Marketo Engage Performance Tiers

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In September 2022, we released two Marketo Engage Performance Tier packages:

1. Performance. Additional performance to meet the needs of high demand marketers.
2. Performance Plus. Highest level of performance to meet the needs of any marketer.

When you purchase a performance package, additional infrastructure is allocated to your Marketo Engage subscription. This allows your subscription to scale to meet increased demands.

Each package has a set of defined thresholds for various capabilities as described below. The thresholds represent the highest level of performance that can be achieved when using best practices. Exceeding a threshold may adversely impact performance or cause undesired product behavior. Each threshold falls into one of four categories: Entitlement, Scoping Parameter, Performance Guardrail, or Static Limit. For category definitions, and threshold values, please see the Marketo Engage Product Description here.

If you would like to know how your current product usage compares with these product thresholds, please contact your account representative.

Note: Nothing changes in how Marketo has always operated, it still is a multi-tenant system and the mileage one gets is dependent on overall activity level within the subscription as well as within the data center. Published values should not be interpreted as throughputs one should consistently expect. Rather, the values represent the maximum performance thresholds/guardrails beyond which purchasing a performance package would become required.

Activities

Marketo Engage supports a wide variety of activity types which are related to Person records. Every data change, action, or flow step is recorded against a Person’s activity log. These activities can be leveraged in Smart List and Smart Campaign filters and triggers.

There are two activity-related scoping parameters:

1. Maximum Number of Activities – Rolling 7-day Average
2. Maximum Number of Activities – Peak Per Day

The Rolling 7-day Average is the total number of daily activities over a 7-day period divided by 7. The time span goes back several weeks from time of retrieval. The Peak Per Day is simply the largest number of activities observed in a day over that time span.

Campaigns

There are two campaign-related performance guardrails:

1. Maximum Trigger Campaign and Segmentation Throughput
2. Maximum Batch Campaign Throughput

Campaign performance is highly variable. The type of program, the complexity of the program (smart list filters and triggers, flow steps, etc.), the number of persons that qualify for program all contribute. In addition, environmental factors such as the current load on the system will impact performance.

Throughput in the context of campaigns refers to the volume of campaigns that run to completion over a given period. The Standard level of performance represents the base level of performance provided out of the box. The higher levels of performance provided by performance packages are expressed in terms of multiples relative to Standard. Using batch campaigns as an example, a throughput improvement of 8 times greater than Standard can be achieved by using the Performance package (10 times greater when using Performance Plus package).

Email

There is one email-related performance guardrail:

1. Peak Batch Email Send Rate

Peak Send Rate is the maximum number of emails that can be sent in an hour. Send rates are supported for sustained periods of up to 4 hours per day, and up to 4 days per week.

Marketo Engage supports both shared and dedicated IP addresses.  When you use a dedicated IP to send email, your messages are sent from a unique and exclusive IP. As such, you have complete control over your email sender reputation and thus email deliverability. Multiple dedicated IP addresses are used to efficiently distribute large email volumes leading to higher throughput. To achieve the highest send rate available using Performance Plus, you must use 5 dedicated IP addresses (Email Delivery Services and Power Pack are included).

CRM Sync

There is one CRM Sync-related performance guardrail:

1. Peak Sync Rate with CRM System

Peak Sync Rate is the maximum number of records that can be synchronized in an hour and in a day. Sync rates are supported for periods of up to 10 hours per day. The rates for Salesforce and Veeva are similar due to using the same underlying technology.

Sync rate performance is highly variable due to the nature of the sync process. The CRM vendor's API response time, the number of objects and records and fields within each record, whether creating new records versus updating existing records, all these things impact performance.

API

There are two API-related static limits:

1. Maximum Purchasable Number of API Calls
2. Maximum Purchasable Size Limit for Bulk Extract Jobs

Number of API Calls is the maximum number of calls that can be made:

• In a day (daily quota)
• Over the time span of 10 seconds (rate limit)
• At the same time (concurrency limit)

Purchasable means that these limits can be increased by purchasing a Performance, Performance Plus, or in some cases by purchasing an addon. Please contact your account representative for more information.

These static limits are strictly enforced. Exceeding a limit will cause the API to return an error.

Data Model

There are six Data Model-related static limits:

1. Maximum Number of Custom Object Records
2. Maximum Number of Custom Objects
3. Maximum Number of Fields per Custom Object
4. Maximum Number of Custom Activities
5. Maximum Number of Fields per Custom Activity
6. Maximum Number of Fields per Contact

Custom Object Records refers to the number of database rows that have been written for a given custom object. Custom Objects refers to the number of custom object definitions.  Fields per Custom Object refers to the number of fields defined within a custom object definition.

Custom Activities refers to the number of custom activity definitions.  Fields per Custom Activity refers to the number of fields defined within a custom activity definition.

Fields per Contact refers to the number of custom fields defined for a Person.

Custom objects are most efficient if the fields are defined when objects are first created. Fields that are defined afterwards are slower to insert and update. If updates are not needed, then custom activities should be considered as an alternative. In many cases it is better to have several custom objects with fewer fields versus a single monolithic custom object with many fields. Consider your schema carefully before finalizing on usage.

Data Ingestion

There are two Data Ingestion-related performance guardrails:

1. Maximum Number of Web Page Visit Activities Processed
2. Maximum Number of Form Submissions Processed

There are two web page visit activities: Visit Web Page, Clicked Link on Web Page. Both occur when a person interacts with a web page that has been instrumented with Lead Tracking JavaScript.  Marketers should only instrument web pages that are related to marketing campaigns. Typically, these are landing pages that are placed in the body of an email.

When a person submits a Marketo Form, a Fill Out Form activity is generated.  Forms can be hosted on Marketo landing pages or on a customer/external landing page (embedded).

Settings for the Standard package are sufficient to handle typical web page visits, and form submission volumes.  If not, you may see a lag between the actual time of activity and time when the activity is available within Marketo. If you have trigger campaigns that leverage either of these activity types, high volumes can cause the trigger campaigns to fall behind.

Segmentations

There is one Segmentation-related static limit:

1. Maximum Number of Segmentations

This is simply the number of Segmentations that can be created in a subscription.  Segmentations are implemented as a system triggered smart campaign. The campaign is triggered when a field in the Segment Rule is updated.  If the rule references many fields and/or the referenced fields change frequently, this can adversely impact performance.

Engagement Programs

There is one Engagement Program-related static limit:

1. Maximum Number of Engagement Programs

This is simply the number of Engagement Programs that can be created in a subscription.