Marketo: Sweet and Simple
Updated October 31, 2018

Marketo: Sweet and Simple

Joseph R. Sweeney | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Software Version

Standard

Modules Used

  • Marketo Lead Management
  • Marketo Sales Insight
  • Marketo Social Marketing
  • Marketo Real-Time Analytics

Overall Satisfaction with Marketo

Originally, it was just being used by our marketing team to manage our own images and logos. We then took this and developed it further for our brand authentication division to help us manage our various vendors and their logos. It has helped in not only organizing everything into one place, but also by automating the process across multiple projects.
  • The API and UI are far superior and much easier to use than other similar programs that I have used in the past making it faster to pick up and use.
  • Project organization is a plus as it makes distributing different programs and files much easier when dealing with multiple images/logos/project design ideas.
  • Its handling of multiple users is integral as we have a few different team leads as well as cross-project branding which allows for different projects to be shared across different users.
  • The reporting tool has limited functionality in regards to its analytics which draws from it becoming more of a well-rounded all access type of tool.
  • Customization of reports is not present, nor can I save standardized reports that I would want to run quickly. It takes too long to get these reports figured out.
  • I would like to see the price driven down from where it currently is, especially due to the lack of functionality. Our company switched from another product and are considering switching back if we can't work with this one.
  • Product Launches
  • Upsell
  • Cross-Sell
  • Lead Management
  • Prospecting / New Business
Part of our business is about bringing clients on to manage their brands as well as protect their image. Marketo assists us in managing a client's marketing portfolio which then allows us to get our foot in the door with other products that we offer. So far, it has helped with upselling several clients to a larger portfolio coverage as well as cross-selling them on our online brand protection coverage. Our hope is to build these customer relationships so as to get new business through word-of-mouth.
We used to use our own trademarks organization system to manage and disperse various images and logos, and then we switched to Quantify IP Portfolio Estimator to expand our capabilities. Both lacked functionality that we required in both sharing projects and managing multiple sales and marketing projects in the same account, which is why we made the decision to switch to Marketo.
If you need a simple tool to organize different marketing scenarios or projects across a team, then Marketo is right for you. However, if you are looking for a more in-depth program that will allow you to run statistics and reports on your marketing and/or sales, you may want to consider a more robust program.

Adobe Marketo Engage Feature Ratings

WYSIWYG email editor
7
Dynamic content
9
Ability to test dynamic content
9
Landing pages
9
A/B testing
8
Mobile optimization
8
Email deliverability reporting
8
List management
8
Triggered drip sequences
7
Lead nurturing automation
7
Lead scoring and grading
7
Data quality management
7
Automated sales alerts and tasks
8
Calendaring
8
Event/webinar marketing
7
Social sharing and campaigns
Not Rated
Social profile integration
Not Rated
Dashboards
9
Standard reports
7
Custom reports
5
API
8
Role-based workflow & approvals
8
Customizability
6
Integration with Salesforce.com
8
Integration with Microsoft Dynamics CRM
8
Integration with SugarCRM
8

Using Marketo's core features

  • Channels
  • Programs
  • Forms
  • Landing Pages
  • Reporting/Analytics
  • Salesforce integration: Seamless connection between the two platforms that allows for eliminating duplicate efforts.
  • Customer support: May not be a traditional feature, but their customer service is exemplary and includes a wide community for bringing issues or bugs to a larger group.
  • Setup: Marketo is basically ready to go right away and allows for a quick and easy initial setup.
Their landing page builder is something that we only just started using recently that I wish we had started using much earlier. It can take some time getting used to it, but it allows for a more presentable display of data as well as allowing users to organize and group different projects together on one screen.
Our analytics and support team needed a more robust and
customizable way of organizing our data and reports and allowing for outside
users to access this information as well. When we started, we were using the
basic reporting functionalities and so our reports were rudimentary at best.
When we were introduced to the Marketo community and were given more resources
into things we were developing, we were able to expand our reporting
functionality with additional extensions which ate up much less of our time.
I can’t emphasize enough how easy it is to set up Marketo
and get reporting and analysis up and running. It is a bit more basic than some
of its competitors, but there is additional functionality that you can add that
will make it a more robust tool. If you want a seamless transition, Marketo
truly is the way to go as it is intuitive as well as user friendly.
Salesforce integration, hands down. We were repeating
efforts a few years back by entering data into our previous software and then
duplicating this effort by entering the same information into Salesforce. This
was necessary so that we could share information as up to date as possible. Our
sales team needs this information to make the most informed decisions when
meeting with clients. Now, though, with Marketo, we just connected it to
salesforce in the beginning and it automatically syncs up.

Benefits of using some of Marketo's core features

We track lead source primarily through salesforce, but we
also use the messaging features and automatic Salesforce sync within Marketo to
communicate lead sources. We had been using this before implementing Marketo
but we see an improvement in the consistency and reliability of this data now
which allows for much faster decisions.
List Import, Operational, and Web
List Import has been useful in pulling data from several of our third party data verification parties as well as uploading our own data from our internal servers. Operational has assisted in reporting on our data management enterprises which has significantly improved our communication as well as our systems integrity issues. This has reduced down times for pulling reports and simplified the procedure for fixing it. Lastly, our Web channel provides the communication aspect that we need to get everyone on the same page and report any issues immediately.
We were satisfied overall and did not experience any issues segmenting our audiences, although we only segmented 3 audiences within Marketo: Data Integrity Team, Support, and Operations.
We segmented our Operations in Marketo so as to provide a more efficient way of presenting data specific to their day to day activities as well as easing the flow of communicating relevant data.
Our SmartCampaigns are used primarily for communicating new
updates to our various teams within our organization. As such, our initial
filter revolves around sorting the audience to whom the updates apply. Our
Sales Rep team has their own selection in the “Program Member” filter just as
our Operations team has a selection.
SmartCampaigns are useful for separating which
communications go out to which team, but we do not use this features very
frequently. Our teams have their own internal communications methods and since
Salesforce is always up to date, there is just a common practice of checking
that source for the most relevant data.

Forms are easy to set up for the most part, but the
challenge is when you want to make a more complicated form in Marketo which
requires some programming knowledge. Fortunately, we have a development team
that assists with this, but if you don’t then you will be limited to just the
basic form builder. We house most of our finance forms as well as order request
forms for our clients and so some of those have needed additional options that
were just not available in the simple form builder.


Email templates we employ:



Announcements – Used for companywide announcements that target
everyone within the organization.



Sales Rep Details – Summary of details necessary for sales
team to bring up the information they need prior to a sales meeting.



Op Requests – Operations team uses this template to
coordinate requests and bring them into one single email.

Development Requests – Same thing except for our development
team

Easy to use and they allow for a lot of time saving when it
comes to pooling information from different team members. Plus, they allow for
multiple members to automatically be added instead of typing out every single
one.