CallidusCloud LeadRocket (discontinued) vs. Adobe Marketo Engage

We have really enjoyed the personal level of customer service with CallidusCloud and the quick turn around on any concerns and issues. CallidusCloud works well as an integrated instance with Salesforce and also as a stand alone instance that can send to csv files. We have been able to build campaigns, track success of said campaigns and manage automation. The level of integration has been key to our success and to the ability to create professional, personalized templates that are true to our brand but allow us to innovate. We also are pleased with the way that we can add blocks of emails on during our busy times so that service is not interrupted.

Incentivized

Adobe Marketo Engage is great for lead gen because of the out of box solutions. We import leads from Google, LinkedIn, Meta, Tradeshows, and web forms. It allows me to track leads from the moment they enter the system to the point where they become customers. I use it to score leads, segment them, and nurture them with targeted content. It's especially useful as a B2B organization.

Incentivized

• Reporting - we can send out emails all day, but if we don't have something to report to the client after-the-fact it voids the entire process. Genius provided a visually stimulating reporting tool.
• Tracking - Genius was great at tracking opens, clicks, bounces, hard bounces, etc. This helped us clean up our system as we sent campaigns out.
• CRM Integration - Genius was great about tracking each contact (in Salesforce) and their activity via emails.

• Like I have said Marketo has been very helpful by helping us to connect us with our customers and keeps them coming back, hence saving time, effort and resources.
• Let AI build predictive audience and segments easily.
• Personalize experience with active listening and triggered content.
• 24/7 responsive support and service team.

• One area of LeadFormix that could be improved is the way it schedules out an email to multiple lists. It can get problematic when an email scheduled to ten lists takes ten hours (one list per hour) to go out. It also isn't efficient to make us schedule individual emails instead of this process. I would like to be able to send out an email to ten lists and have it arrive in everyone's mailboxes at the time I scheduled it for.
• The email design platform could use work. I've resorted to coding my emails using html, since the WYSIWYG platform seems to add unwanted and un-needed style codes throughout the email (it's not a platform for people unfamiliar with coding).

• Marketo's email editor is basic in comparison to other cheaper alternatives out there.
• Marketo doesn't work as well in B2C scenarios as it does in B2B. One of the painpoints of this is it's difficult to showcase a selection of product recommendations based on purchase behaviour without a very time consuming workaround. It's manageable if you're only selling a handful of products, but it's inefficient when dealing with a large catalogue.
• Marketo's form and landing page builder are also behind the times. Perhaps not as bad as the Salesforce Marketing Cloud platform, but for an enterprise company the product should be much better.

Incentivized

Since the company has grown, the personal touch has dispatched and it's more difficult to get a rep. There is no longer a phone call that can be made but the responses don't take as long as others and the glitches are becoming more and more frequent.

Incentivized

We're likely to renew for several reasons:

• Now that it's been implemented, I can't imagine not having marketing automation and the easy interface that Marketo provides to run our campaigns
• Marketo's community and customer service is fantastic; I know that when I need help, I'll get it
• Marketo continues to improve the product, so I know that I can expect it to be even more useful in the future

Very easy to use and designed well.

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.

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

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.

It has declined since we started with this company and it could be better.

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

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

We selected CallidusCloud (Genius) based on the level of service for the price. It was more cost effective then Silver Pop which was another tool recommended to us. On the other hand, mail chimp did not provide the level of integration needed with our CRM - Salesforce. We need to be able to connect the response to an email campaign to the individual contact (student) record and determine the success of the campaign.

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

The total cost is a little bit higher than we expected.

Incentivized

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.

• We have had problems with our emails landing up in spam which was hampering out marketing efforts.
• Too many features that add very little value to business
• You spend too much of time on the tool because the UI is very confusing

Incentivized

• Generated a 35% higher return on investment (ROI) in demand generation in the company.
• The focus on the accounts that presented a greater sales potential, allowed us to prioritize and reduce costs by 20 Million USD.
• Being personal and optimized. reduced efforts towards a more personalized customer experience, in working hours by almost 100 h.

Incentivized