Marketo Review
Updated September 07, 2019

Marketo Review

Lisa Heay | 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 across our whole organization. We use Marketo to manage our website downloads, newsletter and email programs, lead lifecycle management, and database growth reporting. Paired with Salesforce, Marketo is the hub of our marketing activities and lead data. We also consult other companies on how to get the most out of their Marketo instance.

Pros

  • There are many ways to accomplish a single task. You can customize workflows and campaigns based on your business needs and accessible data.
  • The Marketo Community - this is often a better resource for me when I have a question than Marketo Support.
  • Email program functionality is intuitive and easy to set up. The wizard walks you through the whole process, including A/B testing and sending an email based on your recipient's time zone.
  • Marketo lets you block field updates. This doesn't seem major but IT IS. Other tools like HubSpot and Pardot don't have this ability. We use this feature to preserve our original lead source values.

Cons

  • Marketo Support - I've submitted many tickets over the years and I have never found the support team particularly helpful. They seem more focused on closing tickets versus finding a solution for their customer. I don't find they spend much time explaining why something is the way it is or making sure their customers understand an issue. I've even been given completely false information by Support reps.
  • Reporting - Some reports are not very powerful or intuitive to set up. If you're looking for end to end attribution, you'll probably need to add an additional tool to your martech stack. Caveat, I haven't taken a deeper look at some of the attribution now that Bizible is folded in.
  • I often struggle with the email and landing page editor. Email 2.0 helped, but I think it'd be most useful if Marketo provided a Master template that included all the possible modules. Then the user could re-arrange based on their needs, delete modules they don't need, or clone the ones they do. Then they can create templates and further customize.
  • I find that the site hangs. I'll go to close my Marketo browser tab and I get a warning asking me if I **really** want to leave the page. It makes me nervous every time that whatever I'd just worked on in Marketo wasn't actually saved. I have to close the tab against the browser's better judgement, and then go back in to double check my work had been saved.
I feel Marketo is a superior tool. As I mentioned, you can go about things multiple ways, workflows are user friendly, and you can block field updates! I've found Marketo's lead scoring capabilities to also be superior. There are endless ways to go about your scoring, but scoring is very limited in Pardot and HubSpot.
Consider the size of your database and the number of programs you expect to run. Marketo is a great tool but I often see small companies purchase it when a cheaper, simpler tool would meet their needs.

That being said, I think Marketo is a superior tool to the other platforms.

Adobe Marketo Engage Feature Ratings

WYSIWYG email editor
8
Dynamic content
9
Ability to test dynamic content
9
Landing pages
9
A/B testing
9
Mobile optimization
9
Email deliverability reporting
9
List management
10
Triggered drip sequences
9
Lead nurturing automation
9
Lead scoring and grading
9
Data quality management
9
Automated sales alerts and tasks
9
Calendaring
8
Event/webinar marketing
9
Social sharing and campaigns
7
Social profile integration
7
Dashboards
7
Standard reports
9
Custom reports
8
API
8
Role-based workflow & approvals
8
Customizability
8
Integration with Salesforce.com
9
Integration with Microsoft Dynamics CRM
8

Learnings & Advice

Using Marketo's core features

Comments

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