marketing: 15 Experts Share Their Trade Secrets

Welcome to the world of instant gratification.

Today’s on-demand economy has brands bending over backwards to deliver products, support, and services to consumers at lightning speeds. As consumers, this world is fun to play in — we get what we want, when we want it. As marketers, however, keeping up with consumers in real-time and adapting on the fly is nigh impossible. Or, at least it feels like it.

So, what’s a marketer to do? How can you keep up with your audience to deliver the right message at the right time to the right people?

To deliver on consumer needs and meet today’s increasingly high consumer expectations, you need to work smarter, not harder. And marketing automation tools, which offer huge productivity gains, can certainly help. Below, 15 marketing experts share their secrets for maximizing their marketing strategies and technology stack without working 24/7 so you can do the same.

Jill Rowley

Member Board of Directors | Affinio

Jill Rowley Headshot

As the former Chief Growth Officer for marketing automation powerhouse, Marketo, Jill has plenty of insight into how marketers can maximize the effectiveness of their campaigns and streamline operations. Today, she serves on the board of directors for marketing intelligence platform, Affinio, to help companies better understand today’s consumers.

What’s Jill’s productivity secret? Collaboration.

“We just need to work together. Nothing, no acronym or fad, will work in a silo.

“Instead of just randomly serving the world, you need to be very strategic about serving a certain set of accounts. ‘You’ means sales and marketing and even customer success. Yes, and also your executive team.”

Read more from Jill with her article: Drunk on Inbound, and the Hangover Is Severe

Follow Jill on LinkedIn and Twitter.

Jenn DiMaria

Senior Director of Client Services | Digital Pi

Jenn Dimaria HeadshotJenn DiMaria is an expert in all things marketing automation, the productivity tool of choice for many marketers. But even marketing automation takes a lot of work to set up. Jenn’s expertise helps marketers set their automation tools up for success, increasing productivity in the long-run.

What’s Jenn’s productivity secret? Always set an objective first.

“Figure out what you want to report on before setting up your programs. Planning ahead adds extra time to the front of your campaign process, but it’s well worth it when your CEO comes to you at the end of a quarter asking for a report on ‘how marketing is doing’ and you can actually present him/her with data.”

Read more from Jenn with her article: It’s Not You, It’s Me: 3 Self-Inflicted Problems That Get Blamed On Marketo (and How to Fix Them)

Follow Jenn on LinkedIn and Twitter.

Joe Reitz

Marketing Automation Trainer | Amazon Web Services

Joe Reitz headshotWorking for Amazon Web Services, one of the world’s leading cloud computing platforms, Joe has the task of training AWS’s staff on how to get the most out of their marketing automation tools. In his pastime, Joe has several video tutorials that provide expert advice for other marketing automation users.

What’s Joe’s productivity secret? Automated list management.

“In Marketing Automation, you need to be able to manage your deliverability rates for your marketing emails. Luckily, you can set up an operational program in Marketo that manages bounces, and will mark them as invalid/suspended records in your instance so you don’t keep sending emails to the twisting nether.”

Hear more of Joe’s advice with his video: Building a “Bounce House” Program

Follow Joe on LinkedIn and Twitter.

Caitlin Culbert

Marketo Practice Director | The Pedowitz Group

caitlin culbert headshotCaitlin Culbert is a Marketo expert, instructor, and consultant. In addition to practical marketing automation tips and tricks, Caitlin offers strategies that help get the greatest return from their marketing automation investment. After all, productivity isn’t just about getting more work done in less time. It’s also about producing greater results in less time.

What’s Caitlin’s productivity secret? Get the right integrations.

“Quality marketing automation takes work, and it’s well worth your effort in the end. It’s easy to assume marketing automation is ‘easy’ since you can auto-schedule your content for the future, but quality automation isn’t finished once you send it. You don’t have the ability to sit back and relax because marketing automation is only a small piece of a much larger strategy. How you use your MA software is dependent on the holistic integrations of your multi-channel customer experience.”

Read more from Caitlin with her article: 9 Myths About Marketing Automation

Follow Caitlin on LinkedIn and Twitter.

Jenna Molby

Marketing Operations | ACL

Jenna Molby HeadshotHere at FeedOtter, we’re big fans of Jenna Molby. And not just because she has nice things to say about us. Her website is a goldmine of marketing automation and productivity hacks with over 100 helpful blog posts. If that alone doesn’t qualify her as a marketing productivity expert, she’s also lived and breathed both B2B and B2C marketing for over a decade.

What’s Jenna’s productivity secret? Automate RSS emails.

“FeedOtter takes out the manual work of creating blog digests and RSS emails. Simply tell FeedOtter when to send your RSS email, schedule a daily, weekly, or monthly digest or send blog posts and content to subscribers as they are published in real-time. They even have a library of responsive, visually appealing templates to make your RSS email look great or you can choose to upload you own.”

Read more from Jenna with her article: 12 Tools That Every Pardot User Should Know About

Follow Jenna on LinkedIn and Twitter.

Josh Hill

Senior Manager of Marketing Automation | RingCentral

Josh Hill HeadshotJosh Hill of RingCentral is a marketing operations and technology leader. To date, he’s helped create and refine the martech stacks for some of the most renowned B2C and B2B brands. His expertise on marketing technology gives him unique insight into how technology can aid productivity — but only when done right.

What’s Josh’s productivity secret? Assess and optimize your martech stack.

“A successful martech stack allows you to automate marketing and sales business processes in a way that you can efficiently report on the funnel and make future decisions on budget allocation. To evaluate if your stack needs help, you need to ask the right questions, add/remove the right tools, and involve the right teams.”

Read more from Josh with his article: Martech Stack Assessment Tips

Follow Josh on LinkedIn and Twitter.

Meagan French

Founder | Lotus Growth

Meagan French HeadshotAs the Founder and Chief Analyst of her own consulting firm, Lotus Growth, Meagan is an expert in helping companies reach their target accounts through demand generation and account-based marketing campaigns. How does this help with productivity? Meagan’s advice can help you get more out of your demand gen efforts with less work.

What’s Meagan’s productivity secret? Prioritize tactics with attribution.

“Marketers that use marketing technology and attribution see a 2.8x ROI. Marketing attribution allows you to see what’s working and what’s not.”

Read more from Meagan with her presentation: Growth Marketing: Secrets for Fueling Bottom-Line Revenue

Follow Meagan on LinkedIn and Twitter.

Steve Susina

Director of Marketing | RevenueWell

Steve Susina HeadshotWith an engineer mind, Steve’s marketing is heavily influenced by data and analytics. Adopting a similar, systematic approach to your marketing operations can help you produce more within the same time constraints and tools. He’s also a marketing automation and demand generation expert.

What’s Steve’s productivity secret? Strategy sets you up for success.

“Before getting started with marketing automation, it is important to have a great content strategy already in place. Automation will help you deliver content faster and more efficiently to the right people. That’s awesome if you have great content. If your content sucks, marketing automation will also expose it to more people, more quickly.”

Read more from Steve with his eBook: 18 Content Marketing Innovator Tips

Follow Steve on LinkedIn and Twitter.

Jon Miller

CEO and Co-founder | Engagio

Jon Miller HeadshotEngagio is a must-have tool for any marketer hoping to execute an account-based marketing strategy. As the CEO and Co-founder of Engagio, Jon has can’t-miss advice on how to increase your ABM effectiveness through new technologies and strategies. He also helped create marketing automation giant, Marketo.

What’s Jon’s productivity secret? Maximize your return with a targeted account-based marketing strategy.

“Just like mapping out your road trip, your journey to a successful account-based strategy depends on your ability to map out your list of target accounts correctly. After all, the whole point of account-based marketing is to focus your efforts on high-value accounts that have the greatest revenue potential. Get this right, and you’ll maximize your return. Get it wrong, and you’ll either miss major opportunities, waste resources on the wrong account, or both.”

Read more from Jon with his article: How to Select Accounts for Account-Based Everything Success

Follow Jon on LinkedIn and Twitter.

Ian Cleary

CEO | RazorSocial

Ian Cleary HeadshotIan Cleary has been routinely listed as one of the top digital marketers by the likes of Onalytica, Inc., Entrepreneur.com, and others. He’s a master at helping his clients drive more traffic and sales through effective inbound and outbound marketing strategies.

What’s Ian’s productivity secret? Take advantage of Facebook custom audiences.

“Find a tool that supports automatic creation of Facebook custom audiences that you can target. Imagine if you could automatically create an audience of people who visited your checkout page but didn’t buy so you can target them with the right advertisements.”

Read more from Ian with his article: 101 Marketing Tools and Tips

Follow Ian on LinkedIn and Twitter.

Chad Pollitt

VP of Marketing | inPowered

Chad PollittChad Pollitt may be VP of Marketing at inPowered, but his impact goes far beyond any one company. In fact, he’s also an Adjunct Professor at not one, but two world-class universities. He’s also authored three marketing-related books and is a regular contributor to top industry media outlets like the Huffington Post, the Guardian, and Social Media Today.

What’s Chad’s productivity secret? Artificial intelligence.

“Marketers can breakthrough the glutton of noise online by using the latest AI technology to scale amplification across all of the appropriate native and social channels.”

Read more from Chad with his article: Why Content Amplification is Critical for Brands Today and Tomorrow

Follow Chad on LinkedIn and Twitter.

Ned James

Senior Product Marketing Manager | FIS

Ned James HeadshotNed James is a product marketing professional with over a decade of experience in devising strategies that maximize results with effective tactics. Speaking from experience, Ned can help you get the most out of your programs while working within the same scope.

What’s Ned’s productivity secret? Model your current customers.

“Generating quality leads isn’t easy. It’s hard. Yet, there are proven lead gen methodologies that work better than others and are worthy of your time. One of these is modeling your best customers. The premise behind this lead gen strategy is simple; your best leads will look like your best customers. Put another way, those most likely to buy your product in the future look like those who currently buy your product in the present. And the way to identify those leads is to model your current customers.”

Read more from Ned with his article: How To Model Your Best Customers For Lead Generation

Follow Ned on LinkedIn and Twitter.

Oli Gardner

Co-founder | Unbounce

Oli GardnerOli Gardner knows landing pages — the last-stop before converting for many customers. As the Co-founder of Unbounce, a landing page builder, Oli has the knowledge and expertise that can help you create conversion-optimized campaigns that drive more leads and more sales — boosting results without extra effort.

What’s Oli’s productivity secret? Use persuasive design.

“In a perfect world, conversions would flow like fresh spring water. But in real life, you need to guide your visitors toward a single call to action with a combination of persuasive design and psychological triggers. Using the principles of Conversion-Centered Design (CCD), you can create create — and optimize for — delightful, high-converting marketing campaigns.”

Learn more with Oli’s interactive guide: The 7 Principles of Conversion-Centered Design

Follow Oli on LinkedIn and Twitter.

Stewart Rogers

Analyst-at-Large | VentureBeat

Stewart RogersAs the Analyst-at-Large for VentureBeat, Stewart Rogers spends much of his time researching, mastering, and writing about disruptive marketing technologies like AI, blockchain, and more. In addition to knowing which technologies can help make an impact on marketing productivity and results, Stewart is also expert in analytics, email marketing, lead generation, social media management, and more.

What’s Stewart’s productivity secret? Nurture your leads.

“Lead nurturing is a powerful tool that is relevant and necessary for every type of contact made via your lead generation efforts. If you send the right type of information to the right segments of contacts – regularly, consistently and with brand continuity – lead nurturing can be the difference between making your targets and falling well short of the mark.”

Read more from Stewart with his article: B2B Lead Nurturing Tactics and Best Practices

Follow Stewart on LinkedIn and Twitter.

Chad White

Research Director | Litmus.com

Chad White HeadshotEmail marketing is Chad White’s forte. He’s authored the book “Email Marketing Rules” and written more than 3,000 blog posts and articles covering the latest email marketing trends and best practices. As a result, Chad has become one of the leading email marketing experts who can help you generate greater ROI from all of your email marketing campaigns.

What’s Chad’s productivity secret? Don’t become a campaign workhorse.

“Email marketers send a lot of campaigns. It can seem like that’s the job of an email marketer: to send campaigns and maximize their value. However, looking at it this way can cause us to send campaigns that decrease response in the future and to avoid sending campaigns that increase response in the future.”

Read more from Chad with his article: Don’t Use The Wrong Metrics To Measure Success

Follow Chad on LinkedIn and Twitter.

Do More With Less

Productivity isn’t about producing more campaigns in less time. Productivity is about generating greater results using the same amount of time, effort, and resources. From leveraging the right tools to carefully thinking over your approach, the 15 productivity secrets about can help you maximize your marketing and keep up with your audience in today’s rapidly changing landscape.

And last, but not least, we have a tool that can completely automate your RSS emails from your marketing automation platform and help you create curated content newsletters and blog digests. To learn how this tool can help save you massive amounts of time, schedule your demo of FeedOtter today.

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How to Create an Editable Marketo Email Template Using BEE Free

In my last post I showed you how to create a one-off email for Marketo using the BEE Free site which is always a great, easy option when you’re tired of the Marketo editor. But, what if you want to re-use one of those emails just like the pre-built Marketo email templates? Not a problem! And no, you don’t have to be an expert developer to do so. I’ll show you exactly what you need to do.

Creating an Email Using the BEE Free Site

If you don’t already have an email in your Marketo instance that you want to make editable, then I suggest choosing a template you like from the BEE Free site. The site is very intuitive and easy to navigate but be sure you deselect the “pro” option when sorting through the templates. This will ensure you’re only viewing the free options. Once you choose the template you would like to use simply click “get started”.

An editor will open allowing you to fully customize that template design. Now, because we plan to use this as a Marketo email template you don’t necessarily need to fill it in with real content just yet. However, you will want to edit things like background color, text box and image locations, fonts, etc. in order to get the design exactly how you want it.

BEE Free Editor

When you’re finished editing, simply click the “save” button in the top right-hand corner. This will take you to a new page offering the Pro version of their services. The Pro version offers storage so you can save your template inside the BEE Free site. For our purposes however, we really don’t need that so you can simply click the “I just want to download it” button.

Download Template

Adding the BEE Free Email to Marketo

First, you’ll need to open your computer’s “downloads” folder and locate a folder that’s named “beefree” followed by some random letters and numbers. Open that folder and click on the .html file inside. This will open a webpage. Right-click anywhere on this page (except on an image) and select “view page source”. Highlight and copy ALL of the text on that page. This is the coding behind your new template.

Next, you’ll open your Marketo instance, create a new email in the design studio, click “edit code” in the editor and replace the existing code with the new code you copied earlier. The reason I recommend creating an email here rather than a template is because it is easier to verify the edits we’re about to make to create editable fields. This will make more sense as we move through the next steps. Once you’ve replaced all the existing code with your new code, click “save”.

Making Your New Marketo Email Template Editable

Now that your email is created in Marketo, you’ll need to make it editable. To do so you simply need to add <div class=”mtkEditable” id=”section_name”> tags to each section of code. Editing code may sound scary to some at first, but it’s really not once you have a basic understanding of what html is.

So to start, open your new email in Marketo and get to the edit code page. In the code, your email is broken into sections. Each section is housed within <div> tags as shown below.

Example of Code Sections

Example of Code Sections

 

Also, keep in mind that the code of an email flows in the same order as your design. So if you’ve got a text block in the middle of the template you want to make editable, you’ll find the block of code for it toward the middle as well.

Example of code location

Making an Image Block of a Marketo Email Template Editable

If you want to make an image block editable, look through the code for an <img> tag. This is noticeable by the URL linking to the image and the <img> start tag. I typically use control-F to search for the URL of the image. For example, if I know the image is titled “wine” then I search the page for that term and will be taken directly to that portion of the code. Once you have the correct image located, back up through the code and find the <div> tag that comes directly before the <img> tag.

example of image location in code

You’ll notice that in my example this <div> tag already contains a “class=” designation. Since you can only have one of these designations per <div> tag, you’ll need to remove what’s there and replace it with class=”mktEditbale”. Also, Marketo requires every editable section to have an “id” designation. They use this as the section name in the “content” column on the right-hand side of the email editor. So you’ll need to add id=”header-image” (or whatever title makes sense for your email) directly after your new class designation.

To test to see if you added it in the correct location, click save code to get back to the Marketo editor and if when you hover over that section it highlights it or you see the section in the right-hand column, then you know it is editable and your edits to the code worked!

verify your work

Making Text Blocks in a Marketo Email Template Editable

You’ll need to repeat the step above for every section you want editable. For text blocks, the easiest thing to do is to hit control+F and search for some of the words in the text of your email. In the example below that would be “Lorem Ipsum dolor sit…” That will take you directly to the appropriate section of code. Then you’ll again locate the <div> tag directly before the text and add class=”mktEditable” id=”section_name” like below.

locating text block making text editable verifying in Marketo

Finalizing Your New Marketo Email Template

Once you have all the editable areas in place and your email looks just how you want it (again actual content isn’t necessary just yet), you’re ready to save it as a template in your Marketo instance.

Click edit email to open the email editor for your new email. Once in the editor, click the email actions drop down in the top left corner. Choose “save as template” and set your desired location and name. Then hit save.

save as template in Marketo naming your template

You now have a brand new Marketo email template ready for use. Go to your Marketing Activities and locate a program or campaign you’d like to add an email to. Create a new local asset. Choose email and you’ll new see your newest Marketo email template in the template picker.

Plus, as an added bonus, you can now say you know how to edit HTML code!

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Social Media for Pardot Marketers

One of the best ways to get your content in front of a receptive audience is through social media. No secret to content marketers, social media can help you grow a new following as well as stay in front of the followers you already have. Much of marketing is about being in front of the lead at the exact time that they are ready to buy. And on another token, more touch points in a campaign generally correlates with more brand legitimacy and trust, as well as more interest in the product or service you are offering. Social media has a place in your marketing efforts, and your investment will be increased tenfold by integrating social posting with your Pardot platform.

The Benefits of Using Pardot for Social Media

A Comprehensive Picture of Your Prospects

The number one benefit to leveraging Pardot for your social media posting is that it will offer you a more comprehensive picture of your prospects and the type of content they are engaging with. The process is similar to your website tracking process. Anonymous web activity is reported, and when Prospects are cookied by Pardot, they are then matched to their web sessions. At that point, you are able to view a specific Prospect’s web activity and how it relates to the rest of their profile. Prospects can also be cookied and matched to their social media profiles, filling the missing gaps in their digital activity.

Robust Campaign Tracking

As with all other assets in Pardot (emails, forms, landing pages, files, etc), social media posts will be assigned to a campaign. This gives you more robust campaign tracking when it comes to evaluating which pieces of content have had the most face time, and how it performed across different channels.

Page Actions and Custom Redirects

A strong feature in Pardot, Page Actions allow you to trigger automated functions based on a Prospect’s visit to a particular page on you website. Think sending an autoresponder email to follow up, adjusting their score, creating a Salesforce task for a sales rep to follow up, etc. Similarly, Custom Redirects provide you tracked links that redirect to another web page. When you include these in your social media posts, you reach your Prospects on another channel to nudge them toward your web content. And if they click, it will trigger any designated automated functions and cookie them in the process.

Connecting Your Social Channels

Pardot currently allows you to connect Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn accounts for easy posting through Pardot. These can be set up with a few easy steps.

  1. On the blue lefthand sidebar, select Admin and then Connectors.
  2. Click on the social media platform you would like to connect.
  3. Click on Create Connector.
  4. The system will refresh and the connector will show up in your list as unverified. Click on verify now, which will launch a window for you to log into Facebook and accept Pardot’s permissions.
  5. Save, and you should be all set!

How to Make Sure Prospects Are Cookied

To really take advantage of Pardot social media posting, you will want to make sure that you can cookie as many of your Prospects as possible. This happens at the point where a Prospect clicks a tracked link.

Social Links in Emails

By including social links in your email templates, you will increase the likelihood that your Prospects are found on social media. If they click on your social icons, they will be cookied and that information will now be tracked.

Those Custom Redirects Again

Because Custom Redirects are tracked, your Prospects will be cookied when they click them. Incorporating these in your social posting can help you cookie more people and trap activity that may relate back to a Prospect you already have in Pardot.

Interested in other great ways to use Pardot? Check out our guide to Pardot best practices.

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The Top 3 Free Email Builders

As a content marketer, one of your most valued duties includes creating content and sharing it. However, using different marketing software may present as your biggest challenge. Picture this, you’re up against a tight deadline to launch an e-newsletter containing this month’s featured content, but you’ve run into a snag because your email template just doesn’t translate the way you imaged or worse isn’t rendering correctly.

If you’ve ever found yourself in this scenario, this blog is for you! By the end of this piece, you will know how to use the top free email builders and how to import your new design to use in Pardot.

 

BEE Free

BEE Free is one of the easiest email builders to use. You can drag and drop content onto email templates, including buttons, text blocks, images, and more.  With BEE Free, marketers can design sleek and modern emails with ease. This site also offers a way to export HTML to transfer into email marketing platforms.

To begin building your email template, head over to the BEE Free homepage and “Start Designing”. The site will prompt you to start your own design from scratch or select a template where you can filter through an abundance of free templates, usage types, and different industries.

 

Once you’ve selected a template you’re now ready to customize it! The drag and drop email builder gives you a seamless user experience. Once you’ve got the look you desired you want to “Save” the email template. However, if you’re using the free version, BEE Free will ask if you’d like to sign up for a paid plan or if you’d just like to download your template – you want to choose to download it.

 

After selecting to download the email, a zip file should load where you will find an image (holds all the images to the email template) and .html file. You’ll want to open this file and right-click to reveal the drop-down for “View Page Source”. This will allow you to view the code of the whole page. This is the code we’ll later copy and paste into Pardot.

 

In the Pardot email builder, you’ll want to paste the code from the page source into the HTML tab in Pardot.

 

*Note: You may receive the following alert: HTML message: An unsubscribe tag (%%unsubscribe%% or %%email_preference_center%%) is required somewhere in the body of the email. This can be done by highlighting the text you’d like to link for unsubscribers and selecting the hyperlink icon to choose the unsubscribe tag as the link type.

 

Once the HTML code is added I suggest previewing your email template and making revisions. Please note if you’re adding images to the BEE Free template, you will need to readd them to the Pardot template.

 

TOPOL.io

Similar to BEE Free, Topol.io allows users to design emails with a drag and drop tool and it’s “sooooo easy”. In comparison to BEE Free, Topol.io also provides a number of email templates but not nearly as many. One feature I believe Topol.io does better is the process of exporting the email HTML. Topol.io automatically creates a download of the .html file, rather than a zip file.

 

After selecting your email template to design, you’ll want to “Save & Download”, which will prompt an automatic download of the HTML. From here the same process as stated above should be followed to import the email HTML into Pardot.

Stripo.email

Unlike our first two contenders, Stripo requires users to sign up for a free account and caps off at 4 free downloads each month. However, Stripo.email states the download limits get reset every month. By selecting “Email Templates” in the navigation bar, you’re able to select from numerous email templates and filter by type, industry, and season.

 

“Try Out” your email template once you’ve selected the right fit and begin to make your revisions. When you’re ready to export the HTML, you will save the email template which will then prompt you to create a free user account.

 

When your new account has been registered you will be brought to an overview screen of all your email templates. Select the one you’d like to export the HTML and proceed with selecting the “Export” button > HTML > Download HTML file.

 

Not a Pardot user? Here’s a similar article for Marketo.

 

 

 

 

 

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Pardot Best Practices

When you are a Pardot marketer, it is important to keep yourself organized and follow Pardot best practices to ensure that your platform operates the way you need it to. Pardot relies on your data as fuel to deliver more targeted, personal campaigns. You can accomplish the most when you have an organized interface and understand all of the information you have stored. So, as you set out on your endeavor with Pardot (or want to revisit your setup and get organized!), take some time to audit your platform for the following items.

Salesforce Sync

Pardot and Salesforce are built to work in unison, but there are some quirks that can make the syncing process confusing. It’s important to remember that these systems are intended to be customized for your company’s needs, and may need some configuring before they will produce the results that you expect.

Salesforce Connector

Naturally, the first place to start with your Salesforce/Pardot sync is with installing the Salesforce connector. Your platforms are connected through one user, and this user must be selected wisely to ensure that everything runs smoothly. Pardot best practice for this is to create an alias account such as pardot@yourcompany.com or marketing@yourcompany.com so that your configuration is not affected by any individual users. That way, if someone leaves the company or if any user permissions need to change, you will not have a big mess on your hands.

Once you have selected a user to connect Salesforce and Pardot through, double-check to ensure that this user has maximum permissions and visibility into the entire Salesforce database. Pardot will only be able to “see” what this user can see, so it is important that they have access to key fields such as ownership and custom objects. This will allow all of your records to properly sync.

Everyone is a Prospect

While Salesforce differentiates between Leads and Contacts, and any existing Opportunities, Pardot considers everyone in the system to be a Prospect.  To see a list of only Leads or Contacts in Salesforce, use a dynamic list such as in the screen shot below. Your rule would match all prospects that match the desired CRM status, and pull them into the list. This is helpful for curating a list in order to send customer-specific newsletters and updates, or generating a list of only leads so that you can avoid sending marketing material to current customers.

Syncing Must be Enabled

All new records that are created in Salesforce will be automatically created in Pardot. However, new records that are added to Pardot will not automatically be added to Salesforce. This is by design, because every company’s sales process is slightly different and there may be varying use cases. Best practice is to hold all leads in Pardot, and bar them from Salesforce until they are qualified by certain criteria. Typically, this criteria is reaching a certain lead score, or submitting a form. Use an automation rule such as in the below screen shot to let Pardot know when it’s okay to create a record in Salesforce.

Custom Fields Need to be Mapped

To be able to segment your prospects based on field criteria, your Salesforce custom fields must have a counterpart created in Pardot. In your admin panel, you can use the Configure Fields tab to accomplish this. For each custom field, you will be able to select the Salesforce field that should be linked.

For the best possible data accuracy, use dropdown and checkbox fields anywhere you can. This makes things easier for everyone while preventing multiple different versions of the data being entered. That way, you can cleanly pull a list of everyone that has a certain value. For example, you could pull a list of everyone who has an Industry field that matches Healthcare without having to worry about “health”, “HC”, “health care” or any other variations having been entered.

Campaign Tracking

The concept of campaigns in Pardot can be a bit hard to grasp, especially if you are used to the way Salesforce campaigns are used. While leads in Salesforce may touch several campaigns over their sales cycle, prospects in Pardot can only be a member of one campaign. Think of Pardot campaigns as glorified folders that help you group assets together to track lead generation ROI. The campaign they are assigned to is the one that they entered Pardot on, such as through a form that you are using for an Adwords campaign, a contact form on your website, or a manual import from a tradeshow.

Cost

With each campaign that you create, you will have the option to enter a Cost. This may be your Adwords budget, for example, or what is costed to send a team of three to a tradeshow. If you use this feature, you will be able to analyze your campaign ROI later on to determine which lead generation sources provided the most value.

Tracking Codes

Even if you don’t track these campaign costs in Pardot, there is a major benefit to utilizing Campaigns. Each asset that you create in Pardot, be it an email, form, landing page, or anything else, will require that you associate it to a particular campaign. You are also provided a designated tracking code for each campaign. All web activity will be tracked from your main Pardot tracking code, but your campaign-specific tracking code can be embedded on any pages that are directly involved with your campaign. This will help you effectively measure your success, as well as give you more visibility into which assets are helping your prospects convert.

Folder Structure

In addition to requiring you to associate every asset that you create to a Campaign, Pardot also requires that you add these assets to a Folder. Many Pardot users find themselves leaving all of their assets in a general “Uncategorized” folder, or naming the folders the same thing that they named the campaigns. At the end of the day, your folder structure is about what makes sense for you to be able to quickly find your assets later.

Pardot best practice is to keep your folder structure referencing a time period. That way, you can quickly navigate to your most recent emails and workflows, or check out what was done in a previous year. This avoids the inevitable “Tradeshow – Email #1 – Spring – 2018 – copy 4 – hr” naming conventions that can get very confusing. Instead, in this example, you should name your email HR Tradeshow Email #1, associate it with the HR Tradeshow campaign, and place it in the Spring 2018 folder. Then, when you copy these emails the following year or for a different tradeshow, you will be able to find the proper assets.

Segmentation Functions

Advanced segmentation functions and automation capabilities are what makes Pardot the robust tool that it is.

Dynamic Lists

Pardot best practice is to create dynamic lists for groups of users when you can instead of uploading static lists. This will ensure that your information stays current and you always have the most accurate list. Manual lists may always need to be uploaded following an event, or when acquiring a list from another source. However, if the prospect group can be generated in a Salesforce report, it should really be a dynamic list.

As we discussed above, dynamic lists can be pulled to match all prospects with their CRM status of Contact or Lead. They can in fact be pulled based on any identifying criteria such as custom field values, scores, or the sales rep that is assigned to them. In addition, a dynamic list can be pulled for prospect behaviors such as accessing a certain file, filling out a certain form, or opening an email.

When you are done with lists, go ahead and add an archive date for them so that they no longer appear your list view. You will always be able to pull up all Archived Lists if you need them again down the road.

Tagging

Tagging is helpful in situations where you want to note something about a prospect, but not necessarily pull them into a unique list at this point. Tags can be used to trigger automation rules, add prospects to a workflow, or just store passive information about a prospect. If it is necessary in the future, you can always pull a dynamic list in the future based on all prospects that match a particular tag or group of tags.

Some of the most commonly used tags include “hot”, “cold”, and “inactive”. Pardot can also be leveraged to apply these tags to your prospects based on their behaviors. For example, you can set an automation rule to add the tag “inactive” to any prospect that doesn’t open an email for 60 days.

Another great use case is to apply tags for different page views on your website. When your prospect engages with a page about a particular product or service, you can tag them as such. Or, if they read content pertaining to a certain industry, you can apply a tag for that.

Everything looking good? Once you are comfortable with all of these items, it’s time to dive into designing Pardot campaigns and navigating Engagement Studio!

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Learn 4 Tools to Determine Audience Segmentation in Pardot

What is Audience Segmentation?

As a content marketer, it’s common to hear that segmenting your data is important, but do you know why it matters? Segmenting your customer data allows you to pinpoint different subgroups that relate to another in one or more ways. This simple strategy can be extremely beneficial to a content marketer. The most significant reason a to consider audience segmentation is due to the fact that it hones in on a data subset, which allows you to better understand your customer. In turn, you can create customer-specific content that resonates with the right target audience.

Why Does it Matter?

With all the advertising and marketing clutter today, it is more imperative than ever to offer relevant and valuable content to your target consumers. By delivering worthwhile resources, customers immediately see value within the company and brand. This can result in a greater opportunity for cross-selling/up-selling, consumer retention, higher conversion rates, and more.

Who is your Audience?

If you are just starting out with content marketing and have yet to determine who your audience is, here are the most common characteristics for segmenting your data.

1) Geographical/Regional (i.e. State)

2) Demographic (i.e. Income)

3) Behavioral (i.e. Product Purchased)

Keep in mind your audience segmentation is going to be specific to your company – learn more about audience building. For example, as a loan lender, you may choose to segment your data by income. The greater the income a contact has, the larger loan you may be able to offer them. This would determine the specific campaigns marketed to these groups – leverage your content the right way.

4 Pardot Tools for Audience Segmentation

If your company utilizes a marketing automation tool like Pardot, you can take advantage of the native tools within the platform to create audience segmentation. These tools include:

1) Static vs. Dynamic List

  • With this tool, you are able to create a one-time list (static) and lists that automatically update based on a set of rules and criteria (dynamic). Static lists are manually updated by importing or removing contacts. These are the standard types of email lists. As for a dynamic list, the only way a contact can be added to that list is if they meet the criteria. For example, you may create a dynamic list that only holds contacts with the state MA. If a contact has the state RI, they will not be added to the dynamic list and you cannot manually add them.

2) Suppression List

  • Pardot allows you to prevent certain contacts from receiving specific mailing communication when opting to “suppress” them. For example, you may want to create a suppression list of everyone who has not opened an email within the last 30 days to avoid mailing uninterested leads.

3) Tagging

  • This functionality in Pardot allows you to apply “tags” to individual contacts. This helps to organize and segment your data even further. For example, you may want to tag your “tradeshow contacts” within Pardot to easily distinguish they need to be placed in a pre-show campaign. You can also use these tags to create dynamic lists or automation rules later on.

4) Automation Rules

  • Pardot allows users to create automation rules, which can automate a number of things. Specifically, regarding segmentation, automation rules can push contacts to a mailing list based on criteria. Automation rules can also automatically apply tags to contacts given criteria has been provided. There are many other actions you can take with automation rules like updating contact fields or adjusting their Pardot score.

Now that you have learned how to segment like a pro, let’s look at how to create an effective content and distribution strategy.

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Effective Content Strategy & Distribution in Pardot

As a content marketer, you understand the value of content and the role that it plays in your marketing strategy. Writing strong content establishes us as thought leaders on a subject and engages our audience without pushing an aggressive call-to-action. This inbound strategy helps naturally attract new leads and opportunities. Often considered the most crucial part of your website, cornerstone and evergreen content draw new visitors to your web pages and increase your search rank. But, aside from SEO, how can you leverage this content?

With a marketing automation tool like Pardot, you have the ability to track your prospects’ behaviors and activity. This includes the topics that interest them, as well as the form of content that they prefer, whether that be blog, video, whitepaper, or something else. Then, you are able to take that knowledge and segment your database in order to provide the best types of content to the prospects that are looking for it.

 

Tracking Content

Set yourself up for success with content marketing by having the proper tracking mechanisms in place.

Tagging

Add tags to prospects that you know are interested in different subject areas. For intelligent and dynamic tagging, make use of page actions and custom redirects.

Page Actions

Page actions allow you to trigger actions, such as applying tags or updating field criteria, when specific pages are accessed on your website. This function is often used to alert a sales rep when a prospect visits a page that indicates high intent, such as a product pricing page. Thinking a little more critically, this can also be used to apply tags to prospects when they visit certain pages of your website.

Custom Redirects

For content that is not hosted on your own website, such as your Youtube channel, or even third party content, make use of custom redirects. This Pardot feature has the same functionality as page actions in that you are able to trigger actions based on the designated URL being accessed. Pardot replaces the end URL with a tracked one, which you can then use in your campaigns.

 

Leveraging Content

With all of that information stored in Pardot, you can design your next email campaign accordingly. Build out your next workflow in Engagement Studio with smart rules that send your prospects down different paths based on their tags. To do this, select your best content pieces in each subject area, and promote them to prospects that are tagged with those subjects. Then, follow up with similar content pieces that the prospect may be interested in. These emails should be personal in nature and come from a specific sender rather than a nameless company email address.

Some other ways to leverage content over email include:

  • Sending weekly blog newsletters to the prospects that have shown previous engagement with your blog page — learn how to automate this
  • Using content pieces as the main focus of one of the first touches in your nurture campaigns
  • Taking the absence of activity, such as a group of prospects that has not opened an email in 90 days, and sending those prospects a strong content piece in an attempt to re-engage them

Not sure where to start with curating content for your emails? The most efficient, automated process for curating content is through the use of RSS feeds. To learn about integrating your Pardot instance with RSS feeds, schedule a demo of FeedOtter.

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Build a Workflow in Pardot’s Engagement Studio

A workflow can be summed up in one phrase. They can save you a ton of time! Specifically, a workflow is a sequence of actions that are automated based on set criteria. This criterion is usually established by a prospects behavior and/or data your business has collected on that individual. A workflow can be built out using Pardot’s Engagement Studio tool. This tool is a visual workflow builder that allows a number of actions to be automated such as sending emails, updating fields, adjusting prospect score, and more. While the most common type of workflow is client facing, they can also be used for internal efforts, such as setting notifications and updating custom fields via Salesforce.

Common Types of Workflows

1) Prospect Activity Workflow

Based on your prospects activity, you can automate actions like sending email autoresponders. Pardot’s Page Actions are meant to “flag” priority pages on your website. You can also set Completion Actions within these Page Actions that tell Pardot to kick-start an automated activity when this page is visited. If you’re a content marketer, Pardot’s Page Actions are going to be a dream come true. This tool will allow you to mail more relative communication to prospects who have visited content offers. For example, a contact visits your blog The Best Snacks to Have with Peanut Butter. Using Pardot’s Page Actions you can automate an autoresponder email linking to your related blog Top Peanut Butter Desserts for the Holidays.

**Note: Keep in mind that page actions do not work if you do not have a website tracking code from Pardot present on your website.

2) Nurture Workflow

This type of workflow is exactly as it sounds. The idea is to nurture prospects over time to introduce your company and offer value. New leads may not be ready to commit to your company’s product/service, but by nurturing them you stay top of mind. Nurture workflows typically have three objectives

Create awareness — Introduce your company and it’s products/services. What makes your company special? Why choose your products/services over the industry leaders?

Offer value — Share valuable content that will resonate. Blog posts, case studies, white paper, etc. Offering valuable resources helps creates trust.

Convert — Converting the prospect is the most important objective in a nurture workflow. A prospect converts to a lead or contact once they’ve requested more information in one form or another. Some examples include inquiring on a web form, creating a membership, starting a free trial, etc. This signifies a point of interest or sale.

3) Upselling/Cross-Selling Workflow

Creating additional opportunities for your company can be easily automated with Pardot’s dynamic list and engagement studio tools. If you’ve ever heard the expression data is key, here’s a great example of why it matters. Dynamic lists are emails list that can automatically populate based on criteria. Furthermore, these auto-populated lists can be entered into engagement programs, which automatically filter contacts through a workflow. Companies can use these Pardot features to cross-sell or upsell to their market segments. For example, by creating a dynamic list based on recent customers who have purchased a lawnmower you can automate an email series showcasing your top grass seed brands.

3 Steps to Build a Workflow in Engagement Studio

Workflows can vary in size and complexity. If it’s your first time with a marketing automation tool like Pardot the set-up and launch of an engagement program may be overwhelming. Just remember to take a step back and always keep in mind what the ultimate goal is — get more help on building Pardot campaigns.

Step 1: Ask yourself these questions

  • What is the end goal/objective of this workflow?
  • Who is your audience?
    • What does your audience want to hear from you?
  • Are you offering value to your audience? (i.e. Whitepaper, Case Study, Downloadable Resource, etc.)

Step 2: Create your assets (if applicable)

  • Resources
  • Landing Pages
  • Email Templates/Write Content

Step 3: Build and Launch

  • Sketch your workflow out on paper
  • Build in Pardot’s Engagement Studio
  • Launch!

Engagement Studio Terminology

If you have started to play around with Pardot’s Engagement Studio, you’ve probably realized the three different options when building the steps to your workflow — Action, Trigger, and Rule.

An action is an activity Pardot is taking internally or towards your prospect. Some examples include adding a prospect to a list, applying tags, and sending an autoresponder email.

A trigger is an activity your prospect has taken in which you are looking to track. Triggers can consist of tracking email opens, clicks, form submissions, landing page visits, and more.

A rule is checking for internal data you have on your prospect. Rules include checking if they have a custom field, if they’re a member of a list, if they have a certain score, and more.

Both a trigger and rule can be used to build out different “yes” and “no” paths within your workflow – get more hands-on with an engagement studio webinar.

Learn more about the basics of Pardot’s Engagement Studio.

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