Strong enough for IT, but made for a Marketer
Updated March 30, 2016

Strong enough for IT, but made for a Marketer

Robert Barrett, MBA | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Software Version

Global Enterprise

Modules Used

  • Marketo Lead Management
  • Marketo Revenue Cycle Analytics

Overall Satisfaction with Marketo

Marketo is a program that seems small and lightweight until you really get under the hood and discover it's a beast of a powerhouse. Having worked with other marketing automation tools in the past, I really appreciate how Marketo is built and designed around marketers, not IT folks. You don't need to know database design, HTML coding or JavaScript - but if you do, the possibilities are endless. I've been able to rapidly develop, deploy and copy programs for engaging nurture marketing programs, content downloads, webinars, trade shows, digital ads, paid search, contact us pages and numerous other channels. The tools in Marketo make the job of ETL to our CRM simple and easy to understand. Marketo was designed to be a marketer's tool. Leads are easily scored and dispositioned.
  • Innovation - creating an easy-to-use marketing automation tool that's designed for marketers, not IT, but with powerful capabilities for power-users.
  • Listen to customers - a very involved community where users can reach out to each other for support and guidance.
  • Improve - continuously enhancing the user experience.
  • Power - the servers sometimes seem unable to keep up with the work.
  • Stability - while seeing the program improve is exciting, I'd like to see them hit a point where less improvement is needed.
  • Offline Client - to be able to work when I'm not online.
  • Engage and grow customers over time
We have seen a lot of funnel creation and growth thanks to Marketo. While marketing is contributing less overall than sales in terms of net revenue and customers, we're attracting higher worth customers. The average marketing generated lead is worth about 15% more than a sales generated lead. That's substantial. And marketing is contributing about 15% of the total direct revenue. Most of these are leads looking for US, not just referrals. This is a great way to help people find us.
I worked with Adobe Campaign when it was Neolane, up until right after it sold. I still miss the functionality of it but it was extremely complicated to use. That said, there was nothing you couldn't do with it except quickly and easily deploy a campaign. I think that the ease of use of Marketo makes it more suitable for a marketing department than Campaign.
It is perfect for companies that need a low-cost solution that will enable their marketing users to create emails, landing pages, forms, etc., and get them live on their website quickly without the need for expensive help. However, expensive help will show you how to take Marketo to the next level. I would not recommend Marketo for organizations that only want to push out 1-2 newsletters per year. I will say that Marketo can handle very large clients - I work for a Fortune 10 company and we're all using Marketo.

Adobe Marketo Engage Feature Ratings

WYSIWYG email editor
10
Dynamic content
10
Ability to test dynamic content
10
Landing pages
10
A/B testing
10
Mobile optimization
10
Email deliverability reporting
10
List management
10
Triggered drip sequences
10
Lead nurturing automation
10
Lead scoring and grading
10
Data quality management
10
Automated sales alerts and tasks
10
Calendaring
10
Event/webinar marketing
10
Social sharing and campaigns
10
Social profile integration
10
Dashboards
10
Standard reports
7
Custom reports
4
API
10
Role-based workflow & approvals
6
Customizability
6
Integration with Salesforce.com
10
Integration with Microsoft Dynamics CRM
10
Integration with SugarCRM
10

Using Marketo

150 - Global marketing users truly across the world. Mostly marketing, some IT. Overall, we probably have close to 500+ users when you put in all of the sister companies of mine. It's marketing, sales, IT, business development, revenue marketing, and demand generation.
20 - My "customers" come from all backgrounds. Some of them have been using Marketo for years, others are brand new to Marketing Automation. While it definitely helps to have a background in HTML, Email Marketing and workflows I find that it's not totally necessary. I've been able to create program templates to turn new users into Marketo Mavens rather quickly.
  • Demand Generation
  • Awareness
  • Funnel Velocity
  • Decrease form requests
  • Lead scoring and attribution
  • Operation programs
Marketo is a part of our business and right now there's no going back.
  • Very good ROI - we're able to help new customers find u
  • Lead Sharing - we can get leads from other sister-companies

Evaluating Marketo and Competitors

Yes - Not sure - I was brought on afterwards
  • Price
  • Product Features
  • Product Usability
  • Product Reputation
  • Vendor Reputation
  • Third-party Reviews
The entire enterprise made the decision to switch to Marketo to standardize. We wanted something easy to use but powerful, and from a company that we felt would grow. We wanted simplicity but elegance.
I wouldn't change it, but then again I wasn't part of the committee.

Marketo Implementation

I inherited a well-oiled machine.
  • Was not
  • Part of
  • Implementation

Marketo Training

  • Online training
  • In-person training
  • Self-taught
I took in-person training at their annual summit and loved the exposure it gave me to other Marketing users.
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.
I find that the Marketo Community does an excellent job at helping new users. I've personally responded to dozens of requests for help and have become a strong acquaintance with other power users.

Configuring Marketo

It seems customizable thanks to their new release of custom objects but I've yet to use them.
Work with IT to set up SPF / DKIM keys. Make sure you have people on-board that know what they're doing and have experience working with Marketo.
No - there is no facility to customize the interface
No - the product does not support adding custom code

Marketo Support

They really dig deep to provide answers and when we bring them problems they take an interest in seeing things resolved.
ProsCons
Quick Resolution
Good followup
Knowledgeable team
Problems get solved
Kept well informed
No escalation required
Immediate help available
Support understands my problem
Support cares about my success
Quick Initial Response
None
Yes - We have a service contract that gives us access to higher level support when needed. We're a truly global 24/7 organization and we're stretching the limits of what can be done so we need to make sure the needed support it available at all times.
Most recently we've been facing issues due to the growing size of the userbase using Marketo and that we're global so there is no "good time of day' to run large imports which kick off a lot of workflows. They listened and have engaged their engineering team to take a look at what's going on and we're working on a plan to fix the occasional problem.

Using Marketo

I think it's extremely easy to use, based on the amount of new users that I've had to train and support and how quickly they're able to be self sufficient. It helps Marketing users understand what's possible so they dream bigger and think bigger than just the standard types of MA programs.
ProsCons
Like to use
Relatively simple
Easy to use
Technical support not required
Well integrated
Consistent
Quick to learn
Convenient
Feel confident using
Familiar
None
  • Easy to quickly send out an email campaign
  • Easy to create a segmented targeting list
  • Easy to create an email, landing page or form
  • Creating custom reports
  • Looking for non-standard metrics
  • Trying to do deep dives into program performance

Marketo Reliability

We have noticed performance issues when large jobs are submitted. Typically involving imports or massive data changes but we've noticed slowdowns and bottlenecks.
Marketo has never been unavailable that I've seen other than regularly scheduled maintenance which is announced in advance.
Pages do not load quickly and caching is not available with Marketo. Google PageSpeed ranks it pretty low, which is something I'm hoping they'll improve in future releases.

Integrating Marketo

LaunchPoint is pretty easy to work with and I'm impressed with the number of companies adding native Marketo integrations.
  • Webex
  • MadisonLogic
API connections can take a little time, but the WebEx integration was very smooth.
  • Reporting
Do not know
  • File import/export
  • API (e.g. SOAP or REST)
  • Javascript widgets
Nothing else

Relationship with Marketo

I was not a part of the sales process.
They've been great for us, often holding company-only trainings, demonstrations or bringing in partners to showcase new modules and enhancements.
Was not part of negotiation.

Upgrading Marketo

Yes - Marketo makes their releases overnights and doesn't always warn us ahead of time. There have been a few instances where things didn't go absolutely smoothly but they were quick to respond and fix the issues.
  • Automated Reporting
  • Microsoft Browser support
  • Lead dashboard
  • Template improvements
  • Landing page / email improvements