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Case study · Pardot migration

Off Pardot in three months, into real marketing automation

A specialist asset manager outgrew Pardot. I moved more than 100,000 contacts and a program sending nearly a million emails a year onto HubSpot without a gap, then replaced static email programs with nurtures, scoring and paid media integration.

Client
Specialist asset manager, intermediary and institutional channels
Platforms
HubSpot Marketing Hub, Pardot, paid media platforms
Services
Pardot to HubSpot migration, HubSpot for asset managers

Key result

100,000+

contacts moved off Pardot without a single missed send

  • ~1M

    marketing emails a year carried across

  • 3 mo

    incremental migration, team live in HubSpot throughout

  • 7

    nurture programs replacing static sends

The situation

The firm had restructured its distribution around intermediary and institutional teams, and its marketing automation hadn't kept up. Pardot had stopped moving forward as a product, and the team was working around it:

  • A stagnating feature set with little meaningful development on the roadmap
  • Weak campaign reporting, so performance questions took manual work to answer
  • Limited campaign controls, which made complex, multi-step execution hard to run reliably

The firm chose HubSpot for marketing. During that assessment, new leadership reached a broader conclusion: HubSpot was the CRM they would choose if starting from scratch. That became its own project.

What was getting in the way

  • Programs ran on habit

    Recurring sends had piled up over years, many of them static blasts with no logic for who should get what next.

  • No intent-based priority

    Without automated scoring, sales saw activity but not readiness.

  • Paid media ran separately

    Ad audiences and CRM data didn't connect, so campaigns couldn't target or suppress on what the CRM knew.

  • No room for a hard cutover

    At nearly a million sends a year, a weekend switch risked deliverability and missed sends.

Each program was rebuilt, tested and switched on in HubSpot before its Pardot version was turned off. The team never lost a send.

What I built

Delivered in sequence over three months so the team kept sending throughout.

  1. Incremental migration

    Programs moved one at a time, each live in HubSpot before its Pardot version went dark.

  2. Clean data on arrival

    Contacts matched to advisor data by CRD number, with every Pardot opt-out carried across.

  3. Static programs retired

    Programs that no longer earned their place were shut down during the move.

  4. True nurture programs

    A general nurture and six product nurtures, with enrollment logic so no one receives both.

  5. Automated scoring

    Engagement scoring flags buying intent and hands contacts to sales without a report.

  6. Paid media integration

    Audiences built from, and suppressed by, CRM data.

How it works now

Before
After
BeforeStatic blasts sent on a schedule
AfterNurtures that respond to what contacts do
BeforeSales saw activity, not readiness
AfterScoring surfaces ready contacts automatically
BeforeAds disconnected from the CRM
AfterPaid audiences targeted and suppressed by CRM data
BeforeReporting assembled by hand
AfterReporting from the platform the campaigns run in

What carries to your firm

A Pardot migration is the cheapest point to fix how your marketing runs, because every program is already being touched.

Migrating incrementally keeps sends going. Retiring the programs that no longer earn their place keeps their problems out of the new platform.