What users are saying about
99 Ratings
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Based on 99 reviews and ratings
Marketo
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Top Rated
1760 Ratings
<a href='https://www.trustradius.com/static/about-trustradius-scoring' target='_blank' rel='nofollow noopener noreferrer'>trScore algorithm: Learn more.</a>Score 8 out of 101
Based on 1760 reviews and ratings
Likelihood to Recommend
Acoustic Campaign (formerly IBM Watson Campaign Automation)
Silverpop is a powerful and comprehensive tool for digital marketers, and is apprprioate for companies of varying sizes, as well as both B2B and B2C models. It's particularly well-suited for companies with large, accurate customer databases and the ability to track customer actions on their websites to use as marketing automation triggers.
Email Marketing Manager, Analog
Texas InstrumentsSemiconductors, 10,001+ employees
Marketo
Marketo is really the only choice for large enterprise Marketing organizations, in my opinion. It scales better than other platforms with similar functionalities and is easier to use. Competitors' products in this space will require more "technical" users with coding and database management backgrounds, or will flat out not handle the volume. Marketo is in the sweet spot. If you have Salesforce or Dynamics and are in a large or medium-sized organization, especially if you are in a B2B oriented industry, Marketo is for you.I am personally currently in the Higher Education industry, and Marketo works well in that space, though we sometimes need to seek workarounds for some areas of functionality that are B2B-focused.Small businesses may price out of Marketo, especially if they have a large database or B2C orientation, but it is still worth a look. That said, I personally implemented Marketo at two different small software and services shops with 100-150 employees, and they both still use the tool 5-10 years later. For organizations that are going to want to do only traditional batch/blast email campaigns and have small databases, Marketo will work, but you'll be paying for leaving a lot of capability on the table.
Sr. Manager, Marketing Ops and Marketo Admin
Laureate Online EducationHigher Education, 10,001+ employees
Feature Rating Comparison
Email & Online Marketing
Acoustic Campaign (formerly IBM Watson Campaign Automation)
7.2
Marketo
7.6
WYSIWYG email editor
Acoustic Campaign (formerly IBM Watson Campaign Automation)
4.5
Marketo
7.1
Dynamic content
Acoustic Campaign (formerly IBM Watson Campaign Automation)
8.0
Marketo
7.6
Ability to test dynamic content
Acoustic Campaign (formerly IBM Watson Campaign Automation)
7.5
Marketo
7.5
Landing pages
Acoustic Campaign (formerly IBM Watson Campaign Automation)
7.5
Marketo
7.1
A/B testing
Acoustic Campaign (formerly IBM Watson Campaign Automation)
7.4
Marketo
7.3
Mobile optimization
Acoustic Campaign (formerly IBM Watson Campaign Automation)
5.6
Marketo
7.1
Email deliverability
Acoustic Campaign (formerly IBM Watson Campaign Automation)
8.0
Marketo
8.2
List management
Acoustic Campaign (formerly IBM Watson Campaign Automation)
8.3
Marketo
8.5
Triggered drip sequences
Acoustic Campaign (formerly IBM Watson Campaign Automation)
8.3
Marketo
8.3
Lead Management
Acoustic Campaign (formerly IBM Watson Campaign Automation)
7.3
Marketo
8.1
Lead nurturing
Acoustic Campaign (formerly IBM Watson Campaign Automation)
7.5
Marketo
8.4
Lead scoring and grading
Acoustic Campaign (formerly IBM Watson Campaign Automation)
7.0
Marketo
8.3
Data quality management
Acoustic Campaign (formerly IBM Watson Campaign Automation)
7.5
Marketo
7.9
Automated sales alerts and tasks
Acoustic Campaign (formerly IBM Watson Campaign Automation)
7.4
Marketo
8.0
Campaign Management
Acoustic Campaign (formerly IBM Watson Campaign Automation)
7.1
Marketo
7.2
Calendaring
Acoustic Campaign (formerly IBM Watson Campaign Automation)
6.6
Marketo
6.6
Event/webinar marketing
Acoustic Campaign (formerly IBM Watson Campaign Automation)
7.5
Marketo
7.9
Social Media Marketing
Acoustic Campaign (formerly IBM Watson Campaign Automation)
6.3
Marketo
6.6
Social sharing and campaigns
Acoustic Campaign (formerly IBM Watson Campaign Automation)
6.5
Marketo
6.6
Social profile integration
Acoustic Campaign (formerly IBM Watson Campaign Automation)
6.0
Marketo
6.6
Reporting & Analytics
Acoustic Campaign (formerly IBM Watson Campaign Automation)
6.8
Marketo
7.0
Dashboards
Acoustic Campaign (formerly IBM Watson Campaign Automation)
6.6
Marketo
7.0
Standard reports
Acoustic Campaign (formerly IBM Watson Campaign Automation)
7.3
Marketo
7.2
Custom reports
Acoustic Campaign (formerly IBM Watson Campaign Automation)
6.4
Marketo
6.9
Platform & Infrastructure
Acoustic Campaign (formerly IBM Watson Campaign Automation)
6.9
Marketo
7.4
API
Acoustic Campaign (formerly IBM Watson Campaign Automation)
8.0
Marketo
7.9
Role-based workflow & approvals
Acoustic Campaign (formerly IBM Watson Campaign Automation)
5.9
Marketo
7.6
Customizability
Acoustic Campaign (formerly IBM Watson Campaign Automation)
5.9
Marketo
7.5
Integration with Salesforce.com
Acoustic Campaign (formerly IBM Watson Campaign Automation)
8.3
Marketo
8.3
Integration with Microsoft Dynamics CRM
Acoustic Campaign (formerly IBM Watson Campaign Automation)
5.1
Marketo
6.7
Integration with SugarCRM
Acoustic Campaign (formerly IBM Watson Campaign Automation)
8.0
Marketo
6.4
Pros
Acoustic Campaign (formerly IBM Watson Campaign Automation)
- Automated Messages - we currently have over 70 automated messages going out on any particular day through feeds and API calls that we pass to Silverpop. We rely on these automated messages to communicate to our customers and can rely on Silverpop to always be up and running to get these messages out.
- Robust query building - We can target customers easily based on a combination of demographic profile data, as well as email and site behavior and purchase behavior, allowing us to finely segment our audience
- Deep dive reporting - the UI reporting, as well as the available reports to download through the API give us tremendous insight into how our subscribers are responding to email.
Email Marketing Manager
SmartPakRetail, 201-500 employees
Marketo
- Flexibility - It has a lot to offer, but you don't have to have it all. There are a lot of integrations that allow you to set up your MarTech environment however you want.
- Usability - Marketo is pretty straightforward to use, and there are a lot of resource documents and community available to help mitigate any issues a user might have.
- Comprehensive - There's a huge range of features that Marketo has built into it that can be bolted on. I accept there are other tools out there there that do "more", but Marketo's features are comprehensive and operate in a local environment.
- Support - Marketo's support feature and team are fantastic. They've always been willing and able to help with simple and complex queries in a highly professional manner. The Marketo Community backs this up - with both Marketo Support and Marketo Experts providing insight and responses to queries.
Senior Customer Lifecycle Manager
Trade MeConsumer Services, 501-1000 employees
Cons
Acoustic Campaign (formerly IBM Watson Campaign Automation)
- Data syncing and errors - Silverpop does not do a great job of getting data to sync regularly with our CRM (Salesforce.com). The data had to flow back and forth several times before being added to campaigns and in some instances, it took days to update leads! Also, failed lead syncs get stuck in an alert list but it does not notify you otherwise that a lead failed the sync.
- Design issues - we use custom HTML to build emails and landing pages, and we were unable to render background images on our campaigns. Also, once you toggle between design and source (code) view to make edits, it often broke the code and threw off the design.
- Administrator alerts - when sync fails altogether between systems, there is no email alert sent to the system admin (me/my team) so we at times have found that we have gone 18 hours until we stumble across the fact that the system sync has failed.
- Reporting - it is not very comprehensive and we had difficulty generating the level of reporting that we need to have.
- Support - there are a few gems in the support team who know what they're doing, but largely calling support is a lesson in frustration.
- Product bug fixes - in two instances, my open support tickets were identified as product bugs. One related to incorrect cookie tracking which was causing our leads not to be scoring properly. They determined that this wasn't critical enough to build into their product fix road map. This is core to an automation system working properly.
Sr. Interactive Marketing Manager
SafeNet, Inc.Information Technology and Services, 1001-5000 employees
Marketo
- Pricing -- Marketo is clearly designed for a premium market, and most people will not be able to get in at the price point it starts from. This is a con especially for small businesses who do not always have the resources to invest in a solution like this.
- Analytic reports within Marketo are not the greatest. I feel that there is more data you can view, and smart lists do not always work as they are supposed to.
- It must also be said that Marketo does have a steep learning curve, and in some cases, you may need to hire a specialist to help you with the integration process. This can add to your cost.
Regional Manager
Dotcom ZambiaConsumer Services, 11-50 employees
Likelihood to Renew
Acoustic Campaign (formerly IBM Watson Campaign Automation)
Acoustic Campaign (formerly IBM Watson Campaign Automation) 5.5
Based on 30 answers
SilverPop is a great marketing tool that integrates with Salesforce to provide customers and employees a great buying and selling experience. The software takes some very difficult tasks and makes them easy to accomplish. With proper setup and management, Silverpop gives you the tools to gain insight into the productiveness of campaigns.
Senior Manager, Marketing Analysis
Roadnet Technologies Inc.Education Management, 1001-5000 employees
Marketo
Marketo 8.0
Based on 144 answers
The renewal process with Marketo can be very frustrating. The first year I managed the renewal for my company, I received a quote from the rep with additional products that I had not even inquired about. Additionally, as a result of an increased database size that required us to go up one tier level, we saw our price jump by over 25%. This year, we are decreasing our database size by at least two tier levels and so far I'm disappointed to see that there will be very minimal savings, despite having much less data to store.
Marketing Operations Manager
SmartBear SoftwareComputer Software, 201-500 employees
Usability
Acoustic Campaign (formerly IBM Watson Campaign Automation)
Acoustic Campaign (formerly IBM Watson Campaign Automation) 8.0
Based on 6 answers
This is a little bit difficult to rate because Silverpop is gradually updating its interface to improve usability all around. I know users are able to do their job with minimal assistance. However, some of the interface is dated, and the Programs interface, while functional, has a bit of a learning curve.
Silverpop Administrator & Web Designer
Intertek10,001+ employees
Marketo
Marketo 7.7
Based on 88 answers
There's a fair amount of flexibility, but as you start moving beyond the basics and get into more complex programs, it gets a bit cumbersome; for example, flexible drip campaigns that can customize / change content based on triggers after the initial start. Some way of normalizing scoring so older, less intensive users don't overshadow newer, more-intense users. Etc.For a basic setup and taking control of the user flow from contact to lead without leaks, Marketo is awesome, once you've got the core data governance and standardized processes in place.Template design is difficult - designers find it restrictive and there is a LOT of debugging needed, with finished templates sometimes behaving very oddly in some environments - adding / deleting code snippets, disabling some scripts - not enough to break it, but definitely some odd behaviors
Senior Manager, Marketing Technology
Tata Communications (Americas) Inc.Telecommunications, 5001-10,000 employees
Reliability and Availability
Acoustic Campaign (formerly IBM Watson Campaign Automation)
Acoustic Campaign (formerly IBM Watson Campaign Automation) 10.0
Based on 2 answers
While several of the other reviews have mentioned poor performance in this department, we have only had one situation where the system was down (although it was down for several hours). Silverpop segments its clients on different servers, and I know that the problem we experienced only occurred on our specific server (maybe other servers have had their own problems?) but our service has been reliable otherwise.
Silverpop Administrator & Web Designer
Intertek10,001+ employees
Marketo
Marketo 8.4
Based on 23 answers
There are performance issues that make it seem like it's down sometimes. The backlog of campaign triggers etc. can be a real issue. The issue is probably more around performance than uptime.
Marketing and Analytics Manager
NavicureComputer Software, 201-500 employees
Performance
Acoustic Campaign (formerly IBM Watson Campaign Automation)
Acoustic Campaign (formerly IBM Watson Campaign Automation) 7.0
Based on 2 answers
The throttle time for sending emails would vary depending on how many other campaigns were going out that day, which I found inconsistent

Verified User
Professional in Marketing
Media Production Company, 11-50 employeesMarketo
Marketo 7.9
Based on 28 answers
There are times when it is slightly slow for us, where we sit on a screen waiting for it to load. This could be our internet since we have had the same issue occasionally with other systems, but it is enough to make you crazy.
Demand Generation Specialist
Applied SystemsComputer Software, 1001-5000 employees
Support
Acoustic Campaign (formerly IBM Watson Campaign Automation)
Acoustic Campaign (formerly IBM Watson Campaign Automation) 5.9
Based on 5 answers
The Salesforce Integration support team is fantastic. I'd give them greater than a 10 if possible. The rest of the support team can be extremely frustrating to work with. Too often they try to blame something obscure and refuse to escalate or look into the issue. And on occasion when you find system glitches they don't seem to care about fixing them
Senior Manager of Email Marketing
Connections AcademyE-Learning, 1001-5000 employees
Marketo
Marketo 7.1
Based on 77 answers
On multiple occasions we've had Marketo support (technical and license based) issues. Technical issues were minor and resolved within a day. License based issues (even things encouraged by Marketo for partners, like provisioning another license) took WEEKS. They actually took so long to respond that the client we were working with withdrew from the contract because they were no longer convinced Marketo was capable of supporting their business. As an agency trying to sell the software, you can only explain away so much before they just made us look silly.
Client Relationship Manager
TrekkMarketing and Advertising, 11-50 employees
In-Person Training
Acoustic Campaign (formerly IBM Watson Campaign Automation)
No score
No answers yet
No answers on this topic
Marketo
Marketo 7.0
Based on 11 answers
Our account rep stopped out in Lincoln, NE to ensure we were properly set up and running. This was very much appreciated. I was very, very new at this point, so I can't comment very much on the extent of what was taught because I was still brand new to the company and the system
Marketing Specialist
LI-COR Biosciences201-500 employees
Online Training
Acoustic Campaign (formerly IBM Watson Campaign Automation)
Acoustic Campaign (formerly IBM Watson Campaign Automation) 9.0
Based on 2 answers
The online trainings are very detailed (for the most part) and really walk through the entire system. They are a little dry, but they are usually broken up into segments to allow you to skip to the parts you need.
Silverpop Administrator & Web Designer
Intertek10,001+ employees
Marketo
Marketo 3.2
Based on 27 answers
I had never used Marketo prior to taking this job so online training was my starting point. I was able to follow along, it was interesting and quickly and efficiently taught me what I needed to know without a lot of fluff. It was far from boring and really helped me get my hands dirty with Marketo.
Marketing Automation Manager
GE Healthcare ITHospital & Health Care, 10,001+ employees
Implementation
Acoustic Campaign (formerly IBM Watson Campaign Automation)
Acoustic Campaign (formerly IBM Watson Campaign Automation) 7.4
Based on 4 answers
Based on recommendations from Silverpop we made some implementation decisions that we later regretted pretty substantially. In hindsight we should have started a pilot implementation earlier so we could learn and then start over. The big issue for us was that Silverpop recommended a non-keyed database, or at least a database that doesn't use email address as primary key. This is resulted in a large number of duplicate email addresses so that the end user is forced to unsubscribe multiple times to stop receiving emails.

Verified User
Vice-President in Marketing
Computer Software Company, 1001-5000 employeesMarketo
Marketo 7.1
Based on 36 answers
1. Have a content marketing plan to run in parallel with the marketing automation installation--you'll need a lot of content to make full use of Marketo's capabilities.2. Work with sales (and ISRs) to define and document a workflow--build your Marketo installation around how you do business--not figure out how to apply your business to the tools3. Spend time of data cleaning--both an initial project as well as a strategy for ongoing data management. We found some change manaement issues (no more appending ZZZ to the first name to identify contacts who have left the company, for example, or prohibiting the entry of "info@company.com" email addresses).4. Find some champions in the sales and ISR teams. You'll have both fans and detractors--work with the fans to build some success stories
Director, Demand Generation Services
Crain CommunicationsPublishing, 501-1000 employees
Alternatives Considered
Acoustic Campaign (formerly IBM Watson Campaign Automation)
Reviewed HubSpot, Marketo, Pardot and ActiveCampaign. Chose IBM Watson Campaign Automation due to their workflow capabilities. They can automate a process that requires a series of steps that typically require intervention by a several different users. Administrators can write rules to determine who and when a user needs to complete a step. Also includes notification of users when they need to take action.

Verified User
Manager in Marketing
Computer Software Company, 201-500 employeesMarketo
Honestly, they are the industry leader for a reason. Their database like approach in interface and the way the product functions could be confusing or intimidating for some people, but once you see the power it has, and get the hang of it - you'll never look back. We honestly couldn't do some of the things we do without Marketo, and they probably have ME as a customer for life. If I'm consulting with other companies, honestly, it depends on what you're looking for. If you have a simple use case, a simple solution like Pardot or Act-On will probably suffice. If you want advanced targeting capabilities, data cleanliness and automation, advanced segmenting, form completion actions, and industry leading scoring, then I wouldn't look further than Marketo. More of a steep learning curve, but trust me - it's absolutely worth it!
Digital Marketing Operations Manager
SaltStackComputer Software, 51-200 employees
Scalability
Acoustic Campaign (formerly IBM Watson Campaign Automation)
No score
No answers yet
No answers on this topic
Marketo
Marketo 7.9
Based on 9 answers
As we have grown, Marketo has grown with us. We started with simple single email campaigns and are now doing complex campaigns with multiple emails and tracks that we send a contact to if they take certain actions within our emails. We also have a complex integration with several systems and have the visibility into our marketing activities throughout our organization.
Demand Generation Specialist
Applied SystemsComputer Software, 1001-5000 employees
Return on Investment
Acoustic Campaign (formerly IBM Watson Campaign Automation)
- we have not experienced any currently but moving to lead automation and lead scoring could change that.
- i'm not sure how increased employee efficiency would ever be a benefit b/c lead importing and visibility, along with setting up email templates is quite cumbersome.
Senior Marketing Manager
SafeNetComputer & Network Security, 1001-5000 employees
Marketo
- Massive increase in efficiency for sales/service/customer success reps -- automation manages their workflow and communication letting them focus on what they do best and increase customer satisfaction.
- Much faster deployment of programs and campaigns.
- Big gains in conversion and revenue through better nurturing, lead scoring, lead management.
Senior Consultant
PerkutoMarketing and Advertising, 11-50 employees
Screenshots
Acoustic Campaign (formerly IBM Watson Campaign Automation)
See All (4) Acoustic Campaign (formerly IBM Watson Campaign Automation) ScreenshotsPricing Details
Acoustic Campaign (formerly IBM Watson Campaign Automation)
General
Free Trial
—Free/Freemium Version
—Premium Consulting/Integration Services
—Entry-level set up fee?
No
Acoustic Campaign (formerly IBM Watson Campaign Automation) Editions & Modules
—
Additional Pricing Details
—Marketo
General
Free Trial
Yes
Free/Freemium Version
—Premium Consulting/Integration Services
Yes
Entry-level set up fee?
Optional
TBD*
* depends on scope and complexity
Marketo Editions & Modules
Edition
Spark | $8951 |
---|---|
Standard | $1,7951 |
Select | $3,1951 |
- per month up to 10,000 records