Do votes really matter for Marketo to consider actioning an IDEA?

[Dan_Stevens_]

A common phrase often heard when talking with Support, the Product Team or members on this community is to "create an idea - Marketo takes these seriously to determine what functionality/features to focus on that are most important to its customers."  How exactly does Marketo determine what to focus on?  One would assume it would be number of votes - afterall, that's the basis for ideation.  But if you take a look at the most popular ideas, the same ones remain in the "we like it" or "maybe one day" status for years:

And then you'll have an idea like this - that gets actioned with only 2 votes:

I think it would be helpful to understand what drives the focus here.  And does "we like it" mean that it's been added to the product roadmap?  There are several ideas with "we like it" that have been in this status for years.

I'm not trying to be critical here, just want to understand how the Ideas process works to influence future product innovation and development - and some of the logic behind it.  And most importantly, how we - as Marketo's customers - can help shape Marketo into the most feature-rich/advanced marketing automation platform on the market.

[Josh_Hill13]

Hi Dan,

I think I've used that exact phrase before too. Marketo has been pretty quiet recently on their roadmap and the next updates. Lots of ideas that customers want have taken years (smart list subs??). Marketo has to look at keeping us happy while also remaining competitive in the marketplace and whether or not to build/buy or push off features.

I do know there was grumbling among clients on the investment in the UI vs. getting ideas done.

Cheryl Chavez​ is the primary person to ask here, so maybe she can give us an update on the roadmap.

[Dan_Stevens_]

I will also add that Christina Fuentealba​ (a senior product manager at Marketo) has personally reached out to me earlier this week to obtain some additional input to some of the most popular ideas - in this case, .   This isn't the first time this has happened.  So it is encouraging to see senior management making this sort of effort - beyond just the activity that takes place in the community.

[Grant_Booth]

Hi Dan,

I think a lot of it has to do with what features/ideas can be accomplished relatively easily v. which ones require redesign of essential features. Some requests sound complicated but are simple to implement. Many requests sound simple but are very complicated under the surface. Smart list subscriptions are a good example: smart lists are probably the most basic asset in Marketo, and making any fundamental changes to them will have huge impacts across the product. In addition, when it gets released it will likely receive *massive* use and we need to make sure there are enough processing resources to handle the demand. This means that it requires careful development, QA, and a prolonged beta phase.

On a side note, I'm bookmarking this discussion so I can refer some people here. You've taken a lot of great ideas and summarized them all in one place!

Grant

[Dan_Stevens_]

Grant, that's actually a screenshot of a specific view I created within the Ideas section and just hyperlinked that image to the view (top ideas with "we like it" status).  Here's another view with "we like it, but it's complicated".  It's sometimes tricky to get the exact view that you're looking for with Ideas - the admins are aware of the issue.

[Anonymous]

Hey Dan,

I agree with your post here.  I posted back in the old community an idea about ideas:

There is a small community (Linux Mint) where the developers are actively involved in the discussions and requests made by their users.  I would like to see that here as well.

[Dan_Stevens_]

The statuses that are used today are great - as long as they mean something.  When I create an idea, get a bunch of votes and then Marketo changes the status to "we like it", there is a level of expectation that this will be worked on soon - at least within the next year.  The amount of ideas with "we like it" that exceed a year are significant.  Also, what's the difference between "we like it, but it's complicated" and "maybe one day"?

So I guess just a bit more transparency here is what we're looking for (like we've been seeing with some of the product managers like Justin Cooperman) along with whether the number of votes really does mean anything - seeing how there haven't been any significant feature updates that us customers have been begging for; or any ground-breaking innovation that doesn't already exist in competitor platforms like Eloqua, HubSpot, etc.  As of now "Forms 2.0" and "guided landing page" are the most significant features over the past couple of years.  I'm hoping we see a more aggressive rollout of features/capabilities moving forward - especially since Marketo is moving to a quarterly update cycle.

[Devraj_Grewal]

Whether the vote count gets taken into consideration or not, wouldn't it be great to be notified on when your idea progresses? Vote for my idea here: Ideas - alert when your idea changes stage (ex. NEW > WE LIKE IT!)

[Dan_Stevens_]

I thought this happens today.  Or maybe it's just that the idea resurfaces to the main ideas page (which lists the 10 most recent).  Speaking of which, that's another issue.  Ideas get buried very quickly - and forgotten.  I wish the Ideas section worked like the main product discussions - so that when someone comments on it, it will bubble back up to the top of the list.  There is a small hack in doing this for Ideas - edit the title of your idea.

[Devraj_Grewal]

Unfortunately, there is no alert at all. We just have to remember to check back a few weeks/months after we post the idea to see if Marketo progressed it.

Ideas do get buried very quickly, totally agree. So yes, a workaround is to edit the title and that will register as recent activity in order to show up in the "Show Latest Activity" section, where recent votes will also register as activity.