Supercharging ABM: Leveraging Interaction Studio with Pardot

 

This session, presented by Grace Izzard and Michael Roberts, explores how Interaction Studio (IS), Salesforce’s real-time personalization tool, integrates with Pardot to solve common marketing challenges—especially for Account-Based Marketing (ABM) and personalized content delivery.

Key Takeaways

 

• The Personalization Barrier: ABM is outperforming other marketing, but the biggest barrier remains creating truly tailored, personalized experiences.

• IS Complements Engagement Studio: IS handles real-time personalization and content decisions, while Engagement Studio remains the engine for orchestration and sending the content.

• Tracking Unknown Prospects: IS leverages reverse IP lookup to understand and personalize the experience for visitors from target accounts, even before they convert to known prospects.

• Content Decided at Open Time: IS makes content decisions (what product or offer to show) at the time the email is opened or the website is loaded, ensuring the content is never stale.

The Three Ways to Supercharge ABM

 

Interaction Studio supercharges ABM by providing real-time data and recommendations.

1. Targeted Website Personalization

 

IS uses IP lookups, account segments, and affinity data to tailor website content for target accounts, even if the visitor is anonymous.

• Account Intent Data: This data is tied to the Account Record in Salesforce, allowing ABM tools to leverage it.

• Dynamic Offers: Personalized content (like a unique hero image or product recommendation) can be deployed anywhere, including on a Pardot landing page or directly on the company website.

• Profile Building (Known & Unknown): IS builds a comprehensive profile on every visitor, tracking their geolocation, web views, time spent, and a configurable engagement score, which drives subsequent personalization. When an unknown visitor converts (e.g., requests a trial), IS merges their previous anonymous behavior with their new known profile.

2. Content Recommendations and Next Best Action

 

IS analyzes behavior to provide the most relevant content and guidance to both marketers and sales reps.

• Decision Engine: IS looks at factors like a prospect’s affinity (interest), most recent engagement, and saturation rate (how often they’ve been contacted) to determine content choices.

• Next Best Offer for Sales: Sales reps (using tools like Salesforce Engage) receive direct content recommendations and next best actions (e.g., “Send Release Notes” or “Send Customer Webinar”) based on the prospect’s real-time engagement and account status.

• Seamless Integration: This feature ensures content is always fresh and relevant. IS makes a rapid decision based on the customer’s current account data, intent, and affinity at the exact moment they open an email or pull up a web page.

3. IS vs. Engagement Studio (The Functional Split)

 

Interaction Studio and Engagement Studio work together but serve different primary purposes.

• Interaction Studio is focused on real-time reactive personalization. It manages the behavioral data, intent, and affinity (known and unknown) and is the decision-making engine (determining what content to show next).

• Engagement Studio is focused on proactive, brand-driven orchestration. It manages the known prospect data and Salesforce data, and is the engine for orchestration and sending (when to send, what path to follow). Its reporting focuses on multitouch attribution and campaign ROI.

Integration and Implementation Notes

 

• Licensing: Interaction Studio is its own SKU (product license) within the Salesforce Marketing Cloud portfolio. You do not need to purchase the entire Marketing Cloud (ExactTarget) solution; it can be added directly alongside an existing Pardot implementation.

• Integration: The integration involves placing a simple snippet of code into Pardot email templates or landing pages. The new Pardot email features will allow for this integration using one-click custom components.

• Next Best Offer with Engage: IS integrates with Pardot Engage. A sales rep can send an Engage email, and the content block within that email will be dynamically populated by IS based on the recipient’s behavior at the time of open.

• Cost: Pricing is based on the volume of people marketed to and the number of content decisions (recommendations/offers) IS is making on the back end.

• Strategy is Key: When running multiple Engagement Studio journeys, strategic use of suppression lists is crucial to prevent saturating prospects. IS data can be pushed to Pardot to inform these suppression lists.