Marketo is lagging behind

[Josh_Hill13]

Paul,

I was attempting to be diplomatic. I am very well aware of Marketo's shortcomings and lack of focus on the features you mention and lack of focus on many User Ideas that are partially coming out in Sky.

I am also sorely disappointed in many of these areas.

Yet, some areas you mention aren't really Marketo's expertise. And I'd question any platform that attempts to buy or incorporate these into the "kernel" which we've seen with MSFT and SFDC.

- 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?

RCE/RCA did answer much of that if you had it, and you had set it up correctly. That required a lot of work...and it was very advanced through 2015/16 or so. And if you still use it, you can answer all three questions still with limited additional analysis. Now, if you want a custom Attribution system or go beyond Channel Source, then you need to go to other options.

Then tools like Tableau, Domo, etc came out and with some programming, those could pull in your entire database and redisplay the data more flexibly. Should Marketo make that native? I don't know, but maybe they should work on other areas that would help us marketers deliver more data to those external tools.

Ultimately, Marketo is a workflow engine. Do all the flow steps and backend items exist? No. Is the email engine providing enough information and able to handle the AB Testing, Timezone, Best Time features? Not entirely. Should it in 2019? Yes.

The fun part of Marketo sometimes is in workarounds and finding cool vendors to plug into that. Is that always ideal, no it is not.

I have had many conversations directly with Marketo staff on these topics.

[Amy_Lepre]

To add insult to injury, they reneged on the promise of all customers getting ABM for free. Now they are offering it at a "significant cost reduction" instead. Abhorrent business practice.

[Josh_Hill13]

How are we defining Marketo's ABM? The last time I really looked it was essentially a special smart list.

[Amy_Lepre]

I am referring to the paid add-on feature that has existed for a number of years that was then promised to all Marketo customers free of charge at the Adobe Summit. We've never had the feature so I've never used it, so I can't speak to how it works (if it's essentially a special smart list).

[Alyssa_Meyer]

Ever since Adobe acquired Marketo, they've been increasingly difficult to work with. It feels like they are trying harder than ever to squeeze every possible penny out of their customers.

[Grant_Booth]

Our experience has been the opposite, and I think this may simply vary by your CSM and/or their manager. When Marketo was owned by Vista, we felt like our CSM was very aggressive and we were being arbitrarily squeezed, where as our current CSM seems more focused on building a healthy long-term relationship with us. My impression was that while Vista was focused on flipping the company for sales (as venture capital firms tend to do), Adobe is more focused on the long-term health of the product. But acquisitions are chaotic, and it could take years to see the fruits of that.

[AnneMarie_C]

Diego Lineros‌

Thank you for taking the time to share your concerns regarding Marketo.  We understand how frustrating it can be to have these concerns, and as a customer-obsessed company, this kind of feedback is critical to continuing to improve and create an exceptional customer experience.  Because our service has not met your expectations, we will work with you, and other customers who have provided feedback in this thread, to address these comments directly.

We are currently reviewing issues brought up within this thread and will be responding in more detail. If you have any additional concerns that are not part of this thread, please email me directly at acovelli@adobe.com, and I will either answer your questions or connect you with the right point of contact to ensure we evaluate your feedback as part of this effort.

Our ultimate goal is to provide an exceptional level of customer service and that our product consistently meets or exceeds your expectations.

Best regards,

AnneMarie

Marketo Customer Support

[Kevin_Schultz]

If anyone actually receives a response to their concerns here that actually addresses their concerns to a level of satisfaction - it would be great to know that, so come back and share with us how Marketo solved your problem! 

Recently I had one of my many days where Marketo makes me question my sanity and I made a post like this one, got a nice mea culpa comment like this one with a suggestion that we take the conversation to email (out of public view) and the result were a few phone calls where we talked in circles and no real action was taken. 

I find it comical that you'd describe Marketo as a "customer-obsessed company" - whatever it is you're obsessed with, it's very surface level. 

[Justin_Cooperm2]

Kevin, 

I echo the sentiments from AnneMarie. I've been at Marketo for quite some time and can assure you that, during this entire time, the product team has always read and engaged with customers publicly in these forums (like I am right now ). I have personally looked through Oracle, Salesforce, HubSpot (and other) communities and do not see their product leadership engage at the level we do (if at all). I am proud of that and it's what makes Marketo special. 

We come to work every morning to make our customers happy and to deliver a fantastic product. We're also not oblivious to the fact that there are times when customers get frustrated. I hear this loud and clear and we all take this feedback very seriously and try to put it into action. Your input matters and it will 100% be read...the more thoughtful you are about it, the better the results will be. Of course, not everything can be done overnight but we gain so much from the invaluable insights of our customers. 

Justin

[Kevin_Schultz]

I appreciate the response, Justin - but I can't say it engenders any new confidence within me. I hear the implicit direction from you to be more thoughtful about my feedback but frankly my concerns are more expansive than the particular criticisms of product that are the purpose of the original post, and I would assume, the main concern of the product team you are a part of. 

What I hope you and others hear in this thread are the other ongoing challenges we face as customers in addition to a product that lags - we might be able to deal with a product that is slightly behind the times (and even be compassionate to the challenges you face in balancing all of our needs) if it wasn't for the fact that issues exist elsewhere too - like in support, sales, and professional services to name a few. 

As others have noted in this thread, we have to deal with seemingly helpless L1 support that requires escalation to solve any actual problem - and there are even examples given here about being totally in the dark about P1 level issues that takes months to resolve even after escalation.

Others have also noted in this thread that we have to deal with broken promises from sales around pricing and access to certain product offerings as they evolve - Marketo has changed the names / classifications of parts of the product so many times that I'm honestly not sure anything in my company's contract with Marketo even corresponds to something anyone at Marketo understands anymore - every time we ask, we're given more confusing and misleading information, along with the opportunity to simply pay Marketo even more money to get access to what we thought we already had. In my case, you're constantly trying to squeeze an extra couple thousand here and there out of a six figure customer - it's not necessarily that I can't afford it, it's that I feel incredibly offended you'd treat me that way. 

And to top it all off, there's the incredibly high staff turnover rate - especially in professional services. I'm glad you've been at Marketo a while, but I imagine many of your coworkers haven't - at least the ones that have been on my projects. That says something to me about the environment internally - and it's not something good. 

And finally - to your point about your product team being active in these forums - I'd return to my original assessment that whatever it is you're doing here, it's superficial. I may not get responded to by a product manager in the Salesforce forums - but guess what, if I want a phone call with the owner of the product I use at Salesforce, I get that call easily - and that real-time interaction is much more valuable to me. We spend an incredible amount on both Salesforce and Marketo - and Salesforce takes great care to show me how they value me at the highest levels - Marketo certainly does not.