A Complex Yet Essential Tool

We use Marketo for all of our marketing automation including lead capturing, lead management, and targeted campaigns. Marketo is used across all business lines.

Correct setup is super important. Start with clear guidelines like naming conventions, integrations sync, and the right programs. Marketo has template programs like email send or tradeshow. make sure to use those vs building everything with Smart Campaigns in a Default program.
Also, get someone with HTML knowledge on your team, you will need it! That's the biggest pain point.

Lastly, go to one of their training early on to understand Marketo - it's a robust program but super powerful!

We use Marketo to track offline campaigns too. I use a Smart Campaign to trigger campaign success if someone responds to a Direct Mail campaign for example. I also build an Interesting Moment for that so we can see what companies and ultimately opportunities we have influenced with our marketing campaigns. The idea is not to count the activity but the engagement with the campaigns - sending someone an email doesn't mean much if there is no interaction with it. Same goes for offline campaigns. We bring it all into our Marketing Automation tracking.

Marketo can somehow do everything, you just need to know how. Follow the Marketing Nation - it's a great community. Also, I highly recommend keeping a close relationship with your Account Manager - they are great.

One more thing to consider: make sure your entire marketing stack is Marketo compatible. Pro tip: Zapier can solve many of those integrations.

The online community by Marketo users is great. There is almost no problem someone else hasn't had before. Also, the Marketing Nation yearly conference is amazing. Now, it's held at the Adobe Summit. Also Marketo's own content (videos, blogs, courses) are a great resource to acquire knowledge.
I don't use LinkedIn much but as a certified Marketo user, you have access to a group. This reminds me to check it out.

Automate reports and send to yourself weekly, monthly, or what have you. If you use Slack the webhook is great to stay informed with things that happen. Often it's a set-and-forget approach so it's good to see interactions. For example, I see if someone visits a key website or requests a demo in Slack. I can click on the record and go straight to Marketo and see all the details.

This is general Marketing Automation 101, triggers are more successful than badge campaigns - if someone gets an email, for example, because he/she did something, the engagement is higher than an email because they are a member of your list. Use triggers as much as possible without being creepy. Just because someone visited a page you don't have to trigger an email cadence of 10 emails. Especially, don't reference why they get the email. I have the luxury of marketing to marketers, so they know it anyways.