Imagine you had a time machine to predict the future. Then it would have been easy to avert risks, understand your prospects' upcoming needs, and stay ahead of your competitors. 📈

Sounds like a fantasy? Not really, Padot’s predictive analytics can make it happen for you.

What is predictive analytics?

You must have come across palm readers or fortune tellers who predict your future. 🔍

With predictive analytics, the same can be done for your business strategizing using historical data. 📊 Predictive analytics uses statistical modeling, data mining techniques, and machine learning. 

Harvard Business School defines it as the use of data to predict future trends, and events, and to forecast potential scenarios that can help drive strategic decisions.

Source: Salesforce

While data in smaller quantities may seem inefficient, when put together in groups in large numbers, can help you predict shockingly accurate results. It can also be powered by making use of big data, machine learning, and data mining which churn data to be used for predictive insights.

IBM classifies predictive analytics models into three categories:

Classification model: They fall under the spectrum of “supervised learning”, which uses data sets and puts them together for segmentation.

Clustering model: Unlike the classification model,  this is unsupervised by nature. In this,  data is grouped based on similar attributes. Then based on the group’s features, a tailor-made marketing strategy can be formulated.

Time series model: As the name suggests, in this model seasonality, trends, and cyclical behavior are harnessed by using data in specific time-frequency. For example, to predict how much you’ll sell in each month of the next year based on the data of the last few years.

So the next time you binge-watch a TV show or scroll down the products recommended in ads, be alert, as someone sitting miles away predicted that to happen. Suspicious? 🧐

Don’t be, it’s all about driving you toward where you want to be driven, based on where you used to drive happily. And that’s what predictive analytics is about.

The mechanism behind Pardot predictive analytics

Pardot is loaded with time-tested features that empower it as a predictive analytics tool. Using them brings to life, even the buried data from trenches. Some of them are as follows:

Pardot Einstein

This built-in AI engine helps determine if your leads match your ideal persona by analyzing those who converted in the past.

You can up your funnel attribution analysis using an attribution model like Einstein by determining the impact of channels, campaigns, and sales activities in your pipeline.

To make all this work, your engagement-based data is forwarded to Pardot Einstein which helps you with vital insights through these features:

Einstein behavior scoring

Einstein gives a score in the range of 1 to 100 after considering positive and negative interactions, and a wide array of Pardot engagement activities. Thus, it identifies prospects whose behavior suggests they’re ready to buy.

Einstein campaign insights

It’s all about harnessing your campaigns and finding new audiences. For this, Einstein utilizes machine learning to fetch relevant data and offer real-time insights about campaigns, emails, landing pages, marketing forms, etc.

Einstein attribution: This makes your life easier by helping you figure out the most effective inbound marketing campaigns based on the sales pipeline. Thus you can have your best-performing campaigns and touchpoints at your fingertips.

Optimize send times with Einstein: Einstein gauges through your historical email engagement data to recommend an optimal send time for your prospects. In simple terms, this amplifies your prospect engagement with the power of AI.

Einstein key accounts identification for account engagement: This helps you identify prospects for your account-based marketing efforts. For this, a scoring model is created based on historical opportunity creation data. After that, it categorizes individual accounts into different tiers individually.

B2B Marketing Analytics Plus

It is a group of apps built on analytics templates that help you visualize key metrics and harness the potential of the analytics platforms tailor-made for B2B marketers. Simply put, it is a CRM Analytics app.

While getting a view of top-level metrics and engagement trends is relatively simple, what if you could predict your ROI for different campaigns and channels? Well, B2B Marketing Analytics Plus has got your back.

It builds on your existing B2B marketing analytics by adding the predictive capability to not only understand what went through your previous marketing efforts but also predict future outcomes and trends. 

It is loaded with Einstein Analytics for accurately forecasting future trends and analytics. Combining the data of Salesforce & Pardot, helps you gain deeper insights through customizable dashboards. Furthermore, it connects flawlessly with external data sources for detailed analysis.

As per Salesforce, B2B Marketing Analytics Plus is available in Salesforce Enterprise, Unlimited, and Developer Editions with Account Engagement premium edition. It is also available in Account Engagement Plus and advanced editions with the B2B Marketing Analytics Plus add-on.

Engagement Studio

It is not directly a predictive analytics-oriented tool. But when combined with predictive analytics-based Pardot data, lets you build highly automated workflows. 

As a result, your nurturing ability improves, helping win over leads and prospects.

It also helps to build dynamic and responsive campaigns that can positively impact your sales pipeline and forecasts. 

Furthermore, using it, you can segment leads, and align your marketing efforts with the sales forecast to drive sales growth engine and predict future sales.

Why Pardot can be your go-to choice for predictive analytics

Predictive lead scoring: You must be aware of how lead scoring can help you identify your next customer.

With predictive lead scoring, you can increase the likelihood of a lead turning into a customer based on your historical CRM and Marketing Automation data. This helps your sales team to prioritize those leads who have greater potential to convert.

Advanced reporting: Imagine you could create reports with robust dashboards in just a few clicks, which enables you to strategize ahead of time by harnessing predictive analytics. Pardot makes it happen like a charm.

AI-backed marketing automation: It can be thought of as the coming together of AI & machine learning for your automation needs. Understandably, it’s turning out to be the renaissance for extracting the “wealth” out of data, streamlining operations, and creating targeted campaigns.

Personalized experience: Talking further about marketing automation, it helps you use AI-driven marketing automation as the answer to your business challenges. This is done by creating personalized experiences and delivering customized solutions.

Cost-effectiveness: While many providers reserve a feature like predictive scoring exclusively for higher-tier editions or enterprises, Pardot lets you have the advanced edition clubbed with Salesforce Enterprise.

Similarly, Pardot’s marketing automation is part of the Salesforce marketing cloud itself.

Content recommendations: These recommendations are made by analyzing user behavior and preferences. As one would expect, such targeted content boosts your inbound marketing efforts.

Sales forecasting: As discussed earlier, a tool like Engagement Studio helps you bring your sales forecast and strategy to the same table. And then through better planning efforts and targeted campaigns, you can amplify your conversion rate.

Continuous monitoring: With detailed insights, analytics, and metrics evaluation, you can keep refining your approach and identifying the areas for improvement. As a result, your data-driven decision-making process improves.

Keeping up with trends: Integration with AI-powered tools, incorporation of machine learning, and regular updates show that Pardot can help you walk hand in hand with the evolving technology-oriented business world.

Salesforce-driven benefits: Although Pardot is a top-notch standalone marketing automation solution, as part of the Salesforce ecosystem, benefits from its parent company in numerous ways. 

For instance, if your mailing list, scoring rules, and prospect management are well set up, your lead management improves significantly. 

Furthermore, you benefit tremendously from a bidirectional Salesforce-Pardot data sync.

Source: Medium

Brand value: Lastly, with Salesforce as its parent company, Pardot takes pride in the high brand value that you can rely on easily.

It’s a wrap

So Pardot presents a strong case to be your go-to choice for predictive analytics-led forecasting, sales enablement, customer journeys, marketing automation, and CRM needs.

If you have any doubt weighing on your mind, ranging from its selection, and onboarding to implementation, our RevOps experts have got you covered. No pun intended when we say that, with us, you’re in a safe “company”. 😋

Drive your leads toward your marketing funnel for higher conversions today by predicting and defining their future!