Back in 2018, I termed Account Engagement (Pardot) Admins as the “new breed of Salesforce Marketing Specialist” as during that period, Account Engagement was moving closer to the core Salesforce platform. This meant that Account Engagement (Pardot) Admins had to learn concepts on the Salesforce side to take advantage of all Account Engagement has to offer.
Half a decade on, I thought it would be a good time to dig this one out of the archives; thanks to Wayback Machine (a website that allows the user to go ‘back in time’ and see how websites looked in the past), I was able to fetch this guide from the (now defunct) Pardot blog.
What is a Powered-Up Account Engagement (Pardot) Admin?
The opening paragraph of said blog post went like this:
“The growing influence that Digital Marketers have across organizations is no freak occurrence. In B2B Marketing, the rise has been fed by trends such as Account-based Marketing, Social Selling, and ever-powerful Analytics. When it comes to Pardot Specialists, we’re kept hot on our toes with marketing KPIs, campaign optimization, and product release roll-outs.”
I then went on to divide the responsibilities/skill sets that Account Engagement (Pardot) Admins have into three categories:
- Operational
- Technical
- Strategic
At that time, the world of Account Engagement (Pardot) was becoming one where the marketing-side admin had to spread their horizons to the core Salesforce platform. By “core”, I’m mainly referring to Sales Cloud, where Account Engagement has its tightest integrations.
There’s a belief that Account Engagement (Pardot) Consultants and Admins should be familiar with Salesforce administration – and even be Salesforce Admin certified. When you view the checklist of Salesforce skills we recommend having, you will see how Account Engagement is no longer an island.
Wind forward to now, the marketing data landscape has never been more demanding due to growing data volumes, tightening privacy regulations, and the increasing occurrence of CDPs. Each of these stretches our prowess in the operational, technical, and strategic areas.
The Operational
The “operational” category is made up of the core responsibilities for Account Engagement (Pardot) users – all that goes into day-to-day campaign execution. While by no means an exhaustive list, this includes the creation of marketing assets (emails, forms, landing pages), building flows and automation, and social posting. It’s enough to keep anyone busy.
However, the “operational” tasks often become time-sponges for marketers, because this is where creative flair needs to meet Account Engagement know-how. There are ways to streamline your marketing operations in Account Engagement, such as knowing the app’s navigation like the back of your hand, making assets searchable using naming conventions and tags, plus leveraging Engagement Studio to assemble and visualize campaigns as a sequence of activities. By learning productivity tricks, you can free up your capacity.
The Technical
Let’s play word association. When you hear the word “technical”, you most likely think of data and integrations – and you would be correct. You may also wince at the thought of handling these types of responsibilities. However, it’s not as out-of-reach as you may believe.
Organizations have never had more data to handle than they do now, which means that data management has become a priority: how it flows, how it’s leveraged, and its quality.
Connectors open up ways Account Engagement data can flow and be leveraged in other parts of the business. The most important data stream to get familiar with is the Salesforce Connector for Account Engagement: knowing how it syncs records, the impact of record changes, and how it’s configured for your organization in particular.
A responsibility that is often not covered is monitoring the connector sync queue and troubleshooting errors. Failure to allocate this to someone means that records are blocked from syncing, and no fields get updated as a result.
Data compliance is a hot topic to get on top of. Although it’s a requirement that organizations should have adhered to for many years, compliance has a renewed urgency with the American Privacy Rights Act (APRA) under discussion. It is vital to know your organization’s data capture points and permitted data processing, how Account Engagement honors opt-ins and opt-outs, and the mechanisms you can use to capture them (e.g. Email Preference Pages).
The Strategic
Personally, I dislike the word “strategic” because I feel it’s misused and overused. To describe “strategic” competencies in a nutshell, I’d say it’s about gathering all the information required to make a solid decision and then weighing up the benefits against factors like time, business disruption, and downstream consequences. It’s about having the birds-eye view; being the one to take a step back, look at the numbers, and spot trends in order to take the best course of action.
Traditionally, this was a role reserved at management level; thankfully, there are multiple types of analytics across the Salesforce platform (such as B2B Marketing Analytics) that open up this insight to all users. Data-savvy marketers are highly sought after, especially when coupled with a sound understanding of how marketing impacts all other business functions.
Campaign Influence can often trip marketers up. This is how campaigns are credited to opportunity revenue, ultimately determining marketing return on investment (ROI). As with any system, the Salesforce data model has rules that must be followed; ensuring correct campaign attribution is set puts you at the forefront of marketing. Now, in 2024, consider if Campaign Influence is working for you, or if your organization has outgrown a setup that was designed for simpler times…
To lift your organization to new heights, assess which Account Engagement features have not been rolled out, or that are under-utilized. Some examples are scoring categories, grading, and competitor monitoring. These features are not activated out-of-the-box, and it’s not as simple as “flicking a switch” to turn them on; instead, use your holistic organizational knowledge to advise on how to set up these features successfully for your business, and communicate benefits as well as potential consequences when misused.
The conversation around business analysis took off when Salesforce released their Business Analyst certification. In the spirit of sharpening up on the “strategic” side, I took the certification and found it is equally relevant to marketers as it is to other Salesforce roles. If we were to always say “yes” to every request we receive, we’d likely end up overwhelmed and, eventually, accruing technical debt (when there’s a lack of time to clean up as we go along).
Inevitably, the most sensible marketers will need to say no on occasions. This may not go down well with your other colleagues within the marketing team, and beyond (e.g. sales team). There are questions you can ask yourself before jumping to implement a new feature.
Gathering the facts on time required, prerequisites, and future gain, will enable you to prioritize what will be impactful, and result in a smoother implementation and change.
Summary
In an increasingly demanding discipline, working with ever-complex tech stacks serves as a good reminder of where to refocus your time and energy. After all, it may not be enough to do “the doing” (operational), or “the knowing” (technical) – but where you’re going to stand out and bring the most value is “the thinking” (strategic).
Plus, as AI-powered tools are being touted to take on some of the legwork within the “operational” and “technical” areas, we’re going to see a shift towards more critical decision-making, and experimentation informed by trends identified in data.
