While other sales and marketing intelligence vendors provide integrated prospecting within marketing automation platforms, Salesforce has not implemented Data.com prospecting for the Pardot B2B marketing automation platform.  Pardot is strictly a permission-based marketing platform so sales reps need to work the prospects to obtain marketing permission before the record can be sent from Salesforce to Pardot.

“It’s a bad idea to purchase email lists and immediately send email to those purchased prospects, and no reputable email service provider will allow you to immediately send email to a purchased list. However, that doesn’t mean you can’t benefit from this treasure trove of information, as long as permission is explicitly obtained first,” said Skyler Holobach, Pardot’s Email Compliance Manager.

Instead, Holobach recommends using Data.com Clean to enrich basic contact information obtained from web forms or tradeshows.  If the user is synching with Data.com Clean, then company and contact data is enriched.  Otherwise, users can synch against Data.com Connect for contact enrichment.  Updating takes the user through a “stare and compare” process.

When users have Data.com Prospector lists, they are required to call into accounts to obtain opt-in permission.

“The incorrect way would be to use Data.com as a cold lead generator for email purposes. Given the terms stated in the Permission-Based Marketing Policy, customers can not pull in prospects through Data.com and immediately add them to Pardot lists for emails and/or nurturing without first obtaining their permission. By not following best practices, you’re also running a significant risk for getting your IP address blacklisted, which can lead to significant email reputation damage,” said Holobach.  “Instead, you should follow the best practices outlined above, to first obtain permission prior to sending email. By obtaining explicit permission prior to sending email, you can reap the benefits of the Data.com database while staying in compliance with Pardot’s Permission-Based Marketing Policy and keeping your email reputation high.”