Adobe Marketo Engage

Now having refined our system infrastructure and base processes - in itself a huge job - I can quickly build processes for just about any initiative our marketing team can dream up. Marketo gives you the building blocks, and its up to you to know what you want to make with them, and how. This freedom is something I wouldn't trade out despite the extra learning it requires - it doesn't confine you like other tools where everything is pre-formatted. Moreover, its truly fit for enterprise-level needs. The amount of data that gets processed through Marketo daily would slow other tools down. I like that I can give my teams granular permissions to allow them to be independent when needed, without putting us at risk of messing up something important. The fact that you can build your email and landing templates in a much more customized way than just the design - actually changing the way the module selectors themselves function - is also huge. We've created templates with every element adjustable in minor ways with additional controls in the editor, instead of creating 10 versions of every module.

Marketo's near-instant sync with our our crm instance makes life easier when adding/removing folks from campaigns and reports. We are also using it for email marketing, and I love that the report building is similar to our current crm.

Managing complex B2B lead lifecycles and marketing automation programs becomes very easy with AME as it allows creation of sophisticated workflows that enable marketing teams to engage prospects across different stages of a buyer's journey. It also has great reporting and performance tracking using which marketers can analyse campaign performance, progression of leads through the funnel, and engagement metrics.

There are feature requests that have been circulating the Adobe community for years now which would greatly improve the functionality of some features, but they are never addressed. This is not a game-changer, but marketo is not a product that actively implements feedback or rolls out new updates regularly. What you get now is probably what you'll have for the forseeable future. Additionally, reporting, to any level beyond the basics, is not really feasible with marketo. Though the tool can capture every dimension of data you could wish, from all systems connected to it, forget about visualizing this data or making advanced reports. You will need separate tools for that. Also, like I said, you will need marketing ops/revops oversight for most things beyond building templateized programs.

While Marketo does great with the syncing, it seriously lacks in the user interface. It's very antiquated in it's feel. Also, the email building can be very buggy at times, slowing us down significantly.

One of the main challenges that we face with the platform is that it can become overwhelmingly complex as we usually run a large number of nurture programs and campaigns. I along with some of my colleagues, also find the user interface slightly dated when compared to other marketing automation platforms in the market.