Item: Marketo
Rating: 10
Author: Kristina Schroffel

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

I use Marketo for our global company and across the organization. It solves CRM business requirements as well as personalization. We manage a lean marketing team and run campaigns using Marketo on a global scale. We can fully grow within the Marketo system and continue to segment and personalize and scale.

Pros and Cons

Trigger campaigns
Personalized content
Metrics and analytics
Salesforce integration
API integrations
Custom campaign development
Design Studio
Lead Database
Community

Form CSS - make it easier for everyone to modify
Landing page guided templates
More flexibility for email editor
More design options for customization

Using Marketo to Support Sales Goals

Product Launches
Upsell
Cross-Sell
Customer Service
Lead Management
Prospecting / New Business

We are trying to drive revenue and acquire and convert leads. Marketo also helps us determine ROI from events and different campaigns.

Alternatives Considered

Pardot and Salesforce Marketing Cloud Email Studio

Marketo has more functionality and behavioral triggers as well as more program customization for reporting purposes. RTP and Content AI also distinguish Marketo from other platforms. I have used Salesforce platforms for marketing automation and while useful because of their one to one integration with Salesforce, Marketo offers greater potential abilities.

Number of Contacts (List Size)

100,000 to 250,000

Using Marketo for B2C or B2B marketing

B2B

Likelihood to Recommend

Full-scale business and marketing applications and setting up channels to measure marketing activities. I think Marketo is a great ecosystem addition that can be integrated with different platforms. For example, Slack integrations, Zapier integrations, CRM Salesforce, RTP, ABM, and MPI new features and email deliver-ability options all are available and ready to implement.

Core Features Used

Channels
Programs
Email Templates
Forms
Landing Pages
Smart Campaigns
Lead Scoring
Lead Sourcing
Segmentation
Lead Nurture
Reporting/Analytics

Favorite Features

Templates, they are full customization available if you know coding
Tokens, they are great for enabling others to use the tool
Smart campaigns, changing and updating anything I need to

Feature You Wished You'd Used Sooner

database hygiene and setting up fields accurately, there's always a lot of cleanup and it's easier to start correct from the start then to clean up later, but then again with so many users you are basically always cleaning things in Marketo for us.

Help from the Community

FT, LT, MT functionality, preference center and subscription management. Email template design. All these long term projects can be started and you can learn in the community.

Marketo Differentiators

Marketo is the Cadillac of marketing automation tools for me, I learned the most on it and it's pretty advanced compared to other tools. I like the tokens, the community, the support it feels very best in class and that all the work I did is already in the system is helpful.

Staying Organized

Folders, and archiving assets. I use these to keep my instance organized and it's up to me how I want it to be organized. I can change things. Then I also follow a naming structure to keep everything easy to find and for anyone else who uses the system.

Lead Sourcing

I can use that field for custom reports in Salesforce as well as in Marketo for MT/FT reporting reasons and ROi for marketing campaigns.

Channels

Webinar, Events, Product Promotion and Partner related. We also look at strategies and regional focus.

We can compare which channels perform the best and which do the best job at generating leads and qualified leads for our sales teams.

Segmentation

I wish I had more segmentations and could make more than 20 but I do love using them.

Dynamic content and for routing leads and database management.

Smart Campaigns

For all routing and lead management. I also use them to sync to Salesforce and to move between programs or manage program members.

They keep everything organized and run our Marketo platform. Without them it'd be very disorganized.

Forms

I use forms for all programs. I wish they had more functionality for styling and for mass pasting form field outputs. I also can't embed and have it recognized in a outside landing page which is frustrating but we have work around.

Email Templates

I build them from scratch using HTML. I also use tokens and the widget functionality.

Templates are great for other users and for me to have a lot of elements in one template.

Users and Roles

25 - All of our business, regional (APAC, EMEAR, Americas), Sales business development, partner enablement, product focused marketing teams

Support Headcount Required

2 - It can range from basic design skills and editing rich text to full scale campaign build out. For our organization we have admin experts and then users that clone programs but don't build.

Business Processes Supported

Marketing Automation
Marketing Activities
CRM Salesforce Sync

Innovative Uses

Slack Integration
Tokenized emails for fast email sends
MT/FT Tracking
ROI Reporting in Salesforce
Tableau Reporting

Future Planned Uses

More Tableau reporting
Slack Integrations
Business Development notifications (Alert emails from Marketo)

Likelihood to Renew

9

I am happy with our tool and how we have scaled its performance, we have customized a lot and it's not quite the same as it was 2 years ago but it grows with us.

Other Software Used

Salesforce Lightning, Trello, Slack

Return on Investment

Lead tracking with Munchkin Tracking
FT, LT Reporting
Marketing Automation

Products Replaced

Yes - Pardot, because we wanted a more dynamic marketing automation tool with more features and ability to scale within the department.

Key Differentiators

Product Features
Product Usability
Product Reputation
Prior Experience with the Product
Vendor Reputation
Existing Relationship with the Vendor
Positive Sales Experience with the Vendor
Third-party Reviews

I think asking others and seeing the vast community that Marketo had helped make the decision easier. In the beginning Marketo had a lot of support and training to learn their tool. I've heard people call it the Cadillac of Marketing Automation tools.

Evaluation Lessons Learned

I'd probably ask other people by researching review sites and talking to people who use the tool, but also I remember back when I learned Marketo there weren't as many users of Marketo as there are now so it has definitely gotten to be more common recently.

Implementation Rating

9

You will need to dedicate a long time and involve experts in the IT sphere as well as Marketing.

Implementation Details / Implementation Partner

Implemented in-house

Implementation Phases

Yes - 1. IT background plumbing
2. IP Warming
3. Workspace set up
4. Lead Partitions
5. Templates
6. Creating programs
7. Creating channels

Change Management Lessons

Change management was a big part of the implementation and was well-handled - You need to stay in the planning phase of implementation for a long time before you can truly have it ready and it involves a lot of management for the future.

Implementation Issues

Changes
IT
Background work taking longer

Training Types Used

In-person training
Self-taught

In-Person Training

I don't know I am fully self taught.

Online Training

Ease of Marketo Training

I learned over the span of many years so it takes longer but resources are available online and in the Marketo community.

Product Configurability

8

I think I want to jailbreak some things in Marketo but for the most part you can do a lot of custom work with templates.

Configuration Lessons

Follow the product docs and plan ahead for a long time.

UI Customization

Yes - we have customized the interface extensively - It's not easy you need to learn coding on your end to change a lot of the components.

Extensibility and Customization

Yes - we have added extensive custom code - It wasn't easy it takes a lot of coding knowledge.

Additional Customization Considerations

Pretty much as much as we could customize, we did.

Support Rating

9

I think the chat feature is fairly quick. I miss the phone call option they seem to discourage talking to them on the phone now which I noticed changed recently. However through email can usually be sufficient.

Marketo Customer Support Pros and Cons

Pros	Cons
Quick Resolution Good followup Knowledgeable team Problems get solved Kept well informed Immediate help available Support cares about my success Quick Initial Response	None

Premium Support

No - I don't think it's worth paying for the premium support even if it is an option. I can usually use support chat or submit a case.

Bug Resolution

Yes - Yes, some issues are worse than others and take the engineering team some time. I think the worst was when they didn't renew their domain and that process was painful and took a while to get back online. Also sometimes pods go down.

Exceptional Examples of Marketo Support

I have had support people quickly answer obscure questions I've had very specific but not obvious questions and they get the answer I need. I'm impressed how even if they don't know the answer right away they figure it out.

Usability

9

I think that its a great tool, but takes a while to learn. A lot of people can be brought up to a certain level but full training is hard and takes a long time. I do think it's a great tool overall and is good to use as an Admin.