Speaker 0: Hello, ParDreamin’. Thank you for joining us today. Rakesh Gupta, a senior solution architect, automation champion, and so much more, is here to help us pump up our marketing tech stacks with 10 productivity-enhancing tools. Take it away, Rakesh.

Speaker 1: Hey. Thanks, everyone. Thanks for joining my session at ParDreamin’, and we are going to talk about 10 apps that help you as a marketer to get most out of your Pardot investment or learning. And I’m a Salesforce MVP, automation champion, and I also run a Salesforce automation hour, a biweekly webinar series, which we run every Friday at 3:00 PM Eastern. So if you want to learn about Salesforce flows, you do want to join. It is automationhour.com. With that said, here is the agenda. We’ll start with what we are going to discuss, how my top 10 productivity tools come down. And at the end, if time permits, we will take Q&As. This is one of my favorite quotes: “Productivity is never an accident. It is always the result of commitment to excellence, intelligence, planning, and focused marketer.” As marketers, we do lots of things. We create the content, we promote the content, we grab the leads, we pass the leads. So, if lots of things which you can automate, you can use the tools to improve your productivity. And if you are not doing that, you might be losing your time. Like, for an example, as in marketers, we create content and promote. And you are capturing the leads, basically email. And if you have the dirty emails, that will impact… And if you are passing the dirty emails, directly in the email, and if the email is basically did not deliver, then it will impact your sender domain’s and domain reputation. So we have lots of things to cover in this session. As I said earlier, data is king. So data is everything for marketers. If we have the right data, we can take the right decision at the right time. With that said, how many of you have used “add to calendar” events when building an email campaign?

Speaker 0: To launch that poll? So we’re just gathering some answers. Give it another few more seconds. Oh, thank you. It looks like it’s pretty evenly split. We’ve got 42 that say yes, 58% that say no, and I had seen it at an even fifty-fifty before.

Speaker 1: Alright. Good. Good to know that some of the people are still already using the “add to calendar” button. So it happened with you as an end user and as a marketer. So when you register for a webinar or upcoming event, and if you forget to add that event to your calendar, you miss it. And later you realize, “Okay, also, I missed a webinar last week,” because there is no “add to calendar” action on that email. “Okay. I registered for the webinar. I received a confirmation email, but there is no action for me.” So what should I do? Nothing. I will delete that email, or I will keep it if I’m a very enthusiastic person. So what I will do, I will manually create the event in my calendar. But that’s too much for an end user. And with doing that, you might be losing some of your prospects and business. Like, this is one thing I learned. So in the last financial year when I was working, we were sending a bulk email to our prospect. And first time we noticed that we did not add a calendar button. And the response was very bad because we have only 10 people attending a webinar, which is given by our senior financial rep. So next time, what we have done is we did add a couple of buttons for the “add to calendars.” And there were different time zones and with respect to what operating system they are using, whether iOS or Android. And now what happened is we have seen from 10, so it is 253 participants who are in the webinar. So how that is possible? So that is what Eventable is for. Eventable is an application which allows you to add, create an “add to calendar” button and that you can put on your email, any outbound email that you are sending. Next. How many of you are using any tools to validate emails on your form?

Speaker 0: We’ve gone ahead and launched another poll for that and collecting responses.

Speaker 1: Oh, thank you.

Speaker 0: It looks like the “no’s” are winning right now.

Speaker 1: Oh, wow.

Speaker 0: Give it another few seconds. Okay. So we’ve got 77% that are not using a validator and another 23% that are.

Speaker 1: Alright. So this is I think everyone should have to do this. So what happened is I think marketers, we really focused on creating a content. Like, we created a content, white paper or something, that kind of content. And we put it on the back, gated content. We make it a gated content so that we can capture the email address. Now what happened is it depends on what kind of gated content you created. So you can simply create a gated content, which is a simple form, and you can ask the user to enter the email address and then you are just displaying or giving them a link to download the white paper. But what happen if someone enters a bad email address? Or how do you validate whether the email domain is valid? Or a typo or something else? So that is not possible with the out-of-the-box Pardot forms. There are different tools you can use. I have used this application called BrightVerify, which helps me to validate the email when someone is entering it without going into the Pardot form. So it is one step less. So I can validate, “Okay, this is the email domain is valid and this email is valid, so I am going to allow this user or prospect to download my content.” Otherwise, “No. You cannot download this content,” which will help you to generate some quality leads. Because at the end, if you have the quality leads, then only you can able to convert that in the sales. Next.

This is okay. Now you created an email. Your content is very, very good. Now lots of people are struggling, “Why my open rates are very low?” “So I have very good looking content. I hired a designer who designed a very nice looking content. It looks very good on Android, iOS, Mac, and other platforms. But still my open rates is very, very low.” And sometime, it also happens your email is ending up with the spam folder or junk folder. Why? Because there are some reasons. It might be possible that you are using some words which is maybe flagged as spam or maybe some promotional words like exclamation marks, question mark, and there are other things. Now how do you make sure that when you send an email, it at least reaches the inbox, not, you know, at least in the general promotion. And as a new marketer, it happened with me. So when I started my marketer journey in 2015, I made all these mistakes. And then I later found this nice tool, called as Mail Tester. I hope many of you heard about this tool, called Mail Tester. What it does, it basically, it is a tool, which is available, I think, for no cost. When you create an email, what you have to do is you have to just forward an email to this Mail Tester. And what Mail Tester will do is it will analyze and let you know that, “Okay, so this email has a sending score of 9.5.” This is one of my sending scores, but you can validate. Either it will give you eight, seven, and this will give you some suggestions how you can improve. And this is very, very, very helpful because content creation is very good. Email, beautiful, very, very good. But if it’s not reaching the prospect, the lead’s inbox, then it doesn’t have any value. So utilize this to help your email to get to the prospect inbox.

And next, how many of you know about domain reputation and tracking a domain reputation?

Speaker 0: Launching another poll. Do you know how to track your domain reputation? Yes or no? We have a lot more “no’s” than “yeses” at this moment. So, yeah, we’ll give it another few seconds, but it looks like we’re three quarters no, one quarter yes.

Speaker 1: Oh, my. So,

Speaker 0: yeah, it’s it’s sticking pretty pretty firmly there, seventy-five twenty-five. So, um, yes. So we’ll we’ll, uh, we’ll stick with that.

Speaker 1: Alright. Okay. So tracking email domain is very, very important because everything is looking good, but your sender domain, like, I I also send my emails from my blog, https://www.google.com/search?q=mail.automationchampion.com. And if the email domain reputation is not good, it might be possible that Gmail is reading, “Okay, this email that we are receiving from this domain is often has a spam.” Like, people are marking them as spam, or you sent an unauthenticated email or something like that. And it starts going to your junk folder of your prospect user or whatever. Now how do you do this? So it is very easy to track email domain reputation. I use Google Postmaster. You can set up an account. It is free of cost. When you set up the Google Postmaster account, you have to validate your domain authentication. I bought my domain with the Google, so it is easier for me to validate. And again, it is just a few clicks. And once you validate it, now inside the Google Postmaster, you can able to track lots of things. IP reputation. So it will tell you what is your IP reputation. Then it will also tell you the domain feedback loop, which is basically tells you if someone has marked on your email Google. Only on Google server. And this is you can do it with different, uh, there are different other applications as well, but I prefer to stay with Google because most of my prospects are using Gmail. And this will, again, tell you the delivery errors as well, whether rejection rate, temporary failure, and then spam count as well. And as well as you will also get SPF, DKIM, and DMARC as well for your email domain. And if you don’t know what is the SPF, DKIM, and the DMARC and you are a marketer, you have to learn about it because those are the three key things you have to set for your outgoing email domain or subdomain to make sure that you are sending an authenticated email. The SPF is good, but you have to with the SPF, you have to have DKIM as well as DMARC. I am taking a minute pause if anyone has any questions at this point.

Speaker 0: Yeah. Rakesh, we we have had some questions on the the content so far. One question we had was with the, um, the email validator. Um, how can you check and see if you’re using an external validator or not?

Speaker 1: Uh, you have to like, if you’re new and you want to check whether the existing forms are using an email validator or not, then you have to look at the forms and code so you can able to see. Most of the these forms give you a JavaScript code which you can put with your email forms, and then you can directly check.

Speaker 0: Okay. So Pardot also has an included email validation option. Is that is that not good enough?

Speaker 1: That is good enough, but that is just for a few things. But, like, for example, if I want to check if the email is valid, if the email email address someone is entering is an active email, so this software has that capability, which Pardot does not support, at least for my experience. Okay. That means that Pardot can check if it’s not a free domain, it’s a business email and all, but BrightVerify is a one step further.

Speaker 0: Got it. Same thing with the spam checker. Most of the Pardot org levels have the the Litmus email rendering, which also provides some spam checking in it. Same thing. Is that is that too light?

Speaker 1: That is too that is too light. These these tools go ahead and give you more, like it it it help you as a teacher. It will help you, like, whether what things you are missing, and it is one step forward. But, yes, Litmus email is also good. At least if you’re using that, that’s a good point.

Speaker 0: Okay. Great. Um, it looks like that’s all we have right now. So, um, definitely keep your questions coming in the chat, and we’ll we’ll be able to address some more at the end. Alright.

Speaker 1: Uh, next is okay. Now, as agile marketers, we create content. Okay. Good. Now we are displaying the same content to different people again and again, again and again. Now the different tools like Uberflip will help you to display the right content to right people at the right time. And this is about Uberflip. It help you to generate (or avoid) displaying the generic content to each and every user. It help you to display the personalized content at every touch point. Again, some of the things are available in Pardot, but this is going a step forward. And next, how many of you are using RSS feed to send emails to your customer when you publish a new blog or you publish some new articles?

Speaker 0: Yep. We’ve got, uh, some answers coming in. Um, so far, it’s a full vote for no. A couple of “yeses” came in. So give it a few more seconds. If you all can hit the the vote on your screen, that would be great. Um, definitely, predominantly, no. 90% no is about the the where we’re at.

Speaker 1: Alright. And I think this is one of the features lots of people are not using there. They’re still using manual emails. So now what happen is you publish a blog post. So most of the time, as a blogger or marketer, what we do, we go and manually create an email with all the content and then send it. It takes some time, but what happened is sometimes you just create a blog post and you just want to notify your prospect leads or customers so that they can be aware of it. And you send an email. Nothing else. You don’t want to add any promotional things. That is where the FeedOtter come in the picture. So FeedOtter will read your feed, blog feeds, or website feed. And based on if you have a new blog post, what it will do, it will take this and put into the, uh, Salesforce Pardot email and then send an automated email to the prospect or lead or whatever email list you selected. So this will save some of your typing. Again, I also I started using it, but I still I sometime I switch back to the manual. Sometime I use FeedOtter, but this is one of the very, very good tools when it’s when it’s come to send automated emails without you touching anything in between once you publish a blog post.

Speaker 0: Rakesh, does Pardot have an RSS capability?

Speaker 1: Uh, that I don’t know.

Speaker 0: I don’t think I I It

Speaker 1: don’t think so. Uh, but, uh, I have to also explore.

Speaker 0: Thank you.

Speaker 1: If anyone knows if Pardot has RSS capability, please post your comment. Now what happened when we send an email and sometime we receive a response? If I send 10 emails to 10,000 people or 50,000 people and we started receiving a response. Now how do you capture those responses? And in the response, sometime, you’ll receive, like, okay, their signature, their phone numbers, or office address. Now how do I manually update this? So Direct Mail is one of the things which I only use twice, which allows which what it does is basically it read all your emails and then check if the, uh, if phone number had changed, it will update the phone number, if it has a title, or if someone is out of office. So you want to notify your sales team, say that, “Okay. This person is out of office. Don’t call in between these two days.” So Direct Mail has such capabilities. Now Canva. How many of you are using Canva or have used Canva or Edit.org to design content? Some of you. So this is also one of the good tools when it comes to designing a banner or you want to design a poster or flyers for your marketing content. With this, you can go with the Canva or Edit.org. Canva is free and paid as well. Edit.org is I like Edit.org because most of the things are free in the Edit.org. So you you may want to try if you don’t have never used it. But this is basically you don’t have to have any designer experience. You can go ahead with the frames. There are all predesigned content. You can use it. You can change the color. You can change the background and images, and you can start using this.

Speaker 0: Yeah. I I did pop up a quick poll on on one, and it looks like quite a few people are are using Canva, so almost 80%.

Speaker 1: Oh, good. Yeah. Most of the people are using Canva and some of the people I found, Edit.org, which is also cool. Both are more or less, you don’t need to have any designer experience to design any any banner flyers or any marketing content over these two tools. Good to know that people are using these two tools. Now next is how do you cap… now what happened is as a marketer or the human being, you met some people and they give you the visiting card. Now how do I enter such visiting card as in Pardot, as in prospects? So initially, I was wasting my time by manually entering it. Like, “Okay, I got in some, like, fifty, sixty of those cards for my salespeople and marketing people, and they request me to, ‘Okay. Can you enter those into Salesforce?'” And I was investing couple of hours. And one day, I was exploring how you can do automation on such things because I don’t want to set and type and then there is a human error happen. Okay. So I mistyped some phone number and email. And then I found one application, which I like very, very easy to use. I use this application and what you have to do is nothing. Just scan it and then it will give you, uh, the things and that it will automatically integrate it with the Pardot so it can capture the data as well. And if you are in the Salesforce, Salesforce has an Apex application, you can do that as well. So you can create a lead in the Salesforce and directly pass into the Pardot as well. But, again, this is directly connected to the Pardot. Anyone use any applications like this? So go ahead.

Speaker 0: Yep. We have just a few minutes left. So we’re, like, four minutes until time is up.

Speaker 1: Alright. We are almost there. Alright. Last but not least, integrating Pardot forms with WordPress. I hope most of you are using WordPress for your CMS, and I’m also using WordPress. And most of the customer I have worked with, 95% use the WordPress to host their content and website and all. So when you create Pardot and you need Pardot forms in any of the WordPress, you don’t have to use your HTML code and deploy the forms manually. What you can do is you can install a plugin on WordPress. And what happens is anything that you create, any marketing content, it is directly available to your WordPress site. So you can select the form and that’s all. Nothing else. No coding. Nothing. And with that said, I hope you like the session, and feel free to share your apps which you use and what are the advantages of using it. You can follow me on social media and send me an email, rakesh@automationchampion.com, if you have any questions.

Speaker 0: These were such great, um, items to note, you know, especially for people that are maybe new to the Pardot ecosystem or even seasoned users will find value in just finding new tools to use.

Speaker 1: Yes. I myself did lots of mistakes when I started Pardot and as an agile marketer. So these all are from my learnings.

Speaker 0: Yeah. If if only we had that crystal ball. Right? Yes. I have I have the same thing. So, um, so we have a couple questions. Um, do you have a suggestion for a good integration for email building?

Speaker 1: Uh, email building, you mean email templates?

Speaker 0: Um, perhaps, Jackie, if you wanna add another, um, another note into the chat. And Karen’s asking if you’ve ever tried the DOT business card with Pardot?

Speaker 1: Uh, no.

Speaker 0: Okay. Okay. Um, could you review what the email validation app was?

Speaker 1: Email validation app was basically it validates the email and tells you if the email is a valid email, or it is an active email, it is not from any temporary emails. There are temp emails, and you want to make sure that it is not a temporary email or one-time email so that you can validate with the email validator.

Speaker 0: Okay. The name of the tool was was that bright bright BrightVerify?

Speaker 1: Bright Verify, B-R-I-T-V-R-I-F-Y. Bright Verify.

Speaker 0: Thank you. Um, and how about using Zapier or Zapier to automate Pardot activity?

Speaker 1: Yes. That is one of the best tools. If you want to automate some of the things with Pardot, yes. You can do that as well.

Speaker 0: Great. Um, Yeah. So Jackie was asking about email templates when she asked about a good integration for email building.

Speaker 1: Okay. Uh, we have one thing right in my mind, but just don’t comment right now. I will

Speaker 0: Okay.

Speaker 1: I have to I I initially designed… someone designed one email template for me, uh, in the past, and I used that. I’m not a market designer, but that’s what I use. Uh, but there are lots of email template designers out in the market.

Speaker 0: And Brian recommended Stencil for email building.

Speaker 1: Stencil Lite. Yeah. Stencil Lite. I heard lots of people are using Stencil Lite.

Speaker 0: Yeah. And so we’re we’re about at time. And, um, just a reminder to everybody that’s in the audience, this session is recorded, and the recording should be up and running fairly soon. We’re we’re saying within two hours. So, um, so check back on the the Spot Me platform page. Um, so, Rakesh, thank you so much for for this great session, and thank you to everybody for attending. And we have to give a big shout out to the sponsors because without them, this event wouldn’t be so fabulous. So thanks, everybody, and have a great rest of your day.

Speaker 1: Thank you, everybody. It was a great learning for me as well. I learned about few new applications. So thank you.

Speaker 0: Thanks. Bye.

Speaker 1: Bye.