Marketo is the industry leader for a reason
January 14, 2019
Marketo is the industry leader for a reason
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Modules Used
- Marketo Lead Management
- Marketo Analytics
- Marketo Web Personalization
Overall Satisfaction with Marketo
We use Marketo in all of its glory. We moved from Mautic, and I'd previously moved from Act-On and Pardot. Marketo is a little bit more to bite off and chew for sure, but the payoff is absolutely worth it. Took much longer to implement, but not necessarily to get connected up with Salesforce. We personally don't use Marketo much for landing pages (yet) - we mostly use our CMS, but plan to do some testing with Marketo in the future here. We use Marketo HEAVILY for post form submission automation, data cleanliness, and much of their automation. Love their email WYSIWYG, but like every WYSIWYG, it can have quirks. We paid for their template team to come up with landing page and email templates - well worth it! They also had an implementation team (ours was through LeadMD - 3rd party Marketo services partner), and our experience there was absolutely fantastic!! It took some time to get FULLY off the ground, but we were sending emails within a few days. I would say Marketo can take a little more technical savvy to set up and administer, but for your end users, it's worth it.
Pros
- Automation: unparalleled. The things you're able to do with Marketo can alleviate automation on the Salesforce end, and bring data into the system clean, precise and ready to route before it hits Salesforce.
- Flexibility: There are SO many things you can do to tweak the system to operate according to your lead / data flow.
- Targeting - persona, territory, demographic... etc. If you have the data, you can easily get Marketo to slice, dice and precisely target your data.
- Integrations: They have a ton. The ones they don't, there's third party integrations through Zapier that work pretty well. Super happy on this front.
Cons
- Technically heavy. Takes a bit to implement and understand - there's a bit of a learning curve here, and may require some help to stand up and implement.
- Interface: They just rolled out a new interface, but they definitely have a "database" approach to the software - folders, subfolders, sections... can be confusing at first, but once you learn, you'll be locked in.
- Rope - you can hang yourself. Need to be methodical and well executed with your campaigns, or you can get yourself into trouble!
- Salesforce API... I would expect there to be a managed package.. but you set up the system through a traditional API connection. It's cumbersome and timely, but once it's set up, it's definitely rock solid.
Honestly, they are the industry leader for a reason. Their database like approach in interface and the way the product functions could be confusing or intimidating for some people, but once you see the power it has, and get the hang of it - you'll never look back. We honestly couldn't do some of the things we do without Marketo, and they probably have ME as a customer for life. If I'm consulting with other companies, honestly, it depends on what you're looking for. If you have a simple use case, a simple solution like Pardot or Act-On will probably suffice. If you want advanced targeting capabilities, data cleanliness and automation, advanced segmenting, form completion actions, and industry leading scoring, then I wouldn't look further than Marketo. More of a steep learning curve, but trust me - it's absolutely worth it!
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