Future of SFDC Integration??

[Anonymous]

Marketo has been removed the the AppxChange list in Salesforce.com and is no longer welcome at Dreamforce. What does this mean about the future of the relationships? How is everyone else handling this?

[Anonymous]

I agree with Tom on Pardot - having used it before, it does not compare to Marketo (yet).  Additionally, there is always a love/hate relationship in spaces like this - Salesforce.com wants to be able to "do it all" for its mid-tier clients but functionality-wise for large scale clients, there are typically vendors who have served those purposes (like Marketo, Eloqua) that cannot be matched in an all-in-one solution.

Kudos to Marketo for jumping in and publicly discussing this.

[Anonymous]

Hello fellow members of the Marketing Nation!  In the vein of keeping you updated, I wanted to drop a quick note here -- consistent with our prior message about customer success.  I'm happy to tell you that Marketo's listing is visible again on the @Salesforce AppExchange http://bit.ly/10u8e6M and tomorrow we are back jointly partnering at Cloudforce Toronto as a sponsor.  And, we remain a Titanium sponsor at Dreamforce.  We all are focused on making customers and the Marketing Nation successful.  

[Anonymous]

Thanks for the update, Sanjay. We appreciate you taking the time to personally respond.

Removing Marketo from the AppExchange still seems like a petty move, but your comments (very diplomatically) frame the decision from a reality-of-business standpoint. I think it seems so unnatural because Salesforce and Marketo always gave the outward appearance of a very symbiotic and cordial relationship. I suppose things change rapidly when you become competitors, huh?

I was an ExactTarget customer 5 years ago for about 2 months before bouncing them and going with Genius.com. ET is pretty much a tool for newsletter management. They're big on customer base, shallow on capabilities and were not a very good partner to work with in my experience. 

Pardot was, along with Marketo, in our final 2 last year when we were looking to upgrade from Genius. It's a very capable tool at a friendly price, but it's no Marketo. We would have reached their limitations pretty quickly. They're going to have to beef up their capabilities and workflow processes significantly to compete at an Enterprise-level. The state of integration of Radian 6 and Buddy Media, in addition to how long it’s taken to truly integrate Jigsaw/Data.com, makes me think that this SFDC/ET/Pardot marriage will take a while to gel.

Anyway, it’s nice to hear that Marketo remains in a strong position and that it appears Salesforce remains committed to being an open platform. If they start acting up, though, Marketing Nation's got your back! And if there's one thing we know how to do, it's get our message across effectively.

[Anonymous]

Thanks much Sanjay (and Heather & Liz) for keeping us posted here in the community. Those of us active here in the community are aso the Marketo evangelists at our repective firms--I'm sure I'm not the only one here being asked about this. Your openness and comments give us the messages we can deliver back to our management.

Please continue to keep us posted!

[Anonymous]

I will second Heather's props -- our customers are the best. Thank you for your support!

[Anonymous]

@Raingal @kimi @Hotoshi - thank you for the kind words!  The Marketing Nation & Community wouldn't be possible without stellar customers 🙂

[Anonymous]

Here are the key things to consider regarding the ET acquisition:

1. SF is going to start sending clients emails about their new capabilities. It would be silly to not educate yourself about them and the market in general.
2. Capabilities are only a small part of being successful with an email marketing or marketing automation platform. The Marketo community is the strongest of any tool (and I've used Eloqua, Pardot, Marketo, ExactTarget, TailoredMail and worked for e-Dialog). Outside of a full-service/agency-type of setup, the Marketo community is one of the best places to get questions answered, campaign ideas,...etc. 
3. Realistically, Marketo is going to be a target for the few remaining big players who don't have robust marketing automation capabilities in their portfolios (by few, I mean two). Even so, any future integrations will take time, so I think Marketo will continue to the right choice for most of us using the current Marketo/SF integration. 

Happy to chat more with anyone who enjoys being a student of the space as much as I do! 

[Anonymous]

@Heather - that was fast! It's already changed. Thanks. 🙂

[Anonymous]

@Heather - Will be looking forward to it. The software and the community is terrific!

[Kimi_Heskett1]

Thanks Sanjay for taking time out of your day to correspond with us! As usual, Marketo is a class act! I'm proud to be part of the Marketing Nation!

[Anonymous]

@Hitoshi - My team and I are working on updating these assets to encourage customers to review us on sites like LinkedIn, Trust Radius, SoftwareAdvice, or G2 Crowd.  Thank your comment!

[Anonymous]

The funny thing is, Marketo still has the "Review Marketo" (write a review in AppExchange) as one of the criteria in My Rewards. Clicking on the link takes me to Marketo page in the AppExchange which is labeled as Private. Do Marketo still want users to write reviews there? lol

[Anonymous]

Are you planning to host any events corresponding, but not affiliated with Dreamforce?  I'm certain that a number of folks in the Marketing Nation will be attending and would love to connect in some way. 

[Anonymous]

Hi All!  I just wanted to post a quick note on this thread -- the Marketo / Salesforce.com integration is very much in tact and is very safe going forward. AppExchange does not equal the product integration -- AppExchange is a marketing vehicle.  

The most important point is that our integration is built using Salesforce.com’s public web-services API’s and open Force.com interfaces.  Salesforce.com – as all modern cloud companies must be – is committed to maintaining an open platform, for us, for their AppExchange partners, and most importantly for you their end customers.  

Because Salesforce.com is now getting into marketing, we are competitors.  And, because Marketo is the #1 marketing software company, we understand their desire to take us off the AppExchange marketing vehicle.  The same is true of companies they compete with like Oracle (Eloqua), Microsoft (Sharepoint), and SAP.  Those companies all have integrations supported by Salesforce.com's public APIs -- even though they don't do joint marketing events like AppExchange and Dreamforce.

There will be no change in our strategy and support for our best in class integration with Salesforce.com’s CRM platform.  As recently as this year, Salesforce.com customers have rated Marketo as the best marketing solution, continuing a five-year streak of similar affirmation from the Salesforce.com customer base.  

We are committed to the success of our customers and would welcome a discussion with anyone who would like to discuss further. 

[Anonymous]

Wow, this is very interesting. Thanks for the update.

[Anonymous]

I checked the Dreamforce page... Marketo continues to be listed as a sposnor. 

No suprise about Eloqua & Oracle.  No love there at all.

[Anonymous]

Keep us updated if you hear anything!

[Anonymous]

Eloqua was kicked out of Dreamforce as soon as Oracle bought them.

[Anonymous]

This is very interesting.  It appears that SFDC is going to be very aggressive in this space after purchasing Exact Target.  Is Marketo the only Marketing Automation vendor not coming to Dreamforce or has Eloqua been asked not to come as well? 

[Kimi_Heskett1]

Interesting... very interesting. I hope there is some explation given at some point. We LOVE Marketo but a big part of our choosing SFDC hinged on the integration so I hope actual system integration doesn't sour.