Blueshift Labs is a marketing automation software solution offered by Blueshift Labs. It tracks data for individuals, but does not have an attribution model.
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Adobe Marketo Engage
Score 8.3 out of 10
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Adobe Marketo Engage (acquired by Adobe in 2018) is a marketing automation platform whose basic features include email marketing, drip nurturing, landing pages, and lead scoring, but other editions offer additional advanced features. Typical customers are B2B firms with complex sales cycles.
I feel that Blueshift has a ways to go before they get near some of the upper-tier ESPs out there that drive successes and are willing to be involved in the everyday marketing strategy.
There are a lot of pieces that you have to get in addition to Blueshift.
I think Blueshift is well suited as a CRM. It does a great job handling the customer information that you need, placing it, and displaying it in one concise place. They could do better in regards to being forthcoming with information. Documentation is weak, and depending on who you speak with on the support team, they may have different answers to the problem you're having. In my experience, there are a lot of inconsistencies in how they think about reporting, that someone who's been in marketing for the past 10-years, has to relearn and rethink how we share data for KPIs.
The best thing with this tool is how they use rich behavioural data, built -in intelligence and sophisticated journey flow to identify and engage our best customers and accelerate the customer experience. The support team has been very phenomenal and outstanding for the last 1 year I have not been delayed any response to my question.
Customer Segments + Recommendations Tool - Blueshift and has helped with automating and personalizing our retargeting efforts. The true value of Blueshift was realized when we could launch triggered marketing campaigns targeted to specific segments based on a user's behavior onsite, and deliver relevant personalized content using the AI-based Recommendations tool.
Integration with Segment and other apps
Retargeting with dynamic content pulled from data feeds / catalogs
The ability to clone entire programs and campaigns should not be underestimated as a marketing manager. This is a stand-out feature that other automation tools can't do (yet) in my experience.
myTokens: Campaign-based/local variables that can be used in emails and landing pages for everything from basic text, rich text, email scripts, CSS, scoring, and more. Set up your emails and LPs with myTokens and you'll be able to create an entire campaign without opening the email or LP editor. Clone program, update myTokens, test, and launch.
Engagement Programs: let you quickly create basic email nurture tracks with ease. Currently EPs can only send on a cadence of once per week, but future product release announcements suggest variable cadence will be possible soon.
AB Testing: using Email Programs and AB Test or ABCDEFG Test is simple to set up and report on. Manually chose the winner of your test or have Marketo choose automatically.
In some aspects, the tool can feel quite clunky in parts. But with the rich feature set it has, it's understandable. There is a lot of room for improvement for the user interface. The system itself doesn't have a slick or modern feel, so the usability could feel nicer to use with these areas considered.
Marketo provides different way and abilities to connect. If you are having product support or unexplained errors you can get someone on Marketo support 24 hours a day. One of Marketo's greatest assets in my opinion however would be the community. Often times our company is just looking for case success stories from someone else. In the community you can search for problems you are currently facing and see others having the same issue and solutions for those issues. If not, you can pose a question to the whole community and champions of the product and others can chime in to provide suggestions to fix your needs. The community is truly a 24/7 place to get your answers quickly.
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.
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.
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
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.
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 tools 3. 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
Customer has a better UX/UI but Blueshift's capabilities are far stronger. The price is also more interesting considering what it does. Blueshift doesn't have certain integrations that are useful for startups (like Slack) but it's something that they should be having soon. Social media interconnection is also a step in the right direction that Customer hasn't moved toward
Prior to Marketo, we used SharpSpring. I will say that SharpSpring is more intuitive to use than Marketo, but it has much less functionality. If you have the time to really learn Marketo, it has much more to offer as well as many more options to customize the solution to your exact needs.
We look at scaleability in a few different ways. First, the speed while using Marketo has remained relatively the same as our database has grown. Though I would say Marketo is slow at times, it has not gotten slower over the last few years. If anything, it has improved, and they are working to improve it. Second, the amount of programs we have developed in Marketo has exponentially grown as well. Marketo has allowed us to drastically increase our output without having to drastically increase our headcount.
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.
