Marketing with Good Intentions: Leading with Heart and Impact

 

This keynote session, which launched the second annual PAR Dreaming event, introduced the concept of Good Intentions—a practice that shifts the focus from purely achieving KPIs to intentionally shaping the feeling and benefit a customer or colleague receives from every interaction.

What is Good Intentions?

 

Good Intentions is the practice of being mindful of the feeling and benefit you want to achieve with every professional interaction. It encourages marketers to look beyond the “what” (KPIs, results) and focus on the “why” and the soft impact of their work.

“People don’t always remember the specifics of what you do and say, but the feeling that you leave them with matters and it lingers.” — Maya Angelou

Benefits of Setting Good Intentions

 

• Brings Meaning Back: Reconnects daily work to a deeper, more meaningful purpose.

• Improves Connection: Helps bring the people you are helping (customers, colleagues) closer to you.

• Business Impact: Leads to better mood, lower stress, better concentration on the customer, and ultimately, better job performance and business results (“personalization from the heart”).

The Good Intentions Framework

 

Claire Kelly, who founded the movement within Salesforce, outlines four core steps for incorporating this practice into marketing automation.

1. Focus (Mind-to-Heart Shift)

 

To set an intention, you must shift from a busy mental space to a heart-centered, relaxed space.

• Action: Take a brief moment to focus on your breath before a meeting, presentation, or planning a campaign. This simple act of self-compassion can take just five seconds.

2. Intention (The Two Questions)

 

Ask two critical questions to define your good intention:

1. What feeling can I leave this person with today? (e.g., supported, inspired, relieved, joyful).

2. What is the best possible outcome/ripple effect? (e.g., the learning they gain helps them get a promotion, or they feel so appreciated they become a loyal advocate).

3. Implement and Express

 

Find a way to integrate the intention into your work environment, acting like an “API to API call” where the feeling goes out into the code of the universe.

• Pardot Implementation: Write your good intention in the Campaign strategy, the Engagement Studio journey description, or even down to a specific Email description.

• Technical Implementation: Embed the written intention into the code (e.g., layout templates of landing pages or emails) so the intention is technically part of the asset being delivered.

4. Share

 

Share your intention with your team. This is not only a moment of compassion but also a powerful tool for alignment on marketing strategy and campaign goals. This practice is also used in meetings and one-on-one sessions.

Pardot Leadership and Customer Perspectives

 

Meredith Brown (SVP & GM, Pardot)

 

The Pardot product team intentionally builds good intentions into product development, focusing on features that help marketers humanize their messages.

• Driving Investment: The pandemic highlighted the need to invest in features that enable empathy, leading to the creation of the new email builder and content builders.

• Social Impact: Meredith highlighted Be The Match, a customer using Good Intentions in their communications. Their intentionality helped make programs more accessible, increasing donations by 123% and saving lives.

• Product Good Intentions:

  • Extensibility: Features like adding custom components (e.g., Vidyard) to emails or using external activity in Engagement Studio are intended to empower the marketer and make the end customer feel appreciated.

  • Account-Based Marketing (ABM): Features like Einstein Key Account Identification and Accounts as Campaign Members are intended to bring joy and accessibility to ABM strategies.

  • Collaboration: Investments in Pardot automation with Slack are intended to build trust and alignment between marketing, sales, and service teams in a “work from anywhere” world.

Brian Coles (Longtime Pardot Customer)

 

Brian’s career trajectory (from “fumbling noob” to published author) was directly impacted by the caring and supportive intent he received from Claire Kelly’s CSM team years ago.

• Personal Impact: He gained confidence from those interactions, which accelerated his career.

• Paying It Forward: Brian now dedicates his work to spreading good intentions, empowering marketers to be bold and brave, and encouraging them to give and “pay it forward.” His recently published book on marketing automation includes a charitable component.