Pardot - Ummmm. I'm Uh, I Like....Not Quite

I sat down with a good man the other day - sat down via the phone (though the phone on my butt hurt) and the web, that is. That would be Derek Grant from Pardot, a company that does, interestingly enough Enterprise Marketing Automation on demand. He is a fine human being and the company seems to be young but reasonably well established with 33 customers in the last 18 months which for a young 'un isn't a bad pace. He ran me through a demo of the company's signature on demand marketing service (I always have to resist the temptation to call an on demand service - a "product" or an "application" though I suppose I could and no one would raise an eyebrow, much less yell at me). First, from the big picture standpoint, I found it a true "1.5" service - integrated with salesforce.com, SugarCRM and NetSuite - a wise thing to do because if there's one area all three of them - and just about every other CRM or CRMish company's services and products suffer from - its entirely weak marketing features and functions. And from that standpoint, Pardot's signature services had about all the traditional marketing functionality that companies from $5 million to $200 million (the lower end of the mid-market) could want. Campaign management that truly was solid as a rock, though not flashy; some analytics though they were a bit on the limited side - geared more toward page views and deep drill downs and whatever the activities the person on the site was engaged in. But enough for a company in their marketplace. Their ability to drill down to the specific activity of a web manque and then to score the prospect for both their level of activity (seemingly on a scale of 1-1000) and how close (based on the web surfer profile) the web traveler's profile was to the ideal prospect was truly impressive. So for example, based on what you did and your profile, if you had a score of 750 and an A or A+ profile, you were about as good a prospect as existed on the planet for some immediate love. Not only that, but what was most impressive of all, perhaps, was the incredibly smooth integration with the SFA side of salesforce.com (and I presume SugarCRM and NetSuite) which I saw and was REALLY impressed with. The pricing was fair too. Pretty much along the same lines as salesforce.com. Not much different. Actually identical with top price being $125.00/mo per user. So all in all, I see all of this and yet....yet....yet....I got a little creeped out. Why? Not because of anything I just mentioned - they were all good and worth a look. But there is one feature that in good conscience, was horrible - though seemingly innocuous. Here's how it works. You go onto a site that's powered by Pardot. You decide you want to download a document that the site offers for download. You fill out a brief registration form with your name address etc. and your email. You put in "paul-greenberg3@comcast.net." (How DARE you steal my email!!). Note comes back saying that you need a business email address so I'd have to put in some other email with a business address - not a well-known ISP (hotmail.com; aol.com etc. would be no-nos here). If you don't have it, leave the site and you're out of luck. That's not creepy particularly, just a bit annoying if you're a self-employed business person who uses an ISP as millions do or you're doing it in your off hours for yourself, etc. The Pardot rationale is that its worth losing some people rather than the business having to deal with the cost of false email addresses ($5 or so, I think was mentioned). But what is genuinely disturbing to me is that the service registers and then keeps your email (the "bad" one) and will send you a note of introduction in a few days or weeks or whatever despite the fact you didn't get what you were giving them the "bad" email for in the first place. Even though you got a message saying something akin to "tough luck" they are still holding it. I was told that there is no easy turnoff switch for this feature but it could be disabled with some form handling...or something to that effect. Do you see the problem here? Like Facebook keeping your profile after you quit the site (which is a considerably worse offense), this is taking control of something that is yours from you. The analogy I can think of is what we all did on occasion when we were kids - "you give me that at the same time I give you this. When I count to three....1....2....3!" and on 3 you snatch the thing from his hand and hold onto yours and run away leaving your counterpart with nothing. In a business ecosystem where the customer is truly understood to be in command, this blatant violation of an implied social compact, if not an implied contract, is a real negative because it removes my asset - the email - without my consent and then doesn't return to me what I'm expecting as part of the compact. Then I get an introductory email saying, without being too obvious I imagine, "Hahaha. Tricked you. Have your email and I'm letting you know, you silly putz." Its sad too. First because Derek Grant who did the demo is a truly good person who does get it. Second because the service has a lot to offer for "non-conversational marketing" - true and solid traditional EMA functionality. There isn't much in the way of CRM 2.0 features but they do what they do in 1.5 apparently very well (my caveat as always is that I don't see it in a production environment, but there is no reason not to trust what I see). But that one feature makes me want to stay away from it until they do something about it. Fix it. Your customers will appreciate it. Minimally, make it an opt-in feature for the business. Let it be on your client's conscience, not yours, Pardot. Optimally, don't even offer anything like that. If you do, I'll revisit what you're doing because I think otherwise you got something pretty good there. If you don't. I won't. Not even a link until then.

Comments

[Brock Butler]

Paul,
In my opinion you may have done your subscribers a disservice in your post on Pardot. I recently completed an evaluation of mid-tier interactive platforms and am familiar with the features you are discussing. May I suggest the following?

1. In my opinion the exclusion of public addresses (non-business) email addresses is a poor practice. If I am a business person, and use a public address to research business solutions, then by definition that public address is a business address. This is exactly what happened to me the first time I looked at Pardot and I almost excluded them from the evaluation for that reason. It made me mad – not what you want in a kinder, gentler web 2.0 world.

2. This feature is a set-up option. One click and the problem goes away. Why slam one of the more practical interactive marketing solutions for a feature than is optional?

3. It is best practice to understand ALL customer behavior. If the non-business email feature adds value to your business, then it is important to have visibility into how many buyers were turned away at the door. This is a good thing to know. Pardot does not send follow-up emails to people who were turned-away. A user would have to set up a campaign to do this. This would be so self-destructive that you would question the sanity of the marketing person.

Paul, I have your book on my shelf so you are a friend of the family. My company has selected Pardot to power our new internet prospecting and pipeline development services. Could you please clarify your remarks about Pardot? I also believe them to be good people. They deserve better.

Brock Butler
MoreDemand

[David Cummings]

You're exactly right that it is small and unimportant to the our clients and the effectiveness of the system (and shouldn't be touted otherwise by us). The main reason we mention it in the demo is that most people don't know that it is possible and it helps us differentiate that our scoring model is more comprehensive. I'm confident no one has used it in the malicious manner you described in your post. I'd be happy to personally show you exactly how it works and/or have Derek spend a few more minutes with you on it to make you feel more comfortable that we are approaching it with privacy concerns in mind.

Thanks!

[Paul Greenberg]

Thank you David. I'm going to write something about this (brief) in the next couple of days if not today. What I would SERIOUSLY suggest is that you take this out of your demo of the product since its not a major feature apparently and its so difficult. I could understand to some degree if its used passively (for scoring) in the following way - "did not use business email and abandoned" is noted and then it (the non-business email) should be dropped from the system. Which isn't what I'm reading from you the way it works but is the result (it still keeps the address) Also, why do you mention it in the demo to analysts (in this case, me) as a switched on "feature" meaning the business email filter/abandonment feature "combo?" It sounds (from the demo) big and important. While you're saying its small and unimportant.

That said, after you respond, I'm going to write something else and then probably so to speak, provide a link. Because I did like the rest of what I saw.

[David Cummings]

Sure, I'll further clarify:
- allowing all email addresses, including those from ISPs and free providers, is on by default and the norm
- capturing of abandoned form data is always on but is not actionable without manual human copying and pasting. It is stored as part of the audit trail of an anonymous and/or identified visitor to be used only for automated scoring (e.g. gave Gmail email address, subtract five points). Users of the product can see the audit information but cannot do anything with it without copying and pasting it into a manually created prospect. We purposefully make it difficult to use the information, and don't allow anything to be done in an automated fashion, so as to make it cumbersome to use the information in manner like you described in your review.

Thanks,
David Cummings

[Paul Greenberg]

Thanks for the clarification, David. I was told that it wasn't off by default in fact. Whether it was invented by someone else or not doesn't make it any better though. As far as pricing goes, I'm not sure what you're referring to. Your price tops out exactly as salesforce.com does at $125.00. That's not a problem to me. Pretty fair actually.

Given the conflicting stories, I need to know if abandonment capture is off by default or is a feature that is offered with the switch on to your clients. If it is off, I'll write to that.

Thanks.

[David Cummings]

Paul,

Thanks for the review. Here are a couple points of clarification:
- the non-free email address domain blocker option is configurable and is off by default -- most Pardot Prospect Insight clients accept all valid email addresses, not just from domains that aren't ISPs
- form abandonment capture was invented by the ecommerce industry and is well known: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=form+abandonment
- the product was launched in Q4 2007 (not 18 months ago - that's when we began development)
- our pricing starts at $30/user/month and is public: http://www.pardot.com/products/purchase/pricing-plans.html

Thanks!
David Cummings