Push To Add Analytics Continues, As Pardot Forms Partnership With GoodData For Richer Reporting
- Written by Andrew Gaffney
- Published in Feature Articles
The movement to add deeper analytics to marketing continued to gain steam this month as Pardot and GoodData announced a partnership designed to allow Pardot users to enhance their reporting functionality.
Under the terms of the collaboration, GoodData reporting will be integrated and included directly into Pardot users’ accounts as a part of their current package at all levels. For advanced users, Pardot plans to make a more in-depth package available as an add-on feature.
The Pardot-GoodData pairing was announced at Elevate 2010, Pardot’s first annual Users Conference, which took place the last week in September. The Pardot event also marked a record-breaking quarter, signing 62 new clients in Q3 alone, bringing the company’s total user base to more than 330 companies.
GoodData is a SaaS-based BI tool that powers the data behind top systems like Salesforce.com and ZenDesk. Sam Boonin, VP Marketing at GoodData, pointed out that BtoB marketers are now being challenged to demonstrate their impact on revenue. “The pressure is on to be smarter, more effective, and more aligned with sales. Analytics enables them to do just that,” he added. “Marketers need to optimize business outcomes, not marketing program outcomes. In other words, they need to be tied into revenue and customer retention. How many opens and clicks and webinar attendees generated is not as important as how many MQLs and how much Marketing Influenced Revenue.”
Boonin suggested BtoB marketers are now focusing on new metrics, such as:
- overall email campaign effectiveness trended over time
- number of MQLs, SQLs and SALs - trended by time, by campaign
- Cost per MQL
He predicted partnerships like the Pardot-GoodData collaboration will become more commonplace. “Delivering analytics is difficult for SaaS vendors. It's always the #1 or #2 most-requested feature, but it requires a very different technology than what they are used to. Analytics requires storing and reporting on data in a multi-dimensional fashion. Analytics, reporting, dashboards, slice and dice - it's a completely different skill set to deliver.”
Pardot is hopes to roll out the GoodData integration to all clients by the end of 2010. Through the partnership, Pardot customers will get their analytics powered by GoodData from their Pardot system. If they want deeper reporting or want to do mash ups with Google Analytics, Salesforce/Microsoft Dynamics, or other CRM systems, customers will have the option of working directly with GoodData.
In addition to the Pardot powered by GoodData relationship, the move to expanded analytics is also being pushed by Marketo, which recently announced the general availability of its Revenue Cycle Explorer, the latest addition to Marketo’s Revenue Cycle Analytics, designed to provide a unique methodology to make it easy to measure, understand, optimize and predict the revenue cycle.