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.

What I like most about Marketo is its marketing campaign functionality. It provides a strong foundation for automation, customization and performance tracking, which makes it easier to manage campaigns at scale while maintaining control. The campaign structure is flexible enough to support different channels and use cases, allowing teams to build, test, and optimize workflows.

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.

Marketo is powerful, but the level of customization and flexibility can create a challenging learning curve. New users may need time and training to feel fully comfortable, and som tasks take more steps than expected compared to more intuitive tools.