Long-term user willing to give credit where due and concern where warranted
Updated May 20, 2015

Long-term user willing to give credit where due and concern where warranted

Brigid Greenway | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Software Version

Global Enterprise

Modules Used

  • Marketo Lead Management
  • Marketo Sales Insight
  • Marketo Revenue Cycle Analytics

Overall Satisfaction with Marketo Marketing Automation

We use Marketo across the globe as the marketing platform for the digital and field marketers to execute their campaigns and it has branched into being used by non-marketing teams like customer success managers. It allows us to have a unified platform, standard branding, and flexibility in reusing elements across campaigns for efficiency.
  • Great community articles and knowledge articles to help with self-taught education.
  • Flexibility to account for customized CRM environments.
  • Great platform partners to help drive seamless marketing campaigns like webcasts etc.
  • Admin level access to troubleshoot and/or control/audit things is behind in terms of roadmap.
  • Tends to roll out "sexy" new features rather than deal with long standing issues raised by the community.
  • Inability to delete fields - hiding them is not enough of an answer.
  • Improved brand consistency.
  • Improved efficiency on lead management and campaign performance.
  • Great ROI study on the impact of all the marketing touches toward revenue - not just a last touch or a first touch.
  • Pardot Marketing Automation,Act-On,HubSpot,Eloqua
Most marketing automation systems either have very little flexibility when it comes to your CRM environment or if it does, it is extremely complicated and/or pricey. Marketo has been able to remain squarely in the middle - they are not the cheapest nor the most expensive, they can give you room to accommodate your own environment but they know the CRM systems that they are connecting to.
PROS
What type of connectivity do you plan to do with it? It has multiple CRM options as well as the Webhook and API options to connect other systems.
Do you need to keep marketers in their "respective corners" (limit data visibility, permissions to do something)? Marketo offers the ability to split your database into lead partitions and workspaces - as well as permissions to execute certain actions within a specific workspace. We onboarded folks using a Beginner/Intermediate/Advanced method that allowed an increase of permissions once they had gone through training and proved their ability.
FANTASTIC customer support - WW coverage and extremely responsive.

CONS
If you have a huge database, or one that is not regularly cleaned, it is a more expensive solution than others.

Adobe Marketo Engage Feature Ratings

WYSIWYG email editor
9
Dynamic content
7
Ability to test dynamic content
7
Landing pages
8
A/B testing
7
Mobile optimization
7
Email deliverability reporting
6
List management
9
Lead nurturing automation
10
Lead scoring and grading
10
Data quality management
7
Automated sales alerts and tasks
8
Calendaring
9
Event/webinar marketing
10
Social sharing and campaigns
Not Rated
Social profile integration
Not Rated
Dashboards
9
Standard reports
10
Custom reports
10
API
9
Role-based workflow & approvals
5
Customizability
8
Integration with Salesforce.com
10
Integration with Microsoft Dynamics CRM
Not Rated
Integration with SugarCRM
Not Rated

Using Marketo Marketing Automation

100 - 
  • Field and digital marketers
  • Product/Solution marketers
  • customer renewals team
  • Free trial/freemium automation
  • Typical resource tracking and delivery system (whitepapers, webcasts, product sheets)
  • Customer notifications and communications
  • Nurturing and recycling of database
Just renewed - and for multiple years! :)

Marketo Marketing Automation Implementation

CLEAN database is critical before you connect
Knowing what you are tracking and when
Know that Marketo is designed to work against a truly native CRM setup (customizations can work - but have to know what it expects). For example, Marketo de-dupes against the Lead object by email address but at the Contact level, it goes by the record id - which most people say it prevents dupes but it prevents dupes the way that SFDC would have most people treat their lead and contact objects.
Determine how you plan to connect updates (using Programs, changes go over instantaneously; using smart campaigns you can build wait steps).
Change management was a big part of the implementation and was well-handled - 
  • Define campaign types
  • Define when to use which type
  • Define what will be "global" versus regional or localized
  • Determine how to streamline processes/areas where mistakes can happen
  • Build solid documentation
  • On-board people - don't expect that they can pull all the levers on day 1
  • Implement a 2nd set of eyes check
  • Knowing how long it was going to take at the first sync connection to bring our CRM in alignment with Marketo and vice versa (took almost two weeks to complete due to high volume of custom fields, objects, and records being synced).
  • Dealing with non-native use of CRM in terms of ownership of records - what workarounds had to be put in place to use functionality in both systems without tripping each other.
  • Not having a proper sandbox test environment stood up previously to test functionality.

Using Marketo Marketing Automation

Interface and search function is fantastic.
ProsCons
Like to use
Relatively simple
Easy to use
Technical support not required
Well integrated
Consistent
Quick to learn
Convenient
Feel confident using
None
  • Search
  • Workflow interface
  • Generic reporting/analytics
  • User administration
  • Audit/tracking
  • Tracking errors/issues