by Zoe Fisher 
Grading is Pardot’s answer to getting a quick view on how closely a prospect matches your ideal customer profile. But what if your business has several ideal customer profiles, one for each business offering? Perhaps you could set up custom Grading profiles…
What is Grading?
If you haven’t looked at setting up Grading in your Pardot account before, here’s a quick recap on the feature:
- Grading measures how interested you should be in a prospect
- This is a letter grade, ranging from an A+ to an F
- By default, all Prospects start with a D Grade
- You can influence Prospects grade by matching or un-matching them to criteria set up in a Grading Profile
Head to Marketing > Segmentation > Profiles to find your Grading Profiles in Pardot.
You will see that one Profile called ‘Default’ exists already, and there are some criteria set up with a fraction of a letter against them. That is the standard configuration created by Pardot.
How to set up a custom profile
If you only need one Grading Profile for your business, you can customise that Default profile.
However, if you have multiple ideal customer profiles or personas for your different products / services, then create a custom profile:
- In the Profiles section, click on the ‘+ Add Profile’ button
- Name your new profile
- Enter Criteria Name and assign a grade adjustment to each one
- Click ‘Create Profile’
Grade Prospects with your custom profile
In order to automatically change a prospect’s Grade, your best option is to use Automation Rules.
Example: Increase prospect’s Grades if they are based in the UK for the Grading Profile ‘Product / Service A’
Create an Automation Rule, that looks for prospects who are based in the United Kingdom. Set the action to Change Profile Criteria – Ideal Customer A – Location – Matches.
Now you can create additional automation rules for the rest of your custom Grading Profile personas.
This will ensure that even if you have multiple business offerings, your Pardot Grading doesn’t need to have a generic ‘one size fits all’ approach. That way your sales team can rely on the Graded Leads coming through, while leveraging Pardot automation to target your segments of ideal customers!
Want to learn more about Lead Qualification using Pardot? Get in touch to speak to one of our Pardot Consultants, or find out more with Trailhead.