Connect Pardot to Slack: Notify a Slack Channel

October 22, 2021
Connectors, Salesforce Ben | The Drip

Slack is one of the most popular chat platforms for businesses globally. When Salesforce acquired Slack, their largest purchase to date, it caused a stir in the industry – if you’re wondering why, this community-sourced Slack to Salesforce wishlist could spark your imagination.

When it comes to Pardot and Slack, there are many reasons why you would notify a channel when a prospect interacts with a Pardot marketing asset – for example, a high-value Pardot form, like a Demo Request. Compared to the existing Notify user completion actions, Notify Slack channel (a new completion action) allows admins to customize the message that appears in the Slack channel. Plus, being a channel, more than one user can rally around (“swarm”) the message, and collaborate on a plan of action.

I decided to take the new Pardot Slack Connector for a test drive, including creating a Slack app, adding the connector in Pardot, and setting a completion action.

What Does the Pardot Slack Connector Do?

With the Pardot Slack Connector installed, you can set notifications to send to Slack channels when a prospect interacts with a marketing asset. This Pardot automation is known as “completion actions”, and can be set on Pardot forms, form handlers, list emails (Pardot Classic), files, custom redirects.

Notify Slack channel appears as a new completion action option from the dropdown:

The Pardot Slack Connector is currently in beta (as of the Winter ’22 release) – you can read about what that means, and how it could impact you. A couple of considerations are:

Pardot Lightning only: you must use the Pardot Lightning App.
Workspaces and channels limits: you can connect one Slack workspace, and up to 10 channels.

Set up the Pardot Slack Connector

1. Create a Slack app

You’ll need to consult your Slack workspace admin (and possibly a developer) to ensure you don’t cause any disruption when installing this into your Slack workspace! Having said that, this is the first Slack app I’ve created – the guided setup makes for a smooth experience!

Go to the “Basic App Setup for Slack” page, and click on the green “Create a new Slack app” button.
Select the “From an app manifest” option, which pre-populates much more for you, versus starting from scratch (note: you can create one from scratch if you have a reason to).

Select the correct workspace. Note: according to the beta, you can only use one Slack workspace with each Pardot account (connector).

Then, install the app into your workspace. It will appear in the Apps menu in your workspace:

Tip: keep the browser window open!

2. Add the Slack Connector to Pardot

Head to Pardot Settings to opt into the beta testing. On Account Settings, click ‘Edit’, then scroll to the ‘Try the Pardot Slack connector’ checkbox.

Then, go to Pardot Settings → Connectors. Click + Add Connector. Slack appears in the “Other Connectors” section:

Click Add Workspace
Back to your browser window. Find OAuth & Permissions in the menu. Copy the Bot User OAuth Token that’s generated, paste it into Pardot, and Verify.

Switch from the WORKSPACES tab to CHANNELS. Click Add Channel.
Fetch the channel URL from the Slack app. Right-click on the channel name, Copy link.
Paste it into Pardot and Verify, just like you did when adding the workspace.

Create Slack Notifications for Pardot

Slack notification completion actions are available for:

Pardot forms, form handlers,
List emails (Pardot Classic),
Files,
Custom redirects.

I’ve opened up a Pardot form (Completion Actions step) where I am going to create a notification to fire each time the form is submitted.

Select “Notify Slack channel” and a Slack channel you have connected.

You may have to see it to believe it – but yes – you can customize the notification message! (a highly-requested functionality for many years). The Custom Message box can use a combination of Pardot Merge Fields and Slack markdown:

Pardot Merge Fields: use the Merge Fields { } picker to insert field data for the specific prospect that has just submitted the form. It could be a good idea to think about which fields your form contains, as well as the fields the Slack channel users will find useful. Find advanced ways to tap into Pardot personalization.
Slack markdown: use will know some basic commands if you’ve used Slack – think : to insert emojis, or _italic_ *bold* ~strike~ Use this reference guide by Slack for the full list.

I’ve used both Merge Fields and Slack markdown in the example:

Note that some information is included by default:

Prospect name, hyperlinked to the prospect record (a Pardot Lightning link!)
The marketing asset name they just interacted with.
Job title, Company, Email, Phone.

When the form is submitted, the channel is notified:

Summary

Now you know how to connect Pardot and Slack together by creating a Slack app, installing it in your workspace, creating a Pardot connector, then setting up completion actions on your desired marketing assets.

Recently, I connected our Salesforce org with our Slack workspace using the Slack to Salesforce app – so I was curious if the steps to integrate Pardot and Slack would be similar.

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