1. Home
  2. Marketing Automation Software
  3. Adobe Marketo Engage Reviews
  4. User Review of Adobe Marketo Engage
Marketo expertise is a career shaper
Updated October 31, 2023

Marketo expertise is a career shaper

Kristina Schroffel | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Modules Used

  • Marketo Lead Management
  • Marketo Analytics
  • Marketo Web Personalization
  • Marketo Sales Insight
  • Marketo ContentAI

Overall Satisfaction with Adobe Marketo Engage

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.
  • 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
  • More Salesforce sync customization/visibility
  • 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.
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.
100,000 to 250,000
B2B

Do you think Adobe Marketo Engage delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with Adobe Marketo Engage's feature set?

Yes

Did Adobe Marketo Engage live up to sales and marketing promises?

Yes

Did implementation of Adobe Marketo Engage go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy Adobe Marketo Engage again?

Yes

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.

Adobe Marketo Engage Feature Ratings

8.8
WYSIWYG email editor
6
Dynamic content
9
Ability to test dynamic content
10
Landing pages
10
A/B testing
8
Mobile optimization
9
Email deliverability reporting
7
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
9.5
Calendaring
9
Event/webinar marketing
10
10.0
Social sharing and campaigns
10
Social profile integration
10
9.3
Dashboards
10
Standard reports
10
Custom reports
8
10.0
API
10
Role-based workflow & approvals
10
Customizability
10
Integration with Salesforce.com
10
Integration with Microsoft Dynamics CRM
Not Rated
Integration with SugarCRM
Not Rated

Learnings & Advice

We have very custom solutions and we are always looking to use Marketo in new ways whether leveraging middleware or implementing PMCFs. There is a lot of room to expand and scale with the business and business requirements change and evolve.
Lots of leveraging of the Marketo API once you are in that area of Marketo long enough it becomes more of the default for our team. I love seeing what is possible and fitting it into our use cases.
Good luck and take time to explore ALL parts even the less known areas. There is always something new and parts of it can define your whole career whether you want to specialize in DNS type work, more technical integration (Zapier), or latest campaign features and reporting. Don't be afraid to connect the whole ecosystem.
I have learned what others are doing that is new and exciting. I also have felt less alone with my troubleshooting other customers have gone through something similar.
Get very close with your data science teams, Salesforce teams, and integration contacts for all the Marketing technology tech stack. You will need those connections as your Marketo grows and evolves.

Using Marketo's core features

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

Benefits of using some of Marketo's core features

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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.

Using Adobe Marketo Engage

25 - All of our business, regional (APAC, EMEAR, Americas), Sales business development, partner enablement, product focused marketing teams
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.
  • Marketing Automation
  • Marketing Activities
  • CRM Salesforce Sync
  • Slack Integration
  • Tokenized emails for fast email sends
  • MT/FT Tracking
  • ROI Reporting in Salesforce
  • Tableau Reporting
  • More Tableau reporting
  • Slack Integrations
  • Business Development notifications (Alert emails from Marketo)
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.
  • Lead tracking with Munchkin Tracking
  • FT, LT Reporting
  • Marketing Automation

Evaluating Adobe Marketo Engage and Competitors

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

Adobe Marketo Engage Implementation

You will need to dedicate a long time and involve experts in the IT sphere as well as Marketing.
  • Implemented in-house
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 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.
  • Changes
  • IT
  • Background work taking longer

Adobe Marketo Engage Training

  • In-person training
  • Self-taught
I don't know I am fully self taught.
I learned over the span of many years so it takes longer but resources are available online and in the Marketo community.

Configuring Adobe Marketo Engage

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.
Follow the product docs and plan ahead for a long time.
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.
Yes - we have added extensive custom code - It wasn't easy it takes a lot of coding knowledge.
Pretty much as much as we could customize, we did.

Adobe Marketo Engage Support

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

Using Adobe Marketo Engage

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.
ProsCons
Like to use
Relatively simple
Easy to use
Technical support not required
Well integrated
Consistent
Convenient
Feel confident using
Slow to learn
  • Email editor
  • Email programs
  • Smart lists
  • Design for customizing
  • Complex filters
  • Database management
Yes - You can't really I have the app but it does not work well mobile.

Adobe Marketo Engage Reliability

It works well to scale, it is expensive to add more users sometimes and scale. However the permissions are easily customizable and you can cater to the user.
Sometimes, it is difficult to get a hold of the right people. However, for the most part everything works well.
Sometimes email images can load slowly. Especially when using tokens.

Integrating Adobe Marketo Engage

Some are very complex but the developer MKTO resources are helpful.
  • Salesforce
  • Slack
  • FeedOtter
  • Tableau
  • Facebook
  • LinkedIn
  • Wistia
  • Zoom Webinar
  • Adobe Connect
Some were complex, (Slack) and others were simple (Zoom).
  • Homemade data warehouses
  • Google Analytics
I do not have an easy way to integrate with Google, these are the more complex integrations
  • File import/export
  • Single Signon
  • API (e.g. SOAP or REST)
  • Javascript widgets
  • AppExchange or similar marketplace
Zapier
I think its a learning curve, but well worth it.

Relationship with Adobe

We got moved around and upsold a lot.
After the drama of getting a quote that wasn't over our expectations, it's fine.
Users, lead database size, add ons
A less salesy sales process

Upgrading Adobe Marketo Engage

Yes - It went smoothly also with moving from http to https
  • Security: http: - https:
  • Better UI/UX
  • Reporting
  • New features