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.
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Salesforce
Score 8.1 out of 10
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Salesforce is a web-based CRM application that enables users to forecast revenues and track leads. It is a leading sales, service, and marketing app. Salesforce.com's Sales (CRM), Service, Platform and Marketing applications are designed to help companies connect with customers, partners, and employees in entirely new ways. According to the vendor, on average, reps using Salesforce see: a +29% increase in sales from greater visibility, +34% increase in sales productivity, and +42% increase in…
Businesses having Salesforce as CRM and looking for a Marketing Automation solution should go for it. if your business uses CRM other than SFDC, you should consider comparing Marketo with the one on your list. Marketo has all capabilities that your business would need, the only …
Marketo is on the tier of the Salesforce marketing cloud, but SFMC allows for more data and queries to be built out. Additionally, the Personalization ability of SFMC is superior to Marketo due to the ability to create a nearly unlimited number of databases. Marketo is far …
I've used Campaign, Pardot, and Salesforce Marketing Cloud in my career along with Marketo, to me Marketo seems like a clear choice and a winner in terms of platform usability, reliability, and capability to customize items. For example, in Pardot, users aren't able to …
So we migrated to Marketo from Salesforce Marketing Cloud which was just too simple of a product and difficult to use and didn't have a lot of functionality that we needed. This has definitely been a huge upgrade for us from Salesforce Marketing Cloud. Then when we were looking …
Marketo provides email marketing services but does so much more. While Hubspot, SFMC, and ActiveCampaign have more automation, they do not come close to the customization that Marketo allows you to create.
Verified User
Consultant
Chose Adobe Marketo Engage
Adobe Marketo Engage has an outstanding ability to customize everything; right from setting up custom fields, custom activities, custom objects, API integrations, etc. makes Adobe Marketo Engage stand out from the crowd. Adobe Marketo Engage has a lot of add-on features like - …
Adobe has a clear distinction in the speed in comparision the mention program although that in itself is not enough to be commendable, i personally prefer the customization abilities of marketo but yet again, that in itself can be greatly improved. in comparision with other …
Marketo seems more robust and it seems easier to set and get running with marketing activities. Other tools are visually more appealing in terms of UI but overall marketo is a great tool.
Adobe Marketo Engage's UI for campaign management is by far the best I've encountered. It makes it incredibly easy to create template campaigns with a variety of assets, workflows, and emails that can be instantly cloned. This saves hours of work during the campaign creation …
Adobe Marketo Engage was the clear favorite among the other platforms we demoed due to the fact that there was such a deep asset library with Adobe in terms of images, templates, and more. This def. made an impact against our requirements and we went ahead with the platform. I …
Adobe Marketo Engage is definitely more powerful than Pardot in most aspects (Pardot is also focused on B2B customers). Adobe Campaign, however, is more flexible and extensible but Adobe Marketo Engage usually fits better for B2B than Adobe Campaign (unless it is a very big B2B …
Out of all the tools mentioned above, the very features which stand out Adobe Marketo Engage are lead management, lead nurturing, ABM, and Nurture campaign.
For B2B companies, Adobe Marketo Engage is definitely well-positioned against its main competitors - they keep on updating the platform and implementing features that are actually useful.
Marketo is the most flexible email service provider (ESP), making it simple to set up email campaigns with multiple segments and audiences. It's excellent for B2B, mainly promotional messages, but it may integrate with eCommerce transactional emails. Easy-to-understand reports …
Salesforce
Verified User
Technician
Chose Salesforce.com
I had previously used Kronos at a past employer, though it got the job done, it was not near as up to date and felt "clunky" in use compared to Salesforce.
One of the driving forces in our decision to use Salesforce over Oracle was Salesforce's ability to have seamless communication between departments. Although only marketing and sales teams use Salesforce at our company, Salesforce has allowed both teams to communicate …
Verified User
Administrator
Chose Salesforce.com
SFDC is the top choice if you need the customization it can give you and already have a MAP. If you don't need such customization, it still might be the best option at the basic offering.
Verified User
Employee
Chose Salesforce.com
Salesforce is MUCH better than what we were previously using. For one, Saleslogix isn't a SaaS product - you're completely tied to what PC your user creds are installed on. Second, searching for records is nearly impossible in Saleslogix - you have to exactly type something how …
Verified User
Program Manager
Chose Salesforce.com
SFDC is FAR BETTER than Microsoft Dynamics. But also, MS was free. So I get what you pay for.
I inherited our org, and so was not part of the selection process. However, Salesforce's reputation and presence in the market made it the strongest contender for our business.
Microsoft CRM.
With Salesforce.com, the security model mapped nicely to our territory and partner model.
In evaluating Microsoft CRM we felt there would be more complexity for development.
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.
Salesforce is so customizable that I can't think of situations where you couldn't configure the tool to do what you need. If Salesforce hasn't developed the capability itself, there is a marketplace where anyone else can develop and upload their solution for others to use as well. Also, due to Salesforce's success and size, almost every other app/software that you can think of has or is working on an integration with Salesforce. So if you need to use a different tool for a certain function, you can more likely than not still integrate it with Salesforce to enhance value.
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.
Salesforce.com is extremely customizable. I would not consider it an out-of-the-box solution, although its standard fields allow for fundamental CRM activities and reporting.
Salesforce.com is able to integrate with 100s of third-party softwares—often times creating efficiencies in processes.
Reports within Salesforce.com have the ability to be simple as a standard Account report, or you can get very granular with your report filtering to segment a very specific result, eg. Accounts in California who are active clients and fall within the pharmaceutical industry and have a specified market capitalization.
The Knowledge module can be improved. It is still limited compared to regular CMS. Still not possible to have a filter view per data categories
Using the Community portal also comes with a limited Community reply function that doesn´t allow text formatting. Very difficult to move staff away from emailing customers when this text box is very poor
Rigidity when you work in a big organization with same template. It needs to be a one fits all instance and the local needs are deprioritized because SF doesn´t allow customization
There are days when I wish we hadn't switched, but I know that if we put in the time, we will get to where we want to be with the software and that it has many more capabilities than anything else we looked at. However, the amount of time and onboarding we need to do is also far greater than we realized/were told when we originally bought the product. They told us we should hire onboarding support, but at the end, after we had already reached our budget maximum for this, so it's been slower than we had hoped.
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.
I'm a Millenial and more tech savvy, so learning this tool is more intuitive and I don't mind learning the ins and outs of the product. It can be cumbersome when permissions or new rules by our admins get enacted, that can cause disruptions in our workflows and annoyances. Overall, the usability is fine, and helps in my day to day more than causes disruptions
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.
Salesforce is always available securely from any internet-capable device anywhere in the world, UNLESS you choose to set security measures so that ONLY trusted IP ranges may access the system at certain times of the day. It's all about choice and flexibility with Salesforce products.
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.
Salesforce performance in general is excellent. "The cloud infrastructure beneath Force.com has been fine-tuned over the past 10 years. It powers nearly 100,000+ businesses running more than 185,000 applications that 3 million users count on every day." Points per Salesforce - 1) Multitenant kernel - With a multitenant platform, each business that uses the app doesn’t have its own copy. Instead, all businesses share a single copy and then customize it for their specific needs. 2) ISO 27001 certified security - You can’t compromise when it comes to enterprise-level security. Force.com is road-tested and trusted by nearly 100,000+ companies, including many of the world’s most security-conscious organizations, such as banks and health care providers. 3) Proven reliability - All Force.com apps run on world-class data centers with backup, failover, and disaster-recovery facilities. Force.com has had a proven 99.9 percent uptime record for years. 4) Proven, real-time scalability - Force.com is used by many of the world's largest enterprises, including Cisco, Japan Post Network, and Symantec. Applications can automatically scale from a few users to millions of page views, as needed. 5) Real-time query optimizer - You need fast access to your data. The Force.com query optimizer delivers under 300ms response time, at a massive scale. 6) Real-time transparent system status - You can always see real-time system performance, availability, and security information at trust.salesforce.com. 7) Real-time upgrades - Unlike traditional software platforms, our upgrades never break your customizations, code, or integrations. We upgrade the platform for you 3 to 4 times each year. As a result, you’re always on the latest version, with access to the latest features, performance, and security enhancements. 8) Real-time sandbox environments - With a single click, you can create copies of your applications, configuration, and data in separate environments for development, testing, and training. 9) Three global production data centers and disaster recovery - Force.com runs on three geographically dispersed, mirrored data centers with built-in replication, disaster recovery, a redundant network backbone, and no single points of failure
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.
The overall support has been good. More and more features are being released quite frequently. Very small features are also making big difference in how the tool can be adapted and used better. If there is anything we need or are stuck, the support team sets up a call and helps in resolving the issue/provides workarounds.
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 attended two training sessions. I would rate them a 4 as an advanced user. It was very basic – great for someone new – would give 8+ for new person.
I had 3 years of experience at the time. I skipped basic and went onto advanced and still not helpful. A lot of it was best practices that didn’t feel relevant for our business
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.
I have gone through multiple. The content that’s delivered is quite basic – I wish they had more advanced training.
We are grandfathered into premium support plus training. We get unlimited access to instructor led and online training for free. We have taken advantage of this
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
Just from an organizational standpoint - we standardized our data prior to moving to Salesforce. But we essentially standardized it wrong. That's created a big disgusting mess for us know that I'll have to deal with as the Admin. Be sure you think through use cases prior to doing something like that - seek outside opinions on how the data will work best, especially depending on what else you're going to integrate with Salesforce.
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.
I've used Act CRM by Xperience previously. Salesforce is way more robust and intuitive and meets the needs of an enterprise company with enterprise clients way more effectively. I don't think there is another CRM in the market with the overall functionality and usability that can complete with the Salesforce platform for someone in my role.
Salesforce is the most widely used CRM system. Professionalism tends to increase when things go wrong for market leaders. Salesforce considers us as users because they own the market. Having all of our data in one place and all of our teams working within Salesforce. Anyone who uses Salesforce is impacted by it, even if they don't.
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.
I've worked with Salesforce since 2001 in companies ranging from 4 to hundreds of sales people and the system has been able to scale and perhaps more importantly expand (functionally) to the needs of larger organizations. In fact in my previous company, as a provider of a solution that integrated with Salesforce, we had customers that had thousands of sales people using Salesforce.
Using Salesforce.com has made my daily routines more efficient and simplified the manual tasks I had to perform independently. I can now access data from any device, online or offline, and provide better guidance to my team about the forecasts provided by the built-in artificial intelligence (AI). A chat with a Salesforce support specialist would be great. The knowledge base has a community forum where Salesforce users can ask questions and learn more about the product.
It requires a lot of time to manage but does a good job keeping everything in one place
Managers! Quit having sales professionals create spreadsheets and reports ad hoc. The information is in SFDC. Build a report so you can get it yourself.
If used properly and not restricted and overmanaged, SFDC will provide huge ROI
