Our issue: we kick off x number of programs every morning that take several hours to send. In the meantime, we have prospects filling out web forms asking us to contact them to purchase our services.
The web form processing queues up until the sends are completed, meaning we don't know for several hours - sometimes not until the next business day - that those prospects tried to contact us.
This is no way to run a business. It happens to us on a near-daily basis. We're not a large company (~20MM/year in email sends). There is no way large Marketo customers are allowing this to happen to them.
What's the solution?
I recently wrote a blog post on this issue - it could be based on how you are using triggers for non-time-sensitive campaigns. Before You Pull the Trigger on Triggers
20MM sends/yr is actually fairly large for Marketo users. My current system is even larger and we have had similar issues. If you want to get deep into this:
https://www.marketingrockstarguides.com/load-balancing-marketo-marketing-automation-2414/
You can also use the Email Send program with HeadStart soon to queue up large sends 12 hours in advance. Typically, I send emails around 5-7am only and havent been experiencing issues in slowness.
I've also cleared out hundreds of triggers and experienced huge gains in speed with Marketo.
Things to consider