Behind Competition. Missing Key Features & UI Straight Out of 2004

In my opinion, the interface is atrocious. You'd think Adobe-designed software would be at the cutting edge of interface development, but I feel there isn't a single competitor who has a higher learning curve. Not only is it unintuitive, but, in my opinion, it doesn't have any semblance of design standards. It seems the Marketo Engage marketing team is literally embarrassed by the design, being that it crops down the interface in almost every product shot.

Everything - and I mean everything - is overcomplicated. There is a fine line between allowing companies to have control in their organization and formatting conventions and putting up guardrails so things don't end up a clustered mess. It seems the Marketo Engage development team didn't want to implement any guardrails whatsoever. Except, of course, in my opinion, the terrible implementation of templates. I understand the desire to create organizational standards for corporate communications, but that does not mean restricting literally everything but face-level changes. The template landing page development experience is probably the worst time I've ever had in "web development." It would make a world of difference if it were like the email designer -- which, in itself, has issues.

I'm not sure the Email Designer can even be called WYSIWYG. Your email will look great in the designer and in previews, but don't expect to be done when you finish designing it. You're only half the way there. You have another hour or two just trying to figure out why Outlook, Gmail, and every other email program renders your email differently. It'd be nice to have on-screen warnings when you do something that won't be supported and by which program. For that matter, the entire designer should be built to improve your email. Give feedback when there's "spam words" in the copy. Auto-generate subject line suggestions based on the copy using words and formatting that is proven to increase clicks.

The ability to send email campaigns based on time zones is great, but there's absolutely no intelligence when a data scientist could have a field day with all the fantastic open-and-click data. Multiple competitors use send time optimization and intelligent, personalized send time features to make sure you inbox exactly when needed.

In my opinion, there's no intelligence to Adobe Marketo Engage. It does what it is supposed to do, but that's it. There are no improvement recommendations (anywhere!), and it doesn't utilize the mountain of engagement data it has to further drive and increase metrics. There are a ton of opportunities here that are just being overlooked.