David Cummings on Startups

Pardot as the World’s Most Widely Used B2B Marketing Automation System

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David Cummings

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In last night’s post Thoughts on Salesforce.com Acquiring ExactTarget/Pardot, I missed making the most important point: Pardot will shortly become the world’s most widely used B2B marketing automation system and be the defacto standard. Much like QuickBooks dominates the market for SMB accounting software, Pardot will dominate the SMB marketing automation market.

As an entrepreneur, the goal is to change the world. With Pardot, it’s amazing to think that the product we helped birth is going to be the most popular product of its kind and will be used by millions of people around the world. Pretty awesome!

Salesforce.com has 130,000 customers. Marketo has 2,100 customers. Pardot has 1,400 customers. Eloqua has 1,200 customers. What percentage of Salesforce.com’s customers, growing at a rate of 4,000 per quarter, will become Pardot customers over the next 1 – 2 years? How about in five years? The opportunity for Pardot to have tens of thousands of customers is readily apparent. What’s my guess as to the percentage of Salesforce.com customers that eventually become Pardot customers? Answer: 15%. And, as Salesforce.com grows its customer base, so too grows the Pardot customer base.

Man, it feels good to have a product become the standard in the market.

What else? What are your thoughts on Pardot becoming the world’s most widely used B2B marketing automation system?

Comments

5 responses to “Pardot as the World’s Most Widely Used B2B Marketing Automation System”

  1. mikeschinkel Avatar
    mikeschinkel

    First, congrats on building something that became so attractive to SaleForce; as an entrepreneur I bet that feels really good.

    But as for Pardot being the most widely used B2B marketing automation system in short order, do you expect Salesforce will offer Pardot for significantly less than $1000/month? If not, do you really think it’s realistic for Pardot to become the defacto-standard when it is outside the price point that most SMBs will consider spending on a SaaS solution unless they are completely convinced it will generate more revenue than it costs? In the SMB space your biggest competitor is probably doing nothing, and I can see $12,000/year as being a really good incentive for most SMBs to feel good about continuing to do nothing.

    Or do you think(know) that Salesforce plans to offer significantly less expensive entry points for the SMB market?

    Reply
  2. Laura McCarty Avatar
    Laura McCarty

    Congratulations! I know you are proud. But it’s also great for as evidence of the strong work coming out of the entrepreneurial and technology sectors in Atlanta and Georgia. This should be trumpeted in the media for a lot of reasons.

    Thanks for the blog!

    Reply
  3. Scott Armstrong, Brainrider B2B Marketing Agency Avatar
    Scott Armstrong, Brainrider B2B Marketing Agency

    Congratulations David!
    SalesForce has lots to learn from the service and support culture you have built! Perhaps the way to look at it is that SFDC will soon become the leader in supporting and servicing SMB.

    Cheers

    Scott

    Reply
  4. David Rosendahl Avatar
    David Rosendahl

    David, congrats. Love reading your posts and seeing your enthusiasm.

    My thoughts are similar to Mike’s:

    What I heard Marc say seemed to indicate that eventually, Pardot will be woven within the SF UI (seamless). Do you think he intends to offer it as an additional p/user fee? Or does a version of it become available to all?

    Keep rockin’,

    -dr-

    Reply
  5. Himanshu Pagey Avatar
    Himanshu Pagey

    Hey David,

    Congrats man. This is himanshu. I am ATV member and worked briefly at salesforce email team. When I heard the news of acquisition of Exact target by SFDC I got really excited as it meant Pardot ( an ATL based bootstrapped company) was indirectly acquired by Salesforce.com

    Reply

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