How to use Pardot Dynamic Content on Websites

Applying dynamic content in your website is becoming increasingly important. These days, consumers expect their experience to be highly personalized, given all the data they provide you. For example, if a prospect downloads an eBook in your website, he or she will not like to be offered the same eBook time and time again… The same happens when you see ads everywhere encouraging you to book a hotel you have just booked. Presumably, if you have already booked your stay, spamming you with more booking ads will be useless. Do these situations sound familiar to you? They sure do to me. At the end of the day, we all end up feeling frustrated and annoyed, isn’t it?

That is why, in this article, we will help you understand how Pardot dynamic content helps you fighting against the above-mentioned situations. We will also give you some guidance on how to use it on your website to increase engagement and conversion. Ready?

What is Pardot Dynamic Content?

Dynamic content, as the name might suggest, is an adaptable type of content you apply to marketing assets. Adaptable in the sense that it changes according to the information you have about your leads or prospects. So, for that purpose, Pardot offers the possibility to create content that changes based on the values of some fields. It opens a new window of opportunities for you to personalize landing pages, emails, your website, or any other type of content! As it generates a javascript code for each piece of content, you can use it almost everywhere you see fit.

Why should you use Dynamic Content?

The increasing investment companies are making in customer experience, alongside with the diversity of information available to customers online contribute to customers becoming more demanding than ever. Consequently, the world is also becoming a more competitive place. Everything you do to improve customers’ experience, even if it sounds small or insignificant, can and will affect your customer acquisition and loyalty. We assure you!

Therefore, one of the things you may need to improve to enhance customer experience is the way you communicate with clients and prospects across your touch-points. “How?” – you may ask. One possible answer lies in Pardot’s Dynamic Content!

There are several benefits of adding Pardot dynamic content to your website. I will highlight the ones I consider to be the most important:

It drives engagement. Your visitors will more likely engage with your content if it is personalized. Wouldn’t you prefer content that goes according to your interests? Content that takes into account previous interactions you had with the brand?
It fosters a good relationship. Personalization helps you to connect with customers at a more personal level, increasing the value of the insights you give and, consequently trust.
It is fast. The way dynamic content is built allows you to change your default content and possible variations in real-time ensuring communication is consistent over time.
It drives conversions. By giving personalized and data-driven recommendations to your website users, the probability of conversion will increase, as the content you’re showing is relevant to them.
It allows for A/B Testing. If you’re not certain about what will resonate best with your audience, try using dynamic content. With it, you can easily test several versions and choose the one with the best performance.

In other words, dynamic content will help you boosting engagement and conversion, as well as improving the way you gather information about customers. You’ll be able to get a better picture of your customers, their preferences and what they value. Consequently, you can offer them what they want, when they need it, and the way they expect it. The more relevant data you have on your prospects, the more successful your personalized content strategy will become.

How to create and apply Dynamic Content in Pardot?

As mentioned before, to use dynamic content you need to have Pardot Plus or Advanced edition. Otherwise, you should talk to your Salesforce Account Executive and discuss an upgrade.

Also, as you may already know, you can access dynamic content in Pardot Classic and Lightning.

For Pardot Classic you need to navigate to Marketing -> Content -> Dynamic Content -> Add Dynamic Content.

Pardot Lightning is the new interface for Pardot in Salesforce. It is easier and friendlier to use. To access the dynamic content you need to navigate to Content -> Dynamic Content -> Add Dynamic Content. A new page, such as the one below, should appear.

Now, it’s time to create some dynamic content variations! Start by creating the default content, the one that appears when prospects don’t meet the criteria for any of the variations. Then you create the variations up to 25 and you specify the criteria for each variation, using the available fields.

Keep in mind the following tips when generating your variations:

Order the variations from the most to the less restrictive, because the first variation matched by the prospect will be the one he/she will see. For example: Let’s say you have a variation for a score higher 50 and another for a score higher than 80. In this case, you should have the latter first, because a prospect who has a score higher than 80, also meets the criteria higher than 50. So, keep in mind: if you have prospects that match more than one variation, they will only see the one that is most specific and tailored to them.
Use only HTML or text when developing your variations, the content will then be adjusted based on the CSS of the page where you embed it.
Keep your variations as simple as possible to avoid any problems in how the content will be displayed on your page. For example: If you need to change a whole page and not only a part of it (such as an image, a part of text or CTA), you should create a piece of dynamic content for each section of the page. Let’s say, one for the header, body, and footer. Does this make sense to you?

After creating the default content and its possible variations, click on view embed code, then copy and paste the code in the HTML of the page where you want it to appear. To ensure your dynamic content is being correctly displayed and does not break any sections of your website use the Testing tools. You may find them on the dynamic content section. This way, you grant a one-time use cookie on your tracker domain.

Ideas on how to use Dynamic Content on your Website

When specifically applied to your website, dynamic content allows you to personalize what each user sees, based on the information you have about the user’s interests and activity. With this, you can achieve two independent objectives.

You micro-convert and guide the prospect directly to the information he or she is looking for, generating engagement and leading to faster buying decisions.
You will be collecting more information, both demographic and behavioral, which will allow you to better target prospects.

As such, let’s see some examples of how this content can be used on your website to provide more tailored messages!

Examples:

Personalize your event invitations based on your prospects’ past attendance.

Why does this matter?

Do you happen to organize lots of events at your company? Then, this dynamic content example is for you! Let’s say you notice that a prospect never misses any of your events. In the registration area of your new event (website section, banner, landing page or form, for example), mention you are glad to meet the prospect once more. On the other hand, imagine now you have a prospect that registered to your last event, but he or she actually missed it. When registering to your new event, your prospect can be presented with a fully personalized message, saying: “We notice you missed our last event. No problem! On this next event, we’ll be covering topic X again!”. Finally, the last scenario, let’s imagine you have a prospect registering for his or her first event of your company. Through dynamic content, at the moment of his or her registration, you may show a message such as: “Welcome to your first event at our company!”. Pretty cool, right?

Remind your prospects to complete unfinished actions.

Why does this matter?

How often do you start an online task and you leave it unfinished? Did you forget to finish that quiz that would tell you which character of your favorite TV show are you? Did you have to interrupt the payment of the new clothes you’re buying online because you can’t find your credit card? Was the pricing request form too long and you left it incomplete? Unfortunately, these situations are more common than we would like. Dynamic content helps you to remind your prospects to finish uncompleted tasks. If you set this tool for that purpose, whenever a prospect with unfinished businesses enters your website, they may be presented with the message: “Did you forget to complete task X? We held it for you! Pick up where you left off!”. Just making sure you ring them a bell!

Place a case study download on your website about the success of your service or product based on the prospect industry.

Why does this matter?

Let’s say you have your website organized by product. Let’s say you sell Salesforce Consulting Services (interesting choice of ours, right?). And, on each page of your website you present a Salesforce product. In each product page, you have a case study section where you offer a case on how that specific product applies to a specific industry. For instance, let’s say you are in the Pardot page. Here you could have case studies on how Pardot applies to the education industry, the consulting industry, the health industry, etc. How can you apply Dynamic content in this case? Well, after having collected information on the industry your prospect comes from, present the most suitable one. This way, you make navigation smoother, agile, and, much more interesting!

Place a banner on your website for subscribing or rate your newsletter, depending on the prospect’s actions on this subject.

Why does this matter?

Many of us, companies out there, strive daily to build relevant content to our customers and potential customers. And then we invest a lot on getting them to subscribe to our newsletter. However, how annoying can it be when you have already subscribed and yet the banner or popup to subscribe keeps appearing? With dynamic content, you can show the option to subscribe only to people that didn’t subscribe. To your subscribers you can show, for example, an option to rate the type of content you send, to update content preferences or suggest topics. Sounds good to you? So does it sound for the people who navigate your website! That’s why at Stellaxius we are already developing this Dynamic Content in our backlog.

We hope this article has been most useful for you! Without a doubt, Pardot dynamic content can greatly improve lead qualification, and of course, nurturing as well! So, if you have any doubt on Pardot Dynamic Content, feel free to contact us or drop us a comment! If you want to know more about Salesforce, subscribe to our Knowledge Center! 🙂