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Switched from Eloqua and very glad we did.
October 24, 2012

Switched from Eloqua and very glad we did.

Anonymous | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Modules Used

  • Core marketing automation package
  • Revenue Optimizer
  • Sales Insights

Overall Satisfaction with Adobe Marketo Engage

  • Integration to Salesforce.com absolutely works as designed since the product is built on Force.com. Things happen instantly. You are not dealing with syncs anymore like Eloqua.
  • Production of campaigns is much faster: With Eloqua it used to take a technical person 2-4 hours to set-up an email, landing page, form etc. With Marketo it takes 20 minutes and can be done by a non-technical person.
  • Enabled more enterprise wide use: Eloqua was rolled out but no one actually using as it was too hard to use. With Marketo, our support team is using it to send emails; one of our product program teams uses it to send out their own e-newsletter.
  • We bought an optional package called the Revenue Cycle Modeler. It helps us track from hand raiser to lead stage to Sales Accepted Lead (SAL) to ClosedWon. Our entire database flows through this. I can look at an opportunity for ABC company and see visually on a chart every contact that responded to things. It tells me the number of marketing touches. It helps me map my business process and understand people flowing through it. It helps me understand how many days there are between stages and conversion ratios. It’s a dynamic funnel. I think it’s worth it and believe there’s a strong ROI for this application.
  • They have a nice community to vote up features.
  • They connect to some webinar vendors but not all. We use Readytalk, but they don’t integrate.
Yes, preliminary reviews of Pardot, Neolane, Hubspot
We had a special session with our IT team where they could ask questions.

Pricing is based upon your volume of email addresses in database - in tiers. But with that you can have unlimited users - there is no seats based pricing - for the core marketing automation package. The Sales Insights module is priced on seats.

Comparing to Eloqua, the plusses are:
a) Usability
b) Integration to Salesforce.com
c) Sophistication - Eloqua has a lot of sophisticated features, but because difficult to use, you don’t get to them. There were a couple of things that Eloqua did that Marketo didn’t but they were really minor and Marketo was upfront about them.
d) Marketo had some social features and bought Crowdfactory. You can see that they are getting there through acquisition or roadmap. We don’t use Crowdfactory yet.

It is important to note that we were on an older version of Eloqua and couldn’t easily migrate to Eloqua 10 which had a lot of connections to social.

Using Adobe Marketo Engage

20 - Marketing, customer service/engagement.
  • Campaign management
  • Lead scoring automation
  • Lead nurturing
  • Integration with our CRM, Salesforce.com
  • We have been able to design an advanced lead nurturing programs that has wowed consultants and other firms. We have a program called the traffic cop in which we tag content with points. We have built advanced logic.
  • We are not yet seeing increased revenue but are seeing higher quality leads. They are getting the right content and are converting faster.
  • Lead scoring is easier. We can get very specific on behavioral and demographic information. We have different scoring systems and they all work together.
  • Campaign production efficiency. We can do so much more. We can get to more advanced stuff because we are not mired with executing on the basics. • We used to have 2 full time production people, one for our enterprise business, and one for mid-market. We now have 1 full time person doing all programs. We took the other resource and focused them on more advanced things.
  • We have been able to spread usage to other users in our company.

Evaluating Adobe Marketo Engage and Competitors

Yes - We were struggling with Eloqua. Production of campaigns was too time consuming. We were not able to get to use the advanced features. The product was too hard to use. Eloqua tried really hard to save our business. They invested $ (reduced software cost) and integration consultants – a team of people who went through the system to try and find issues to improve experience. We did everything they recommended and the system still blew-up after two weeks.

We conducted our own reference calls and did not rely on vendor supplied contacts. I went on LinkedIn and found people using Marketo and reached out to an agency that I know as well. I also reached out to Marketo consultants and those who had worked in Eloqua -to make sure that things that didn’t work in Eloqua worked in Marketo.

Adobe Marketo Engage Implementation

The marketing team led the implementation. It took just 60 days and was a very easy process. By contrast, Eloqua took 3-5 months for us to implement. I would not coach a newbie to do this, unless you have dedicated IT person, experience with a similar system etc. We had a clear sense of what we wanted to architect.

We were assigned a project manager to get up and running and had 5-6 sessions early on with an enablement consultant. included in baseline deal.

We watched all videos, summit presentations, white papers and started to highlight things, then wrote out a flow chart about how it should look.

We were under pretty tight timeline and would have liked more time to think about things. When we imported the leads, we didn’t realize that we needed to attach an acquisition channel first. Now they don’t show up in reports. Had we had 6 months and a little breathing room, it would have been better.

  • Implemented in-house

Adobe Marketo Engage Training

  • Online training
I would give basic training a 10, but advanced training just a 3 or 4. They weren’t prepared for advanced training and handling conversions. Enablement managers are not geared for conversions. They are more oriented for new-starts. We paid $5-7k for expert sessions which were very good.

Adobe Marketo Engage Support

They have been really great.

Using Adobe Marketo Engage

There are a couple of little buttons like email to send test where you can risk sending out the wrong version if don’t hit approve.

Adobe Marketo Engage Reliability

Reporting can be slow with the # of records we have.

Integrating Adobe Marketo Engage

  • Salesforce.com
The integration was extremely important to us. It was easy to achieve as it's native, and it works very well.
  • No.

Relationship with Adobe

We got a 12 months contract even though the rep was pushing for a 2 years, based upon issues we’d experienced with Eloqua and the fact that it was not more expensive to get one year deal if we signed early.

We can upgrade for next year at same price, and deferred billing one month. Billing normally starts upon signing.