17 years helping New Zealand businesses
choose better software
Marketo Engage
What Is Marketo Engage?
Adobe Marketo Engage uses data and AI to automate marketing tasks and workflows, while tracking impact and reach. AI-assisted automations help you create in-depth profiles, and find and segment new prospects and audiences. Real-time “listening” triggers relevant content across web, mobile, and email marketing, as well as paid and social channels. Native integrations connect marketing automation with your most important tools, such as your CRM, to let your teams sync marketing and sales efforts.
Who Uses Marketo Engage?
For B2B or B2C companies that care about customer nurturing, customized and scalable segmentation, personalization and deep customer engagement.
Not sure about Marketo Engage?
Compare with a popular alternative
Marketo Engage
Reviews of Marketo Engage
Marketing strategies with great impact on our sales.
Comments: Marketo Engage has allowed us to automate the different advertising campaigns focusing on the different needs of our clients, we have improved the acquisition of new clients and increased sales, we have been using it for 3 years and we have intensified the positive results with great automation in marketing campaigns.
Pros:
Marketo Engage is easy to understand software, I really like being able to devise different marketing strategies by segmentation, marketing campaigns are automated, which generates productivity and a greater increase in sales and customers. The collection of customer data is very effective, since based on that we can devise better advertising campaigns and adapt to the needs of customers, it is a highly customizable software.
Cons:
The price is a drawback for small businesses, but it is the best software to improve marketing strategies in the short term. For large companies, price is not an issue. Marketo Engage capabilities positively increase sales and customers.
Alternatives Considered:
Flexible and Adaptable, Best for Technical Users
Comments: The depth of configurability has been a huge benefit for our organization, a global enterprise company with a complex international business structure. While there are challenges in terms of getting users up to speed, much of what we accomplish we could not have done on our previous systems in terms of the complexity of scoring, routing, and lead management.
Pros:
The ability to customize and scale has been the biggest benefit of Marketo, paired with the levels of complexity that can be used to refine audiences and reporting in ways that cannot be acheived in other platforms.
Cons:
There is a significant rampup and onboarding period, the tool is designed for a more technical user, which can cause some frustrations and leads to a learning curve
Alternatives Considered:
Marketo Mayhem
Comments: Our marketing team had a horrible experience after using Marketo for a year and switched to HubSpot. It was the best decision we have made and we are not using Marketo again.
Pros:
Marketo had a lot of potential in terms of its lead tracking, automated workflows and contact management capabilities. We were thrilled to be on board with using the application, but soon realized we would never get to use the extra bells and whistles it offered since the core components were a constant frustration. It's also a very expensive platform.
Cons:
Marketo provides templates for emails and landing pages that are difficult to customize, especially with our company logo and branding. We constantly were hitting road blocks and their support always very slow to respond days later after a technical issue was reported.
Alternatives Considered:
Marketo is the Gold Standard of Marketing CRMs in the marketplace!!
Comments: My experience with Marketo has been amazing from the sales rep, our implementation specialist, support department and our CSM went over and beyond to make sure we were getting the most value out of the platform.
Pros:
I love the deep native integration with Salesforce that allows us to sync data and both company and contact records to communicate through marketing and sync up with our account based marketing campaigns and enabling sales to follow up at the exact right time based on lead scoring and actions take by prospect when consuming our content we deliver in the form of email opens, email clicks and % video views with the amazing integration with Wistia. The Strategies you can deploy are only limited by your creativity as a marketer and sales architect and revenue officer at your company and I absolutely love Marketo!!
Cons:
The platform is very robust and takes learning and using it and clearly understand best practices through executional experience running campaigns and this takes an investment of time and it's absolutely worth it and the return on that time investment is the most important revenue driver in our company when combining the power of your sales reps and your sales enablement tool in your tech stack!!
Alternatives Considered:
Customizable to Your Business
Pros:
Marketo is robust and can be configured to meet most business cases. It integrates well with many systems/services. For example, Marketo integrates better with Salesforce than Salesforce Marketing Cloud. There is a solid user group/community. Things like Content AI and Web Personalization take personalization across your digital marketing to the next level. Training is required to use a lot of features.
Cons:
You have to build your own preference center. This doesn't come out-of-the-box. UI is bad, and Marketo Sky will help fix this, but it's taking forever for Marketo Sky to get to a point where I can actually use it. Many features do cost extra but you can pick and choose. Landing page templating is lacking without a dedicated devloper.
Alternatives Considered:
Email marketing with a wide array of versatile features.
Comments: When it came to selecting an email marketing platform, I was seeking more extensive options than what Mailchimp provided. A colleague of mine recommended Marketo Engage due to its expansive feature set and capabilities. He was right.
Pros:
Marketo Engage serves as a robust asset in your email marketing arsenal, offering a wide array of versatile features.
Cons:
Marketo Engage serves as a robust asset in your email marketing arsenal, offering a wide array of versatile features.
OMG! Best Software for Email Automation
Comments: My overall experience on Adobe Marketo was wonderful. I'm still using this software for email automation and social media marketing.
Pros:
One of my company employee suggest me this Adobe Marketo software for email automation and social media marketing. After using it, i found that this software is very helpful for email automation, email marketing, social media marketing, B2B marketing etc. It creates very engaging and responsive emails. Overall, i personally suggest that it's a brilliant software for email automation and social media marketing emails.
Cons:
Adobe Marketo is not available for desktop Mac, desktop linex, and desktop chrome book. It has no free trail and free version before purchasing it. I personally felt that, there should be a atleast three days free trail for beginners.
Alternatives Considered:
Marketo - great software for demand generation
Comments: We implement and optimize Marketo (and several other platforms) on behalf of our clients and have found Marketo a scalable solution for b2b companies with more than 100 employees. Anything less employee wise requires a lesser tool. This is the best tool for the mid-market segment in our experiences.
Pros:
1. Ease of use 2. Drip campaigns triggered on behaviors of leads 3. Lead management (inquiry to close) 4. Ubiquitous in the 100-1000 employee segment, SaaS business
Cons:
1. Customer support lacks 2. New feature functionality is questionable in the 2015-2018 vintage (pre-adobe) - eg Sky doesn't work as one example 3. Limitations on API use 4. Mobile responsive templates are not mobile responsive! 5. Anything account based related
Alternatives Considered:
An excellent Marketing Automation tool and very easy to use
Comments: Marketo is expensive but if you want enterprise automation platform and you are heavily focused on automation its the platform to go. You should have one very good marketo expert but once the implementation is done properly it runs very smoothly.
Pros:
Marketo is easy to use once implemented well. The set-up, filters, data management etc is very intuitive and caters well to automate customer journey mapping, email marketing, lifecycle management, lead scoring etc. It is easily integratable with most CRM, other analytics tools, social media platforms etc. which makes it easy to build a unified martech stack.
Cons:
Marketo's analytics section has very limited customization. Unlike SFDC which is heavy on customization, the same is not possible on Marketo. If yo want to build dashboards etc. you need another tool which is also not very easy with all platforms. Additionally, while the helpdesk is responsive, customer service in general is not as great! They also don't come up with upgrades that often or atleast dont communicate it to customers. Its more self-help system here. Last but not the least, their trainings and certifications are super expensive.
A fair platform for CRM engagement
Comments:
A fair tool overall for all CRM needs
This helps multitasking with other tools.
Pros:
1. Easy to use and deploy 2. AI command is good 3. Mobile friendly 4. Safe to use keeping GDPR in mind
Cons:
1. UX is average 2. Hard to integrate 3. Frequent updates required
Best-in-class Marketing Automation Solution
Pros:
Marketo is the "Porsche with a manual transmission" of marketing automation platforms. It's full of cool features and is incredibly powerful. The strengths: 1) Workflow flexibility that is unmatched by other platforms. Building complex data management, lead scoring, and organizational processes (such as lead routing) is very achievable in Marketo. They basically give you every function they can possibly code and let their customers piece them together as they like (more on this in #7). 2) The engagement programs, primarily meant for lead nurturing, are truly best-in-class. It's a little bit of an adjustment at first, but it really simplifies complex nurturing tracks and saves marketers from putting prospects into multiple tracks at once (which happens more than most admit) 3) The vision is impressive. Marketo has a clear, long-term vision that they continually deliver on. Examples being advances in personalization, ABM, ect. I'd bet on them to lead the way (or buy the way via Vista ) to whatever is next in marketing automation, such as AI or machine learning.
Cons:
I love Marketo. But, there are some things I don't love. 1) The landing page builder has made improvements but still, leaves some to be desired. Unless a template available for import matches what you'd like to do, you pretty much have to hire a developer to build your templates. 2) The reporting is somewhat overhyped. They REALLY sell revenue cycle analytics, but in reality, it's tough to implement and even tougher to accurately maintain. Since data is essentially timestamped and not stored in an external record (i.e. like Salesforce has for a campaign member), if you mess it up, you're SOL. Marketo's advice to me was "don't mess up."
Marketo: An Ultimate Platform for marketing!
Pros:
The reason why I referred the application as an ultimate platform is that it gathers all information about your digital marketing campaigns emails, online forms, marketing material etc. at a single place. It is a user-friendly interface which is easily understandable by you and it has a very brilliant capability of automating almost everything. In this, one can build a variety of things like email templates, landing pages, etc. It supports multi-touch campaigns and multichannel. It is broad and very useful for CRM Integration and most importantly Analytics. It increases efficiency in a variety of ways (like the ability to create a tokenized template) as well as its Lead management process is also brilliant!! Its capabilities are very vast, Comprehensive campaigns capabilities are one of them.
Cons:
Here are a few cons which shouldn’t be ignored. Reporting of Analytics of Marketo is very bad and in addiction smart list designs are not flexible and it is very difficult to design them. Most importantly it is not within the range of all types of people, as its rates are little bit higher. Its interface should be improved for new users as well as some software bugs should also be fixed regarding auto-saving. It loads the previewing list very slowly. Its Spam Identification feature also very poor as well as email and landing page analytics are also not enough. But at last, I want to say that the major issue with it, is regarding its speed of loading the application which needs a lot of improvement
"Powerfully Engage Your Customers with Marketo Engage: A Comprehensive Review"
Comments: My overall experience with Marketo Engage Software has been positive. Marketo Engage has enabled us to create personalized customer journeys, allowing us to build relationships with our customers and increase engagement. We have been able to track our customer journey, understand their behavior and tailor our campaigns accordingly. This has resulted in improved customer retention and improved customer loyalty. Additionally, Marketo Engage has allowed us to automate processes, saving us time and money, and enabling us to focus more on customer-facing activities. Finally, Marketo Engage has given us a better understanding of our customers, allowing us to better target our campaigns and improve our ROI. All in all, Marketo Engage has been a great asset for our business.
Pros:
1. Easy-to-use interface: Marketo Engage has an intuitive user interface that makes it easy to quickly build complex marketing programs and campaigns.2. Advanced segmentation capabilities: Marketo Engage provides a powerful segmentation engine to target the right audiences and ensure maximum engagement.3. Automation and integration: Marketo Engage provides a wide range of automation capabilities, enabling users to save time and improve efficiency. It also allows for easy integration with other systems, such as Salesforce and Google Analytics.4. Flexible and customizable: Marketo Engage allows for easy customization of all marketing programs and campaigns, enabling users to tailor their activities to their specific needs.5. Comprehensive reporting: Marketo Engage provides comprehensive, real-time reporting on all activities, enabling users to track and measure their results.
Cons:
One of the cons of Marketo Engage software is that its user interface is not always intuitive. It can be difficult to navigate or find the features or settings you’re looking for. Additionally, the integration with existing business processes can be tricky and may require additional time and resources to ensure a successful integration. Additionally, the software can be quite expensive, which might be cost-prohibitive for some businesses. Finally, some features are missing from the software that could be useful, such as an AI-powered analytics engine or a more comprehensive CRM system.
My experience with Marketo
Comments: We are using Marketo across the whole organization to improve and automate our marketing activities. We are using it at corporate level as well as in each operation (US, UK, DACH, France, Italy, APAC, etc). We improved ability to attract new leads and the engagement of visitors on our website.
Pros:
- Workflow: the logic behind the workflows allows to automate manual activities - Lead gen: we improved the engagement of the visitors on our website and we manage the entire lead generation process on Marketo integrated with our CRM. - Programs: it is easy to create and manage emailing and nurture programs with the ability to set rules when the email should be sent. - Forms: we are using Marketo forms and we embedded them on our website.
Cons:
- Integration with Dynamics: after 3 years we still have some issues on the integration with MS Dynamics... the 2 systems are not well integrated. - Support: sometimes we had some issues with getting quick replies from support. - Landing pages: it is missing a validation workflow on the thank you pages (to be sure that those who will access the thank you page have successfully filled-out the form included in the landing page).
Marketo - great marketing automation for larger marketing teams.
Comments:
When going through the demos & getting pricing from the Sales team make sure to fully understand their pricing. They've changed their pricing model in the past 18 months to be more a la carte so some features you may really like are additional costs. Depending on the size of your database this can start to really add up.
Marketo is not suitable for small marketing teams as it requires a ton of set up time & ongoing work to fully leverage its capabilities.
Pros:
Easy to track different engagement programs at every stage across multiple steps. Robust criteria for building lead nurturing. Like their lead scoring feature - great way to segment leads based on how they interact with you. Their real-time personalization feature is impressive. Great feature once it's configured correctly.
Cons:
The email builder is pretty basic. Leveraging the full capabilities requires a full-time internal resource. Steep learning curve. We needed to invest in a Marketo specialist to help with integration. Marketo is super expensive & that's before taking the extra cost of hiring a Marketo Specialist to help with implementation.
Alternatives Considered:
Marketo is a beast
Comments: It’s been really hard to learn everything but I’m starting to feel a little more confident.
Pros:
Marketo has the ability to do so many things which is a pro and con. It takes a while to get the hang of things but Marketo can really make this happen for your company.
Cons:
I wish Marketo was more visual. It’s sometimes hard to get from start to finish on a project without realizing how you May be affecting other campaigns and lead funnels.
Powerful marketing automation tool with a wide range of capabilities
Pros:
Definitely the wide range of features. From lead scoring and nurturing to email marketing, to hosting webinars, creating landing pages, and using forms, the platform has everything we need to execute complex campaigns and track our results. Integrations with a wide range of platforms and marketing tools are also a strong point of Marketo.
Cons:
I feel that there is a bit of a learning curve when it comes to using the platform. It's not the most intuitive system and it can take some time to get the hang of all the different tools and settings. Also, the user interface and some of the functionalities seem to be a bit old or outdated. The reporting section seems a bit complex and difficult to use. Difficult to keep the database healthy due to syncing errors with our CRM.
The Big Boy of Marketing Autumation
Comments: Overall - Marketo was killer! Onboarding was great and support with issues was helpful. My biggest advice would be to maximize their time on site by building funnels you actually can use!
Pros:
Marketo allows you to automate anything. Whatever action you want to trigger from - you can. We were a large publishing group sending millions of emails each month. We needed ways to segment and identify the exact user we wanted. Marketo gave us those tools to do that quickly and easily!
Cons:
Some of our team struggled to understand some of the terms and systems. It came very quick to some of the team and slower with others. I mention this because it seemed more like a mental block than ignorance. I also felt like we needed a developer to help make the dreams happen. It was just outside of our skillset so we needed some extra hands in the early days making all the connections perfect.
Great Solution for Salesforce users.
Pros:
I used Marketo in my last role for about three years and was always impressed. Marketo does a great job of integrating very seamlessly with Salesforce and in a sales role, this is imperative to your success. You are able to track not only your emails, but develop sophisticated campaigns to drive engagement in a particular market or across a broad spectrum. Above all, Marketo gave you the flexibility to develop an idea and execute on it successfully. Additionally, the system was great in providing the engagement reports key prospects had with our organization. As a sales professional, quality leads some times make or break a quota. Marketo feeds you quality leads that you're able to rank based on many algorithms. Having an understanding of what your prospect is most interested in, creates a much more effective first conversation, rather than attempting to connect cold. Overall, Marketo was a crucial part of our sales processes and truly assisted in your achievements as an organization. I would highly recommend.
Cons:
We only encountered some occasional problems when uploading smart lists. This would sometimes take quite a long time when Marketo was running updates or changes, that would slow the system.
Efficient tool for marketing automation!
Comments: We've found so much success since implementing Marketo. We are able to track and report on our sales campaigns, which allows us to continually improve our content and marketing strategies.
Pros:
Once you set campaigns and functionality up in the platform, it's extremely easy to clone programs and logic. Managing lists and contacts is very easy to do and the platform offers pretty helpful reporting tools. The Marketo community is full of great resources and you are always connected to helpful tools to help you better use the platform.
Cons:
Email creation can be difficult. How the email looks when you build it can differ greatly from what you see in the preview test send. I've spent a long time tweaking emails in the platform trying to get them to look good, and without templates, it's extremely difficult at times.
Awesome solution for managing marketing campaigns all form one place
Comments: Marketo's made it so much easier to run, monitor, and report on our marketing efforts. We have it synced with our social channels, ad channels, and email and SMS platforms. It's main benefit has definitey been the time we've saved with it. Without it, we'd have to design and run our campaigns all by hand, whereas now, you can just whip up a campaign and run it across several platforms with one click. Other than that, it performs relatively well, has a lot of integrations, and isn't too overly priced. Would definitely recommend overall.
Pros:
1. We didn't have to set up a single API connection to integrate Marketo with our marketing platforms. We were able to connect our tools with it very very quickly thanks to the native integrations. 2. The campaign monitoring works great and has a lot of customization options. We can easily navigate between campaign types and we were able to add a lot of additional metrics onto the reports that weren't available out of the box.
Cons:
There's the odd issue with reports syncing late or not workng properly, but other than that, we haven't had anything that caused much trouble so far.
All-in-one marketing and lead generation solution
Pros:
I like that the tool provides a centralized and flexible solution to handle email marketing and lead generation
Cons:
The learning curve is complex especially to people new to marketing.
The best marketing solution-Marketo Engage
Pros:
I I like the flexibility that comes with the tool which helps us to scale our marketing activities
Cons:
The tool works perfectly and we have not encountered any technicalities
Head and shoulders above other platforms
Pros:
Marketo has robust lead scoring and lifecycle management solutions. Lead scoring can be tokenized to create efficient and scalable.models. Triggered MQL and Sales Alert Emails enable Sales to follow up with highly qualified leads. Engagement programs that allow you to easily nurture leads through the customer journey. Segment your audience and send dynamic content that is personalized to each segmentation Smart list logic and campaigns allow for many different types of triggered campaigns
Cons:
Some minor UX improvements: Be able to view a subject line without opening the email. Improve Text version editor - Even MailChimp's is superior. Create stronger de-duplication technology native to the platform.
Automates busy work... but creates more at the same time
Pros:
The good thing about Marketo is that it does automate a lot of emails and nurtures a prospect through the whole sales cycle. Since it's also one of the bigger marketing automation platforms, it also integrates fairly well with nearly all other marketing platforms/tools we use.
Cons:
Marketo is so incredibly clunky. Just trying to edit a line in one email can take you up to 5 minutes. The look and feel of it is also stuck in the 90s. They don't provide any decent templates so my team is often forced to look elsewhere and then integrate email and landing page templates with Marketo. It's a bear to use but it's simply too much of a hassle to look for another provider.