Block all Pardot syncing with Marketing Data Sharing Rules

18 Aug 2022 🔖 pardot salesforce tips
💬 EN

So you’ve just bought Pardot – exciting! You’ve walked through connecting one of its Business Units to sync with a Salesforce org but there’s no data in Pardot just yet.

Should you flip the switch?

Maybe not until you try using Marketing Data Sharing Rules to block all syncing!

Wait, why flip things off when you’re trying to flip things on?

It’s possible that you don’t actually want to sync every record from your Salesforce org into your new Pardot instance, and it’s a little annoying to clean “old” data out of Pardot, wait for it to die out of the Recycle Bin, etc.

Best to avoid putting data you don’t want in Pardot into Pardot in the first place, right?

Ultimately, you’ll be using Marketing Data Sharing Rules if you want to selectively sync Salesforce records into Pardot.

As you debug setting up those rules, and making sure that your Pardot Integration User has appropriate object and field view/edit permissions, you’ll probably have to experiment. “Does this work?” “How about this?” There could be a lot of trial and error.

There’s no reason to let every Lead and Contact in an existing production Salesforce org sync to Contact the moment you start experimenting, is there?

Turn off syncing object-by-object

1. Make sure that your Pardot connector to Salesforce is still paused.
2. In the Marketing Data Sharing Criteria panel, click the drop-down arrow to the far right of “Lead” and click “Edit.”
3. Change the radio options from “Use default connector settings” to “Use explicit criteria.”
4. Set Field to “OwnerID”.
5. Set Operator to “equals”.
6. Set Value to “IMPOSSIBLE VALUE”.
7. Click Save.
8. Accept the warning that “changing Marketing Data Sharing criteria triggers all matching Salesforce records to sync with Pardot.” Your syncing is paused; don’t worry about it.
9. Repeat steps 2-8 for “Contact”, “Opportunity”, and for any other custom objects that might appear in the list.
10. Un-pause your Pardot-Salesforce connector for the first time to Salesforce and be amazed that absolutely no data flows into Pardot at all. Give it a business day if you don’t believe me.
11. Now you can think, at your leisure, about tweaking your Marketing Data Sharing Rules to be meaningful.
    • Remember that you might have to pause syncing before Salesforce’s Pardot Lightning App to let you edit them.
    • Tip: I like to start by setting up a Marketing Data Sharing Rule that I know will only match 1 or 2 records, and just see what happens.
      • Then if that works, I test by editing it to be a filter that might match a lot of records.

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Tip for custom objects

I highly recommend pausing syncing in between Salesforce and Pardot Admin -> Connectors (under the gear icon to the right of “Salesforce.com) before you add any new custom object definitions to Pardot at Admin -> Custom Objects.

That way, you have a chance to do this “IMPOSSIBLE VALUE” trick to the custom object’s Marketing Data Sharing Rules before you flip the switch on Salesforce-to-Pardot syncing, and you can play with actual criteria at your leisure.

You may need to hit “Sync Metadata” in Admin -> Connectors (under the gear icon to the right of “Salesforce.com) after you add the custom object definition in Pardot, while still paused, so that the object will show up in Marketing Data Sharing Rules at all.

It could also require some logging out of Salesforce & Pardot, hitting “Sync Metadata” in the little gear by the Pardot connector to Salesforce, waiting 5-10 minutes, and other general fiddling around before the new object shows up in the Pardot Lightning App in Salesforce’s Marketing Data Sharing Rules configuration area.

Once you’ve set up the “IMPOSSIBLE VALUE” sharing rule, unpause syncing and validate that no records from your custom object flow into Salesforce, even if you hit “Sync with CRM” on a Prospect.

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