Marketo is lagging behind

[Diego_Lineros2]

After 6 or more years using Marketo, I can say Marketo is starting to dissapoint. Every release is slimmer than the previous, or out of focus.

Why I am saying this?

• Basic missing features that for years are being requested are still missing. In the era of AI you can't even evaluate a date token without calling a webhook.
• The reporting is outrageous, many promisses but nothing happens, we are still with a 2000 style reporting.
• Sky... ohh Sky, many years of promises and it is still an useless interface with little or none advantage.
• We are still dependant on smart lists based on stored data or triggers, not in future inference or likelihood.
• Still the eternal problem of duplications...

I can go on and on ... but Marketo, its time to wake up!

[Diego_Lineros2]

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.

[Jay_Jiang]

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.

[Diego_Lineros2]

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.

[Mikes_Jones]

Also, I really wish Marketo had a better 301 routing system, so many valuable links I've bookmarked over the years that are now dead, and it's hard to find some of that info again.

And I agree, I don't know what the point of Marketo Sky is? I think it would have been better to release something more complete than trickling it out, though I understand that the Adobe acquisition may have something to do with it.

Marketo needs a makeover big time, but I hope that doesn't come at the expense of usability (like Salesforce Lightning, which is a pain to navigate).

[KanakoTone]

I'm curious,,, does anyone feel the quality of tech support deteriorated last few months or so as well? I've been using Marketo and these days they don't respond to me with viable solutions or resolutions within a few days... 

[Karyn_Hill]

The poor tier 1 customer support is one of the reasons we're switching to something else. A year ago it was much better than it is now. Even escalating a trouble ticket doesn't always help; it seems their engineers are so swamped that I had a ticket open for 7 weeks with the support engineer basically checking into things once a week and sending a new solution or request for info. It no longer matters because we've decided to switch and are doing so as rapidly as possible. 

I was a huge Marketo fan in the beginning but the support experience the last several months has soured me on the platform, and the inability to do a few key things without the benefit of a developer means the cost isn't worth it for us.

I'm still gobsmacked by the decrease in effectiveness and timeliness of support. It has been incredibly frustrating and copying in our customer rep barely moved the needle. It's such a shame. I love so much about the product but we're a business (non-profit, but still a business) and we need things that work as expected or can be fixed within a reasonable period of time.

[Lynn_Ray_Pardo]

Thank you for sharing this experience. I imagine by now that you've already switched to another solution. I'm in the unenviable position of having to defend MKTO over HubSpot. 

[Riz_Alvi]

Hi Lynn,

Please ping me at riz.alvi@edifecs.com and I will be happy to share insights. Thanks!

[Karyn_Hill]

We're now using Salesforce Marketing Cloud. Some things are better (such as support!) but it's not as versatile as Marketo. The editor is better but what passes for automation is decidedly not. I really wish Marketo would re-join the race as it can be so much better than it is.

Best of luck! If it were up to me, I'd switch back to Marketo if I had written assurance that the support problems were resolved and they were going to start fixing the worst parts of their lagging platform.

[Austin_Coffman]

Tech support is a complete and utter disappointment. I've been working with them for several MONTHS to simply get our UNSUBSCRIBE page to work. I have worked with our account manager, two different support members, used Marketo consulting hours and our unsubscribe page still doesn't work. Not only could this put us in legal trouble, but it's also annoying as hell to boot! 

PLUS they are telling us that it is an issue related to SSL. Which they recently made us pay for. Also, we can't track clicks!!! Basically, we are paying for a dumbed-down version of mailchimp that is being touted as a full-service ESP. 

[Grant_Booth]

Hey Austin - follow me and then shoot me a private message me with a link to your unsubscribe page. I can take a look and try to help you out. We recently deployed SSL without problems.

[Eric_Stone1]

I contacted support last week when I had a massive sync backlog because of an update across all contact and account records. I asked that our sync bandwidth be temporarily increased and was told this wasn't possible.

Interestingly, we merged two integrated Marketo-SFDC instances late last year and Marketo temporarily increased our sync bandwidth. When I informed support that the information they provided was inaccurate, I got my escalation.

This is common in my experience. The first support response is either - "This isn't a Marketo problem." or "Here is a response that isn't accurate or won't actually help." Once an issue is escalated, my experience is totally different and much much more satisfying.

Someone mentioned elsewhere that they feel as though they know more about Marketo than the first-responder support team. I feel the same way. I shouldn't have to educate support on what is and is not possible on this platform.

[Grant_Booth]

I was formerly a support engineer at Marketo before moving on to be a Marketo admin myself several years ago. From what I recall, each server will have several different customers on it, and each server has some extra resources that can be assigned to speed up an instance's SFDC sync. HOWEVER - if they have already done so for another customer or two on the same server, then those extra resources are tied up and can't be moved to your instance. It depended more on luck than your account size, and was certainly easier to get if you ask a couple weeks in advance of a planned mass update in Salesforce, compared to calling in with an emergency after the fact. I can't say with certainly that's what happened in your case (never rule out overwork or laziness as an explanation for anyone's behavior at any company), but I can say that it happened for other people.

Basically, they can't pull the resources from someone else and screw up their planned deployment in a response to another customer's emergency request. And they don't keep a ton of extra processing resources on hand, because they would use them to make everyone's sync faster by default.
All of this said, it would really nice if you could select which fields triggered records to sync with Marketo, to prevent such backlogs in the first place.

[Josh_Hill13]

you can def ask and get that done if you escalate or tend to be a larger customer.

[Riz_Alvi]

Tech support, what tech support. Most of the time the support person knows less than I do. Seriously, the first approach is to call it "not a problem" if you press then they will sell you consulting services. 

[Mark_Price]

Feels like Tier 1 is outsourced and their metrics are based on not escalating cases to Tier 2.   Might not be what's going on but sure is what it feels like on the customer side. 

[Mikes_Jones]

I've worked on numerous instances of Marketo and trying to get in touch with someone who is assigned to our account or at least is familiar with it is next to impossible.

[Curtis_Hart]

Yes! So much so I had to reach out to my Customer rep about it. In a nutshell they are VERY understaffed right now and are struggling with this. They informed me things should start getting better within the next couple of weeks with new hires.

But yea, It's gotten real bad right now.

[Paul_Trushin8]

My experience was more often positive than negative, I'd say - a lot depends on the type of problem you have: that influences how fast you can get through Tier 1 support. If you can get through to the engineers, problems are resolved swiftly and efficiently but you really need to state your case well. Takes two to tango.

I had a problem recently when I initiated a mass “sync to SF” activity for a DB, which was not really a problem on it's own, since all the leads were already in SF, but since this activity uses up individual API call for every single lead, it threatened us with a Market-SF sync downtime of a couple of days. Marketo support stepped up and helped stop the flow in the backend before it consumed all API calls in a matter of hours, so I have really good memories of it since back then.

[Curtis_Hart]

I also agree we all play our roles, but when information is above and beyond (imo) and support doesn't even QA to verify the issue and closes with a Knowledgebase article, that's a real pain and lost time.

For example, I was QA Known visitor form options on a landing page and it wasn't displaying the custom HTML for me (even after I just registered so my munchkin knew who I was)

I gave them direct links to the landing page in question, and the form itself asking them to troubleshoot. Even told them I had two co-workers QA and get same results.

Their "solution" was the KB article how Known Visitors option is configured and works.

No sh**. I even tried to pin them down asking if it worked for them when they QAd it themselves.  Never answered me, but I know they didn't even bother to check.

It's that type of 'support' where you lose faith in their capabilities.

[Mark_Wright]

Hi, totally agree with all this. We have had a case open because our forms aren't working (completely a serverside issue nothing to do with us) and not only has no progress been made in 5 days. We dont have any kind of update without repeated tracing, and are told that is escalated but I don't think that actually means anything.