Item: Adobe Marketo Engage
Rating: 8
Author: Matt Tonkin

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

I use Marketo both within our organization as our primary lead management/automation platform as well as with clients who I help to optimize their Marketing Ops processes. I've used a number of Marketing Automation Platforms, Marketo is easily the most versatile and scalable. That said it does require an intimate knowledge to get the most out of the platform as well as proper maintenance.

Pros and Cons

Customization.
Versatility.
Multichannel integration.
Nurturing.

Ease of use.
Learning curve.

Using Marketo to Support Sales Goals

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

Within my own organization Marketo is our primary Demand Gen management tool. It is used for nurturing prospects as well as existing customers. It is also our primary lifecycle management tool along with SFDC. We're a team of Marketo experts so we have a lot of experience setting up Marketo to work with our needs. I also work with many other organizations as a consultant helping them get the most out of their instances.

Alternatives Considered

HubSpot and Pardot

Marketo is the most customizable Marketing Automation Platform that I've used. In terms of creating a well integrated marketing stack it has a huge amount of native integrations and almost anything else can be accomplished via API.

It however does not have as simple of a user interface, particularly for Email and Landing page creation. Non-technical users, especially those used to WYSIWYG editors in Mailchimp/HubSpot, etc., may be frustrated without well designed templates.

Number of Contacts (List Size)

25,000 to 100,000

Using Adobe Marketo Engage for B2C or B2B marketing

B2B

Likelihood to Recommend

Marketo is great for mid to enterprise size companies that can:

Dedicate a resource (or many) to system maintenance
Have many users that will require customized levels of access
Have a mature Tech Stack that will benefit from full integration

This isn't to say that Marketo can't be used by small teams, I have done so myself. However it really starts to show its value when it is being used across many types of initiatives. It is far more than an email platform.

Marketo's interface definitely can be difficult to get into, particularly for users migrating from friendlier platforms. For content users the base landing page and email builders are not really usable. Highly recommend investing in some well structured and designed templates with plenty of variables otherwise you'll end up with a wide array of non-standard content.

Unlimited customization

Modules Used

Overall Satisfaction with Marketo