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What is Marketo?

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What is Marketo?

Marketo is perhaps one of the best-known marketing automation platforms for marketers. The company was founded in 2006, but was purchased in 2018 by software juggernaut Adobe for $4.7 billion. Since then it has been integrated into San Jose, California-based Abobe’s suite of marketing software.

Marketo, which Abobe renamed Adobe Marketo Engage, primarily serves SMB to enterprise-level B2B marketers and some B2C considered-purchase marketers in a variety of industries, including technology, business services, healthcare, financial services, education, manufacturing, and telco. Some of its biggest customers include CenturyLink, Charles Schwab, GE Panasonic, RingCentral and Roche.

This guide will walk you through some of the key capabilities of Marketo.


What is Marketo

Explore marketing automation solutions from vendors like Marketo, HubSpot, Salesforce and more in the full MarTech Intelligence Report on marketing automation platforms.

Click here to download!


Product overview

Cloud-based Marketo Engage features 10 major capabilities for:

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  • Marketing automation to create, automate, and measure campaigns across channels.
  • Account insights and profiling to identify the right target accounts using data and AI.
  • Email to engage customers with relevant conversations in minutes.
  • Mobile to communicate with customers using mobile devices.
  • Social integration to identify potential and current customers.
  • Targeted, personalized display ads.
  • Dynamic interactions with customers on a website.
  • Marketing analytics to prove and improve business impact.
  • Predictive content ensures best fit assets are presented.
  • Marketo Sales Insight to drive account and prospect intelligence to sales.
  • Marketo Sales Connect to coordinate sales and marketing.

Marketo Engage also natively performs basic data cleansing. For example, its data deduplication feature finds and merges duplicate users in the database. Users can also set up automated workflows for data normalization. More advanced data deduplication and data cleansing can be enabled through integrations with a number of LaunchPoint partners, including RingLead, ReachForce, StrikeIron, and CRMFusion.

Marketo also includes account-based marketing features as well. For example, Account Smart Lists leverage AI and predictive scoring to reveal the best fitting accounts for campaign activation. Personalized experiences are also automated across accounts through intelligent account nurturing. Account-based insights can also be delivered to sales offering full visibility across the buying team.

In fact, Marketo’s Sales Partnership feature shares customer intelligence across every touchpoint in the buyer journey. That includes:

  • Multi-attribute lead scoring across sales and marketing touches.
  • Real-time data capture and bi-directional data integration sync with CRM.
  • Prioritized lead and account engagement scores.

Supported sales engagements and channels include email, phone, sales and marketing nurture campaigns, preloaded email templates, suggested email categories, cross-channel personalization.

Lastly, Marketo’s features are also compliant with the following data privacy frameworks and is ISO 27001 certified: SOC 2-Type 2, GDPR, CCPA, and HIPAA.

Lead management

Marketo Engage includes five essential capabilities: content personalization, cross-channel engagement, experience automation, sales partnership, marketing impact analytics.

Marketo also provides landing pages and progressive forms and users can develop and qualify potential buyers with personalized nurturing campaigns and scoring capabilities. Marketers can prioritize the best leads with quality and urgency ratings.

Marketo offers campaign cloning across programs, workflows, and assets and integrates with Salesforce, Microsoft Dynamics, SAP, and other CRM systems to increase lead management effectiveness.

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Marketo Engage also touts AI-driven capabilities like Predictive Audiences that support look-alike models and predictive models to help marketers discover new, unique audiences.

Campaign channels

While email is traditionally central in any marketing automation platform, Marketo Engage claims to support the following marketing channels:

  • Email.
  • Mobile push notifications and in-app messages.
  • Direct mail.
  • Social media.
  • Digital advertising.
  • Websites.
  • E-commerce sites.
  • Webinar and conference services.
  • Video/interactive applications.
  • Tradeshows, seminars, and events.

Collaboration

Task management is included natively in Marketo Engage from within the application’s Command Center or from the Tasks section of the Live Feed. Tasks can also be managed from within CRM systems. The platform also offers flexible and customized access, users, roles, and permissions across the user base.

Workspaces can also be segmented or shared based on programs, databases and instances for segmented teams. Marketing and sales coordination is also supported via lead and account intelligence and engagement blueprints in the platform.

Analytics

Marketo Engage’s ROI reports include multi-touch attribution and aggregate impact of marketing on the revenue cycle over time, including conversion rates plus flow and velocity through the funnel. Executive dashboards also feature revenue cycle analytics identifying real-time metrics and trends.

Bizible by Marketo, an add-on platform by Adobe, offers complete attribution across every marketing
and sales touchpoint, a variety of attribution models, and connectors to paid media channels.

Performance Insights identifies programs and channels that deliver the highest marketing ROI and Marketo’s Success Path Analyzer monitors key performance metrics for each stage of the customer journey.

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The company’s Revenue Modeler report defines customer journey stages and monitors how potential customers move through the funnel.

Advanced Journey Analytics reports feature a pivot-table UI for ad hoc reporting on channel and campaign performance, including attribution and ROI.

Lastly, Marketo’s Opportunity Influence Analyzer highlights cross-channel marketing activities that influence deals to understand each marketing touchpoint’s influence.

Integrations

True to its billing as one of the leading marketing automation platforms available to marketers, Marketo offers a very wide range of integrations with other major marketing technology platforms on the market. Overall, Marketo offers:

  • Native integration with Microsoft Dynamics 365, Salesforce, and SAP C4C.
  • Support for two-way synchronization.
  • With CRM credentials, custom objects and fields can be synched automatically.
  • Additions/deletions to CRM framework such as fields or objects are automatically updated in Marketo Engage.
  • Turn-key integrations for Oracle NetSuite, SugarCRM, and Zoho.
  • Partner ecosystem of data integrators and digital agencies includes Accenture Digital, Deloitte Digital, DigitasLBi,
    Informatica, Mulesoft, Talend, and Software AG.

Partners can also be found through Adobe Exchange, Experience Cloud and additional integrations are available through Webhooks, SOAP, and REST APIs.

Pricing and support

Adobe does not share specific pricing ranges, but Marketo Engage pricing is based on the size of the marketing database, plus any additional infrastructure requested such as advanced security, high volume APIs, high volume email infrastructure, or advanced database features. An annual contract is required.

Adobe does offer three pre-built bundles for Core Email Marketing and Lead Management, Account-Based Marketing, and advanced multi-touch attribution. All of its solutions include a Marketing Data Environment, which integrates profiles and engagement history to help marketers build customer relationships by enabling personalized interactions.

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Any Adobe product/module not packaged in the solution can also be purchased as an add-on.

According to Adobe, products/modules are typically priced on a single scaling factor, such as database size, number of marketing users, number of mobile activities, or number of website visitors.

All Marketo subscriptions include access to customer success managers and all customers receive 24/7 web portal support. Global phone support is also available with paid support options.

In addition to software, professional services packages are available for implementation and consulting services.

Premium-priced support services include access to named support professionals, accelerated service-level response, and sessions for proactive mentoring and business review.


Snapshot: Marketing automation

For today’s marketers, automation platforms are often the center of the marketing stack. They aren’t shiny new technologies, but rather dependable stalwarts that marketers can rely upon to help them stand out in a crowded inbox and on the web amidst a deluge of content.

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HubSpot noted late last year that marketing email volume had increased by as much as 52% compared to pre-COVID levels. And, thankfully, response rates have also risen to between 10% and 20% over their benchmark.

To help marketers win the attention battle, marketing automation vendors have expanded from dependence on static email campaigns to offering dynamic content deployment for email, landing pages, mobile and social. They’ve also incorporated features that rely on machine learning and artificial intelligence for functions such as lead scoring, in addition to investing in the user interface and scalability.

The growing popularity of account-based marketing has also been a force influencing vendors’ roadmaps, as marketers seek to serve the buying group in a holistic manner — speaking to all of its members and their different priorities. And, ideally, these tools let marketers send buyer information through their tight integrations with CRMs, giving the sales team a leg up when it comes to closing the deal. Learn more here.

About The Author

1641869137 309 Does your marketing team need an SEO platform

Pamela Parker is Research Director at Third Door Media’s Content Studio, where she produces MarTech Intelligence Reports and other in-depth content for digital marketers in conjunction with Search Engine Land and MarTech. Prior to taking on this role at TDM, she served as Content Manager, Senior Editor and Executive Features Editor. Parker is a well-respected authority on digital marketing, having reported and written on the subject since its beginning. She’s a former managing editor of ClickZ and has also worked on the business side helping independent publishers monetize their sites at Federated Media Publishing. Parker earned a master’s degree in journalism from Columbia University.


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MARKETING

How To Combine PR and Content Marketing Superpowers To Achieve Business Goals

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A figure pulls open a dress shirt to reveal the term PR on a Superman-like costume, reflecting the superpower resulting from combining content and PR.

A transformative shift is happening, and it’s not AI.

The aisle between public relations and content marketing is rapidly narrowing. If you’re smart about the convergence, you can forever enhance your brand’s storytelling.

The goals and roles of content marketing and PR overlap more and more. The job descriptions look awfully similar. Shrinking budgets and a shrewd eye for efficiency mean you and your PR pals could face the chopping block if you don’t streamline operations and deliver on the company’s goals (because marketing communications is always first to be axed, right?).

Yikes. Let’s take a big, deep breath. This is not a threat. It’s an opportunity.

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Reach across the aisle to PR and streamline content creation, improve distribution strategies, and get back to the heart of what you both are meant to do: Build strong relationships and tell impactful stories.

So, before you panic-post that open-to-work banner on LinkedIn, consider these tips from content marketing, PR, and journalism pros who’ve figured out how to thrive in an increasingly narrowing content ecosystem.

1. See journalists as your audience

Savvy pros know the ability to tell an impactful story — and support it with publish-ready collateral — grounds successful media relationships. And as a content marketer, your skills in storytelling and connecting with audiences, including journalists, naturally support your PR pals’ media outreach.

Strategic storytelling creates content focused on what the audience needs and wants. Sharing content on your blog or social media builds relationships with journalists who source those channels for story ideas, event updates, and subject matter experts.

“Embedding PR strategies in your content marketing pieces informs your audience and can easily be picked up by media,” says Alex Sanchez, chief experience officer at BeWell, New Mexico’s Health Insurance Marketplace. “We have seen reporters do this many times, pulling stories from our blogs and putting them in the nightly news — most of the time without even reaching out to us.”

Acacia James, weekend producer/morning associate producer at WTOP radio in Washington, D.C., says blogs and social media posts are helpful to her work. “If I see a story idea, and I see that they’re willing to share information, it’s easier to contact them — and we can also backlink their content. It’s huge for us to be able to use every avenue.” 

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Kirby Winn, manager of PR at ImpactLife, says reporters and assignment editors are key consumers of their content. “And I don’t mean a news release that just hit their inbox. They’re going to our blog and consuming our stories, just like any other audience member,” he says. “Our organization has put more focus into content marketing in the past few years — it supports a media pitch so well and highlights the stories we have to tell.”

Storytelling attracts earned media that might not pick up the generic news topic. “It’s one thing to pitch a general story about how we help consumers sign up for low-cost health insurance,” Alex says. “Now, imagine a single mom who just got a plan after years of thinking it was too expensive. She had a terrible car accident, and the $60,000 ER bill that would have ruined her financially was covered. Now that’s a story journalists will want to cover, and that will be relatable to their audience and ours.” 

2. Learn the media outlet’s audience

Seventy-three percent of reporters say one-fourth or less of the stories pitched are relevant to their audiences, according to Cision’s 2023 State of the Media Report (registration required).

PR pros are known for building relationships with journalists, while content marketers thrive in building communities around content. Merge these best practices to build desirable content that works for your target audience and the media’s audiences simultaneously.

WTOP’s Acacia James says sources who show they’re ready to share helpful, relevant content often win pitches for coverage. “In radio, we do a lot of research on who is listening to us, and we’re focused on a prototype called ‘Mike and Jen’ — normal, everyday people in Generation X … So when we get press releases and pitches, we ask, ‘How interested will Mike and Jen be in this story?’” 

3. Deliver the full content package (and make journalists’ jobs easier)

Cranking out content to their media outlet’s standards has never been tougher for journalists. Newsrooms are significantly understaffed, and anything you can do to make their lives easier will be appreciated and potentially rewarded with coverage. Content marketers are built to think about all the elements to tell the story through multiple mediums and channels.

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“Today’s content marketing pretty much provides a package to the media outlet,” says So Young Pak, director of media relations at MedStar Washington Hospital Center. “PR is doing a lot of storytelling work in advance of media publication. We (and content marketing) work together to provide the elements to go with each story — photos, subject matter experts, patients, videos, and data points, if needed.”   

At WTOP, the successful content package includes audio. “As a radio station, we are focused on high-quality sound,” Acacia James says. “Savvy sources know to record and send us voice memos, and then we pull cuts from the audio … You will naturally want to do someone a favor if they did you one — like providing helpful soundbites, audio, and newsworthy stories.”  

While production value matters to some media, you shouldn’t stress about it. “In the past decade, how we work with reporters has changed. Back in the day, if they couldn’t be there in person, they weren’t going to interview your expert,” says Jason Carlton, an accredited PR professional and manager of marketing and communications at Intermountain Health. “During COVID, we had to switch to virtual interviewing. Now, many journalists are OK with running a Teams or Zoom interview they’ve done with an expert on the news.”

BeWell’s Alex Sanchez agrees. “I’ve heard old school PR folks cringe at the idea of putting up a Zoom video instead of getting traditional video interviews. It doesn’t really matter to consumers. Focus on the story, on the timeliness, and the relevance. Consumers want authenticity, not super stylized, stiff content.”

4. Unite great minds to maximize efficiency

Everyone needs to set aside the debate about which team — PR or content marketing — gets credit for the resulting media coverage.

At MedStar Washington Hospital Center, So Young and colleagues adopt a collaborative mindset on multichannel stories. “We can get the interview and gather information for all the different pieces — blog, audio, video, press release, internal newsletter, or magazine. That way, we’re not trying to figure things out individually, and the subject matter experts only have to have that conversation once,” she says.

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Regular, cross-team meetings are essential to understand the best channels for reaching key audiences, including the media. A story that began life as a press release might reap SEO and earned media gold if it’s strategized as a blog, video, and media pitch.

“At Intermountain Health, we have individual teams for media relations, marketing, social media, and hospital communications. That setup works well because it allows us to bring in the people who are the given experts in those areas,” says Intermountain’s Jason Carlton. “Together, we decide if a story is best for the blog, a media pitch, or a mix of channels — that way, we avoid duplicating work and the risk of diluting the story’s impact.”

5. Measure what matters

Cutting through the noise to earn media mentions requires keen attention to metrics. Since content marketing and PR metrics overlap, synthesizing the data in your team meetings can save time while streamlining your storytelling efforts.

“For content marketers, using analytical tools such as GA4 can help measure the effectiveness of their content campaigns and landing pages to determine meaningful KPIs such as organic traffic, keyword rankings, lead generation, and conversion rates,” says John Martino, director of digital marketing for Visiting Angels. “PR teams can use media coverage and social interactions to assess user engagement and brand awareness. A unified and omnichannel approach can help both teams demonstrate their value in enhancing brand visibility, engagement, and overall business success.”

To track your shared goals, launch a shared dashboard that helps tell the combined “story of your stories” to internal and executive teams. Among the metrics to monitor:

  • Page views: Obviously, this queen of metrics continues to be important across PR and content marketing. Take your analysis to the next level by evaluating which niche audiences are contributing to these views to further hone your storytelling targets, including media outlets.
  • Earned media mentions: Through a media tracker service or good old Google Alerts, you can tally the echo of your content marketing and PR. Look at your site’s referral traffic report to identify media outlets that send traffic to your blog or other web pages.
  • Organic search queries: Dive into your analytics platform to surface organic search queries that lead to visitors. Build from those questions to develop stories that further resonate with your audience and your targeted media.
  • On-page actions: When visitors show up on your content, what are they doing? What do they click? Where do they go next? Building next-step pathways is your bread and butter in content marketing — and PR can use them as a natural pipeline for media to pick up more stories, angles, and quotes.

But perhaps the biggest metric to track is team satisfaction. Who on the collaborative team had the most fun writing blogs, producing videos, or calling the news stations? Lean into the natural skills and passions of your team members to distribute work properly, maximize the team output, and improve relationships with the media, your audience, and internal teams.

“It’s really trying to understand the problem to solve — the needle to move — and determining a plan that will help them achieve their goal,” Jason says. “If you don’t have those measurable objectives, you’re not going to know whether you made a difference.”

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Don’t fear the merger

Whether you deliberately work together or not, content marketing and public relations are tied together. ImpactLife’s Kirby Winn explains, “As soon as we begin to talk about (ourselves) to a reporter who doesn’t know us, they are certainly going to check out our stories.”

But consciously uniting PR and content marketing will ease the challenges you both face. Working together allows you to save time, eliminate duplicate work, and gain free time to tell more stories and drive them into impactful media placements.

Register to attend Content Marketing World in San Diego. Use the code BLOG100 to save $100. Can’t attend in person this year? Check out the Digital Pass for access to on-demand session recordings from the live event through the end of the year.

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Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute

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Trends in Content Localization – Moz

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Trends in Content Localization - Moz

Multinational fast food chains are one of the best-known examples of recognizing that product menus may sometimes have to change significantly to serve distinct audiences. The above video is just a short run-through of the same business selling smokehouse burgers, kofta, paneer, and rice bowls in an effort to appeal to people in a variety of places. I can’t personally judge the validity of these representations, but what I can see is that, in such cases, you don’t merely localize your content but the products on which your content is founded.

Sometimes, even the branding of businesses is different around the world; what we call Burger King in America is Hungry Jack’s in Australia, Lays potato chips here are Sabritas in Mexico, and DiGiorno frozen pizza is familiar in the US, but Canada knows it as Delissio.

Tales of product tailoring failures often become famous, likely because some of them may seem humorous from a distance, but cultural sensitivity should always be taken seriously. If a brand you are marketing is on its way to becoming a large global seller, the best insurance against reputation damage and revenue loss as a result of cultural insensitivity is to employ regional and cultural experts whose first-hand and lived experiences can steward the organization in acting with awareness and respect.

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How AI Is Redefining Startup GTM Strategy

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How AI Is Redefining Startup GTM Strategy

AI and startups? It just makes sense.

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