Marketing Data Sharing Rules are what determine which records should sync to Pardot from Salesforce. Use these rules to restrict which data is sent to Pardot, perfect for organisations who want only a subset of their Salesforce Leads or Contacts to exist in Pardot, or who want to route records to specific Pardot Business Units.
Fortunately, Pardot Admins can build these Marketing Data Sharing Rules using ‘point-and-click’, and are much more appealing than the trickier Salesforce Connector user permissions (field-level security, sharing rules etc.) that were previously the way to go. Yes, now in one place, you can see the record criteria that are allowed to sync!
Why Use Marketing Data Sharing Rules?
As I mentioned, it’s typical for organisations to only want a subset of their Salesforce leads or contacts to exist in Pardot. The rules mean that you control:
- Which records sync between Salesforce and Pardot overall
- Which record sync between Salesforce and specific Pardot business units (if applicable to your organisation).
Which Object Sync Can Marketing Data Sharing Rules Control?
- Leads
- Contacts
- Opportunities
- Custom Objects
Ensure you read the ‘Considerations When Using Marketing Data Sharing Rules’ section because there are some quirks for rules referencing leads and contacts!
Can You Use Marketing Data Sharing Rules?
First things first, you must have:
- Migrated to/implemented the Pardot Lightning app
- Pardot Advanced and Premium Edition
- Purchased or upgraded after February 12, 2019
Create Marketing Data Sharing Rules
Go to ‘Pardot Settings’ → ‘Connectors’, and edit your Salesforce connector settings.
Along the top, there is a tab labelled ‘Marketing Data Sharing’ (highlighted below):
You will find rules have been created as default. Click on the drop down arrow to launch the edit screen (highlighted above).
You can switch to ‘Use explicit criteria’, and select the field and allowed values:
Considerations When Using Marketing Data Sharing Rules
There are considerations you need to take into account when planning and building Marketing Data Sharing Rules, including some limitations.
One rule:
You can only create one rule per object, for example, region is ‘EMEA’.
Salesforce fields:
Rule criteria must be Salesforce fields (and be editable)
What if there are no rules?
If we don’t define a rule for an object, for example opportunities, then the connector will fallback on the connector user’s object level permissions (defined by their profile, and extended by permission sets if necessary).
Leads and contacts:
If you create a rule for leads or contacts, the criteria used in that rule must be applied to both objects. The criteria used in a rule to define lead sync will be applied to contacts too, and vice versa: the criteria used in a rule to define contact sync will be applied to leads too.
Multiple Pardot Business Units:
If you create a rule referencing leads/contacts for one business unit, all other Pardot BUs must have a Marketing Data Sharing Rule for lead/contacts too.
Records no longer matching criteria:
If a field update on a syncing record means that it no longer matches the criteria in your rule, Pardot will automatically send that prospect record to the Pardot recycle bin. For example, if a rule is syncing leads with region ‘EMEA’, and a Salesforce user updates the region field to ‘LATAM’, that prospect record will be recycled.
Importing into Pardot:
If importing directly to Pardot, and the newly created prospect records do not match the Marketing Data Sharing Rule criteria, these records will Pardot will automatically send that prospect record to the Pardot recycle bin.
These are the most important considerations – read the full list here.
Have you tried Marketing Data Sharing Rules? What’s your experience been like so far?
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