Marketo - Simple yet powerful marketing engine for fast moving, agile companies
Software Version
Spark
Modules Used
- Marketo Lead Management
- Marketo Sales Insight
- Marketo Social Marketing
- Marketo Revenue Cycle Analytics
- Marketo Real-Time Analytics
Overall Satisfaction with Marketo
I worked with a couple of companies as an employee to implement, manage and enhance their Marketo instances.
At the first company, I evaluated and eventually selected Marketo and moved from Eloqua. There, we created and executed all the emails, forms, web landing pages, campaigns, processing business logic etc., using Marketo. We also used Marketo programs to orchestrate live and virtual events, and integrated global programs. We created and used reports (dashboards, reports, etc.,) of overall marketing KPIs and campaign performance (by the target, geography, offer, etc.,) right from Marketo Analytics. With a comprehensive lead scoring strategy and RCA model implementation, we used Marketo Revenue Cycle Analytics to demonstrate marketing's impact on revenue. We also created a custom application using PHP, MySQL that used Marketo SOAP API to facilitate bespoke functionality and integrated with internal systems.
For my next employer, we implemented and continuously improved marketing infrastructure integrating Marketo with other solutions in the field of real-time enrichment, near time enrichment, data augmentation, predictive lead scoring, buyers intent enrichment and so on. We also were able to take it to next level by continuous tracking and improvements in lead flow, velocity and demand funnel tracking.
- Simple yet powerful. As a software solution architect in my previous roles, I love the simple yet robust architecture which enables marketing to generate results very quickly. At several companies we were able to get very effective demand engine set up and running in few months. Landing pages, emails, nurture flows, lead scoring and so on....
- Tight integration with SFDC. Most customers I serve use SFDC as their CRM solution. I love the ability to use SFDC information in smart campaigns, email personalization etc. Love the Sales Insights and interesting moments framework. Marketo-SFDC campaign sync also works nicely in certain cases where applicable.
- Agile campaign development. Once one understands the framework how Marketo works, fine tuning results via continuous improvements can be achieved.
- Engagement Engine. Again, simple yet powerful framework to design and implement robust and strategic nurture workflows. Developing nurture flows based on Buyer Persona and Content Messaging framework is easy.
- Enterprise Ready. At the same time, Marketo has most of the bells and whistles which a complex implementation such as a multiple business unit, multiple product / region conglomerate might need. Especially functionalities like - Workspaces & Partitions and Multiple level of user roles and permissions.
- Custom Objects and Email scripting to store custom data similar to Eloqua data cards etc. Multiple API frameworks to integrate with various enterprise systems such as SOAP API, ReST API, Munchkin API, Webhooks. Over the years, I used several of these for complex integrations.
- Regular updates / additions of key functionalities. I must say I am very impressed by Marketo product development roadmaps.
- Recently I used the current 'Beta' functionality called 'Munchitions' which allows regular expressions to process data from Marketo field. Very handy. Very useful for huge databases. Another recent one is Microsoft PowerBI connector. Pretty useful especially for SMB.
- Complex smart campaign queries working in a large database can take long time. But I have seen performance improvements in this aspects over the year. The queries which used to time out a few months back do not time out any more with same result set.
- Sharing workflow among different workspaces. Sharing best practice workflows between various workspaces is still difficult.
- Responsive landing page design. There are improvements in the landing page editors but there might still be some rough edges that need to be sorted out. (This WAS an issue but with new guided templates, this is no longer a limitation).
- Eloqua and Oracle Marketing Cloud - Oracle Cross Channel Marketing to Businesses (Eloqua)
Love the simple yet robust architecture which enables marketing to generate results very quickly. At several companies, we were able to get very effective demand engine set up and running in few months. Especially suited for fast, agile marketing teams, startups etc.
Eloqua is a robust, enterprise-grade product that has a lot of flexible integration options that Marketo does not have. I am certified on Eloqua too. But in my experience, sometimes complex flowcharts, development process etc., scares marketers and they end up not using the automation to take marketing to the next level.
Adobe Marketo Engage Feature Ratings
Using Marketo
- Lead velocity improvements, faster lead conversion.
- Well orchestrated, predictable, repeatable campaigns.
- Increased employee efficiency as employees found it easier to understand and confident to make changes.
- Better funnel reporting.
Marketo Implementation
- Implemented in-house
- Professional services company
- Moving activity data from the old marketing automation system.
- Moving nurture track email settings that were already received by the leads.
Marketo Support
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
Quick Resolution Good followup Knowledgeable team Kept well informed No escalation required Immediate help available Support cares about my success Quick Initial Response | None |
And there were times when the bug was actually an enhancement request. Some of them actually were already in the product roadmap.
Using Marketo
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
Like to use Relatively simple Easy to use Technical support not required Well integrated Consistent Quick to learn Convenient Feel confident using Familiar | None |
- Create nurture flows.
- Report on the marketing funnel.
- Track, Analyze and Optimize your marketing campaign effectiveness. For example, immediately get information such as webinar x, xxx were invited, yyy registered, zz attended and nn noshowed.. Next time lets do this and compare the same results.
- Do A/B testing very easily. Learn from it and automatically send out a winner. Much less manual work needed.
- No formula fields based on fields.
- Difficult to 'bi-sect' the entire database to analyze. For example, I want to get a list of all unique email domains that are in my lead address database. (Good News) It is available as a advanced beta function. I used it, its great.