Want to see proven ROI with a marketing automation system? Look no further!
October 28, 2015

Want to see proven ROI with a marketing automation system? Look no further!

Crystal Vaughan | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Software Version

Global Enterprise

Modules Used

  • Marketo Lead Management
  • Marketo Sales Insight
  • Marketo Revenue Cycle Analytics

Overall Satisfaction with Marketo

Marketo has been deployed across the entire organization. We have several power users within the org, including those in marketing as well as customer success. Creating segmented, real-time nurture tracks has been a huge leap for our business, as we need to stay on top of marketing trends and best practices, seeing as our target audience is marketers.

The other big issue for us is demonstrating marketing's impact on the business. Program reporting and syncing to Salesforce has really helped us demonstrate to leadership the importance and value of marketing spend. It's also helped us figure out where to put our dollars, mixed with Invoca's own call intelligence system and we now have a complete package of the offline AND online customer journey.

  • UI Usability & design.
  • Tracking of programs from creation to execution, including success and engagement across programs like webinars, events, web pages and multi-step or channel campaigns.
  • Complex criteria for building out nurture programs based on targeted parameters and real-time interactions.
  • Global partitions and platform internationalization.
  • Search functionality could be a lot easier with keywords, or created date. I know the platform just updated to search based on URL, but it could use a bit more work to make it easier for newer employees who have tons of legacy items to sift through.
  • Speed of platform is sometimes frustrating - it can be great at times...other times it lags beyond belief, when pulling lists, approving emails and landing pages, and just jumping from campaign to campaign. Sometimes I have to even restart or refresh the platform just to get it moving again.
  • Campaign calendar layout is not intuitive and leaves marketing teams resorting to a Google Calendar or similar feature to track campaign sequencing and deliverables. It's usable if you spend some time in it, but it definitely could be better.
  • Improved efficiency across teams in the business. When you don't have to manually send out emails, you gain more time back!
  • More targeted lead nurture has led to faster lead conversion and real-time engagement. In today's day and age, customers want the right CTA at their fingertips and Marketo can provide that.
  • Oracle Marketing Cloud - Oracle Cross Channel Marketing to Businesses (Eloqua) and HubSpot
Marketo is the only marketing automation platform I have evaluated that can scale as fast as companies grow. They are constantly improving their product features and their (paid) support is exceptional. I haven't had issues with Marketo that have cost me lost revenue dollars, unlike some other marketing automation platforms I've used in the past. Since using Marketo (4 years ago), I have seen this completely revolutionize the business by aligning cross-teams, making them more efficient, metric-driven and overall successful in nurturing leads through the funnel and converting them into customers.

*Make sure to understand pricing - sometimes it increases annually by a percentage, other times support isn't included...and you'll definitely want to pay for the extra support.

*Your CRM needs to be clean and dialed in to what you expect to sync with in Marketo. If your database is cluttered with duplicates and processes are not in place yet, work on that first before moving into Marketo otherwise you are in for a world of hurt.

*Understand this is a platform that has multiple components. If your marketing team is a person of one, that person will most likely have a full time role in Marketo. So there is a resource issue you have to be aware of - also from the other end of the spectrum, you need to make sure there aren't too many cooks in the kitchen. Having a few power users and processes in place to manage Marketo is the best way to handle this.

*Not a deal-breaker, but make sure even basic users are familiar w/ basic HTML and CSS as it is necessary to troubleshoot frequent styling errors.

Adobe Marketo Engage Feature Ratings

WYSIWYG email editor
6
Dynamic content
8
Ability to test dynamic content
8
Landing pages
7
A/B testing
9
Mobile optimization
8
Email deliverability reporting
9
List management
10
Triggered drip sequences
8
Lead nurturing automation
10
Lead scoring and grading
8
Data quality management
7
Automated sales alerts and tasks
7
Calendaring
5
Event/webinar marketing
8
Dashboards
7
Standard reports
9
Custom reports
6
API
7
Role-based workflow & approvals
10
Customizability
10
Integration with Salesforce.com
10