Hi Naor,
I am pretty familiar with Pardot. They do have the ability to trigger campaigns, but there are some significant functional differences that you should be aware of, as follows:
-
Unlike Marketo, where you can create sophisticated workflows based on any behavior in one place (Smart Campaign), Pardot requires that you trigger a set of rules in different areas of the application for different behaviors. So you need to go to Page Actions to setup workflows around web page visits, and you are forced to copy and paste the URL into the trigger. Form completion actions are in a different area, etc. So you end up having such workflows all over the place. And each area has a subset of the overall workflow actions available within the system. To trigger workflows off of anything beyond basic email, form and web behaviors, you are required to trigger based on someone being added to a list. There is no way to trigger workflows directly based on data value changes or cross-channel behaviors like in Marketo. Anything like this requires a list, which can get unwieldy very quickly.
-
There is no equivalent of "add choice" (conditional logic) in the workflow. In Marketo you can create one Smart Campaign that performs different actions depending on certain criteria being met. To perform a different set of actions based on the same trigger in Pardot, a separate Automation Rule and separate associated list would be required for each unique action. For example, if you wanted to setup a lead assignment rule that assigned a lead to a different person or queue based on region, you could do it in one Smart Campaign in Marketo. This would require a unique Automation Rule and List for each variation in Pardot.
-
There are a limited number of triggers and flow actions in Pardot as compared to Marketo. A big one, for example, is the lack of a wait step action. Wait steps are only available in Pardot's Drip Programs, but not in their Automation Rules. Drip Programs in Pardot have a very, very narrow set of actions focused on drip nurture, so they don't come into play when building very specific workflows as you would using a Marketo Smart Campaign.
-
There is no ability in Pardot to trigger workflows based on very specific triggers, such as when a data field value changes from one unique value to another unique value, such as lead status changing specifically from "Recycled" to "Engaged" for example.
Also, as to your mention of using workflows to move leads from MQL to SQL, etc., I don't believe these are available in Pardot. Rather, these are hard-wired in Pardot. As soon as a name is generated, that is defined as a Prospect in Pardot. An MQL stage is triggered when a lead is assigned to a rep. An SQL is triggered when a contact is added to an opportunity. So it doesn't work like Marketo where you can define the stages, as well as when to transition individuals from one to the next.
All of this information can be verified through the Pardot knowledgebase, which is open to the public.
Hope this helps.
Best,
Mike
.png)
Adchoices