Marketo vs Salesforce Marketing Cloud comparison

Adobe and Salesforce are both solutions in the Marketing Automation category. Adobe is ranked #3 with an average rating of 8.4, while Salesforce is ranked #1 with an average rating of 8.4. Adobe holds a 15.9% mindshare in MA, compared to Salesforce’s 22.6% mindshare. Additionally, 96% of Adobe users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 98% of Salesforce users who would recommend it.

Marketo

Read 24 Marketo reviews

2,483 Views
1,931 Comparison Views

96% willing to recommend

Salesforce Marketing Cloud

Read 53 Salesforce Marketing Cloud reviews

5,076 Views
2,991 Comparison Views

98% willing to recommend

Marketo

Salesforce Marketing Cloud

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Marketo and Salesforce Marketing Cloud based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out in this report how the two Marketing Automation solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI.

To learn more, read our detailed Marketo vs. Salesforce Marketing Cloud Report (Updated: October 2024).

Buyer's Guide

Marketo vs. Salesforce Marketing Cloud

October 2024

Download the complete report

Helped 816,406 peers since 2012

Categories and Ranking

Marketo

Ranking in Marketing Automation

3rd

Ranking in Marketing Management

5th

Average Rating

8.4

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Salesforce Marketing Cloud

Ranking in Marketing Automation

1st

Ranking in Marketing Management

1st

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

7.4

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Social CRM (1st), Social Media Management Solutions (1st)

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2024, in the Marketing Automation category, the mindshare of Marketo is 15.9%, down from 16.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Salesforce Marketing Cloud is 22.6%, down from 26.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Marketing Automation

Featured Reviews

PradeepKumar25

Associate Manager at Tech Mahindra Limited

Useful for lead capture and engagement across social media platforms

Before Marketo, I worked on the Oracle Eloqua platform, both B2B-based. Currently, I'm working on Salesforce Marketing Cloud. So, these are the three platforms on which I have good hands-on expertise. One key reason platforms like Salesforce Marketing Cloud are gaining traction is that they invest in marketing campaigns. They conduct many virtual and live events, aggressively marketing their products. This strategy convinces C-suite executives to buy into and implement the Salesforce platform, something that other bigger platforms lack. Most companies are migrating to Salesforce. I've migrated one of my projects from Marketo to Salesforce and encountered many opportunities where companies want to migrate from Marketo, HubSpot, or Oracle Eloqua to Salesforce. I've worked on Oracle Eloqua, which is also a B2B platform, and I've also worked on Marketo. The lead scoring, table structure, and rules we apply are quite straightforward compared to Marketo. In Marketo, it's a bit clumsy. Regarding lead scoring or moving leads through the sales funnel, Oracle Eloqua is better, but it's a bit pricey. So, Marketo ranks second in lead scoring or managing leads, and it highly depends on the respective CRM. The tool tracks significant events, such as form fills on websites or social media handles. All this data is captured and stored in Marketo for analysis. Marketo Analytics is connected with Adobe Analytics. This integration offers detailed reports on total clicks, views, form fills, subscriptions, lead conversions, and more. It's straightforward compared to Oracle Eloqua, which has its own Oracle Business Intelligence suite.Marketo's reporting tools are easy to use, making it a plug-and-play solution for anyone.

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SantoshKrishna

Director at BMO Financial

Easy to deploy, stable, and scalable

The encryption and decryption have room for improvement. We need to be confident that the customer's data is secure when shared outside of the organization. I would like to request additional mobile app features that go beyond push notifications. As the mobile development industry continues to advance with new technologies, such as AI components, it is important to consider these advancements when setting up campaigns. Currently, campaigns are scheduled to be sent to customers at a prescribed time, but they may not be relevant to the customer unless they see them as valuable. For example, if I want to run a campaign offering loans, I would need to consider the customer's needs and balance. In the future, I hope Salesforce can incorporate an AI component that utilizes the shared data, rather than just scheduling campaigns.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Pros

"It's pretty good at handling customization and templates. We can put in different variables, so even someone without coding knowledge can create and develop emails that look good on different browsers."

"One feature I like is the user interface. Compared to other tools I've used, it's much more friendly and easy to navigate. Additionally, it offers a wide range of features, which makes tasks like segmenting data much simpler."

"The most valuable feature is the scoring."

"Marketo is excellent in terms of hands-on usability and lead database management."

"The product has been stable."

"One of the most important things about Marketo is its focus on GDPR compliance. It helps you follow GDPR and CAN-SPAM rules. For example, with Marketo, I won't accidentally target audiences without their consent. Firstly, the Marketo Insights system will highlight new customer segments that I should engage with."

"The main feature of Marketo is sending out emails, so that would be the most valuable feature."

"The valuable features are list uploads, email campaigns, generating reports,source tracking, and lead attribution."

More Marketo pros

"This is a very powerful and scalable solution."

"Salesforce Marketing Cloud's integrations are seamless since it is a native application. It helps us with B2B and B2C send-outs and can handle large columns."

"It is very easy to use from a marketing standpoint."

"The most valuable features of Salesforce Marketing Cloud are the ease of use of the basic features."

"The most valuable feature of Salesforce Marketing Cloud is the ability to sell the products we have made to customers. Overall the solution is very useful for business."

"The solution is user-friendly."

"It is easy to use."

"The most valuable features of Salesforce are the automation and the ability to create dashboards which provide a wider picture of what is going on."

More Salesforce Marketing Cloud pros

Cons

"Segmentation in Marketo is limited to a maximum of 20 segments. Depending on the company's specific needs, these segments can be based on various attributes such as company, industry, or other values. Sometimes, there's a lag when sending data from Marketo to any CRM. It can take around five to fifteen minutes for the report to sync."

"Adobe, the parent company, needs to improve on getting more information published to allow users to educate themselves on how to use the solution."

"It could be more scalable."

"One limitation is the user limit. For bigger organizations with large audience sizes exceeding, let's say, 500k, the solution may not be as efficient as larger enterprise platforms like Salesforce or Oracle Eloqua. However, Marketo is one of the best platforms for mid-scale and small-scale organisations."

"The user experience needs improvement, particularly in terms of ease of use and navigation between projects."

"I had an issue while integrating JavaScript with forms. When you embed JavaScript, you can either embed it in a landing page or some other self-contained management system like WordPress. Currently, it provides you access to CSS, where you can customize your form design, but there is no option for JavaScript modification for a particular form. This area needs to be improved where you can integrate JavaScript, and it has the JavaScript functions for that particular form. There are a lot of other areas of improvement. In the design area, they can give us more testing options instead of relying on email testing alone. It would be great if they can provide responsive testing where email clients can be tested within Marketo. It would be also helpful if they can implement some in-built options for users or forms for blocking a generic email ID such as Yahoo or Gmail. Similarly, it would be helpful to have JavaScript features and forms as well as the option to add Google analytics and a header and footer for the landing pages."

"Marketo's reporting and dashboarding features could be better. Compared to other tools, the visualization options with charts and graphs seem somewhat limited."

"For the moment, we migrated some of our processes to Marketo and implemented them there. We had some difficulties related to this."

More Marketo cons

"The performance is sometimes sluggish, but I think that's to be expected with a heavy CRM tool because they're running reports in real-time on the data that you have entered."

"Marketing Cloud should change the script language that it uses because it's not good. It's tricky and difficult to develop."

"Salesforce Marketing Cloud could improve by having more graphical options because a lot of tables are now only numbers and percentages and data. I prefer graphs, lines, and pie charts. I know there are ways to receive this from Salesforce Marketing Cloud. It doesn't play a huge role in my daily work to invest the time to figure it out. I feel that it would be time wasted. They could make the graphical options easier to find and use in the future."

"Technical support is good but could be faster, maybe more knowledgeable, and more customer friendly."

"It should contain artificial intelligence, in my opinion."

"The solution can be difficult to set up for non-technical individuals."

"We'd like to see more integrations with third-party products."

"We would like an improvement to the 'Einstein Engagement Frequency'; the optimal range of emails that our subscribers will engage with."

More Salesforce Marketing Cloud cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution is expensive compared to others."

"Marketo's pricing depends on the number of contacts and the level of features you need. Compared to other platforms like Oracle Eloqua and Salesforce Marketing Cloud, Marketo is generally more affordable. Like other platforms, it offers different packages based on your needs."

"The initial pricing was excellent, but the pricing for renewals is not as good."

"The pricing is not cheap, but it's not that expensive either."

"Marketo is too expensive for a small-sized company but more affordable for a larger-sized company."

"I'm not sure about the cost because I don't get into this aspect. Clients normally take care of that. I only know that it is costly, and I don't think there are any additional costs to the licensing."

"The licensing cost usually depends on the users."

"Marketo is used a lot because it's cheaper and preferred by many firms."

More Marketo pricing and cost advice

"The solution is paid for monthly."

"Licensing fees are paid on a yearly basis."

"This is a low cost solution suited to larger organizations."

"It's not cheap, which is why I recommend that you use Marketing Cloud to create automated journeys. If you plan to use Marketing Cloud just to send emails, use another tool."

"Its licensing is on an annual basis. Customers are okay with its licensing cost, and they don't find it expensive."

"I don't know if my company pays for Salesforce Marketing Cloud monthly or yearly. It's a SaaS, so it's a recurring cost, but I have no information on its price."

"On a scale where one is the lowest and ten is the most expensive, I rate the solution an eight out of ten."

"It is a license per user."

More Salesforce Marketing Cloud pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

20%

Financial Services Firm

12%

Manufacturing Company

Healthcare Company

Educational Organization

55%

Computer Software Company

Financial Services Firm

Manufacturing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Marketo?

One of the most important things about Marketo is its focus on GDPR compliance. It helps you follow GDPR and CAN-SPAM rules. For example, with Marketo, I won't accidentally target audiences without...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Marketo?

Customer support could be more helpful. The reporting could be better, with more engaging reports and the ability to collaborate more objects, like opportunities. Incorporating AI features similar ...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Marketo?

We use Marketo to provide complex solutions that can be easily implemented. It is a great tool for managing lead databases.

See all answers

What do you like most about Salesforce Marketing Cloud?

Datorama is part of Salesforce Marketing Cloud, which is quite a valuable feature that provides customer analytics.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Salesforce Marketing Cloud?

The solution's pricing is very high and should be more flexible for smaller companies.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Salesforce Marketing Cloud?

Salesforce Marketing Cloud should provide some debugging facilities for every user. Apart from Data Views, nothing is available for debugging purposes. I cannot check for any errors or status behin...

See all answers

Comparisons

HubSpot Marketing Hub vs Marketo

Compared 17% of the time

Oracle Eloqua vs Marketo

Compared 17% of the time

SAP Marketing Cloud vs Marketo

Compared 6% of the time

Microsoft Dynamics CRM vs Marketo

Compared 6% of the time

Teradata vs Marketo

Compared 6% of the time

More Marketo Competitors

Oracle Eloqua vs Salesforce Marketing Cloud

Compared 13% of the time

HubSpot Marketing Hub vs Salesforce Marketing Cloud

Compared 11% of the time

SAP Marketing Cloud vs Salesforce Marketing Cloud

Compared 10% of the time

Amazon Pinpoint vs Salesforce Marketing Cloud

Compared 7% of the time

SAS Marketing Automation vs Salesforce Marketing Cloud

Compared 4% of the time

More Salesforce Marketing Cloud Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Marketo

November 2024

Download Marketo product report

Buyer's Guide

Salesforce Marketing Cloud

October 2024

Download Salesforce Marketing Cloud product report

Also Known As

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Adobe

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Salesforce

Overview

Marketo is an all-in-one marketing solution that was created by marketers for marketers. Founded in 2007, Marketo is branded as marketing software that is easy, powerful and complete.

Organizations have access to multiple marketing and sales tools when they use this solution, such as Marketing Automation, Consumer Engagement Marketing, Real-Time Personalization, and Marketing Management.

Salesforce Marketing Cloud is a comprehensive marketing automation platform that enables businesses to create personalized and targeted marketing campaigns across multiple channels.

With its robust set of tools and features, marketers can easily manage and automate their email marketing, social media advertising, mobile messaging, and customer journey mapping.

The platform offers advanced segmentation capabilities, allowing marketers to segment their audience based on various criteria and deliver tailored messages to each segment.

Additionally, Salesforce Marketing Cloud provides powerful analytics and reporting features, enabling marketers to track the performance of their campaigns and make data-driven decisions.

With its user-friendly interface and seamless integration with other Salesforce products, Marketing Cloud offers a seamless and efficient marketing automation solution for businesses of all sizes.

Sample Customers

Marketo has a customer base of thousands of companies, including Sony, Citrix, BrightTALK, Curves International, HootSuite, Hyundai, SanDisk, and Samsung Electronics.

American Express, Financial Conduct Authority, KPN, Merck KGaA, Peterborough City Council, The Chapar, ADP, Financial Times, Stanley Black & Decker, SureFlap, Western Union, Philips

Buyer's Guide

Marketo vs. Salesforce Marketing Cloud

October 2024

Free Report: Marketo vs. Salesforce Marketing Cloud

Find out what your peers are saying about Marketo vs. Salesforce Marketing Cloud and other solutions. Updated: October 2024.

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