The Pardot plugin for WordPress allows you to harness the power of Pardot automation on your website without using any code. Installing the WordPress-Pardot connector can provide several benefits such as:
- An improved end-user experience through personalization.
- Easily add forms and dynamic content to your WordPress website by using text regions and widgets.
- Campaign tracking code that allows you to understand prospect and visitor activity on your site.
In this guide, we’ll dive into each one of these features. But first, let’s answer a burning question.
Why use the WordPress plugin for Pardot? This can boil down to one question to ask yourself: “do you have the ability/access level to add content to your website?”.
I’m referring to your access and comfort level with adding Pardot-related content (forms, dynamic content etc.) and campaign tracking codes to your website; for example, some marketers don’t have access to add the campaign tracking code to their header.php file, or they aren’t comfortable dropping in the code to embed forms and make adjustments to the form size. The Pardot plugin offers a path for Pardot users to add these without using code or relying on technical assistance.
Add Pardot Tracking Codes to your Website
Your Pardot org has a unique tracking code that tracks visitor and prospect activity, and stores that data in Pardot. If you don’t have access to the header.php file on your website, the plugin will provide you with an easy way to select the Pardot campaign.
If you are already using Google Tag Manager then I’d recommend using GTM to add the campaign tracking code to your website. Otherwise, you run the risk of duplicating activities and potentially skewing your analytics.
Once you have implemented the tracking code you’ll be able to use page actions. This feature allows you to trigger completion actions from a web page visit, ie. when a prospect visits that page. A great use case for this is if you have a prospect who visits a pricing page, to then send a notification to the assigned salesperson because it signifies intent, and therefore, gives the sales person a heads up.
For the purpose of this article, we’ll illustrate how to add these components to your website by using the plugin.
Adding Forms and Dynamic Content to your Website
The Pardot plugin allows you to easily add forms and dynamic content to your website by using text regions and widgets.
To use the Pardot plugin, navigate to your WordPress text component where you will find a Pardot button. Click on this, and it will pull up your Pardot forms/Dynamic content ready to embed onto the page. The greatest benefit of using the plugin here is you can set the form size without using code. It’s ideal for beginners who aren’t comfortable with code.
While you can use the plugin, you can also add forms and dynamic content manually to the website by copying and pasting the Pardot code from the Pardot asset and pasting it into the site.
Few things to note:
- If the text element is already inside of a section, it can only be as large as that section.
- When it comes to adding to the height or width, use percentages instead of pixels. The form will be responsive instead of locking in the dimensions. Note: you may not need to enter dimensions.
- When you insert a form you need to make sure the layout template for the form is the design of the form only in Pardot. Sometimes we see layout templates for the form and a landing page, if you use something like that it will embed an entire landing page.
Dynamic Content Notes:
- Dynamic content will only be shown to prospects, not visitors. Visitors will see the default content variation you define in Pardot.
- Be sure to test out the dynamic content in Pardot before embedding it on your live website. There are testing tools available in the dynamic content section in Pardot.
WordPress + Pardot: Use Cases and Examples
Now that we’ve gone through why you would prefer to use the plugin over embedding the code directly, let’s outline ways to use these features on your website.
Forms
1. Automate Lead Distribution
When a user completes a Pardot form on your website requesting to speak to sales, you can now leverage the completion actions on the form to directly assign the lead to sales. The form allows you to assign based on:
- Active Assignment Rules
- Lead Queues
- A Specific User
- Assignment to a user in a Group
2. Automate Email Deployments
When a user completes a form or visits a page you can leverage Pardot to send an automated email to the user. Keep in mind you can only use page actions when the user is already in Pardot.
3. Automate Contact Us/Generic Inquiries
If you have a generic contact us form, where users indicate what department they’d like to speak to, you can use Engagement Studio to help route the prospect to the right department. (Check out this post to see how).
4. Manage your blog subscribers
Using a form you can allow subscribers to opt-in to specific lists to only receive content they want to read.
5. Embed forms for campaigns
In addition to using forms for general inquiries on your site, you can embed forms for specific campaigns. So if you have a blog post discussing Pardot, and you have a Pardot webinar coming up, you can embed the Pardot webinar registration form right on the page, to help increase registrations.
Dynamic Content
- Offer promotions based on industry.
- Use attributes such as name or company on a landing page to tailor the experience specifically to the user. For instance, the header on the page could say “hello NAME, from COMPANY, thanks for stopping by.” If the person is unknown to Pardot, you can set up default content.
- Create dynamic CTAs. Similar to the above, if you have call-to-actions on your site, you can personalize these based on user attributes. For instance, if you know the industry, you can offer different content offers based on their industry. You might offer different eBooks based on industry, or other attributes such as role, or title.
- Position different content based on where the user is inside the buyer’s journey. If you have a prospect on your site, you’d likely serve them different content than someone who is currently in the negotiation stage. Based on the content you have created for each stage in the journey, you can serve this content based on the visitor’s current stage.
The example below shows different examples of content during 3 different stages of the buying process.
Source: Poweredbysearch.com
There is certainly a huge benefit to weaving Pardot into your website. Whether or not you use the plugin, or insert the code directly to your website, you’ll gain the benefits of Pardot.
As always, keep in mind your end-users comfort level with code and their access to each platform. Using Pardot on your website really allows you to extend Pardot’s capabilities into your digital presence and increases the ROI of the platform.
If you want to take the next step and connect WordPress and Pardot, read my guide on installing the WordPress-Pardot connector using Salesforce SSO.
