B2B Marketing Analytics is the Salesforce CRM Analytics app built for the B2B marketer. In short, get up-and-running with analytics for Pardot faster. Salesforce CRM Analytics is the main analytics add-on for Salesforce, extending functionality beyond Salesforce reports (B2BMA is one part of the full CRM Analytics offering).

Although B2BMA involves a steep learning curve, it opens up valuable insights lying hidden within your marketing data. B2BMA is available for Pardot Pro, Advanced, and Premium customers – so it’s important that you check exctly which edition of Pardot you are using.

I first got my hands on B2B Marketing Analytics back in 2019. Since then, more has been added with every new release (three times each year). This guide walks you through tips for when getting started with B2BMA.

What Does Pardot B2B Marketing Analytics Do? (In 100 Words)

The B2B Marketing Analytics one-line pitch is the CRM Analytics* app built for the B2B marketer. In short, your Pardot data (such as campaigns, email engagement, visitor data, etc.), is “packaged up” into datasets and sent into CRM Analytics through dataflow.

B2B Marketing Analytics gives you data visualizations and comparisons that aren’t possible with Pardot or Salesforce reports. B2BMA analytics is highly flexible, as you can combine datasets, and apply filters to “slice and dice” data any way you like.

You can pull other Salesforce data in too, such as campaign influence, opportunity line items, etc. This is the way to see insights from Salesforce and Pardot combined, in one view.

Note: Salesforce CRM Analytics was formerly known as Einstein Analytics/Tableau CRM.

What is B2B Marketing Data?

B2B Marketing data is what your prospects and customers generate when they interact with your digital marketing assets. These are grouped into datasets (the “package up” data that is sent to B2BMA). Examples include:

• Pardot Campaign Dataset: Date the campaign is created in Pardot, the associated Salesforce campaign ID, etc.
• Pardot Visitor Dataset: Name of the campaign the visitor is associated with, visitor count (the number of times an individual Pardot visitor visited your tracked page in a day).
• Pardot Prospect Dataset: Default prospect fields, e.g. email, grade, score, job title, date created, MQL date, etc.
• Prospect and Activity Dataset: Includes three years of engagement history information and data from default and custom prospect fields.
• Pardot Email Dataset: Who the email was sent to, delivery rate, open rate/total opens, click rate/total click, opt out rate, bounce rate, etc.
• Pardot Form/Form Handler and Landing Page Dataset: The number of conversions (totaled by day), total clicks, total error rate, etc.
• Pardot Opportunity Dataset: The Account ID the prospect is assigned to, the monetary value of the opportunity, the stage the opportunity is in, etc.
• Multi-Touch Attribution Dataset: The Campaign Influence Model used, revenue from related opportunities, ROI, etc.

Find a full list of all Pardot datasets and their fields in the B2B Marketing Analytics implementation guide.

What Are The Main Components of B2B Marketing Analytics?

There are three main parts to Pardot B2B marketing analytics (B2BMA):

• Datasets: Source data that has been formatted and sent to Analytics Studio (remember how I described this as “packaged up” data?)
• Lenses: A view of a dataset that you save in order to reuse later e.g. Account Opportunity value by Industry.
• Dashboards: Collections of lenses that are visualized as charts (known as widgets). You get a more holistic view, and therefore, can make comparisons between charts.

Apps act as containers for the above. You can think of apps as folders, or Salesforce apps, which are a collection of objects.

Datasets in B2BMA

When creating datasets in B2B Marketing Analytics, you will have the option to create a dataset from a CSV file, Salesforce data, or by connecting to data in supported applications, data warehouses, and database services.

For a more detailed list of Pardot B2BMA datasets, dataset metrics, and descriptions, you can check out the knowledge article.

B2BMA comes out of the box with datasets and dashboards, providing you with a solid foundation. However, we may want to tell a bigger story, to expand on this information and bring in more data. B2BMA allows you to create more datasets using the data manager:

The ‘Prospect and Activity’ Dataset

B2BMA allows us to join Salesforce and Pardot data to magically visualize it in dashboards, but there were limitations in how we could join the data together, and what fields were available.

This example dataset supercharges B2B MA, featuring prospect demographic data and engagement activity together (three years’ worth of engagement history information, and data from default and custom prospect fields).

Lenses in B2BMA

Lenses are a particular view into a dataset. They are the building blocks to dashboards. You use a lens to do exploratory analysis and visualization. You’ll have four standard lenses as part of B2B Marketing analytics:

• Pipeline Deals
• Campaigns (Pardot Campaigns)
• Lead Sources
• Lifecycle Snapshot

When you build a lens, you want to start out with a question in mind and define your goal. What do you want to know?

You’ll select a dataset that correlates to your question, for instance, if you want to gauge campaign performance based on email performance, you can choose the dataset we just created when joining the email template and Salesforce campaign datasets.

Once you’ve selected your dataset you need to select your measures and how you will group your data. The measure is the quantitative value such as revenue or open rate. It would be a mathematical calculation. Groups are guided by a dimension which is a qualitative metric like region.

Dashboards in B2BMA

A dashboard is a curated set of charts, metrics, and tables based on the data in one or more lenses. A dashboard is a group of charts, whereas a chart can also be referred to as a lens when a singular visualization.

B2B Marketing Analytics comes with dashboards out of the box that gets you up and running faster. You can also create your own dashboard to visualize the data you desire.

Let’s look at the purpose of each and their metrics.

1.   Pipeline Dashboard

This dashboard shows your sales funnel from the visitor stage to prospects to the opportunities won/lost. You can leverage this dashboard for sales and marketing leadership as a tool to see which assets and campaigns are influencing the most deals.

It includes the following metrics: numbers of visitors, prospects, marketing qualified leads, open opportunities, closed-won opportunities, and velocity figures.

2.   Engagement Dashboard:

• Looks specifically at your marketing assets like forms and landing pages and their performance and how they contribute to the sales pipeline and opportunity lifecycle.
• It includes the following metrics: asset engagement on list emails, forms, and landing pages.

Below are the sections of the dashboard, they can be filtered by selecting either one or multiple campaigns

The above section of the engagement dashboard shows you all of your email engagements with data including: total emails sent, the open rate, the number of unique clicks, bounces, opt outs, and undelivered messages.

This next section shows you your form engagement, with data points including submission rates, visitor to prospect rates, and views.

This final section provides you with a view into your landing pages and their unique views, total submission rates, total submissions, and total views.

3.   Marketing Manager:

• This dashboard is a combination of the engagement and pipeline dashboards and allows you to get a quick look at the health of your business and your campaign performance.
• It includes the following metrics: pipeline deals, revenue by campaign, and marketing asset engagement.

There are two additional dashboards that are optionally available with B2B Marketing Analytics. During the setup, it will ask you if you’d like to enable them.

4. Account-Based Marketing:

• This particular dashboard helps you understand opportunities and contacts from one account that engages with your marketing and sales assets.
• It includes the following metrics: account details, pipeline by account, revenue win percentage, stage value by account, and sales activity as it relates to time spent on activities and number of sales activities.

5.  Multi-touch Attribution Dashboard:

• The multi-touch attribution dashboard shows you which marketing efforts are most influential during each stage of the buying lifecycle. This dashboard allows you to view the data by 3 attribution types: first touch, even distribution, and last touch.
• It includes the following metrics: revenue, total value, cost, ROI, top campaigns, and revenue by channel.

B2B Marketing Analytics Plus

B2B Marketing Analytics Plus is a higher edition of Pardot’s analytics tool. B2BMA Plus adds a predictive element into the mix. Analytics tells you what happened already (descriptive), whereas Einstein Analytics tells you what will happen (predictive).

Tips for Getting Started With B2B Marketing Analytics

Once you have installed B2B Marketing Analytics, you can access Analytics Studio via the Salesforce App Launcher (waffle icon in the top left corner of Salesforce Lightning).

However, before you dive in, there are setup and learning steps you need to take.

1. Check Your Pardot Edition

To save yourself from going around in circles, your first task is to check which Pardot edition you’re using. Pardot updated its editions and pricing a few years ago, and some customers will still be on the legacy editions.

Being aware of this the first time I set up B2BMA would have saved both myself and the Pardot support team hours in figuring out why the correct Analytics Permission Set License wasn’t visible to me. Here’s a comparison table:

Note: If you are using the lower edition of Pardot (Growth/Standard) you will not be able to use B2BMA, even at an additional cost.

2. Prerequisite Checklist

Before you can “flick the switch” to enable B2BMA there are prerequisites – things you must check in your Pardot Settings/Salesforce Setup before B2BMA can work properly. These are:

• Connected Campaigns.
• Campaign Influence.
• Permission sets.
• Additional access for the Integration User (may not be applicable for all accounts).

How fast you will be able to gain insights from B2B MA will depend on whether your account is prepared (with the prerequisites in place), your level of account organization, and your familiarity with certain features:

• Connected Campaigns: How many campaigns do you have? How well-thought-out and practical is your campaign hierarchy?
• Campaign Influence: Enabling this feature is only one piece of a large puzzle. Understanding how Campaign Influence works can be challenging but once you wrap your head around it, you’ll benefit from seeing the true outcome (i.e. won revenue) of your marketing efforts. Plus, being able to combine marketing and sales data, and view it from different angles, will hugely benefit the alignment effort between the two teams.
• Permission sets: Have you worked with permission sets before? Do you need to consult the Salesforce admin to assign permissions correctly?

3. Learn the Lingo

There’s new terminology to learn, so I recommend that you read through the B2BMA Glossary.

I created the diagram below to visualize how some of the most important terms fit together. You should do the same to bring other B2BMA terms to life.

 4. How Data Gets Into B2BMA

A Dataflow is a channel that passes your data from Salesforce into CRM Analytics. Dataflows are more than just a bridge because, during the transit, a Dataflow will also prepare your data to how you need it formatted (called transformation).

The dataflows come included in the B2BMA package to feed in data used by the out-of-the-box dashboards. You have the chance to create your own dataflows to transform data for other charts (widgets).

The default dataflows, once activated, will run every day, at a scheduled time. Be aware that some datasets use Salesforce data (e.g. the ABM dataset), therefore the ability to view data points will be determined by your Salesforce permissions.

5. Explore the Out-of-the-box Dashboards

B2B Marketing Analytics comes with five out-of-the-box dashboards: Marketing Manager Dashboard, Pipeline Dashboard, Engagement Dashboard, Multi-Touch Attribution, and Account-Based Marketing.

Start by exploring these dashboards first. Not only are they ideal for inspiration, but you should also make a copy and do your own manipulation to see how widgets work, and understand the terminology, mainly aggregates, dimensions, and measures.

If you are confident to venture out, and start from scratch, the ‘Dashboard Designer’ blank canvas is still not intimidating, as it’s similar to the Salesforce Dashboard Builder.

What I also discovered is that if (and when) you do want to build your own dashboard (i.e starting from scratch) the Salesforce CRM Analytics Dashboard Designer does have similarities to the standard Salesforce dashboard builder; of course, there’s the additional analytics skills and terminology involved.

6. Testing B2BMA

Naturally, you will want to test out the B2BMA dashboards before anyone else sees them.

So, create a private app. This will mean that you can test to your heart’s content. Remember, in Analytics Studio, an App acts as a folder that you control visibility to. When you’re ready, you simply share the app with the users who will benefit from the insights your dashboard delivers.

7. Add Analytics Front and Center

Did you know you can add B2B MA dashboards on the Pardot Lightning App home page?

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