Marketo is lagging behind

[Josh_Hill13]

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

[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.

[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.

[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. 

[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.

[Riz_Alvi]

Hi Lynn,

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

[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).

[Josh_Hill13]

1. Lagging behind compared to what? Like, everyone complains but what would the next gen system look like? Are there competitors you think do this better?
2. Idea List is long and yes, very few critical User Ideas have launched in years. Sky does cover some of these, but it's a long slog for some reason.
3. Ideas - post them! They are looking. Sometimes they are easy to fix.
4. Reporting - what kind of reporting? I'm not disagreeing with your thought, but what would something better look like? Should Marketo do that, or should a third party integration do that?
5. AI - what do you believe it would do for you? I see a lot of talk at Marketo about AI and other firms promising this, but very few real world examples in B2B. Are your programs sophisticated enough to even use AI? Could you hack influence, inference, or next best asset in other ways? There are a ton of ideas and Marketo has some add ons for this. I'd rather Marketo spend resources in other areas than worry about AI.

Something to consider is that Marketo was originally built for Marketers to make their lives easier. Now we're all MOPS/Tech people who want it to be much more and offer deeper tools.