Pardot and HubSpot are both excellent platforms that offer B2B marketing automation tools designed to make your campaigns run more efficiently. It’s no wonder they’re two of the most popular solutions in the market.
However, it’s becoming increasingly common for many of our leads to inquire as to migrating from Pardot to HubSpot. While the first option is genuinely useful, HubSpot provides a more comprehensive tool set that integrates inbound marketing, as well as their sales and service hubs to their marketing functionalities.
Benefits of Switching from Pardot to HubSpot
There are several advantages to using HubSpot over Pardot, and all of them will make you wonder how your business ever functioned without having it done sooner.
Better Customer Support
Starting to use any new software comes with a learning curve; and you want to make sure you have all the support you need, when you need it. Depending on your plan, HubSpot offers multiple ways to get answers and communicate with customer service, including live chat, phone call, email, knowledge base, and community forums. Meanwhile, Pardot Premier support varies by region.
The Platform is More Intuitive
Learning how to use Pardot can become complicated as you add customization options. HubSpot is more intuitive, offers free HubSpot Academy courses, and you can get consulting support and management from a partner agency (such as the wonder that is elite partner Bluleadz).
Doesn’t Need Third-Party CRM, Sales, or Customer Service
While every business has a tech stack, the more platforms you use, the more work you have to do re: learning how to use each of them, wondering if they’ll integrate well with what you use the most, security, administration, plug-ins, APIs, etc… Pardot has a lot of great tools for marketing, but that’s about it. HubSpot has a free CRM, and marketing, sales, and service hubs that are designed to work well together.
Marketing Hub Works Well With CMS
Effective B2B marketing requires establishing trust in your company as an industry expert; and while reputation certainly is what drives brand awareness, businesses who aren’t as well known as, say, Apple or Google, need to consistently publish helpful content their target audience can use as resources. Whether you want to write a blog or publish in-depth content offers, HubSpot’s content management system (CMS) makes it a cinch.
More Thorough Marketing Strategies
Pardot is very email centric, and while you can certainly create attractive marketing emails and landing pages, it would behoove you to also incorporate tools that can serve your leads throughout every stage of the sales funnel. You can also host videos and integrate with graphic design platforms.
Revenue Attribution Feature
The best way to know which campaign features worked best is to know exactly the amount of revenue from each asset: form submissions, clicks on calls to action, specific emails, etc… HubSpot has a revenue attribution feature that breaks this down so that you can continue making data driven decisions. Pardot does not.
How to Migrate from Pardot to HubSpot
Alright. Now that you know the reasons why HubSpot helps you cast a wider net, let’s go over the step-by-step process of migrating from Pardot.
Prior to Migrating:
- Scrub your contacts list and delete all assets you don’t really use from Pardot.
- Standardize nomenclature so that your database is easy to navigate.
- Identify how Pardot’s data points match with HubSpot (e.g. opportunities = deals)
- Identify how many contacts, deals, and companies you’re moving.
- Identify soft data to migrate (e.g. any attachments you want to include).
- Make a list of all of the workflows and campaigns you want to recreate.
- Identify all the integrations you’ll need when you migrate your data.
To Migrate Your Marketing Database:
- From your Pardot account, go to the Tools dropdown menu and select CSV export.
- Check the “Switch to Full Export” option.
- Import it into HubSpot’s Contacts tool.
- To migrate existing campaigns, import them into HubSpot’s Workflows tool.
- When setting up the Workflows, keep in mind that what’s known as “trigger criteria” on Pardot is labeled as “lists” within HubSpot.
You’ll have to copy and paste your email content into HubSpot templates, and they’ll be easy to recreate with their drag-and-drop functionalities and CTA creators. However, if your templates are customized, you’ll need help from a HubSpot partner agency or a web developer.
Get a HubSpot Demo
We understand that moving all of your assets from one platform to another may seem daunting. Let us show you how using HubSpot can help you better align your marketing team with your sales team, and how all of the marketing automation functionalities work so well with all of its hubs. You’ll see how these seamless collaborations will yield more qualified leads.
Alejandra Zilak
Alejandra Zilak is a content writer, ghostwriter, blogger, and editor. She has a bachelor's degree in journalism and a Juris Doctor. She's licensed to practice law in four jurisdictions and worked as an attorney for almost a decade before switching careers to write full time. She loves being part of the Bluleadz team and implementing SEO best practices with her content. When not working, she loves to read, write fiction, and long distance running.