Prospect Grading is a Pardot feature that represents how closely a prospect fits your ideal customer profile. Each prospect is assigned a letter (A-F) that is calculated by matching their data with your defined criteria. Essential for smarter lead qualification, grading can have a big impact across the organisation when setup and leveraged properly. This four-part series will walk you through how to set up Pardot grading gradually, so you can navigate the different moving parts involved in grading.
In Part 1 and Part 2, we learnt about what grading is (and how it’s different to scoring) and successfully mapped out our grading framework ready to implement into Pardot. With the prepping complete, in Part 3, we laid the foundation with grading profiles, which I refer to as the ‘glue’ that hold your grading criteria together. The grading profiles are not much use without instructions – which is where automation rules come in.
Adding Automation Rules
Multiple automation rules are required to power a grading profile, so organisation goes a long way in keeping your grading machine running smoothly, and your sanity when you need to make changes.
I highly recommend a rule naming convention, structured like:
GRADING-[name of profile]-[name of criteria]-[match level]
Which would look like this: GRADING-Corporate-Industry-Strong Match
First, we tell Pardot which prospects should be included in the automation – in short, this is whichever prospects are assigned to the grading profile, and that fit the criteria values. Let’s put that into play.
In the ‘Rules’ section:
- Set the match type to: Match all
- Add a new rule: “Prospect profile” — is — [name of your profile]
- Add a new rule: [name of criteria] — is — [list of your criteria values]
I’m going to show this in a working example, so have your own grading criteria matrix ready!
The table above could look similar to the grading criteria matrix you built in Part 2. In my example above, I have chosen 2 criteria: industry and whether the prospect is part of a target account.
My first automation rule, called “GRADING-Corporate-Industry-Strong Match” would have 2 rules – one to search for prospects in that profile, and a second to only include prospects in high-value industry (technology), which would look like this:
Next, we tell Pardot what action to take with the prospect’s grade – which criteria to increase, and how much by. Luckily, this is already set up on the grading profile itself (Part 3), however, we need to close the loop here.
In the actions section:
- Select “Change profile criteria” — [name of your profile] — [name of criteria] — Matches
Now to ensure that we are appropriately resetting the grade in a situation where a field value is changed.
Picture this: one day a Prospect has an Industry value of ‘Manufacturing’, which you have defined as a strong match. Tomorrow, their industry is updated to ‘Recruitment’ which you have defined as a good match. To prevent grade increases from stacking up on top of each other, you need to tell Pardot that all the other matches should be set to ‘not known’. This means that you end up with multiple actions on your automation rule – the table below outlines all the combinations:
When the value is… ↓ | Strong Profile Criteria | Good Profile Criteria | Weak Profile Criteria |
---|---|---|---|
A strong match | ‘matches’ | ‘Not known’ | ‘Not known’ |
A good match | ‘Not known’ | ‘matches’ | ‘Not known’ |
A weak match | ‘Not known’ | ‘Not known’ | ‘matches’ |
Has no value | ‘Not known’ | ‘Not known’ | ‘Not known’ |
Add these to the Actions section of your automation rule, like below:
Don’t forget to add one that will reset everything if the Industry field value is cleared!
Click “Create automation rules”.
As you may already know, automation rules are saved in a paused mode, so you have the opportunity to preview. Don’t activate your rules just yet! We will do that later in the ‘Final Checks’ section.
Repeat this rule creation for every criteria and level of match you have. You will end up with a list of rules similar to this:
“Does not match” Automation Rules
A quick note on “Does not match”, another option you see when constructing automation actions. “Does not match” will decrease the grade, thereby making a big statement about disqualification. If it’s easier to describe a disqualified lead than what a qualified lead looks like, this is an interesting strategy for you to take.
Final Checks
When copying multiple rules, it’s easy to make mistakes. Check each one of your rules with a ‘fine tooth comb’, or risk some bizarre results! Refer back to the ‘sense checking’ exercise in Part 2 once more for additional peace of mind, where we checked the weightings of each value made sense, that is, seeing if what Pardot would consider an A Grade prospect lines up with your perception. Never run an automation rule without previewing it first. Finally, once you are satisfied, ‘resume’ each of your automation rules, and watch your grades populate magically.
Summary
Now you have grading up and running, this marks the end of the ‘Guide to Grading’ series. Thank you for reading, I hope you have been able to set up a grading framework that will have a significant impact across the organisation, especially in lead qualification and prioritisation. If you need a refresher, you will find the links to the other parts below:
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