Marketo is lagging behind

Diego_Lineros2
Level 7

Re: Marketo is lagging behind

I know some people like you are real advocates, thats fine Josh, and its good to see you back here after a deserved break, but it's also good leave passions behind and think what are you getting for your money. Your answer supports what I said, "very few critical User Ideas have launched in years", "long slog for some reason", "I'm not disagreeing with your thought". But I just want to clarify the "lagging behind..." it's lagging behind itselt and what it used to be 5 or 6 years ago. Are the competitors doing any better? I don't know and perhaps I should start looking into it, but I can tell you that someone will do it if Marketo won't offer better value for money.

Riz_Alvi
Level 4

Re: Marketo is lagging behind

Hi Josh,

Have you looked at HubSpot lately? 95% of the Marketo features are there and they are super fast in deploying new features. The customer service of HubSpot is the gold standard. 

Thanks!

Riz Alvi
Jay_Jiang
Level 10

Re: Marketo is lagging behind

Not sure where you got the 95% from.

Anyway, feedback on Hubspot's REST API and webhooks is that it's no where near as good as Marketo's. Also their workflow rules don't compare to smart campaigns.

Paul_Trushin8
Level 3

Re: Marketo is lagging behind

Hubspot doesn't come even close. I worked with their API last year - it's chaotic. And don't get me started on their SFDC-Hubspot sync set-up.

Diego_Lineros2
Level 7

Re: Marketo is lagging behind

This thread is not about Hubspot or Partdot or whatever, it is about Marketo and what we are not getting and we won't get. I appreciate AnneMarie Coveli response, and I must be clear, this is not to go against Marketo or be destructive, all the opposite, this is to make a wake up call for a product that we all use, bennefit from, appreciate and we wish to be in the forefront of the MA. Thats all.

Josh_Hill13
Level 10 - Champion Alumni

Re: Marketo is lagging behind

I'd be curious about this because HB has generally focused on SMBs and not adding the more powerful options like APIs and the way that Marketo flows work.

Paul_Trushin8
Level 3

Re: Marketo is lagging behind

Josh,

1. It's not that Marketo is lagging behind compared to any product, but Marketo is lagging behind compared to the technology that's already available - in Adobe Sensei, for example, there's already some AI implemented and the technology has been available for the last 3-4 years at least. Marketo is still leading the charge in its segment.


5. I've been working in marketing automation for the last 7 years and in my opinion, AI will be critical to the continuing success of any marketing automation platform in the nearest future. An existing one or a new one, which actually makes AI part of its core functionality, that's left to be determined in the nearest future. Really hoping Marketo is working on something like this for future releases - the Marketo-Adobe alliance should help some new technologies trickle down. Just to give an idea of what AI really means for marketing automation - right now you have to build reports to find answers to some basic questions:

- how are my different marketing activities doing in terms of driving MQLs, overtime? 
- What should I spend more money on to get more bang for my buck?
- What events gave me the most in terms of ROI and what is their predicted impact next year?

Not only do you have to set the whole thing up manually, you also have to *analyze it yourself*: read every single line, analyze every single event, which greatly limits the capacity of how much information you can actually digest and get actionable insights from. With the technology available now, it's like driving a horse cart while a Volvo drives by. Yes, you can do that and the Amish still do that, but should you? AI would analyze all main data points and provide you with some suggestions to work with but without the hassle of setting up a bunch of reports and without the loss of time associated with actually reading through all these reports.  


The same works for a lot of activities in Marketo. Testing different types of copy for emails should be happening in the background and the user shouldn't have to set up different test groups himself - Marketo already has all the data, that the Admin would use - so Marketo should be able to do it with minimum training and should be able to educate itself based on previous experience. Moreover at some point it should be able to tell us what we are doing wrong/should be doing right  - like poorly chosing the time to send emails to people in Australia when we are in EST or failing to communicate to a group of leads for more than 1-2 months. Marketo already has all the data in activity log, but doesn't really educate itself with that data and what it actually means for business so as to become more self-driving rather than remain a platform fully dependent on both, human activity and human analysis, for further action.

In the end as the matters stand in 2019 (and that's true for all marketing automation platforms, I'd say) if you are servicing a great deal of customers unless you have a dozen people working in marketing automation alone, you end up spending most of your time *doing manual stuff* and *reading stuff about stuff* just to get to the bottomline - thinking through actionable ideas - whereas AI would allow us to spend less time on ops and more on marketing. Don't get me wrong, it's not like any product can fill that void at the moment - I love Marketo, but the technology is already there and has been there for quite a while and the potential specifically for marketing automation can't be overstated.  

As for why we are all tech people now - well, the industry itself is changing. A yet another digital revolution is approaching with 5G making a global hit in the next couple of years, expect everything to go online: all the things in your house, in your car, the house itself, the car itself. Which means more data to consume for a marketing automation platform and even more data to work with - without AI it would be impossible to process such an amount of data. To be a marketeer today is radically different from what it was 7 years ago, as you well know, but tomorrow it would also require to be at least partially a tech guy who understands what's under the hood to be efficient. Just my 0.02, sorry if I'm rambling a little bit, I've been thinking about this for quite a while.

Jaime_Henrique3
Level 2

Re: Marketo is lagging behind

I agree Paul. For example, I have worked with teams using both Marketo and outreach.IO. Because it is so difficult to duplicate what Outreach is doing in Marketo.

Josh_Hill13
Level 10 - Champion Alumni

Re: Marketo is lagging behind

I disagree that Outreach is that much superior to Marketo's workflows except in certain Sales workflows and sales activity reporting. What I see is Salespeople running off doing their own thing, taking back Nurture and Prospecting from Marketers (the way Marketo sold us on taking the burden off of Sales in 2010). Now Sales wants it back for all sorts of reasons. >> some of which are valid (like more mass customization).

Engagio had a better concept because it had approval levels to send on behalf of higher ups and was more intentional in its ABM approach (like, not sending 5000 emails per rep).

Then we all complain about getting BDRs prospecting Marketers for all sorts of martech using such tools. And the marketers aren't reining in email or branding practices.

At least in Marketo, marketers can control the messaging better.

Jaime_Henrique3
Level 2

Re: Marketo is lagging behind

Thank you for your thoughts Josh. I didn't mean to sound like Outreach is superior to Marketo. Marketo and Outreach are both great tools. But one thing that I see outreach doing is making it easy to build sequencing of emails and phone calls in one place and tracking replies to the sales emails. The A/B testing is also AI powered to make life better. 

I am sure the growing pains will pay off and Marketo  will deliver  a better tool as a result.