Overall Satisfaction with Marketo
In an ongoing effort to help local businesses find the right technology for them, I ran a few trials with Marketo and other software in the hopes of finding a suitable automation program. The company I consulted with did not have any form of automation, so finding a product which matched their skill level and abilities was at the foundation of my search. Marketo is very rich and helped them approach their nurture campaigns (of which they also had no experience with), lead generation, and management. It was identified to be used only with their marketing and admissions team.
- Rich. You can do a lot with it, provided you know what you are doing. If you can think of it, there is a good chance you can do it (obviously within the environment of lead management and marketing). Which leads me to my next point...
- Community. If you can't do what you are hoping to with Marketo, then the community will help you find a way. It is a community of people who want to make the program succeed, as innovation only improves the program. There is very much a "learn from your failures" mentality which drives the will to succeed.
- Quick content. You can clone things, match it up to email automation programs, and get together a campaign incredibly quickly if you know what you are doing. This is great for larger teams who need to act quickly in the face of an ever-changing industry.
- My only complaint is that there is a little bit TOO much. If you do not know what you are doing, if you are completely unfamiliar with marketing automation, lead generation, and all of the in-between, you will be lost. The program is simply too much for someone who is brand new to the industry, and even such a wonderful community can't help but be overwhelming.
- Customer Service
- Lead Management
- Prospecting / New Business
We want our customers (families) to feel like part of our family. We want to educate, inform, and make sure they know that we are always there for them. When you automate simple tasks, you eliminate two things: 1) menial tasks which can seem redundant as you continue to do them (welcome or thank you emails can be automated as longer, form field filled emails which connect rather than simple one-shots) and 2) spelling and grammar - you can focus on the content, and let the program do all the sending rather than retyping or copy/pasting.
Marketo was introduced to me as the end-all, be-all of the programs we'd explored as I was consulting. When dealing with the program itself, I could see why. It really is expansive and capable of nearly anything. I recommended Marketo because they were operating a team, one of whom had experience, in general, with these kinds of programs, so I was comfortable with it. I would not have selected it if there had only been one person who was new to the whole thing!
25,000 to 100,000