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A complex, advanced automation platform that's also easily customizable and usable
Updated December 04, 2017

A complex, advanced automation platform that's also easily customizable and usable

Ashish Tewari | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Software Version

Standard

Modules Used

  • Marketo Lead Management

Overall Satisfaction with Marketo

We use Marketo across the entire organization, all regions and product lines. It's primarily used for:
1. Email marketing: as a single source of all records data including email id and optin status, plus tracking email campaign performance.
2. Lead generator: this is applied in both creating landing pages for email campaigns (and others) and also forms to be used on websites.
3. Lead scorer: to rate and evaluate individual leads based on activity and data gathered.
4. Lead assigner: run programs to identify use cases for each lead and assign to appropriate Salesforce programs / users accordingly.
  • Complex programs that are easy to build
  • Easy asset creation - forms, landing pages, emails, etc
  • Global access and compatibility across a variety of sites / platforms
  • Excellent support
  • Boolean if-then-else functions are a big missing piece in program building - without these, we are forced to translate into sequential choices
  • Cookie based parameters have been hard to implement and do not coexist with parametric urls
  • Form customization (eg. responsive embeds, inherited css properties) is difficult, and templated forms would be great in places where we frequently reuse
  • Cross-Sell
  • Lead Management
  • Prospecting / New Business
Lead management: forms, programs to process data received through forms and filtering / responding according to specific sets of scenarios.
Prospecting: gating content, creating and adding potential leads to nurture tracks, progressive profile building, and lead scoring with linked programs. This also includes email outreach campaigns and landing pages.
Cross-sell: we've started this recently, but essentially we're expanding lead scoring to a kind on interest-area scoring that can be used as an input into individual nurture tracks.
Marketo competes against 2 levels of platforms:
1. simple, single-purpose platforms - email marketing, form building, etc.
2. complex, full-suite platforms - Salesforce, Eloqua.
It won it in both because it offered an integrated platform where assets, data and records aren't scattered between different systems, making centralized tracking and control easy, while also being flexible enough to be customized to fit specific scenarios in a shorter and easier cycle than other very large similar platforms.
250,000 to 1 million
B2B
It's expensive, so obviously not meant for smaller SMEs. Ideal for automation (obviously) in terms of nurture programs and scenario identification, but not a full CRM (i.e. once a lead is responded to, you also need to have a Salesforce-type CRM which can be used to assign leads) rather than within marketo itself. It's not smart enough to run heuristic identification, so you have to be very exact - eg. USA and U.S.A would be considered different things. Be prepared to do some really, really deep and extensive preplanning before setup to avoid messing up your data - it's immensely powerful, so a high risk of carelessness having very far-reaching consequences.

Adobe Marketo Engage Feature Ratings

7.1
WYSIWYG email editor
8
Dynamic content
7
Ability to test dynamic content
6
Landing pages
7
A/B testing
7
Mobile optimization
5
Email deliverability reporting
9
List management
8
Triggered drip sequences
7
6.0
Lead nurturing automation
6
Lead scoring and grading
7
Data quality management
5
5.0
Calendaring
5
Event/webinar marketing
5
2.0
Social sharing and campaigns
2
6.3
Dashboards
6
Standard reports
7
Custom reports
6
7.5
API
9
Role-based workflow & approvals
6
Customizability
7
Integration with Salesforce.com
8

Using Marketo

There's a fair amount of flexibility, but as you start moving beyond the basics and get into more complex programs, it gets a bit cumbersome; for example, flexible drip campaigns that can customize / change content based on triggers after the initial start. Some way of normalizing scoring so older, less intensive users don't overshadow newer, more-intense users. Etc.
For a basic setup and taking control of the user flow from contact to lead without leaks, Marketo is awesome, once you've got the core data governance and standardized processes in place.
Template design is difficult - designers find it restrictive and there is a LOT of debugging needed, with finished templates sometimes behaving very oddly in some environments - adding / deleting code snippets, disabling some scripts - not enough to break it, but definitely some odd behaviors.