When it comes to marketing automation, there’s not much Marketo doesn’t do. The platform’s powerful software toils ceaselessly behind the scenes to cover essential marketing tasks that many businesses struggle to find time to complete, including business-to-business marketing and lead management, email and campaign management, real-time personalization, and marketing management with budgets and calendars.
The platform offers solutions for up-selling, cross-selling, and measuring and optimizing your return on investment and advertising spending. The site is also stocked with extensive blog posts, guides and other information that details marketing strategies, best practices and examples.
Pros
Marketo’s huge lineup of features gets consistent applause, particularly the lead scoring and email marketing functions. Another notable feature is the ability to personalize content across multiple channels.
You can create a message and let Marketo help you shape the content to best fit Twitter, Facebook or any other channel you choose.
The marketing management features are yet another plus. You can automatically generate budgets based on past information and then keep real-time tabs on your budget to see where it’s going and whether your investment is performing up to par.
The marketing calendar helps you track the content creation and publication processes.
Cons
Cost is one of the sticking points of this all-inclusive platform. Although Marketo offers four different pricing structures, the leanest option is still nearly $1,000 per month.
Smaller businesses have scoffed at the cost, particularly when it comes with features geared toward larger enterprises that are not necessarily helpful on a smaller scale. The jury is also out on ease of use.
A steep learning curve is involved to master the multiple functions, and even then, some users have found the system overly complex.