Likelihood to Recommend 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.
Read full review I think Sendgrid is a great tool for sending out emails of all types. I've primarily used it for transactional emails as we've had other solutions for marketing emails, but I'm sure it would do just a good job - there is a "Marketing" section within the app you can use. Sendgrid integrates really easily with the development frameworks I've used, such as Laravel and Lumen; I've also integrated it with Moodle with ease.
Read full review Pros 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. Read full review Managing email lists / audiences is easy with features like groups and segments. They provide pre-built email templates that are very easy to modify. It is also super easy to create new email templates with their drag-and-drop email builder. Provides clear / easy-to-read analytics of email campaigns. I can easily import large email contact lists all at once or add a user manually one-at-a-time, when needed. Read full review Cons 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. Greg Beazley Senior Marketing Automation Manager (EMEA & APAC)
Read full review Not necessarily their Email API but their email in general - they are currently in beta for automated email sequences but are still bare bones. Much more work is needed before it can be used mainstream and be able to convert everything to SendGrid. Helping with warming up our dedicated IP for the best-sending score. We seem to hit the promotions folder a decent amount (maybe the IP problem above) and even a lot of their emails hit my spam or promotions folder (whether they be transactional or marketing) which isn't a great sign when trusting an ESP. Transactional email sequences would be a huge plus. Now that Twilio owns SenGrid, having an integrated platform where you could see all our transactional emails together. Better reporting and split reporting between transactional and marketing emails. Read full review Likelihood to Renew 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 Read full review Usability 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.
Read full review It has the potential to be really cool. However, it feels as if it was created by developers for developers (and I work with developers, yet even for me the instrument was somewhat not easy to use - just read SendGrid's help manuals...) However, if you are into data and your way of thinking is more mathematical rather than lyrical, you'll enjoy this instrument
Read full review Reliability and Availability 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.
Read full review Performance 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.
Read full review Support Rating 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.
Read full review Twilio SendGrid Email API is everything we want it to be, and we have no reason to look for any other solution. Features and pricing match exactly what we need. As developers for SaaS products, Twilio SendGrid Email API provides a great service. I hope that they stay this way and don't inflate the service with too many marketing oriented features, because there are other tools for that and Twilio SendGrid Email API is a API for sending email first and foremost.
Read full review In-Person Training 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
Read full review Online Training 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.
Read full review Implementation Rating 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
Read full review Alternatives Considered 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.
Read full review If given a choice between the two, I would pick
Mandrill over SendGrid.
Mandrill is slightly more expensive but the data & reports that you receive from it make the service worth it.
Mandrill lets you export reports over a period of time, view the actual content of emails that you've dispatched and the customer support is way better. If you can bear the slightly higher cost,
Mandrill would be a better choice.
Read full review Contract Terms and Pricing Model The total cost is a little bit higher than we expected.
Read full review Scalability 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.
Read full review Return on Investment 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. Read full review Our clients experience significant ROI from their web forms - without receipt of forms, many of them would not still be in business. As a solution for clients' sites, we find SendGrid is a fast installation and a 1 stop problem solver, saving us man-hours. Read full review ScreenShots Adobe Marketo Engage Screenshots