If you have been in the marketing game long enough, you are most likely familiar with Marketo. It is a household name in the industry. What’s interesting at this point is how it has incorporated AI and machine learning into its platform over the years. But like any tool, Marketo may not be for everyone.
In today’s review, we will not look at Marketo Engage as a whole. Instead, we will explore its AI and automation capabilities and see if it is enough for your marketing automation journey.
So, without further ado, let’s get into it with a brief introduction first.
What is Marketo?
Marketo is one of the Adobe Experience Cloud products. Introduced to the world in 2006, it is a marketing automation and lead-generation platform that is trusted by companies and professionals worldwide. This tool is an impressive blend of content, analytics, personalization, lead management, and much more.
Also, Marketo makes up for what it natively lacks with third-party integrations. For example, it does not have a CRM built into its platform, and nor does Adobe offer a separate tool of its own. However, you can still use a third-party CRM like Salesforce within Marketo via seamless integration. Going forward in this review, we will take a look at some salient automation features to give you a sense of how capable Marketo is.
Predictive Content
In the marketing space, it is not uncommon for emails and websites to only convert a small fraction of the visitors or target audience. But smart marketers leverage the power of predictive content to optimize engagements and, thus, increase conversions. Now, imagine a tool that does it for you automatically.
Marketo determines and presents the most relevant content to your audience. It means different content for each individual based on their behavior and interests. And because it is machine learning, all of it happens in real-time.
Predictive content ensures optimum performance and consumption of your content with higher ROIs. Some use cases here can be personalized emails or websites and content recommendations (as seen on Netflix or Prime Video).
Predictive Audiences
Marketo can identify and target specific groups of individuals who are likely to engage with a particular marketing campaign or exhibit certain behaviors, thanks to its machine learning algorithms and predictive analytics. Here is how it works -
First, Marketo analyzes a wide range of data, including demographic information, past behavior, and other relevant factors related to leads and customers. It then applies its machine learning algorithms to identify patterns and correlations that may not be immediately apparent through traditional analysis.
Next, leads or contacts are assigned predictive scores based on their likelihood to take a desired action, such as making a purchase, clicking on an email, or filling out a form. Your marketing team can use these predictive scores to create targeted audiences or segments. For example, a high-predictive-score segment might be targeted with a specific offer or campaign.
Marketo Engage can then automate the delivery of personalized content or campaigns to these predictive audiences, optimizing the chances of engagement. However, you should know that the predictive models are often refined over time as more data becomes available and as the performance of campaigns targeting predictive audiences is evaluated.
Account Profiling
If you're into account-based marketing (ABM), using Marketo can make a significant difference. It helps you figure out which accounts are most likely to buy from you without a lot of manual effort. With its AI-driven account profiling, you can quickly identify the accounts that have the best chance of bringing in revenue. This means less time planning and more time connecting with the right customers.
You can use account profiling to create lists, like ones that predict the best-fit accounts based on similarities to your past successful ones. Also, you can make lists for suggesting upsell or cross-sell opportunities by looking at what your existing customers have bought. Another interesting thing is creating lists for quick wins based on similarities to your recently closed-won accounts. It's like having a smart assistant that helps you focus on the accounts that really matter!
Adobe Sensei GenAI
A form of generative AI, Adobe Sensei GenAI relies on a number of Large Language Models (LLMs) to generate text and similar experiences. In Marketo Engage, this feature brings your marketing and sales teams together with super-smooth conversations. It helps you get to market faster, grow your pipeline, and set up more meetings.
You can turn your chatbot into a friendly brand ambassador with generative chat. It talks in a natural, friendly way that matches your brand's personality. Also, it gets your sales team ready for meetings and live chats with handy conversation summaries. They include what customers want, what you talked about, shared content, and your campaign goals.
And don't worry about running out of things to say. GenAI can automatically come up with tons of topics, questions, and responses for your chatbot and your sales team during live chats. Easy, right?
Integrations
We earlier mentioned Marketo’s integration with Salesforce. But that just scratches the surface. Marketo seamlessly integrates with all of the Adobe Experience Cloud products, including Adobe Analytics.
As for other third-party integrations, it works perfectly well with Microsoft Dynamics, SAP C4C, Google AdWords, Facebook, Twilio, and more. You can always check a comprehensive list of integrations on Adobe Exchange.
Pricing
You can purchase Marketo under four pricing packages - Growth, Select, Prime, and Ultimate. If you buy Growth and Select, you may have to pay for additional features like Marketo Measure, Advanced Journey Analytics, Dynamic Chat, Predictive Audiences, and Target Account Management.
The Growth package offers access to a team of up to 10 individuals. However, the rest of the plans make it up to 25 users. The pricing can be requested on the official Adobe website.
Final Thoughts
So is Adobe Engage worth it? Well, it is one of the most advanced marketing automation tools in the market. The only catch here is the pricing and the learning curve.
It goes without saying that Adobe products, especially for businesses, are not cheap. On top of that, the Marketo interface seems complex and not intuitive at all. So, if you are a small to mid-scale business and still manage to buy Marketo, you will have to bring in a few Marketo specialists on the team. There is no free trial but you can always request a demo and see if it is a good fit for your business.