Proving the value of marketing activities is no longer optional in today’s data-driven business environment. With Marketing Cloud Account Engagement (formerly Pardot), I can now directly connect my marketing efforts to revenue generation and make data-driven decisions that impress even the most skeptical sales leaders.
Overview
How do Pardot campaigns work?
Pardot campaigns function as thematic touchpoints that track a prospect’s first interaction with your brand. When creating a campaign, it’s crucial to input the campaign budget in the ‘Cost’ field, enabling the system to calculate metrics like cost per prospect, cost per opportunity, and ROI percentage.
After setting up your campaign, Pardot generates a tracking code you can place on websites or landing pages. This code is essential for attributing conversions back to specific marketing initiatives. For landing pages hosted within Marketing Cloud Account Engagement, the system automatically adds this tracking code when you assign the landing page to a campaign.
The true power of Pardot campaigns emerges when integrated with Salesforce opportunities. Once an opportunity is created and marked “closed won,” the ROI figures and campaign statistics update automatically. Importantly, to attribute the opportunity correctly, update the contact role in the opportunity record – this connects the prospect to the revenue generated.
What will the Pardot reports show me?
Marketing Cloud Account Engagement offers several insightful reports that help justify marketing spend:
- The Campaign Performance Report provides a high-level overview of campaign health through an interactive graph where you can compare ROI and cost per opportunity across campaigns. This visually engaging report allows you to adjust range sliders for X and Y axes to zoom in and out of the graph.
- The Prospect Lifecycle Report combines marketing and sales data to show how leads progress through your funnel. This report displays your current pipeline and includes a velocity chart indicating the time from prospect to won deal – invaluable for planning future campaigns.
For granular insights, Engagement History Dashboards let you explore critical engagement data like top-performing assets or most engaged prospects. You can customize these views to check insights related to Campaign, Account, Contact, or Opportunity records.
When properly set up, customers using Marketing Cloud Account Engagement with Salesforce report saving 20–40 hours per month. Furthermore, the seamless integration between these platforms makes reporting on campaigns, attribution, and general ROI more intuitive than other marketing automation solutions.
By tracking campaigns from first touch to closed deal, you’ll gain concrete evidence of which marketing efforts drive real revenue – exactly what sales leaders need to see.
Salesforce reports and dashboards
Salesforce reports and dashboards elevate Marketing Cloud Account Engagement (Pardot) data from simple metrics to strategic business intelligence that sales leaders actively rely on. Unlike standard reports, these dashboards serve as command centers for executives, providing actionable insights rather than just numbers.
The Engagement History Dashboard component can be embedded directly on Salesforce Campaign pages as a Lightning component, bringing marketing performance data front and center where sales teams already work. This dashboard displays how prospects have interacted with all your marketing assets – emails, landing pages, files – associated with specific campaigns. The data typically populates within 24 hours after Pardot processes campaign interactions.
What makes these dashboards particularly valuable is their flexibility. Sales leaders can filter data by:
- Activity date (using relative dates like “Last 30 days” or “Next Fiscal Quarter”)
- Asset Type (emails, landing pages, forms)
- Activity Type (opens, clicks, form submissions)
Additionally, users can exclude specific metrics they consider “vanity metrics,” such as email opens, focusing instead on meaningful engagement.
Beyond campaigns, these dashboards can be added to other objects including Accounts, Opportunities, Leads, Contacts, and Person Accounts. On Opportunity records, the dashboard shows prospect activity of related contacts and details about associated campaigns – creating a complete picture of marketing’s influence on deals in progress.
For organizations seeking deeper insights, Salesforce provides five essential dashboard types that transform marketing activities into pipeline intelligence:
- Multi-touch attribution dashboards that reveal how different initiatives influence deal progression throughout the funnel
- Campaign ROI dashboards that directly connect marketing spend to revenue generated
- Funnel conversion dashboards that track the journey from initial lead capture to closed revenue
- Pipeline velocity dashboards measuring how quickly marketing-generated opportunities move through the sales process
- Executive summary dashboards that roll up critical KPIs into one high-level view
Importantly, Marketing Cloud Account Engagement’s native integration with Salesforce enables customized reporting that aligns sales and marketing teams. This integration helps break down silos as both departments can access shared metrics like campaign performance, lead conversion rates, and pipeline velocity.
Organizations that properly implement Marketing Cloud Account Engagement with Salesforce report saving 20–40 hours per month on reporting tasks. At VALiNTRY360, we’ve helped countless clients implement these dashboards to create a unified view of marketing’s impact on revenue – precisely what sales leaders need to make informed decisions.
Difference between Pardot and Salesforce Campaigns
One of the most confusing aspects for teams new to Marketing Cloud Account Engagement involves understanding the distinct differences between Pardot campaigns and Salesforce campaigns. Although they share similar names, these campaign types serve fundamentally different purposes in your marketing technology stack.
Pardot campaigns function primarily as source tracking tools that capture a prospect’s first interaction with your brand. They’re designed to answer the question, “How did this lead initially find us?” Once a prospect is assigned to a Pardot campaign, that attribution typically remains unchanged throughout their journey, preserving first-touch attribution data.
In contrast, Salesforce campaigns operate as multi-touch engagement trackers that can record numerous interactions across the customer lifecycle. A single prospect can be associated with multiple Salesforce campaigns as they engage with various marketing initiatives over time. This fundamental difference explains why metrics and reporting capabilities vary significantly between the two systems.
For reporting effectiveness, it’s essential to establish a consistent naming convention across both platforms. At VALiNTRY360, we recommend using identical campaign names with different prefixes (such as “SF-” or “P-“) to clearly distinguish between them while maintaining their connection.
The most powerful reporting emerges when these systems work in tandem. While Pardot campaigns excel at showing which channels initially bring prospects into your funnel, Salesforce campaigns reveal which subsequent marketing touches ultimately influence deals. Together, they provide comprehensive insights into both first-touch and multi-touch attribution.
Sales leaders who understand these distinctions gain clearer visibility into marketing’s full impact on revenue. Moreover, this knowledge helps them properly interpret dashboard data and make more informed decisions about resource allocation.
For organizations seeking to optimize their campaign structure, VALiNTRY360 provides specialized consulting services that align Pardot and Salesforce campaigns to create seamless reporting ecosystems that satisfy both marketing and sales leadership requirements
Building Reports That Drive Action
The most valuable marketing reports don’t just present data—they compel sales leaders to take immediate action. Marketing Cloud Account Engagement offers several powerful options for creating reports that drive real business decisions.
The Engagement History dashboard emerges as a standout feature, allowing you to explore critical engagement data across marketing channels. Specifically, you can visualize top-performing assets and most engaged prospects through an intuitive reporting interface embedded directly inside Salesforce records. This dashboard can be customized to display insights related to Campaign, Account, Contact, or Opportunity records—giving sales leaders precisely what they need without switching systems.
Beyond basic reporting, all engagement data flows into Pardot Einstein, the platform’s built-in AI engine. This sophisticated system assigns each prospect a behavior score from 0-100, instantly identifying which leads are most ready to buy. Consequently, sales teams can prioritize their outreach based on actual engagement patterns rather than guesswork.
For organizations seeking deeper insights, B2B Marketing Analytics pulls data from both Pardot and Salesforce to create granular reports using near real-time data. This proves especially valuable for custom multi-touch attribution models that clearly show where revenue is being generated.
At VALiNTRY360, we’ve found that properly implemented Marketing Cloud Account Engagement reporting typically saves organizations 20-40 hours per month on manual reporting tasks. Our clients particularly value custom dashboards that combine:
- Campaign performance metrics
- Multi-touch attribution data
- Engagement trends by asset type
- ROI calculations for each marketing initiative
These actionable reports ensure marketing spend is properly justified—turning skeptical sales leaders into marketing’s strongest advocates.
Conclusion
Marketing Cloud Account Engagement (Pardot) turns marketing data into actionable revenue insights that sales leaders trust. By tracking campaigns from first touch to closed deal, we can demonstrate marketing’s impact in terms of ROI, pipeline velocity, and conversion rates. It’s essential to understand the distinction between Pardot and Salesforce campaigns: Pardot focuses on first-touch attribution, while Salesforce captures the entire customer journey for comprehensive revenue insights. The real value lies in customized dashboards that align with business goals. Sales leaders need actionable data, which Marketing Cloud provides through engagement history dashboards and B2B Marketing Analytics, helping prioritize high-converting prospects.
At VALiNTRY360, we’ve seen how effective reporting can save clients 20-40 hours a month and enhance sales and marketing alignment. We specialize in creating reporting systems that illustrate how marketing drives business growth, transforming skeptical sales leaders into strong advocates for our efforts.
