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Best MA solution for companies that are growing and want to scale
Updated December 15, 2016

Best MA solution for companies that are growing and want to scale

Valerie Armstrong | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Software Version

Standard

Modules Used

  • Marketo Lead Management
  • Marketo Sales Insight

Overall Satisfaction with Marketo

Marketo is used primarily used by our Marketing team, who use it to create marketing campaigns and programs, report on email performance and conversions, and manage lead scoring, lead processing, and segmentations. We also have a few members of our product development team who have access to Marketo for using the API and our Sales team has access to Marketo Sales Insight in Salesforce.
  • I love the ease of use that Marketo has achieved with their product. I personally had no previous knowledge of marketing automation before joining my present company and learning Marketo and was able to quickly learn and get up and running with the product after a few training sessions. Anyone who has previous MA experience should find Marketo very intuitive.
  • When it comes to creating campaigns, I really enjoy having a range of abilities and tools when it comes to customizing assets (landing pages, forms, emails) and processes (smart campaigns). Marketo gives you enough flexibility to build your programs whether it be for scale or even if you want to get the most granular tracking and reporting.
  • As a Marketo Admin, I really love how simple the Marketo API documentation is to navigate through. I've been able to work with our product development team to push data from our products back into Marketo and can easily help them troubleshoot issues using the Marketo Community or developer documentation.
  • Marketo needs to have more customization around roles and permissions. Right now, if you were to turn off a certain permission it would apply to the entire section of Marketo. In certain cases though, I'd like to give users folder-based permissions to allow them the ability to create and edit in certain areas and have read-only privileges in others.
  • The Analytics section of Marketo (not speaking to RCE here) could use some serious attention. I've seen this said in quite a few reviews across the web and truly believe this is the top issue with Marketo to date. The reports are really "out of the box" and don't allow for too much customization from the user. I find myself having to pull them into Excel for further analysis. Additionally, companies that have larger size databases may find that some reports time out, even with proper filtering. I usually find it better to create my "report" as a smart list and export the lead data to analyze myself.
  • The landing page and email editors could use a facelift. Though they have the necessary functionality, the design of the editors is very outdated and isn't as nice of a UX as the Forms 2.0 editor.
  • Product Launches
  • Upsell
  • Cross-Sell
  • Customer Service
  • Lead Management
  • Prospecting / New Business
Our Marketo subscription had been purchased by my company prior to when I started. However, I have had the chance to evaluate other marketing automation tools during the renewal process, including Eloqua and Pardot. From these evaluations, I can say that most marketing automation platforms have the same features and capabilities, it's really just a matter of a different UX/UI. It all comes down to how much you want to pay for the solution and which one can grow with your business.
1 to 5 million
B2B
If you have a large database, Marketo is definitely the way to go because you can easily scale your campaigns and operational processes. Though you may run into some issues with reports timing out, it's easy enough to workaround using smart lists and exporting the data into Excel and analyzing outside of the Marketo platform.

Adobe Marketo Engage Feature Ratings

6.7
WYSIWYG email editor
5
Dynamic content
6
Ability to test dynamic content
6
Landing pages
5
A/B testing
6
Mobile optimization
6
Email deliverability reporting
8
List management
8
Triggered drip sequences
10
8.5
Lead nurturing automation
8
Lead scoring and grading
9
Data quality management
8
Automated sales alerts and tasks
9
7.5
Calendaring
7
Event/webinar marketing
8
Not Rated
Social sharing and campaigns
Not Rated
Social profile integration
Not Rated
3.5
Dashboards
Not Rated
Standard reports
4
Custom reports
3
8.0
API
9
Role-based workflow & approvals
4
Customizability
9
Integration with Salesforce.com
10
Integration with Microsoft Dynamics CRM
Not Rated
Integration with SugarCRM
Not Rated

Using Marketo

21 - All of our Marketing team primarily uses it to create email programs, landing pages and forms. We also have a few members of our IT/Operations and Product Development team utilize Marketo for the SFDC and API integration. Our SalesOps project manager and I use Marketo for workflows, database management and to ensure data and process quality.
2 - In the company, it is usually the Marketo Admins that support other Marketo users at our company. These admins are typically Marketo super users who have had extensive training or experience using Marketo and/or another marketing automation tool or SFDC experience. Currently, only one Marketo admin at our company is a Marketo Certified Expert, but all of our admins have the knowledge to pass the exam.
  • Database management
  • Email marketing/automation
  • Campaign management
  • Creating dynamic call scripts from Marketo landing pages for our sales team using tokens
  • Creating a replicable content cycle (content asset + webinar) utilizing tokens
  • Using the Marketo API to sync leads from our two leadgen apps to Marketo/SFDC
  • Making our instance more scalable by taking advantage of tokens more frequently in our asset creation
  • Using additional Marketo features, such as as real-time personalization, mobile marketing etc.
  • Implementing RCE
The renewal process with Marketo can be very frustrating. The first year I managed the renewal for my company, I received a quote from the rep with additional products that I had not even inquired about. Additionally, as a result of an increased database size that required us to go up one tier level, we saw our price jump by over 25%. This year, we are decreasing our database size by at least two tier levels and so far I'm disappointed to see that there will be very minimal savings, despite having much less data to store.
  • We were able to integrate Marketo with our products in order to sync product usage data to Marketo and our CRM. This has increased the visibility of product usage data across the company and we are able to provide more targeted campaigns based on this data.
  • Having most of our marketing team in Marketo, we've been able to scale operations by allowing all members training and access to be able to create and execute their own campaigns. Since Marketo is very easy to learn once you get going, it's no time before a new user is able to start creating their own campaigns.

Using Marketo

ProsCons
Like to use
Relatively simple
Easy to use
Well integrated
Quick to learn
Convenient
Feel confident using
None