Constantly finding faults with Marketo

[Anonymous]

I know most of you here are Marketo evangelists, but I have had nothing but issues with them since our signup about two months ago. My account manager is great, but there are SO many technical bugs and problems that no one seems to be able to provide an answer for - to the point that we have only been able to send one email in the past two months.

Is this common, and is there hope, or has it been consistently getting worse (for those users who have been here for a while)? I'm so frustrated because I was Marketo's biggest advocate internally, and I just feel like I hit a wall every time I try to show off a capability that *should* be working. 

Please can you tell me your experiences with them, and do you have any recommendations on how to escalate things - I'm just at my wits end.

[Vlada_Prasolova]

we've been with marketo for 5 years, but recent email performance is a disaster, indeed. It took marketo 2,5 hour to send a relatively easy-to-set batch blast for 250k that we've been sending monthly since 2013

What did the support said? - Oh, it's normal, we don't see any problems there

[Grégoire_Miche2]

Hi Regina,

What do you mean by "faults" ?

There is no reason why you should not be able to send emails. Some of our customer produce thousands of emails per year, each of them being sent to literally tens of thousands of contacts/leads.

There are some annoying hitches in Marketo, as I listed a while ago here: Just do it! Marketo so-called minor missing features , and there is surely room for improvement (give a look to the ideas section) but honestly nothing that prevents the work to be done.

Have you had enough training? Help from Marketo real consultant (someone with real experience)?

When migrating from other MAP, the logic of Marketo can be a little difficult to get. Especially the complete separation between assets (emails, forms, landing pages) and actions (smart campaigns), which makes it very different form most of the other solutions on the market, but also so much more flexible.

-Greg

[Anonymous]

Faults as in problems that prevent me from using it as it is being marketed. The biggest problem preventing me from sending was detailed above has hopefully been fixed now, but only after countless hours of emails and phone calls.

No, I probably haven't had enough training, as I can't access the University portal to receive extra training, and they don't seem to be bothered by that... My consultant has been fab when it comes to best practices, but the technical issues (obviously not her remit) have been the things plaguing me.

It's not the actual practical use of Marketo I'm struggling with - it's actual technical errors that seem to be prolific across the platform.

[Jessica_Kao3]

Hi Regina,

I'm really sorry you have had such a difficult time getting up and running.  There are some nuances with Marketo, but I've been using it for many years and sent out millions of emails by now and it does work.  I know some things can be frustrating, but the community is a place to get help and you are not alone.  Also you should check out your local Marketo User Group.  That's how I learned most everything, by befriending folks there as well.  

[Dory_Viscoglio]

Hey Regina, every implementation of Marketo is unique, but what type of specific problems have you been running into? Did you migrate from another MA tool or are you starting fresh?

As far as escalating things, if you have support tickets open you should be able to escalate directly through the ticket -- but I would definitely look at the things that you're having issues with. Can you provide more insight there?

[Anonymous]

I have been having issues with the IP we're sending from being blacklisted due to another customers mailings - literally every time we try to send a mailing - meaning our spam filter/mail client (and the one we sell to the majority of our customers, who we're trying to communicate with) it is blocked, so they never get through. I would expect this to happen very occasionally, but this has happened every single time bar one that we have tried to send a mailing. It seems like a ploy to get us to pay for a dedicated IP, but we don't send enough volume to have one. I've managed to get on a "trusted ip" list, so we'll see if that solves that one problem, but that's just the beginning.

I couldn't access the support portal for the first three weeks of having the programme (even though I was the only registered account user, and the account admin), and I couldn't set myself as the support contact - that was all a massive mess, which was finally fixed.

I still can't access the University page - I have escalated this to T1 and still have yet to receive a solution for this.

I can't add other admins to the instance.

I consistently have trouble logging in, where it says my user name and password doesn't exist, can't reset my password, so have to email support for that.

The IP address was the big one, which is hopefully fixed now (after three weeks), but I was just wanting to see if my experience is a common one, i.e., is Marketo actually riddled with faults that no one finds out about until after you've bought the product, and the support is horrendous and we're all in this together, or am I just hugely unlucky? I'm not sure which answer would make me feel better

[Anonymous]

I had the same issue with the IP address. I think that this is something Marketo needs to pay closer attention to. We are very careful with our email lists, and to be blacklisted because someone else on the server isn't careful with theirs, isn't fair.

We pay a lot for Marketo, and I think there is an expectation that you shouldn't have to pay for an upgraded IP just to send emails.

[Joe_Reitz]

I know that feel. But capitalism .

Unfortunately, you gotta pay to play, my friend. I think it's been documented elsewhere (maybe even somewhere in the above dumpster fire), but there are some good practical/logistical reasons why Marketo doesn't just include them. That said, if your rep isn't crying in his 500 sqft apartment under the stairs after your renewal, you didn't negotiate hard enough

[Anonymous]

Hi Regina,

We had the same deliverability issues. We got our a silver dedicated IP and then had to upgrade to a gold dedicated IP. We also set up dmarc authentication on the email subdomain that we specially created. It was grueling but took us nearly 5 months before we identified the problem. I'm assuming you've already done this, but you can check your sender score at returnpath.com for the IP address.

[Anonymous]

Makes sense to me!

Great explanation Liz!

[Philip_Tieu]

Hi Regina!

I'm a developer on the Marketo education team. Are you currently unable to access the University page? I can help bring this to the attention of my team and see if we can help!

Sincerely,
Philip

[Anonymous]

Hi Philip, Support and the University team have been working on this for two months - but it has finally been sorted last night! Thanks for reaching out though!

[Neil_Robertson6]

I think we also need to be wary of noting "bugs" (there are some 😉 in Marketo when things like IP are not bugs - they are, in most cases, facts of life.  If you are on a shared IP range (you are on more than one f you are) you will hit a spam trap pretty much at least once every day and more than likely due to other orgs mailings - if it your mailings then your data may have a spam trap in it or be poor quality.   Do you know where your instance/is?  UK or US?

The issue with deliverability is people expect 100% or compare it with previous rools...which, in marketing and with things like mass mailings to Outlook/Yahoo etc - is unlikely to happen.

[Grégoire_Miche2]

HI Regina,

The only issue that we have seen recently is the impossibility to create admins.

There is a workaround: create a custom admin role, with all rights. Then create the user. Once the user has been activated (logged in once), you then can grant that person the default admin role.

This should normally be fixed right now (it has on the instance on which we had the problem).

-Greg

[Dory_Viscoglio]

These definitely seem to be unique problems... One question regarding your sends: Have you set up SPF and DKIM (properly)? I know Sanford Whiteman​ knows a lot about this. This will help with your deliverability, if you haven't already set it up.

As far as everything else, I would really push back hard on your account manager. Even if they're great, they aren't helping to get these problems solved -- which is a huge part of their job.

Hopefully once these initial bugs are worked out you will feel like you can be successful with Marketo, as it is a very robust platform. And while there are definite improvements that Marketo could make, bugs aren't something that you should be running across. Best of luck!

[Mai_Haddad]

I would not call them unique we had one of the worst start with any tech company I have ever used. Marketo is a complete mess and certainly is lagging behind most of their competitors. 

[Anonymous]

Yep, SPF and DKIM are set up properly. That was Marketo's fall back and they kept insisting that was the problem, until they finally verified it was set up correctly themselves.

[SanfordWhiteman]

Regina Bluman​​ asking again if the domain is oryxalign.com, because I don't want you to be left with the mistaken impression that your SPF and DKIM are set up properly.

[Anonymous]

Sanford Whiteman​ I'm not mistaken, and I'm also in the UK, so apologise for not responding to your comment in the middle of the night.

[Neil_Robertson6]

Have you signed up/attended the London User Group yet? 

[Anonymous]

Hi Neil, I follow the forum, but I'm unable to access the page on the University where I register for events - due to a bug