Mapping Lead and Contact Fields in Salesforce to Pardot Prospect Fields

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When you connect Salesforce to Pardot, there are automatic default field mappings for individual records. For instance, the Salesforce “first name” field will become the master for the corresponding “first name” field in Pardot. But what if you want to use custom fields in Pardot?

There are an unlimited number of use cases for custom fields. They allow for added insight in tracking prospect data points and flexibility in building customizations. Examples for custom fields include:

  • Generally speaking though, many of the relevant fields in your Salesforce org may be custom fields. In order to take advantage and automate your marketing processes using that data, you’ll need to connect those fields to Pardot.
  • You may want to use custom fields in Pardot to track marketing activity related to your prospects. For example, if a site visitor accessed a specific brochure or content, a custom field would allow that information to be tracked on the prospect record and also viewed on the Salesforce record.
  • The most common use of custom fields is in Pardot forms and form handlers. Lots of businesses offer a variation of “what service are you interested in” on their contact us forms. With a custom field, you can log submissions with that information and then automate based off of it.

Looking for help mapping Salesforce custom objects with Pardot?

How to Create a Custom Lead, Contact, Account or Opportunity Field in Pardot

How to create a pardot custom field

Creating a custom field in Pardot.

  1. Navigate to Admin > Configure Fields

    Select either prospect, account or opportunity.

  2. Click the blue “+Add Custom Field” button in the top right corner

    This will take you to the “Create Custom Field” page.

  3. Create an internal name for the field, for example “Product of Interest”

    A “Custom Field ID” will automatically generate. This is the database name Pardot uses and isn’t visible to end-users.

  4. Select a CRM Field Name is applicable to sync the field with one of your Salesforce fields.

    If a Salesforce field doesn’t exist, think about whether it makes sense to create a corresponding field to map with.

    Note: Enable the “Overwrite value in CRM” option  if you’d like the data in Pardot to overwrite the data for the corresponding field in your CRM in the event of a conflict (by default, the CRM value is the master).

  5. Select a field “Type” value.

    You can select Text, Number, Date, Radio Button, Textbox, Dropdown, TextArea, MultiSelect or Hidden. Read more about Pardot custom field types in their documentation. Keep in mind, a field’s type determines what kind of data the field can capture. It’s important to keep field types consistent with those synced with Salesforce.

  6. Review checkbox settings.

    There are a couple configuration settings you can play around with here:

    “Record and display multiple responses” if you want to log multiple values in a specific field. For instance, it’s useful to be able to track fields that users may be completing a more than once (ex. contact us form comments).

    “Set a default mail merge value to be used when this field doesn’t have a value” is nice for fields like first name. When you use a variable tag in an email (ex. %%first_name%%), if the prospect doesn’t have that value filled out on their record, then the default value would show (ex. Friend).

    “Use pre-defined values (for checkboxes, radio buttons, drop downs, and multi-selects)” is a little more complicated. If prospects will be choosing from a list of items, with no option to add their own response (ex. products or services), then add them in here. If you have the option to “Keep this field’s type and possible values (for dropdowns, radio buttons, checkboxes) in sync with the CRM” then you should select for data integrity purposes. Note directly from Pardot: If you update your field later, add new values using the [+] button. Do not simply change old values to new ones. Changing values without deleting or adding will cause the field value to be overwritten in the prospect record and may effect automation rules in place.

Once you create the custom field in Pardot and connect with Salesforce, you’re going to want to make sure the lead and contact fields are mapped in Salesforce.

How to map a lead to a contact field in Salesforce

This is a very important step that many beginner Pardot admins mistakenly don’t configure. Its super simple step and only take a minute.

When you convert a lead in Salesforce, by default fields like Email, First Name, Last Name, Company, etc. all map to the newly created contact record. If you’re using custom fields you need to map those manually, otherwise the information won’t be mapped on the contact field.

map a lead field to a contact field in salesforce
  1. From the object management settings for leads, go to the fields section, then click Map Lead Fields.

  2. For each custom lead field, choose a custom account, contact, or opportunity field into which you want the information inserted when you convert a lead. In Lightning Experience, a custom lead field can map to account, contact, and opportunity fields at the same time.

That’s it! Now you can start tracking as many data points as you want and begin using them in Pardot for campaigns.

Next: Add Pardot fields to Salesforce page layouts

Relevant Documentation