Marketo was founded in 2006 by Phil Fernandez, Jon Miller and David Morandi, and released its first product - Marketing Lead Management - in 2008. Since then, it has sought to create a comprehensive marketing ecosystem that encompasses email, mobile and social media marketing, sales insights, predictive content, automation, analytics and more. It touts itself as a platform “for marketers, by marketers.” In 2012-13, Marketo ranked on the Inc. 500. Marketo saw substantial growth in user base and revenue between 2010 and 2012. Since then, they’ve won successive rounds of funding. The company went public in 2013. In June 2016, it was announced that Marketo would be acquired by Vista Equity Partners for approximately $1.79 billion.  

Marketo Pricing and Services

Intended Customers Small to Midsize Businesses

Free Trial No

Features

• Lead Generation

• Lead Management

• Email Marketing

• Marketing Automation

• Consumer Marketing

• Social Marketing

• Reporting & Analytics

• Mobile Marketing

• Service & Support

All Available Plans & Services Marketo provides bundles of features sold separately. Businesses can subscribe to one or more bundles depending on their needs. These bundles include Lead Management, Email Marketing, Consumer Marketing, Consumer Base Marketing and Mobile Marketing.

Editor’s Bottom Line of Marketo

Marketo covers the key components of digital marketing - content creation, publishing, social marketing, email marketing, lead management, analytics and reporting. Its robust suite of tools and active community of marketers win it adulation among its users. Its modern pricing model is fairly opaque; there are subscription tiers for Marketo’s core Lead Management services with auxiliary ‘bundles’ available separately. Companies that don’t want certain features can opt out of them, but a business seeking a full-featured marketing automation solution will likely subscribe to most of them. Doing so will puts Marketo’s pricing in the range of industry peers, if not a little lower, but as rates aren’t made generally available and depend on your number of contacts, precise numbers are hard to pin down. Marketo is widely praised for its ease of setup. The platform is intuitive and usable even to newcomers; it’s not the most beautiful interface, but its features are clearly labeled, its customer support team highly regarded, and its community of users active and helpful with campaigns and technical issues. In short, while the user interface may seem ‘academic’, Marketo’s got it where it counts with plenty of resources and assistance available should you stumble. Marketo, as a solution “by marketers, for marketers,” puts together a platform your marketing team would appreciate. Its lead nurturing features include rules and filters for personalized emails with dynamic content according to lead segments; multi-step workflows are programmable to perform system functions based on filters and real-time triggers; landing pages, emails and forms are created through a drag-and-drop design interface; the platform enables social sharing and engagement with videos, social polls and social lead scoring. Marketo offers close sync between its marketing platform (including Sales Insights) and many CRMs, including Salesforce.com, Dynamics 365, SAP and others. Marketo has historically fallen a little short in their landing page and form builder, but recent updates have improved the interface considerably. Certain aspects are still considered a bit less refined than their industry peers. Moreover, the platform has limitations in built-in reporting and analytics, but extensions available through its marketplace, LaunchPoint, can expand its reporting functionality. Overall, Marketo is a well-regarded marketing automation solution, particularly for small to midsized businesses. It offers some flexibility in features and pricing, and with its close integration with major CRMs, robust features and active community and support team, Marketo is a highly credible marketing solution at generally competitive rates.