Content That Converts: Leveraging Dynamic Content for Personalization

 

This session, led by Stephen Stouffer, Senior Manager of Marketing Operations at FireMon, is a fast-paced deep dive into using Dynamic Content in Pardot for personalization, demonstrating beginner, moderate, and advanced use cases across emails, landing pages, and Account-Based Marketing (ABM) strategies.

Key Takeaways

 

• Dynamic Content on Steroids: Dynamic content is like personalization on steroids, allowing marketers to swap out large chunks of HTML or visual elements based on specific prospect criteria (e.g., industry, customer status, score).

• Remove Friction: The primary goal of dynamic content is to remove roadblocks and friction for the customer, making their experience feel personalized and effortless.

• Affirmation as Personalization: Dynamic content doesn’t always have to be deep personalization; it can be used for simple positive reinforcement and affirmation (e.g., confirming a newsletter subscription).

• Bootstrap is the Golden Ticket: To create responsive and standardized landing page layouts in Pardot, learning the Bootstrap framework for HTML/CSS is highly recommended.

1. Dynamic Content in Email Personalization

 

The first module demonstrated how to use dynamic content to transform a generic email into a highly personalized communication.

• Customizing the Email Banner: Dynamic content was used to swap out the main banner image based on the prospect’s Industry. By using the dynamic content snippet within the HTML image source tag (<img src="...">), the entire image URL could be dynamically rendered.

• Preventing Human Error: A CSS trick (text-transform: capitalize;) was used to ensure any user-inputted name (like a lowercase ‘john’) was correctly capitalized when pulled into the email or landing page, improving polish and accounting for fat-finger syndrome.

• Full Email Personalization: Dynamic content can be used for H1 headings, custom CTAs, and large blocks of content to make the entire email highly specific to the recipient’s known attributes.

2. Dynamic Content on Landing Pages (Customer-Focused)

 

The second module focused on removing friction from the website navigation by personalizing content based on customer status and industry.

• Customer Status Change: When a prospect’s status was changed to “Customer” in Pardot, the landing page was dynamically transformed:

  • Navigation Update: The top-right CTA changed from “Get a Demo” to “Contact Customer Support” (since they are already a customer).

  • Pricing Removed: The main pricing/solutions block was replaced with a “Contact Customer Support” button and link to “Open a Ticket”.

• Industry-Specific Solutions: The generic “Solutions by Industry” section was replaced with a direct link or content specific to the customer’s known Industry (e.g., showing a retail case study to a prospect in the retail industry).

• Soliciting Reviews: The customer review section was dynamically replaced with a prompt soliciting a review from the customer.

• AddThis Integration: Dynamic content was integrated with the AddThis notification bar to promote a specific message (e.g., a customer webinar) only to the customer segment.

3. Advanced Use Cases: ABM and Fun Hacks

 

ABM: Ungating Content

 

For high-value, Account-Based Marketing (ABM) accounts, the goal is to remove roadblocks to conversion and engagement.

• The Un-Gating Trick: The website was set up to check if a visitor belonged to an “ABM Account” (a criterion already present in Pardot data). If true, the form was entirely removed from the landing page.

• Conversion Tracking: The prospect is no longer required to fill out a form (since sales is already reaching out). Conversion is tracked via a custom redirect on the “Download Ebook” link, adding a campaign tag for analytics.

Fun Uses of Dynamic Content

 

• Positive Reinforcement: Dynamic content can be used to show instant affirmation after a prospect takes a desired action (e.g., subscribing to a newsletter). The content (e.g., “Module Complete”) appears on the page only after the form submission updates the prospect record.

Technical Tip: Checking for Blank Fields

 

Pardot dynamic content does not natively offer an “is not blank” check. A workaround is to define a dynamic content version that contains every letter of the alphabet (a;b;c;d;…) as the criterion for the field. If the field contains any letter, it is effectively not blank.

Quick Tip: Landing Page Design

 

If you are struggling with unresponsive or generic Pardot landing page templates, the recommended golden ticket is to learn the Bootstrap HTML/CSS framework. This allows you to create standardized, responsive, and reusable templates that can be customized with dynamic content.