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After years with Marketo, moving over to HubSpot
Updated November 27, 2017

After years with Marketo, moving over to HubSpot

Romy Ribitzky | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 4 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Software Version

Global Enterprise

Modules Used

  • Marketo Lead Management
  • Marketo Revenue Cycle Analytics

Overall Satisfaction with Marketo

We use Marketo for lead generation, prospect and customer nurturing. Marketo helps us stay in touch with our marketable community at scale with personalized messages.
  • Marketo allows us to stay in touch with prospects and customers using personalized messages.
  • Marketo allows us to track interactions with different content types to quantify ROI.
  • Marketo allows us to send multiple elements of a campaign by engaging with users who engage with us and enabling us to reach those who aren't engaged in a different method.
  • Marketo's lead scoring tool leaves much to be desired. This is especially true with the rise of bots clicking within assets and emails. Rules are difficult to set up and get around ever more clever technologies set up to outsmart marketing automation.
  • The interface is not user-friendly or intuitive. Setting up our instance was laborious and making changes often requires a developer, Marketo premiere support, and outside contractors.
  • Marketo's premiere support is not knowledgable about the product, often gives incorrect information and downgrades tickets to make it seem as if it responds within the SLAs required.
  • Product Launches
  • Cross-Sell
  • Lead Management
  • Prospecting / New Business
We use Marketo to increase lead generation, grow existing revenue from our existing customer base and expand our brand recognition.

Marketo was great across all categories for the first two years of our use, however, in recent years (2016 & 2017), the tool has fallen far short. We tried working with Marketo's deliverability team when we noticed that many of our campaigns failed to reach our intended targets' inbox -- especially those using Google Apps. The team had no answers for us, except for purchasing a dedicated IP product and more monitoring tools.
In evaluating competitors, we looked at HubSpot, Eloqua and Pardot. We evaluated cost, flexibility with customizations, integration with our CRM and analyst insights. Ultimately, we found that HubSpot was the selection for us as it was easy to use, nimble, supported our customization and add-ons, and was well recommended by both Gartner and Forrester for our needs.
250,000 to 1 million
B2B
Marketo is well suited for enterprise marketing teams who have multiple resources to address marketing automation, including developers, strategists, and those who will execute campaigns. It is easy to see why some of the largest brands use this tool. However, for smaller teams who need to be nimble and affect change for their marketing departments, Marketo is a clunky email marketing tool that is difficult to navigate and control.

Adobe Marketo Engage Feature Ratings

2.1
WYSIWYG email editor
4
Dynamic content
2
Ability to test dynamic content
2
Landing pages
Not Rated
A/B testing
2
Mobile optimization
2
Email deliverability reporting
1
List management
3
Triggered drip sequences
1
3.3
Lead nurturing automation
4
Lead scoring and grading
2
Data quality management
3
Automated sales alerts and tasks
4
3.0
Calendaring
Not Rated
Event/webinar marketing
3
Not Rated
Social sharing and campaigns
Not Rated
Social profile integration
Not Rated
3.7
Dashboards
2
Standard reports
6
Custom reports
3
4.0
API
5
Role-based workflow & approvals
3
Customizability
3
Integration with Salesforce.com
5

Using Marketo

Marketo is best used for enterprise companies with large Marketing staffs who can attend to the multiple needs of the platform. A developer and designer are best to maximize the use of the platform.
ProsCons
None
Do not like to use
Unnecessarily complex
Difficult to use
Requires technical support
Inconsistent
Slow to learn
Cumbersome
Lots to learn
  • Nothing was easy with Marketo. The system frequently times out. Bringing graphics / images in necessitates opening another window.
  • You need to know some light HTML/CSS code to make email go smoothly
  • Upgrading to Orion didn't solve our issues
  • Setting up programs, especially webinar sends, often took approximately 1.5 hours
  • Editing email sends required having each element prepared, sized and ready to go in advance. On-the-fly editing is virtually impossible
  • Dynamic content makes the program building process infinitely longer, especially in the testing and editing phase
Yes - It allows you to preview messages but doesn't allow for you to custom create a desktop / mobile message to optimize for a mobile experience.