Speaker 0: Hi, everyone. Welcome to PARDreamin. Uh, my name is Connor Fitzpatrick, and I’m gonna be moderating today’s session. Uh, I’m excited to introduce our speaker, uh, Lucy Mazelon, who’ll be covering Pardot prospect mailability, what the makeover means for admins. Lucy is a six-time certified Salesforce and marketing automation consultant term turned full-time editor at salesforceben.com, which I’m sure all of us here have used, uh, many times before. She’s also the founder of the Drip and is a Salesforce marketing champion and coleader of the London B2B marketers group. Lucy, we’re so happy to have you here today. Uh, I’ll hand over the session to you to, uh, uh, to lead. Please note for everyone, if you do have any questions, uh, during the session, we will have a q and a briefly at the end. Um, so please, as we get closer to the end of the session, um, start typing in your questions, and, um, we will try to pick a few to answer then. Thank you, Lucy. Feel free to take it away.

Speaker 1: Thank you so much for that nice introduction, Connor. Um, I’ve been really looking forward to speaking with everyone today. And just bear with me a second. Just wanna make sure we get ready. Um, yeah. So as I was saying, I’ve just been really looking forward to coming and speaking with you all, um, on prospect mailability. I know there’s a ton of great sessions going on, so I appreciate you joining me for the next thirty minutes. Um, and I hope that you have a fun-filled agenda for the rest of the day as well. Um, I’m actually really looking forward to the roadmap session. Um, it will be a little bit late my time, but I think it’s worth staying up, um, and hopefully see some of you at the, um, VIP party later as well. So I know Connor’s already introduced me, um, but for those of you who don’t know me, I’m Lucy. Um, and as Connor said, I was a, um, I was a marketing automation, um, consultant specializing in Pardot and Salesforce, um, for a number of years. And in that time, I just worked with a huge variety of different types of projects. So they could have been implementations, could have been long-term contracts, getting really into the details of, um, how a team uses Pardot, uh, on, like, a multi-month contract, um, and just with the whole different type type of businesses. So, um, yeah, I’ve I’ve seen a lot of variety. So, yes, when it comes to prospect mailability, sorry, email marketing. When it comes to email marketing, a prospect record is only as good as its mailability. Of course, when we’re looking outside of email marketing, a prospect record could be good in other ways. But email marketing, if you can’t email them, they’re not valuable to you. But if you can email them, they’re more valuable to you, obviously. So some people, um, if you’re as big a fan of mail mailability as I am, may remember my session last year, which was, um, The Nightclub Guide to Salesforce—um, Nightclub Guide for Salesforce and Pardot Marketers. This was all about deliverability versus mailability, two concepts that often get confused was that sending an email is the only part of the story. And I used the nightclub, um, analogy to to illustrate that. So if sending as as sending email is only part of the story, it’s like turning up to the nightclub and not getting in. Um, you could not get in for a number of reasons. So there’s a whole host of reasons why you may your email may not be, um, able to get delivered. Mailability is one side of it, um, but just the scene setting. If anybody’s interested in learning more about deliverability versus mailability and how they differ, um, I hope that this is a good way to, um, to illustrate that. So it felt right to me to come back to update you on what’s been happening over the past couple of Pardot releases, um, because we all know if there’s one thing we all know about Pardot, it’s that it doesn’t stand still for long. So, yes, today’s focus is mailability. And in the Summer ’21 release, there was, um, there was one item on the list that was get more visibility on prospect mailable status. And safe to say, the update did, um, help all of us to answer, will a prospect receive my email? Um, so, yes, this is the the mailability makeover. There’s new fields, changing field behavior, um, so to do with the sync between Salesforce and Pardot, and a whole host of other data management considerations you need to take as a Pardot admin. And there’s really more to this than meets the eye. So today, I’m gonna run through the six days changes you need to know about, some data actions to take, recommended data actions, um, to take. I will when I will recap that when we get to that session, but I can’t advise on the exact actions you should take. Everything here is guidelines for you to take away and consider against your own organization. And the final part will just be some pointers for training your team to get up to speed.

Change number one, the do not email and email opt out fields. So these two fields we’ve known for some time. Uh, they’re a good place to start. These two fields each have new definitions and new ways that marketers should work with them. So I’m gonna go into that now. Um, Opted Out. This is controlled by the prospect themselves using the unsubscribe link, um, that you send on emails or by using your email preference center if you have one set up. While Pardot users can edit this field, it’s not recommended for compliance reasons. You don’t wanna just opt prospects back in whenever you feel like you need to boost your mailing list. They have to consent. So that that will come back later. We’ll come back to that in the training section. And Do Not Email, this is now intended as a marketing suppression field as in to prevent prospects from receiving emails. Um, and this is meant to be for marketers and internal users to use, um, to check and uncheck that. Um, you can always rely on the handy tooltips inside of Pardot. If you hover above around the, uh, the little icon by the field name, they will appear with a little description of what that field does. So the key takeaway here is that these two fields have also been decoupled, which means that they’re now independent from one another. Um, you may remember before that a value change in one field could automatically switch the other. In this case, if opted out was true, then do not email was also changed to true automatically. This is not the case anymore. Remember, these fields should be used by different parties, internal users and the prospects themselves. Cool. So I hope I haven’t scared you off yet.

Bounce fields. Yes. Admins can now reset the bounce fields, um, on a prospect’s record. If a prospect is unmailable and we suspect it could be for a temporary reason, that’s known as a soft bounce. Examples are, um, there’s, uh, the downtime or the recipient’s inbox is at full capacity or maybe it hasn’t been set up completely correctly. Um, in Pardot, five soft bounces equals a hard bounce, and a hard bounce is a more permanently undeliverable status. However, once an issue appears to have been rectified for a soft bounce, an indicator could be they’ve received an email from you, then admins can now wipe the slate clean by clicking the reset hyperlink by the field. And remember that I said that in Pardot, five soft bounces equals a hard bounce. If you’ve used Pardot for a while, you know that the hard bounce field would then switch the do not email field to true. That’s no longer the case. Hard bounce and do not email are also decoupled. So whereas before we had all these fields interconnected with one another and relying on each other, now they’re all separate apart from soft bounce and hard bounce. Great.

So this is my favorite field now in Pardot, mailability status. So the combination of the do not email and opted out fields ultimately tell you whether the prospect is mailable. Right? And not only that, but which types of emails you’re allowed to send them. So while these two fields should be independent for one another functionally, like we said in point one where they’ve been decoupled, these two fields should be reviewed together because they tell you a whole lot. So this new status field you’ll find in the mailability section of any prospect record gives you a clear answer at a glance. And here are some of the values you’ll come across. Mailable, everything’s good. Undeliverable, that’s when five soft bounces or one hard bounce is detected. Transactional emails only, so that’s prospects with either the do not email field ticked or the opted out checkbox is checked. They can’t receive marketing emails, only operational emails. Archived means that the prospect’s in the recycle bin. And a little bonus here, the, um, prospect data tables, so the lists of records that you see in your Pardot account, they have new icons added. So you get that mailability status at a glance like you see in the image.

Sync behavior. Right. So there were quirky things that Pardot marketers had to be aware of when using the do not email and opted out fields when they were syncing between Salesforce and Pardot. This is known as sync behavior. Um, as they’re both checkbox fields, once they were marked as true, they would remain that way. Even if the checkbox was unchecked, the system would recheck it, um, when it synced with either Salesforce or Pardot. So it was a nasty loop, but you’d go around in circles and never win. Um, and it was it’s also referred to as sticky to true. Um, then, apologies, then, um, probably a year or two ago, Pardot released an additional field, um, sorry, an additional sync, um, setting that could that could be enabled for your Salesforce connector called the overwrite prospect opted out. So this was the first stage in lifting those guardrails. Um, it enabled, um, either the Pardot admin or the prospect themselves to re-opt themselves back in because it overrode the typical sync behavior. It unchecked the, um, opted out checkbox, and that didn’t get rechecked by the system. So key things to note going forward, both fields no longer have that sticky to true issue. The override opted out field sync settings, that is now the new the new default, um, enabled as part of the upgrade as a connector setting anymore. And do not email is treated like any other default field, meaning you can uncheck do not email, and it will remain that way even when the connector syncs next time around. It will stay unchecked. Right.

So you’ve got a sneak peek of number five already. Um, but could this one be the cure for AMTSIA worries? So AMTSIA is, um, stands for allow multiple prospects with the same email address. And ever since it was introduced, marketers have had duplicate prospect records as a worry in the back of their minds. Um, the email uniqueness field is a nice addition to investigate whether records should be merged or they could have been deliberately duplicated for a reason. For example, I remember when AMTSIA was first reduced introduced. Um, at the time, I was quite biased because I was working with an organization. Um, they were an enterprise organization that really needed this functionality for how they because they were marketing to accountants who were specific to each of their clients. So now they could be treated as, um, separate prospect records rather than being, um, merged. So as you can see in my example, the new field for email uniqueness says email address is shared with multiple prospects, which is user friendly. When a prospect record is updated, that warning will appear, um, if there’s more than one prospect. And, of course, you can check for duplicates periodically by pulling a report based on email uniqueness.

Scaling the changes. Um, so at this point, I’ve spoken around the individual prospect level, but how do you take these changes, scale them, and blend them a bit more with your marketing operations? So you can use these fields, um, in automation rules, dynamic lists, and completion actions, and also their available in Engagement Studio too. On the slide, I’ve included an example of how Engagement Studio can be used to route prospects down different paths according to their mailability. And this could very well be an operational example for data management. You have to remember that Engagement Studio isn’t just for sending marketing emails. It can be also used for visualizing data changes. Um, you could think of it as you’re stringing multiple automation rules together. Right?

So I really hope your head’s not spinning right now, um, but I’ve just compiled a few actions you could take on your data, um, because you need to align your records you already have with the new mailability model, especially around that do not email field. Quick recap on how to find your mailable prospects. So this is the thing. The if you’re making changes to your prospect database, just bear in mind that the uses the usage numbers you see in Pardot settings, they update daily, once a day. So if you’re doing lots of small changes, you won’t you can’t see that number change immediately. So if you wanna find that real-time prospect count, you could refer to the, um, um, the Pardot prospect list view and just then filter for mailable prospects. That will give you the real-time count. And remember, mailable prospect limits, um, which is the reason why you should be monitoring the real-time prospect count. Um, but I’ll circle back to that right at the end. So let’s prepare to update. Just to say, remember to seek the help of certified consultants if you’re ever in doubt with any of the steps I’m about to go into. It’s better to get it right first time than have an absolute mess to sort out. Um, and also, like I said, this is guidance. You shouldn’t take any actions certain, um, it’s the right fit for your organization. You know your data. I’m not gonna tell you what’s it’s a straight it’s not a straightforward answer. But first things first, please export your data to use as a backup to revert any changes if necessary. Um, hopefully you won’t need to, but, you know, you’ve got, you’ve got the peace of mind for that backup copy if anything goes wrong. So ask yourself, how did we use the do not email field before? What I mean by this is that there are organizations out there that have used the do not email field to intentionally suppress prospects. That’s a really hard combination of words. Suppress prospects, which is what you should do. Continue to do that. So we’ll call you guys group A if you’ve been doing that intentionally. Everyone else, get used to do not email being a field that, um, no longer means that the prospect was marked unmailable by the system. So you can be group B. Um, one final thing. I know I’ve built this up. Sorry. One final thing. I mentioned segmentation rules a lot. And as you may know, this type of Pardot automation doesn’t get as much attention, um, but they’re suited to this one-time mass data change that, you know, you’re gonna want to do. Um, another reason why I’ve mentioned segmentation rules is that I know it’s quite common to be running up against your limit for automation rules. Um, but of course, you can use the criteria I mentioned in automation rules and engagement studio actions and rules too. Right. So without further delay, let’s look at unsubscribe prospects and updating the do not email field for them. So again, previously, the do not email field was changed to true when a prospect was opted out, unsubscribed. So now these work independently. A key takeaway here, a prospect can’t resubscribe if the do not email field is still true. So you could try to find these people by saying, okay, if opt out is true, but they haven’t bounced, that means they’re simply opted out. Right? They they’re not do not email. But thanks also to the Pardot team for providing these great images. I think they’re really good for, um, wrapping your head about how all of this is relatable. Um, so feel free to use these in in, uh, for referring when you’re trying to sort out your own data. Next up is soft bounces. So, again, a soft bounce could be a result of a temporary glitch. Um, and remember, admins can now reset the individual prospect record. You can find prospects that don’t deserve to be marked do not email by using this segmentation rule criteria. So if they haven’t opted out, if they have soft bounced, but they haven’t hard bounced, then you can potentially change that to do not email. But please proceed with caution. I would be nervous doing this if it wasn’t if I wasn’t having a really close eye on what records I’m changing. Um, so yes, again, this is only guidance. Please seek help if you need it. Um, right. So if there are no bounces. Um, so like I said, there’ll be two groups of organizations. So Group A, who have always been using the do not email field for suppression, you will wanna keep those these these prospects suppressed and not follow this step. But if you’ve inherited a database or you haven’t always had a consistent process around how you use the do not email field, you should you could consider resetting the prospects do not email field to false with a permission pass campaign to recover the prospects that would like to continue hearing from you. So a permission pass, if you haven’t heard about it, is a one-shot email campaign that prompts prospects to click a link to re-consent to your marketing emails. And the idea behind it is that anybody that doesn’t, after a certain period of time, you can assume that they’re not interested, um, and you can just basically change the opted their opted out field because, you know, it’s a good, it’s a good thing to do to clean your database out once in a while. Um, so yeah, there’s the rule criteria there.

So to finish up, here are a few points to consider, um, for training your teams. You know your organization best. You know your team. So this is by no means a full plan of action, uh, just some points I thought of, um, as I was putting these slides together. So point number one, you could use a slide deck. Um, this is the six key changes that, you know, um, that you can walk through those changes and, um, hopefully, it’s been made quite digestible. And use those helpful images that are included here from the, um, Pardot team, the the sales Pardot team. Um, next, you can all huddle together and ask the question, what does the do not email field do? Just ensure you get everyone on the same page with that, um, to get your entire team to agree with how it should be used going forward as well. Right? So really drum that point home. And make it clear who should change which field. Uh, do not email field is the internal users. Opted out is for the prospects themselves to edit. More importantly, when, like, in which situations is it appropriate for internal users to edit either field? Give some guidance to your team there. And now that you’ve mentioned that they’re editable and, uh, to ensure no misuse happens, do you need to change people’s permissions? Um, users that can update the do not email field and opted out fields have the update permission on their record and their user, which is included, um, for the Pardot admin role, user role or be added as a, um, to a Pardot custom role. Um, so, you know, is there anybody that’s an admin, um, got an admin user profile in your Pardot that shouldn’t? Um, or could you use custom Pardot roles to, um, create, you know, the have the standard admin and then, you know, maybe a lesser admin who’s so you have less of a scenario. Um, oh, I know I know Pardot, but I’ve, um, I thought I’d mention a few resources I’ve been working on over the past few months, um, but go into more detail about personally, I’m someone that likes to have feed, um, as well as something to listen to and watch. So, um, the top two, that was part one and two of my talk today. And then some advice for managing a prospect limit as a Pardot. I did say I would circle back to this. You may know that mailable prospects count towards your overall database limit with Pardot. So if you suddenly make loads of prospects mailable that were previously unmailable, then you could find you’re getting dangerously close to your limit. And, um, you wanna obviously action that before, uh, you have anybody reaching out to you about purchasing extra storage. But, uh, then finally, it’s that nightclub guide that I was talking about before. If you’re still a little bit unsure about what the difference between mailability and deliverability is, um, I hope that can help explain the difference because to be honest, that helped me explain the difference to myself many years ago. So, um, yes, that’s it. I’m gonna hop to questions. And, um, just as you can tell, this is a tricky top tricky topic where context is key. Um, I hope to answer your questions as best I can, but I can’t advise on specific use cases. Um, just hope you understand. But thank you all for listening.

Speaker 0: Thank you so much, Lucy. We have a few questions here. I’ll read a couple that have come up recently. Irina Rodina asks, how would you mark an email as transactional?

Speaker 1: So, um, an actual email that you’re going to send, there’s the operational email, um, like, setting as you go to create an email. Um, I believe you can now enable so operational emails are not available by default when you first get your Pardot account. They have to be, um, enabled. I think that can now be done by an admin in Pardot settings. And from then on, you can, um, have that box when you go to create a new email. I remember pre we had to ask support that up. If it’s not available, then follow those steps.

Speaker 0: Lauren Brown also asks, how can we run a segmentation list for email uniqueness to find duplicates?

Speaker 1: That’s available as a criteria. If not, if you prefer to, um, maybe work in, um, so with email uniqueness as well, you wanna maybe work in Excel, um, because then you can highlight duplicates and things like that, um, which isn’t so easy when you’re working off a Pardot list. So, um, you can always export it and then, um, work off it that way of the email uniqueness node.

Speaker 0: Lauren also asks, what if a prospect or lead takes an action in Salesforce? How can I manually opt them back into Pardot without being outside of compliance?

Speaker 1: If a lead or a contact takes action inside of Salesforce or a Salesforce user takes action on your lead or contact?

Speaker 0: Uh, this is a great question, Lauren. Um, so I actually paraphrased. She wrote student. And, again, this is an instance where context is kind of key here. Um, I imagine this is leader contact because they are a college.

Speaker 1: Okay. So if the leader contact themselves opts in or opts in via Pardot? Sorry. I just don’t I don’t understand the question. I just wanna clarify.

Speaker 0: No. You’re fine. Yeah. I’ll

Speaker 1: ask again. So what if this is It could be a portal. It could be like a community because she’s talking about students. Right? So maybe there’s an action from a community going into those resources. Yeah. Okay.

Speaker 0: Yeah. It says, What if a student takes an action in Salesforce? How can I manually opt them back into Pardot without being outside of compliance? And she says, We are a college, and students reapply in Salesforce. I need to opt them back into Pardot.

Speaker 1: I’m guessing then it’s some sort of web form going in Salesforce, like, the the data’s going to Salesforce? Okay. Um, well, that’s, uh, the email opted out field. I’m sure you can use that, um, resyncing that back in. Um, I believe now that the opted email opted out field in Salesforce and the opted out field in Pardot are synced. Uh, you know, you could unsync them before, but now they are definitely synced. So you should and the sticky tree is gone. So, hopefully, test it a few times. Um, I assume it will work.

Speaker 0: Wonderful. And then one final question here, um, since we are a little bit over time. Eric asks, are there any mailable reports that you can create to see a list of everyone with hard and soft bounces?

Speaker 1: Yes. You can create a dynamic list in Pardot. Yep. Or, um, sync it to Salesforce and run a Salesforce report. But you’ll have to do one separately for leads and contacts if that’s the only thing. So just bear that in mind. Don’t forget your leads. Don’t get contacts.

Speaker 0: Wonderful. Well, that’s all of our questions for today. Thank you everyone for attending and for this, um, rich discussion. Lucy, thank you so much for sharing your expertise with us today. Um, we hope to see you all over the course of the neck the rest of the day, um, today and and the upcoming sessions. And, Lucy, we hope to see you again next year at PARDreamin.

Speaker 1: Fabulous. Thanks a lot for moderating.

Speaker 0: Bye. Thank you, everyone.

Speaker 1: Have a

Speaker 0: good rest of your of your Thursday. Take