Acoustic Campaign (formerly IBM Watson Campaign Automation) vs Marketo

• 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.

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• Automation is top notch with its smart campaign execution not only within Marketo, but triggering external communications.
• Connectivity of data and automation within CRM is top notch
• Email marketing templates are simple, straightforward and easy to manipulate through modules.
• Reporting and subscriptions make sharing data with outside users very simple

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• 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.

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• Reporting - Although Marketo reports can answer surface questions and some canned concepts, drilling down and customizing reports is still problematic and is best served through big data and BI visualization.
• Maintenance - The system is not very forgiving for non-technical users working at scale and often requires intervention as performance degrades over time.

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• 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.

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• Improved efficiency across teams in the business. When you don't have to manually send out emails, you gain more time back!
• More targeted lead nurture has led to faster lead conversion and real-time engagement. In today's day and age, customers want the right CTA at their fingertips and Marketo can provide that.

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