Adobe Marketo Engage vs. Customer.io

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Adobe Marketo Engage
Score 8.1 out of 10
N/A
Adobe Marketo Engage (acquired by Adobe in 2018) is a marketing automation platform whose basic features include email marketing, drip nurturing, landing pages, and lead scoring, but other editions offer additional advanced features. Typical customers are B2B firms with complex sales cycles.N/A
Customer.io
Score 9.4 out of 10
Small Businesses (1-50 employees)
Customer.io is a customer engagement platform that enables marketers to build sophisticated automated messaging campaigns. With access to real-time behavioral data, users can create personalized and relevant messages to engage and retain customers. This includes sending emails, push notifications, SMS, in-app messages, and more through a visual building experience. Built for scale, Customer.io boasts users among over 5,300 companies, sending over 17 billion messages per year.N/A
Pricing
Adobe Marketo EngageCustomer.io
Editions & Modules
Growth
Pricing based on database size.
per month
Select
Pricing based on database size.
per month
Prime
Pricing based on database size.
per month
Ultimate
Pricing based on database size.
per month
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Adobe Marketo EngageCustomer.io
Free Trial
YesYes
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeOptionalOptional
Additional DetailsEssentials: For startups and small teams engaging customers on their mobile and web apps. - Up to 5,000 profiles*, Send Emails, Push, In-App, and SMS, Visual Workflow Builder, Segmentation, Two Workspaces, Email Support, Customer Community Premium: For high-growth companies looking for greater control over their messaging outcomes. - Everything in Essentials, Custom Data + Message Volume, Premium Product Features, Additional Workspaces, 90-day Onboarding Program, Premium Email & Chat Support, Managed Deliverability, Dedicated IPs, Parcel Pro Licenses, HIPAA Compliance Enterprise: For at-scale companies looking to create world-class customer experiences. - Everything in Premium, Managed Infrastructure*, Customer Success Manager, Quarterly Success Reviews, Technical Account Manager*, Audit Logging & Data Governance*, Parcel Business Licenses, Migration Support*, *Available by consultation.
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Adobe Marketo EngageCustomer.io
Features
Adobe Marketo EngageCustomer.io
Email & Online Marketing
Comparison of Email & Online Marketing features of Product A and Product B
Adobe Marketo Engage
7.8
Ratings
2% above category average
Customer.io
-
Ratings
WYSIWYG email editor8.20 Ratings00 Ratings
Dynamic content6.80 Ratings00 Ratings
Ability to test dynamic content6.80 Ratings00 Ratings
Landing pages7.80 Ratings00 Ratings
A/B testing8.30 Ratings00 Ratings
Mobile optimization7.80 Ratings00 Ratings
Email deliverability reporting6.40 Ratings00 Ratings
List management8.70 Ratings00 Ratings
Triggered drip sequences9.10 Ratings00 Ratings
Lead Management
Comparison of Lead Management features of Product A and Product B
Adobe Marketo Engage
7.7
Ratings
1% below category average
Customer.io
-
Ratings
Lead nurturing automation8.40 Ratings00 Ratings
Lead scoring and grading8.70 Ratings00 Ratings
Data quality management6.60 Ratings00 Ratings
Automated sales alerts and tasks7.30 Ratings00 Ratings
Campaign Management
Comparison of Campaign Management features of Product A and Product B
Adobe Marketo Engage
7.7
Ratings
4% above category average
Customer.io
-
Ratings
Calendaring7.10 Ratings00 Ratings
Event/webinar marketing8.30 Ratings00 Ratings
Social Media Marketing
Comparison of Social Media Marketing features of Product A and Product B
Adobe Marketo Engage
7.5
Ratings
0% below category average
Customer.io
-
Ratings
Social sharing and campaigns7.80 Ratings00 Ratings
Social profile integration7.20 Ratings00 Ratings
Reporting & Analytics
Comparison of Reporting & Analytics features of Product A and Product B
Adobe Marketo Engage
8.0
Ratings
9% above category average
Customer.io
-
Ratings
Dashboards8.30 Ratings00 Ratings
Standard reports7.90 Ratings00 Ratings
Custom reports7.80 Ratings00 Ratings
Platform & Infrastructure
Comparison of Platform & Infrastructure features of Product A and Product B
Adobe Marketo Engage
7.9
Ratings
6% above category average
Customer.io
-
Ratings
API8.10 Ratings00 Ratings
Role-based workflow & approvals7.80 Ratings00 Ratings
Customizability7.80 Ratings00 Ratings
Integration with Salesforce.com9.30 Ratings00 Ratings
Integration with Microsoft Dynamics CRM7.30 Ratings00 Ratings
Integration with SugarCRM7.20 Ratings00 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Adobe Marketo EngageCustomer.io
Small Businesses
Vbout
Vbout
Score 9.9 out of 10
Simplify360
Simplify360
Score 7.8 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
PFL Direct Mail Platform
PFL Direct Mail Platform
Score 9.0 out of 10
Dialpad Support
Dialpad Support
Score 9.0 out of 10
Enterprises
PFL Direct Mail Platform
PFL Direct Mail Platform
Score 9.0 out of 10
Verint Community
Verint Community
Score 9.9 out of 10
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User Ratings
Adobe Marketo EngageCustomer.io
Likelihood to Recommend
7.0
(0 ratings)
10.0
(0 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
9.0
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Usability
8.0
(0 ratings)
9.0
(0 ratings)
Availability
9.0
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Performance
9.0
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
8.6
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
In-Person Training
10.0
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Online Training
6.7
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
10.0
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Configurability
6.0
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Ease of integration
1.1
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Product Scalability
7.0
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
8.2
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
8.2
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
Adobe Marketo EngageCustomer.io
Likelihood to Recommend
If you are looking to, you're looking to scale up your lead gen work. Adobe Marketo was a very good tool for that. You're looking to deliver leads to a sales team from marketing campaigns. It's a very good tool for that. It runs everything we do on the marketing side and I think a small lead gen team or a very large one could use an equally well.
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This tool is well-suited for companies looking to run email marketing campaigns or send out newsletters regularly to their users/customers. The workflow setup is especially useful for companies who want to send specific emails based on user behavior - i.e. they've not logged in recently, have bought a specific product, haven't opened any emails, etc. This could also be useful for freelancers like me since you can create different workspaces within Customer.io. I have configured it this way to handle email marketing for a few of my clients, and the software keeps everything organized and separate. This might not be the best tool for small businesses, considering the price. It may be better to start out with a cheaper email marketing tool, and then if/when necessary, scale-up with a tool like Customer.io.
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Pros
  • Adobe Marketo Engage is a great platform for custom email design. The user interface is simple and easy to navigate.
  • With Campaign Optimization, Adobe Marketo Engage allows for real-time adjustments, ensuring my campaigns remain relevant and effective.
  • With Advanced Analytics, Adobe Marketo Engage provides robust marketing data analysis, helping us better understand our campaigns' effectiveness.
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  • Ease of use, a good tool for non programmers, or not so tech savvy people.
  • Great support, willing to help a lot, by chat, calls, or screen sharing.
  • Fast updates, it's a newer tool, but they are coming with fixes and updates fast.
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Cons
  • Marketo's email editor is basic in comparison to other cheaper alternatives out there.
  • Marketo doesn't work as well in B2C scenarios as it does in B2B. One of the painpoints of this is it's difficult to showcase a selection of product recommendations based on purchase behaviour without a very time consuming workaround. It's manageable if you're only selling a handful of products, but it's inefficient when dealing with a large catalogue.
  • Marketo's form and landing page builder are also behind the times. Perhaps not as bad as the Salesforce Marketing Cloud platform, but for an enterprise company the product should be much better.
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  • I may be missing it in the UI, but a place to see the list of emails who qualify for a certain email.
  • One easy to view chart of all our automated/lifecycle emails to see what a given user would see over their customer journey. (This is really just a feature request/idea - the product itself is really awesome.)
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Likelihood to Renew
We're likely to renew for several reasons:
  • Now that it's been implemented, I can't imagine not having marketing automation and the easy interface that Marketo provides to run our campaigns
  • Marketo's community and customer service is fantastic; I know that when I need help, I'll get it
  • Marketo continues to improve the product, so I know that I can expect it to be even more useful in the future
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No answers on this topic
Usability
In some aspects, the tool can feel quite clunky in parts. But with the rich feature set it has, it's understandable. There is a lot of room for improvement for the user interface. The system itself doesn't have a slick or modern feel, so the usability could feel nicer to use with these areas considered.
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It is really difficult to leverage all the neat features without a developer. I actually think the base software could be really great for a small business if the price is right, but there are so many things you *can* do but have to know how to do them or have access to your website and the ability to code.
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Reliability and Availability
Marketo provides different way and abilities to connect. If you are having product support or unexplained errors you can get someone on Marketo support 24 hours a day. One of Marketo's greatest assets in my opinion however would be the community. Often times our company is just looking for case success stories from someone else. In the community you can search for problems you are currently facing and see others having the same issue and solutions for those issues. If not, you can pose a question to the whole community and champions of the product and others can chime in to provide suggestions to fix your needs. The community is truly a 24/7 place to get your answers quickly.
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No answers on this topic
Performance
There are times when it is slightly slow for us, where we sit on a screen waiting for it to load. This could be our internet since we have had the same issue occasionally with other systems, but it is enough to make you crazy.
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No answers on this topic
Support Rating
On multiple occasions we've had Marketo support (technical and license based) issues. Technical issues were minor and resolved within a day. License based issues (even things encouraged by Marketo for partners, like provisioning another license) took WEEKS. They actually took so long to respond that the client we were working with withdrew from the contract because they were no longer convinced Marketo was capable of supporting their business. As an agency trying to sell the software, you can only explain away so much before they just made us look silly.
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No answers on this topic
In-Person Training
If you are first time user then the training is perfect, but the advance training is not that effective. After working in Marketo for 5 years there is nothing new to learn. The new tools that Marketo have are expensive and too difficult to use. + I would recommend to learn the basic and use Marketo on the daily bases as you will forget everything in a month if you don't use it.
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No answers on this topic
Online Training
You can get 100% of your training done online. Marketo's community is filled with experts and they list free training videos on marketo.com. They also have user groups in every major city that help you get the most out of your Marketo instance and Marketing Automation in general. It's really easy to pick up this tool and start running on day one.
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No answers on this topic
Implementation Rating
1. Have a content marketing plan to run in parallel with the marketing automation installation--you'll need a lot of content to make full use of Marketo's capabilities. 2. Work with sales (and ISRs) to define and document a workflow--build your Marketo installation around how you do business--not figure out how to apply your business to the tools 3. Spend time of data cleaning--both an initial project as well as a strategy for ongoing data management. We found some change manaement issues (no more appending ZZZ to the first name to identify contacts who have left the company, for example, or prohibiting the entry of "info@company.com" email addresses). 4. Find some champions in the sales and ISR teams. You'll have both fans and detractors--work with the fans to build some success stories
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Alternatives Considered
[...] is a partner of HubSpot, and we are mutual customers of each other. This may be because HubSpot is a [...] investor, but roughly half of [...]'s customers are Adobe Marketo Engage customers (the other half being HubSpot customers).
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We used Autopilot in the past. It worked well but the integration wasn't very good, considering they only used cookies. We have a very complex system right now to be able to track every customer, and it was expensive but worth it. Autopilot worked very well when we were starting, but then it didn't track purchases, it wasn't easy to change a customer attribute, and so on (this was a few years ago, probably they have improved a lot). It was more visual and better to create huge workflows. . Mailchimp was the first program we used. It's very basic but good at what it does: sending a newsletter to your small database. It has integrated very well with other services and we haven't used in a lot of time, but certainly was grown a lot so it must be doing things fine. I also tried Active Campaign but it was almost the same as Autopilot.
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Scalability
As we have grown, Marketo has grown with us. We started with simple single email campaigns and are now doing complex campaigns with multiple emails and tracks that we send a contact to if they take certain actions within our emails. We also have a complex integration with several systems and have the visibility into our marketing activities throughout our organization.
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No answers on this topic
Return on Investment
  • Generated a 35% higher return on investment (ROI) in demand generation in the company.
  • The focus on the accounts that presented a greater sales potential, allowed us to prioritize and reduce costs by 20 Million USD.
  • Being personal and optimized. reduced efforts towards a more personalized customer experience, in working hours by almost 100 h.
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  • Helped increase our new user engagement with our cloud-based software
  • Helped our sales team identify clients who had dropped off and stopped interacting with our software
  • Helped our sales and customer service team track which clients were completing their full registration process
  • Helped our marketing, sales, and customer service team identify key features and messaging with A/B testing for different campaigns
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ScreenShots

Adobe Marketo Engage Screenshots

Screenshot of the Contact Timeline in Adobe Marketo EngageScreenshot of the Audience Feature in Adobe Marketo EngageScreenshot of Progressive Profiling in Adobe Marketo EngageScreenshot of the Insights Dashboard in Adobe Marketo EngageScreenshot of Sources in Adobe Marketo EngageScreenshot of Metrics in Adobe Marketo Engage

Customer.io Screenshots

Screenshot of data-driven or manual segments that can be created in the no-code builder for recipient lists, campaign triggers, filters, and conversion goals.Screenshot of the code editor for email, that helps navigate code and iterate.Screenshot of account performance, visible at a glance from the Dashboard view.Screenshot of drag and drop messages, time delays, and branches where desired, to build cross-channel campaigns.Screenshot of triggered campaigns based on forms submissions, customer attributes, customer actions, and dates.Screenshot of localization for global audiences. One message can be delivered in multiple languages.