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A clear leader in data management
Updated November 22, 2018

A clear leader in data management

Erik Heldebro | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Software Version

Standard

Modules Used

  • Marketo Lead Management
  • Marketo Sales Insight
  • Marketo Social Marketing

Overall Satisfaction with Marketo

Marketo is currently used in our marketing department. Having a lot of experience with the platform we use it for a multitude of use cases addressing lead generation/management, qualification, and sales insights. We use it as a hub for handling data between our systems as it has a whole range of customization possibilities with tokens, API, and webhooks.
  • From comparing to other MAPs, Marketo really nails the scalability aspect of marketing programs by collecting a group of assets (landing page, form, email, smart campaigns for triggers) and allowing users to clone these into entirely new programs which maintain the same process connections for quick rollout.
  • Having a unique architecture where every part of a process can have its own Smart Campaign asset may look intimidating to new users when everything is not clearly painted in a flow chart but allows for so much more simple building blocks when getting into a more complex process.
  • Tokens are an amazing feature that can be underestimated, allowing for values to be assigned on the Person, Program, Folder, and Trigger level to name a few.
  • Data management is very user-friendly in Marketo for either translating data or keeping it clean but Marketo offers a lot of segmentation options on top of this.
  • The UI has been due for a refresh in terms of speed and UX - Although at the time of writing (Dec 2017) the UI is planned to get a reboot pretty soon.
  • I would like to see the same modular aspect applied to Landing Page templates as with the newer modular email templates.
  • Product Launches
  • Upsell
  • Cross-Sell
  • Customer Service
  • Lead Management
  • Prospecting / New Business
The use cases kind of hang together as there are many aspects of Marketo that support different initiatives. We use the tool for lead/demand generation as well as lead management, providing nurturing to new users to educate them in our products and where specific use cases can apply for them.

Cross/Upselling would go hand-in-hand as the tool offers a lot of segmentation possibilities with segments, smart lists, data management which very much support achieving impact on these initiatives.

We have replaced our forms with Marketo forms on the website, this is a great improvement by being able to translate activity, aggregate data, but also gives the security of for example knowing that if something has not been notified about, it's easy to get back to that data.

Don't use Marketo specifically for customer service but it allows us to easily notify support when contact submissions come in by using webhooks without the need of setting up too much complexity with multiple systems.
I have previously worked as a consultant and therefore worked with some clients using other systems. I liked the ease of use and customization with Marketo, there are of course always some aspects where different actors could have a better feature, but overall I think Marketo has a winning overall product that offers nearly an endless amount of possibilities for coming up with a solution to a problem. What I've seen as the most powerful aspect of Marketo is the data management capabilities for allowing users to easily translate data and set up processes to keep it clean.
Less than 10,000
B2B
Depending on the size of the company, their customer base and budget, I would recommend Marketo in most cases. If someone was evaluating enterprise level solutions I would definitely recommend Marketo.

I would also be able to recommend Marketo to both a company with limited technical resources as many aspects of the tool help marketers rely less on their IT department, and would highly recommend it to a company that has many technical resources and the need for integrating data points from different databases/systems.

If a company were in a startup phase and/or had a limited budget I could not justify the investment as there would probably be more important things to focus on and that company could perhaps do well with something very lightweight to start and get the ball rolling - in this case the same goes for other big actors like Pardot, Eloqua, etc.

Adobe Marketo Engage Feature Ratings

9.2
WYSIWYG email editor
10
Dynamic content
9
Ability to test dynamic content
9
Landing pages
9
A/B testing
8
Mobile optimization
9
Email deliverability reporting
9
List management
10
Triggered drip sequences
10
10.0
Lead nurturing automation
10
Lead scoring and grading
10
Data quality management
10
Automated sales alerts and tasks
10
8.0
Calendaring
8
Event/webinar marketing
8
8.0
Social sharing and campaigns
8
Social profile integration
8
6.0
Dashboards
6
Standard reports
6
Custom reports
6
9.4
API
10
Role-based workflow & approvals
10
Customizability
10
Integration with Salesforce.com
10
Integration with Microsoft Dynamics CRM
7
Integration with SugarCRM
Not Rated

Using Marketo's core features

  • Channels
  • Programs
  • Email Templates
  • Forms
  • Landing Pages
  • Smart Campaigns
  • Lead Scoring
  • Lead Sourcing
  • Segmentation
  • Lead Nurture
  • Reporting/Analytics
  • Webhooks - For more advanced use cases it is so easy to pass on data between other systems and I'm glad it's so flexible with tokens.
  • Programs - Although a basic feature, I love cloning assets for quicker production and it's even better done on a program level.
  • Smart campaigns - The ease of setting up triggered processes or even batch campaigns is great. Smart lists used both in Smart Campaigns and outside of them is also a useful feature.
When starting out, a useful feature is engagement programs, because of the ease of setting up drip nurture compared to other marketing automation tools.

I find I have not had too many feaures I'd learned about sooner but I would personally say webhooks, because of the possibility of creating soft integrations with other tools/data. Instead of relying on other companies' integrations, which can sometimes be created quite poorly, it's useful to call webhooks in flowsteps to push or request data to/from other channels.
The Marketo Community in general offers great insights, either through blog posts or looking over questions asked. This could range anywhere from getting tips on form styling or setting up custom events for form conversions. In general it all depends on what you are looking for but the community is useful for tips when you do a quick search.
I always consider Marketo best at data management, which is key to creating personalized communication as well as proper tracking of marketing initiatives. Not solely relying on custom fields, and extending certain reporting to e.g. programs and channels, provides more flexibility for analyzing performance. Not to mention Marketo is excellent for processing lead data and ensuring data is clean and grouped in the most efficient way, although that's up to the user to configure.
Of course Programs are a key feature here, even with setting up program templates for cloning processes. My Tokens within programs can let any user clone a process and switch out key information to have something ready to go - although this needs to be configured first. Aside from this I'd say the modular email templates also contribute to staying organized, since you only need one template these days for making multiple different layouts.