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 Marketing Cloud
Score 7.7 out of 10
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Marketing Cloud is an AI-powered, cloud-based digital marketing platform within the Salesforce Customer 360 ecosystem. Marketers can segment their audience, deliver personalized messages, track campaign performance, engage leads and accounts, and optimize strategies based on real-time insights.
Marketo is the most comprehensive and robust marketing automation platform that I've worked in. It has everything that an organization may need from your standard marketing functions (i.e. email campaigns, landing pages, forms) to automated workflows. One downside is that there …
Marketo has more functionality and behavioral triggers as well as more program customization for reporting purposes. RTP and Content AI also distinguish Marketo from other platforms. I have used Salesforce platforms for marketing automation and while useful because of their one …
Adobe Marketo Engage is better on customization as Marketo Engage provides a high degree of customization, allowing organizations to tailor the platform to their specific needs and requirements. This includes customizing workflows, campaigns, and landing pages. It's also better …
Marketo is the most flexible automation product compared to any other software solution I've tried. If you can imagine it, you can do it in Marketo. I found other software more limited in functionality. That being said, it takes a full team to run Marketo. So if you are on …
Adobe Marketo Engage gives out the best reports. Adobe Marketo Engage provides great flexibility in setting up the Scoring and Grading model. Adobe Marketo Engage also provides various options to customize the landing page templates and email templates. Dynamic content usage …
We have selected it based on lead management, nurturing, integration with CRM, and basic reporting. Marketo Engage is far better than Hubspot in terms of Microservice architecture, incremental scoring, APIs, webhooks, etc. The email dynamic content module is at par as compared …
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
Director
Chose Adobe Marketo Engage
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 …
I enjoyed how intuitive hubspot was, however, Marketo has the ability to do more if you're willing to invest the time into it. Marketo is by far the most customizable and feature rich in my opinion.
Before having Marketo, we used to have sendgrid and Mailchimp for sending out emails and Pardot for lead management. This setup worked for us okay, but it had a lot of moving parts and was prone to fail as we scale. Due to certain compliance and privacy requirements of our …
With Pardot, we had issues with how the rules worked when we evaluated it. We were also concerned with platform stability. With the price point being the same across both, we chose to go with Marketo. Compared to Eloqua (now part of Oracle Marketing), Eloqua was seen as a more …
Chose it for the ease of use, though it lacks a few features compared to others.However the form builder, landing page and email editor is old-school and clunky.
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 - …
I’ve selected Marketo multiple times at different orgs as it’s the best MAP available. It has very few weaknesses whereas the other have far more pro’s and con’s
We did not select Marketo, it was the only option available at the time we decided we needed Marketing Automation platform. Today we know that for most of our customers HubSpot is the better solution for many reasons. We would only recommend Marketo to larger companies with …
Marketo is the best of the three options listed above for large enterprise organizations. Hubspot is the most user-friendly out of all of them, however. Pardot is definitely last on the list out of the three due to its limited capabilities. Once you get the hang of Marketo …
Pardot's landing page and email builders were simpler to use, but also needed the aid of a vendor or contractor who has web developing experience. I do prefer the look of Pardot, it looks smoother. Also, I like that drip campaigns were easier to build (and were fairly visual), …
I made this decision over 6 years ago when I purchased Adobe Marketo Engage as one of the first 100 customers. I then became a Marketo employee after using the solution for a year. I have now used the tool for two years since joining Apttus.
Verified User
Professional
Chose Adobe Marketo Engage
Parador and Adobe Marketo Engageare fairly similar. Because I have more experience with Marketo I tend to be a little bias when asked which is better. Both are great platforms for marketing teams especially those within marketing operations. I recommend Marketo more highly …
Marketo Engage is definitely the most powerful marketing automation tool I've used. Its robust features and integration with other common CRM tools makes it the leader for email marketing software.
Pardot has a tighter integration with Salesforce CRM compared to Marketo. This allows for more seamless data transfer. MCAE has a slightly more user-friendly interface compared to Marketo, which can make it easier for non-technical users to navigate. From the cost perspective, …
Salesforce Marketing Cloud is intuitive and does what it needs to do. The functions are easy to find, and the automation options work smoothly. You find an intuitive workspace in both HubSpot and Marketo Engage, and the options in these programs look similar to Salesforce Sales …
I think that all of the marketing platforms I have evaluated and used in the past serve different markets and purposes. Salesforce Marketing Cloud was more palatable to our team because of our existing tech stack where we had Salesforce CRM already deployed and in use. Compared …
The decision for our organization to switch to Pardot was a global decision and was not very popular. Countries in our company who were using Marketo were very happy and we seem to have limited ourselves by going with Pardot. Overall, Pardot works fine, but Marketo has much …
Pardot is a better price point compared to some of the other B2B platforms.
Some of the functionality may be lacking compared to some of the other B2B, and definitely B2C platforms.
Verified User
Manager
Chose Salesforce Marketing Cloud
Pardot is pretty much on the same level. We chose Pardot because it integrates directly with Salesforce. We already use Contentful for landing pages, so we weren't too worried about using Pardot's builder. I really liked the simplicity of the visual email workflows. Coming …
Pardot is definitely one of the best tools out there. It's got a great UX and it is intuitive, easy to learn, and fast. Some of their naming conventions are a little bit confusing, like Users vs. Prospects. Published Templates vs. Draft Templates. List Emails vs. Sent Emails …
Pardot was less expensive than HubSpot or Marketo. Compared to Act-On, it was similar in price but had more features and the integration with Salesforce was better and natively supported. Compared to SharpSpring, it doesn't have the same strong features, but the integration …
I found Marketo to have stronger, more granular functionality around automation. However, Pardot is MUCH easier to use, and thus more manageable for one or two people. You don't need to have a developer on your team to be able to put out some great looking content. Pardot is …
Pardot is a VERY flexible tool. Most have thought of it as a very adolescent tool, but it holds its own against Marketo in the VAST majority of areas. You DON'T need a near full-time developer to keep it working (unlike Marketo). Act-on was limited in what it could do, HubSpot …
We originally used Marketo but switched when Salesforce bought Pardot. We expected the Salesforce/Pardot integration to be better than Marketo but that was not the case for many years. However, now I think the integration is as good as Marketo and having both products …
I've used both Infusionsoft and Marketo in previous roles to aid in marketing automation. Infusionsoft is much more small business and is great for that market. Marketo, although appropriate for a variety of company sizes, is less user friendly and requires more developed …
My previous company was using MailChimp because we did not have the data volume needed for deep integrations. I would say that MailChimp’s interface is considerably more user friendly. Templates are better (and often used by Pardot if you view the source html code) and are less …
Integrated Marketing - Demand Gen and Inside Sales
Chose Salesforce Marketing Cloud
I used Marketo and hated it. It was difficult to use, required too many steps to execute a program, and the customer service was terrible. I actually don't know why anyone would use it when options like Pardot and Hubspot are available. Pardot is exactly the opposite - easy to …
HubSpot: Pardot wins (by a huger margin) on both product and customer service.
Eloqua/Marketo/Silverpop - have used all three of these. They are solid solutions but integration with Salesforce is not as tight or reliable. In addition I found clients have a longer time to …
This was selected before I joined the team. In their selection process pricing was an issue as we couldn't afford the likes of Marketo and Eloqua. I have evaluated Marketo and Eloqua and Act-On at previous employers.
Eloqua and Genius where the other two we looked at. Genius did not offer the marketing team all the tools they were looking for Eloqua had more features than we needed and was more expensive than our budget allowed
I have never used another Marketing Automation software, but I have evaluated them - they include: Eloqua, Marketo, HubSpot. All which are great products as well, but Pardot offered the best user experience and functionality. The interface is easy to use and is simply designed. …
For my current needs, Act-On outshined Pardot. But at my previous company, we picked Pardot over Marketo because at the time it outshined Marketo's abilities and the Salesforce connection made it a safer bet for support since the team was new to marketing automation. I have …
I would definitely recommend Adobe Marketo Engage to other large or medium organisations such as ourselves, who have a number of users from different offices around the globe. It is well suited to those who have large email marketing contact databases and need to do sophisticated segmentation. It has a lot of functionality for integration with Salesforce and lead scoring models.
Salesforce Marketing Cloud does an excellent job at collecting and storing leads. Once the leads are qualified by workflows and automations established against your qualifiers, you can begin to segment, target, send communication, and track the efficacy of your campaigns. Being that Salesforce Marketing Cloud is an extension of Salesforce CRM, there is little work that needs to be done to ensure that your SQL are migrated to your CRM once they are ready to do so. The seamlessness between the two systems is paramount to the success of our organization.
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.
As of right now we have not seen any other program that integrates as seamlessly into our Salesforce platform. We have barely scratched the surface of all the features and use cases. It would be irresponsible to make a move to another platform in the near future. We have not come up against any limitations that would prompt a need to switch
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.
You won't find another solution that has as many features as Salesforce Marketing Cloud Interaction Studio. We all know Salesforce, we all know how big they are and it's not for nothing... Their tools do most of the things you want, need and even imagine. Using it is complicated, but the usability is infinite.
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.
Upgrades and timing of the upgrades were communicated well and planned during off hours for our work. If we did have a campaign scheduled during that time, it would kick-off after the system was back active. There were a few unplanned system down times, but it was a rare occurrence and those times were also short in duration.
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.
Though the make up of MA apps is not built this way today, it would be nice to see them become more real-time. The integration between Salesforce and Pardot is not a true real-time integration. If I modify something in Salesforce, those changes are not automatically reflected in Pardot immediately. There is a delay of about 15 minutes before the systems sync. This delay, although not long, is less than ideal We would love the systems to be integrated real time such that changes are propagated from one system to the other immediately.
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.
They're fast and knowledgeable. You will always know what's the status of your request and they usually follow up with phone calls to ask you questions or provide updates. Sometimes it takes them a couple of days to investigate, especially if you have custom "situations" like my company usually does but at least they are very good at managing time expectations.
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
The trainers at the Pardot user conference (Elevate and Connections) were very knowledgeable and presented the material well. Again, the content was targeted to more of a new user audience, and was not really relevant for folks who had been using the product for 2+ years.
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.
Pardot's online training touches on all topics briefly and vaguely without much indepth exploration into how a final outcome could look, such as Nurturing Campaigns, Email templates, landing page templates, etc... The only true way to uncover Pardot's full capabilities is to have Front End design and coding experience. Without this key skill set, I would not recommend Pardot to another business.
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
From an IT perspective, once you set up the Javascript beacon and start collecting data there is a waiting game. During this time you can start labeling your site actions which can be labor intensive for a single person, but you don't really have the final end-users on the platform yet. We did a lot of training so users were experienced, but it wasn't until they had their first tasks to accomplish that they started using the system and had questions. I'd recommend setting up some immediate goals for an end-user to start segmenting for the purpose of displaying message campaigns so you can jump start end-user action.
Marketo helps us to show our customers we understand them by delivering personalized content, delivered at the right time, every time. Also gives the sales and marketing teams the ability to create more coordinated journeys. From emails to landing pages, Marketo Engage uses in-depth, real-time behavioural and demographic data, and AI to personalize users experience, even for the anonymous visitors.
Salesforce Marketing Cloud stands out for its comprehensive features, scalability, and seamless integration capabilities. Compared to other platforms, its unified suite of tools for email, social media, mobile, and advertising enables streamlined cross-channel campaign management and personalized marketing at scale. We chose Marketing Cloud for its industry leadership, robust ecosystem, and tight integration with Salesforce CRM, allowing us to deliver exceptional marketing solutions and drive measurable results for our clients efficiently.
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.
Salesforce Marketing Cloud helps create profiles for each subscriber. The Contact Builder feature stores information about every subscriber, including whether they're an active customer, their purchase history from the last year, and their email engagement metrics. It also identifies the likelihood of a subscriber churning, aiding in creating personalized campaigns to boost company revenue.
Salesforce Marketing Cloud allows us to more efficiently reach out to a higher number of prospects.
Salesforce Marketing Cloud allows us to nimbly communicate important messages in a timely fashion to facilitate conversion.
Salesforce Marketing Cloud allows us to track who is opening our messages so that we can stop sending to those not interested and focus on the most engaged audiences.