A Review of Marketo’s Marketing Automation Software

Marketo, an Adobe product, was created in 2006 and has gained a reputation as a leader in inbound marketing automation, lead management, lead scoring, and marketing analytics. They’ve added many new features and integrations over the years making this a very robust tool.

If you’re considering Marketo’s marketing automation tool, you will undoubtedly want to know what it does best so you can be sure it’s the right option for your organization. Particularly because it certainly isn’t the most affordable tool on the market. This is what we aim to address in this article.

At the end of this post, you’ll be able to make the decision as to whether Marketo is the best solution for your marketing campaigns. If you’re currently using another tool, and wish to migrate to the Marketo marketing automation platform, we’ve included a number of checklists at the bottom of this post to help you make the transition.

If time is a factor and you value efficiency and expertise over all else, reach out today so we can set up a time to speak with you about our services and how we can assist you during the migration process.

But for now, let’s move on to the considerations for choosing Marketo as your MOPs and lead generation solution. These include: which type of organization it is best suited for, and some of the pros and cons of this marketing automation platform.

Why Choose Marketo’s Marketing Automation Tool?

Marketo is an enterprise-level solution for organizations, marketers, and sales teams that require powerful marketing automation capabilities and need numerous third-party integrations. Unlike some other tools that can be a bit overwhelming to use, Marketo has divided its platform into multiple apps that allow you to pick and choose the functionality that you need without the additional capabilities you don’t need.

Marketo Pricing

Marketo is mid-range in terms of pricing. While they do not advertise pricing on their site, we can tell you what we learned from our most recent experience with this platform. Please be sure to contact Marketo directly for the most up to date pricing. They offer three pricing tiers: Spark, Standard, and Select.

Basic

• starts at $1,195 per month
• 10,000 contacts
• 5 marketing users
• 5 sales users

Pro

• starts at $1,995 per month
• 10,000 contacts
• 5 marketing users
• 10 sales users

Elite

• starts at $3,195 per month
• 10,000 contacts
• 5 marketing users
• 20 sales users

Marketo’s Automation Features

As for its capabilities, you will find that it has many of the same features and customer support team as other account-based marketing tools. What differentiates Marketo’s digital marketing automation tool from its competitors is its superior user experience and design. Here’s what they offer:

​Marketo Marketing Automation Pros & Cons

Now that you know a bit more about Marketo, their product, and their pricing, let’s break down the specific pros and cons to help you decide if this is the right tool for your marketing efforts.

PROS

Very User-Friendly

As we’ve stated before, we really love the effort Marketo has put into ensuring that their user interface is easy to use and pro-customization. Everything is labeled well so the learning curve is minimal and you can easily find what you need. In addition, their separate applications make it easy to use the features you need without having to weed through the ones you don’t.

Extensive Marketing Capabilities

Marketo’s list of marketing tools and premade form, landing page, and email templates are quite extensive. We rely on tools that offer a robust set of solutions to enable us to serve every type of business size and need without having to purchase a lot of extra add-ons.

Seamless Salesforce integration

Have we mentioned how well Marketo integrates with Salesforce? For many organizations, this is critical to success and accurate reporting. Marketo Engage also does a great job of helping you to align your sales and marketing teams with shared visibility and insights.

CONS

Pricing

While it’s not as expensive as say, Oracle Eloqua, pricing for Marketo is still pretty steep considering there are other tools on the market that can do similar things for a lower cost. In addition, since its launch in 2006, pricing has skyrocketed with no real transparency to its user as to why, so it may be out of the budget for some small businesses or those with a tight budget.

No CRM

Another serious drawback is that Marketo does not currently offer a customer relationship management tool as a part of its service. While you may not need other marketing automation tools, you will need a separate CRM which can be a deal-breaker for many.

Landing Page Ease of Use

One complaint we’ve seen frequently, and have to agree with, is that Marketo’s landing page and form builder are pretty weak compared to other automation tools. While they do offer drag-and-drop functionality, overall, it is not the easiest or most efficient to use.

Ready to Migrate?

Now that you have a good understanding of Marketo, it’s strengths and weaknesses, you’ll have to decide if moving to this platform is the best for your sales and marketing teams. If so, we welcome you to use our Marketo migration post as well as these customized checklists to help guide your transition.

Hubspot to Marketo
Mailchimp to Marketo
Eloqua to Marketo
Pardot to Marketo

Don’t have the bandwidth to commit to a migration effort? Worried that assets might fall through the cracks and campaigns won’t function properly once in Marketo? Let us help!

At Interrupt Media, we are automation experts and we provide a white glove approach to migrating your database from your current automation tool to Marketo.

Reach out today and let’s set up a time to chat.

Topics: Marketing Automation, Marketing Operations, Marketing Tools