Demo Jam: Extending Pardot’s Capabilities

 

This session features a high-energy Demo Jam where five companies showcase solutions designed to enhance the native functionality of Pardot and Salesforce, focusing on extensibility—the ability to connect Pardot to other systems, redefine user experiences, and automate complex processes.

Key Takeaways

 

• Extensibility is Key: The featured tools all demonstrate how to move beyond out-of-the-box functionality, whether by bypassing forms, integrating complex systems, or improving the sales handoff.

• The Three-Minute Rule: Each company had exactly three minutes to present their product, emphasizing speed and clarity.

• Winner: Sercante Labs, presented by Adam Erstel, won for successfully demoing four separate tools.

The Competing Solutions

 

The demos focused on tools that address common “paper cuts” and process gaps in the sales and marketing experience.

1. FormAssembly (Custom Form Creation)

 

FormAssembly allows users to build highly customizable and secure data collection forms that integrate seamlessly with Pardot.

• Use Case: Streamlining lead generation by building flexible forms and connecting them to a Pardot Form Handler.

• Process Highlight: Demonstrates how to map form fields to the Pardot Form Handler’s external field names. Upon submission, Pardot is configured to automatically update the prospect’s score and send a notification to the marketing or sales user.

• Benefit: Provides custom layouts, secure payment processing, file uploads, and ensures accurate, timely scoring.

2. Sercante Labs (Winning the Demo Jam)

 

Circante Labs demonstrated four solutions designed to fix specific pain points for Pardot and Salesforce professionals.

• Cruise Your Data: Utility tool to quickly split large lists (e.g., countries from a spreadsheet) into smaller, manageable chunks for easy copying and pasting into Pardot dynamic lists.

• Email to PDF: Allows users to send an email as a test list and receive the content as a non-damaging PDF attachment, making it easy to forward internally for email approval cycles.

• Campaign Influence Starter Pack: A set of pre-built reports and dashboards to jumpstart Campaign Influence reporting.

• Automated Opportunity Contact Roles: A lightweight app that automatically creates Opportunity Contact Roles on Opportunities when they reach specific stages (e.g., Closed Won). This is critical for ensuring accurate campaign influence reporting, as influence is impossible without a Contact Role.

3. LeanData (Intelligent Matching and Routing)

 

LeanData is a Salesforce-native platform focused on the critical connection between sales and marketing by accurately matching leads to accounts and routing them to the right seller.

• Use Case: Preventing interested buyers (like Joe Langston) from falling into a CRM “black box” after an MQL threshold is crossed.

• Process Highlight: Uses fuzzy matching to connect incoming leads to the correct Salesforce Account record (e.g., Hewlett Packard). It then routes based on account-level data (Customer vs. Prospect).

• Routing Logic: Routes customers to the CSM (to maintain good CX) and prospects to the AE. If no match is found, it uses round-robin and working hours to enforce “speed to lead” via an immediate Slack notification.

• Benefit: Enforces ABM motions, tracks inbound SLAs, and provides routing insights to ensure every record is followed up on.

4. Workato (iPaaS Automation)

 

Workato is an Integration Platform as a Service (iPaaS) that enables users to automate complex processes across multiple platforms without writing code.

• Use Case (Speed to Lead): Automating the MQL handoff process.

• Process Highlight: An MQL trigger in Pardot fires a “recipe” in Workato. The recipe handles routing and lead-to-account matching. The innovative step is using a Slack notification that allows the SDR to take action on the lead without leaving Slack (e.g., clicking “Accept” updates the lead status in Salesforce, or clicking a low-fit option enrolls them in a low-fit nurture sequence).

• Benefit: Enables non-coding experts to build and adapt complex business processes quickly, freeing up programmers for core development.

5. Qualified (Real-Time Conversational Marketing)

 

Qualified is a conversational marketing platform that provides real-time visibility and engagement with VIP buyers on the website.

• Use Case (Operation ZoomSwap): Targeting “Diamond Accounts” (e.g., Stanford University CIO Steve Gallagher) to start sales conversations instantly.

• Process Highlight: When Steve Gallagher (a known, high-value target) visits the website, an alert is sent, and he receives a personalized, high-priority greeting. The sales rep sees a full Customer 360 view pulled from Salesforce/Pardot, including his Pardot score/grade, Account Tier, Owner, and Open Opportunities.

• Engagement: The rep engages the prospect with context (e.g., based on the case study they are viewing) and can instantly transition the conversation from chat to a voice call (telephony powered by Twilio) right on the website.

• Handling Unknowns: The system uses automation for visitors of unknown status, using a bot to ask qualification questions and then routing the conversation if the criteria are met.