Pardot Makes B2B Marketing More Social with Major Platform Upgrade

SAN FRANCISCO (DreamForce 2011) -- Pardot has significantly upgraded its cloud marketing automation software to help small and midsized business marketers make better use of powerful social media tools.

New features include automated access to sales prospect social media profile data and posts from within the Pardot system, and the ability to schedule and send social media messages to prospects from Pardot's platform. The result is an integrated solution for social as well as traditional marketing campaign management. From a single, interface, marketers can now plan and execute targeted and timely campaigns, across digital channels.

"There's no denying that social media is a powerful force in today's marketing world," said Adam Blitzer, co-founder and chief operating officer at Pardot. "But until now, marketing automation platforms have lacked the tools that are necessary to truly engage sales prospects in a social media environment. Our new profiling and messaging features solve this problem, and we're proud to be the first cloud marketing automation vendor to offer what we believe is critical functionality."

Through an integration with Qwerly, Pardot automatically populates its system with a prospect's public social profile data using his email address. The Pardot platform can pull info from Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn, among other leading social networks. In many cases, a prospect's photo, location information, and a short description is also added to the prospect's record. Quick links are provided to profiles across the various social systems, allowing Pardot users to view a prospect's information in a single click.

Social data is also displayed in a prospect's CRM record through Pardot's integration to salesforce.com, SugarCRM, Microsoft Dynamics CRM, and NetSuite. Profile data can include job title info to help reps determine if a lead is a good fit for a given product.

Pardot has also added social posting features to help marketers manage their social media sharing. Users can schedule Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn posts in advance. And via Pardot's existing connector, all links in a post will be automatically shortened and tracked, with the option to use custom, branded URLs. Users can also share Web-based versions of their Pardot email, such as a monthly newsletter, through social channels. Posts can be scheduled to send from multiple accounts and across multiple social sites, too.

"Our social posting capabilities are more powerful for sales and marketing users than existing scheduling platforms because they allow you to tie data directly to an individual in your database," said Blitzer. "You aren't just seeing that 15 people clicked on your link via Twitter, you're getting insight into exactly who those people are. For sales reps calling on leads, it provides another reason to reach out and engage a prospect."

Social posting data will also be available in Pardot's reporting module, allowing users to pull reports on individual messages and across all campaigns. Marketers can use this information to determine which areas of social media are most effective. For example, they might learn that their Twitter posts consistently result in more prospect engagement than Facebook messaging.

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