One technology we regularly work with at Cylogy is Marketo, a leader in the marketing automation space and a popular choice for digital marketing teams.
What is Marketo?
At a high level, Marketo is a digital marketing platform used for email marketing, social media, websites and any kind of multi-channel campaign. “Marketo Engage” is an SaaS-based solution that allows teams to automate and measure campaigns across multiple digital channels. Essentially, it helps teams to centralize marketing materials, reports and assets, and execute the related campaigns with detailed analytics to track engagement, success in conversions and more.
The platform’s leading-edge analytics ensure that marketers can drive and execute personalization, identify the best leads and achieve efficiencies through automation. Marketo tends to have more penetration into the B2B market although it is also used by B2C customers too.
Marketo is based in California and was founded in 2006, with the first solution launched in 2009. After success in the market and a couple of acquisitions under its belt, the company went public in 2013. In 2017 it was acquired by Vista Equity Partners, and then by Adobe in 2018. Marketo is now part of the Adobe group of companies but has retained its branding.
Here are five of the reasons why we love working with Marketo.
1. A recognized marketing leader
Marketo is definitely one of the leading marketing automation solutions around and is recognized by analysts such as Gartner who categorized Marketo Engage as a Leader in the 2020 Magic Quadrant for CRM Lead Management. The acquisition by Adobe also means that future investment and product evolution is very likely to happen, meaning that customers selecting Marketo can be confident that the platform is going to continue to improve. There is also a mature partner network. Marketo is a strategic investment that can provide long-term value.
2. Strong integrations
A robust digital marketing ecosystem requires strong integration between your CRM system and your marketing automation and analytics platform; this helps to drive workflows, personalization and more. Here, Marketo definitely ticks the box with native integrations with both Salesforce and Microsoft Dynamics, underpinned by regular two-way synchronization. There is also support for integrations with other leading CRMS including Netsuite, Oracle, SAP and SugarCRM, as well as custom options.
The strong integration capability of Marketo (particularly with Salesforce) is a key factor why some teams use the product. It’s also satisfying for us to be able to deliver a solution that through its integrations adds value to a team’s entire martech stack rather than potentially undermining it through the creation of silos and broken workflows.
3. Powerful features
Marketo Engage comes with a wide variety of features including marketing automation, lead generation, account insights and profiling, industry-leading integrations, support for email, mobile, social, digital advertising and website campaigns, marketing analytics and related dashboards, an AI-driven content marketing feature to underpin personalization, and more. In fact, if you’re looking for a solution that delivers lead generation, personalization, multi-channel analytics, strong account-based marketing and so on, it’s likely that the broad feature set will deliver what you need. Ultimately this gives power to small marketing teams to deliver on ambitious objectives.
4. Flexibility
The range of capabilities means that Marketo is very flexible. It can suit the needs of most business sectors and organizational sizes, as well as many different use cases. This flexibility means that Marketo can evolve as your marketing focus and activity evolves.
Recognising that the features available may outstrip the needs of some organizations, Marketo is priced in a variety of different “bundles” based on use cases such as lead management and email marketing.
5. A well-designed platform
Because Marketo does come with a lot of functionality it has the potential to be complex and difficult to use. Thankfully, interfaces on Marketo are well-designed and consistent, so a digital marketer who understands what they want to achieve will be able to master the platform.
Want to get the best out of Marketo?
If you’re already invested in Marketo but are not getting the best out of the platform and need some advice, then get in touch. Perhaps you are hoping to expand the use of the platform? We continue to work with clients to help them achieve real-world success with Marketo, driving better account-based marketing and lead generation, and ultimately achieving ROI from the platform.
