Item: Adobe Marketo Engage
Rating: 9
Author: Andrew Parker

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Marketo is used throughout the business. We like to describe it as the chassis that the company is built on. Our lead generation goes exclusively through Marketo and our homegrown CRM. Additionally, all of our customer communications, surveys and even some internal communication goes through the system. It's used, and used extensively every day. For us, Marketo makes it easy to have a single source of truth within the organization for all our funnels, whether they are pre or post acquisition. Further, the flexibility it gives us to manage our daily lead flow and to test, test, test, is unparalleled. While it does have it's limitations, overall, we've been pleased with it.

Pros and Cons

Lead nurturing in Marketo is second to none. Currently, we use it to nurture our daily lead flow and we've seen a marked increase in the ability for us to take advantage of previously unsold leads. And since we market on a pretty big scale, the ability to provide personalized, engaged follow-up messages to interested customers who haven't purchased yet automatically is a big deal for us.
Reporting has really improved within Marketo, but it's taken a long time to get there. The reporting they do have, especially within revenue cycle analytics works pretty well, but there is some refinement needed. That said, it delivers on the reporting side and gives us what we need for now.
The API integration is seemless. So easy to set up and get integrated--even with a homegrown CRM like ours.

The WYSIWYG editor for landing pages and email creation is not that flexible. It doesn't do responsive very well and the forms for landing pages don't do responsive at all. They have some serious work to do to make their content creation engine as good as their automation and reporting.
The real-time analyitics are limited. They've gotten better over the years, but the real time data you can pull is extremely limited. The RCE reports are far more flexible, but they only update overnight.
Marketo's own response time to custom projects and needs is not that great. I'd like to see them give more of a white glove experience when you call in needing some custom help.

Return on Investment

Better insight into ROI on marketing spend is the big one for us
We've also been able to reduce churn because of how we now market to customers
Costs have also dropped dramatically because we are more in control of our landing pages and ad spend in Marketo

Alternatives Considered

HubSpot,Eloqua,Exact Target,ActOn

There are two main reasons we selected Marketo:

API integration abilities
The most flexible and intuitive lead nurturing and scoring platform

For us, we generate thousands of leads per day that don't get touched. To be able to contact them on a regular basis and to customize that message without a huge marketing team would have been unthinkable. With Marketo, we can keep a consistent message and ensure that the user experience is a great one with a limited budget and team.

Number of Contacts (List Size)

250,000 to 1 million

Using Adobe Marketo Engage for B2C or B2B marketing

Both

Likelihood to Recommend

Size of company is important as well as what you're planning to do with the platform in general. Marketo really shouldn't be thought of as an ESP provider because it's an expensive ESP. Also, don't use it if all you're going to do is promote webinars. It's too expensive for that and a lower cost ESP and webinar provider will do that just as well. If, however, you're interested in nurturing leads, reducing sales cycles, tracking revenue back to leads and developing an entire experience for your customer, then Marketo is the way to go. They call it "engagement marketing" but it really is the truth. Marketo can help you create and automate an end-to-end user experience with your marketing message and for that, it's extremely powerful.

Marketo Makes Magic...But it's Not Without Warts

Software Version

Modules Used

Overall Satisfaction with Marketo