Item: Adobe Marketo Engage
Rating: 10
Author: Kyle Garrett

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Marketo is a piece of tech that is owned by the Operations arm of our company. I and a colleague share the responsibility of architecting and implementing new marketing initiatives with Marketo, as well as integrations. We use it as our sole database for the intake of the thousands of leads we get each and every month. We use it to manage the lead lifecycle, utilizing lead scoring, status changes, data normalization, and other operational procedures as well as email marketing and other lead nurturing efforts. Everything enters Marketo, and then is fed to our sales systems and sales teams.

Pros and Cons

Marketo has the most capable functionality out of any of the major marketing automation platforms that I have used.
Building complex nurture tracks to your wildest imagination is possible in Marketo.

The UX/UI in Marketo is amongst the worst in modern software offerings. Everyone lives with it because of the amazing capabilities it has.
I've had subpar experiences with customer service, so it's not a great tool to learn with if you are just starting out with marketing automation.

Using Marketo to Support Sales Goals

Lead Management
Prospecting / New Business

Marketo helps us manage our large database. We are at the point as a company where we get too many inbound leads for our team to be able to call every single person who fills out a form on our website, plus the many 3rd-party places someone fills out a form that is routed to us. We use Marketo for lead management and prospecting in that we use the data we receive to score leads until they reach a point where marketing feels they are interested in our product enough to talk to a representative from our company. It allows us to make some sense out of the chaos that is our marketing motions. We collect so much data in Marketo that we can turn into actionable insights that it make it worth its cost over and over.

Alternatives Considered

Pardot, HubSpot, Mailchimp and Campaign Monitor

Marketo is a step above the rest in its customizability and sheer power. In my line of work, there's a general agreement that the other platforms are more for small to medium businesses, and can be grown out of. Marketo will take you to the next level and it would be hard to grow your marketing efforts to a point where Marketo can't handle all the activities you do. Marketo really unlocks capabilities in the department of lead and data management, as well as trigger-based programs, at a level the others just can't provide. Marketo is chosen not because it's the most affordable, because it definitely isn't, but because it's easily the most capable in the bunch.

Number of Contacts (List Size)

1 to 5 million

Using Adobe Marketo Engage for B2C or B2B marketing

B2B

Likelihood to Recommend

In my experience, Marketo is a program that many companies graduate to after they have used other marketing automation platforms, and have outgrown their capabilities. Other programs are far easier to learn on, and even someone with little background in marketing automation can learn on those, but once you're ready to join the big leagues, you move to Marketo. It is perfect for a company that really wants to turn their understanding of marketing, and the ownership of the processes of marketing, up to an 11. If there is a dedicated resource to manage Marketo within the company, or the company is willing to add the headcount to do so, it's well worth the investment. It's best if you are moving beyond simple email campaigns, and really want to coordinate what marketing is doing, and understand the buyers' journey.

Marketo pumps up automation to 11.

Modules Used

Overall Satisfaction with Marketo