Marketo vs. Salesforce Marketing Cloud: A Comparison of Enterprise Marketing Platforms
As competition heats up in the marketing technology space, there are a lot of questions about how different platforms compare. And as industry leaders like Salesforce, Adobe, Oracle and IBM continue to acquire new companies and feature-sets to stay competitive, each product is becoming more capable (and complex) than ever before.
For enterprise companies evaluating a new marketing platform, Marketo and Salesforce Marketing Cloud often make the shortlist. And with Adobe's recent $4.75 Billion acquisition of Marketo, I expect competition between these two products to get even more heated in the coming years. With that in mind, it is worth taking time to understand how Marketo and Salesforce Marketing Cloud stack up from a marketing user's perspective.
The Blurred Lines between B2B and B2C
One primary difference between Marketo and Salesforce Marketing Cloud is that each was originally designed to meet the needs of different types of marketers. Marketo is usually considered a Business to Business (B2B) solution while Marketing Cloud is positioned more like a Business to Consumer (B2C) platform. That is not always the case for every customer, but it is generally how each platform is viewed. This difference is important because it is at the core of what distinguishes the two tools.
But the lines between B2B and B2C are rapidly blurring—a trend likely to accelerate going forward. At the same time, each tool is becoming more capable of operating in either arena. When choosing a long-term marketing platform, it's important to take into account the evolving landscape and consider that your needs may be uniquely suited to one tool over another, regardless of whether you see yourself as a B2B or B2C enterprise.
Data Management in Marketo vs. Salesforce Marketing Cloud
One major differentiator between the two tools is their approach to data models. While Marketo defaults to treating all people as “leads” housed in one lead database table, Marketing Cloud has a more complex data model designed to allow for maximum flexibility but requiring more data management expertise.
If you have simpler or smaller data sets, Marketo will make things easier. For example, finding customer records in Marketo is much simpler since everything is stored, by default, in a master database. It also makes segmentation simpler, since the table used for segmentation is always the same. This can, however, become problematic with large complicated data sets that cannot (or should not) be stored in a master table.
If you have larger or more complex data (often found in B2C environments), Marketing Cloud's flexible data model will work better. Marketing Cloud is structured as more of a blank slate. This allows users to build tables called "Data Extensions" and create data objects that match up to a business's unique needs. This makes segmentation more difficult but has the upside of nearly endless flexibility. There are some default tables in Marketing Cloud like the "All Subscribers" list, but most of the tables and relationships need to be built—which is not always easy to do. The downside is that the complexity of Marketing Cloud's data model requires more development and resources to manage on a day-to-day basis.
Campaign Orchestration: Journey Builder vs. Engagement Programs
Multi-touch campaign orchestration, or "customer journey" automation, is handled differently in each of the two systems. Marketo uses Engagement Programs which allow marketers to set up a series of emails or activities using "Smart Campaigns". Engagement Programs can be set up to work as a customer journey and are useful tools for automation. However, they can be difficult to customize and visualize since they do not use the flowchart UI that most other platforms use.
Marketo Engagement Programs are also heavily focused on email. To include other channels like social and mobile messaging requires custom setup. But the underlying "Smart Campaigns" used within engagement programs are extremely flexible and can do a lot of heavy lifting without having to write code.
In Marketing Cloud, Journey Builder is the primary tool for setting up automated multi-touch campaigns. Journey Builder features a drag-and-drop interface allowing users to build journeys consisting of email, mobile, contact updates, or advertising depending on how you want to interact with customers. Journey Builder certainly has some complexities around getting data in and out of journeys, but it makes visualizing and executing large-scale, cross-channel campaigns much easier.
One of the main advantages to Journey Builder over its counterpart in Marketo is the ability to incorporate cross-channel communication (email, mobile, social etc.) into a single customer journey and to see everything in one place. Journey Builder also offers the ability to set goals and track progress for each multi-touch campaign. This makes understanding the success of each initiative a bit easier without having to set up additional reports.
Triggered Activities and Transactional Messaging
Marketo and Marketing Cloud also approach triggered and transactional messaging in different ways. In Marketo, triggered activities are usually executed using a triggered Smart Campaign based on rules defined by the user’s criteria. In Salesforce Marketing Cloud, you can set up “Triggered Emails” which trigger a message to go out when called by an external API.
With triggered Smart Campaigns in Marketo, the ability to set up custom activities based on actions is flexible and extremely powerful. You are able to be very specific when defining criteria that will trigger activities or send messages, without having to write any code. And for scenarios where Marketo should interact with external systems, you can use webhooks to call, or be called by, external APIs. Overall, the functionality available using smart campaigns is one of the most useful feature sets found in either tool and a key differentiator for Marketo's platform.
With triggered emails in Marketing Cloud, the capabilities are similar but a bit more complex to set up and manage. Triggered Sends in Marketing Cloud are set up to be triggered when an API call is made to the trigger. This allows for flexibility similar to Marketo’s, but there isn't a comparable way to trigger activities without writing and executing API calls. One other limitation is the lack of flexibility around actions that can occur once the trigger is called. By default, the only option is to send an email. To do more will likely require some custom development. However, if you are connected to Sales Cloud using Marketing Cloud Connect, there are many more possibilities for setting up custom triggers without writing code.
Content Management: Content Builder vs. Design Studio
When it comes to building and managing content, both platforms feature similar capabilities in that content is categorized by type and then placed in folders that reflect your content strategy. Both also offer Snippets which allow for reusable HTML and dynamic content to reduce the need to recreate similar content over and over.
One advantage in Marketing Cloud is the easy access to code used for email and landing pages. Accessing HTML/CSS in Marketo assets is not as simple as it could be and often leads to extra work. Marketing Cloud makes the code more accessible for each individual piece of content which simplifies things for those experienced in HTML, CSS, and AMPscript. However, if you are a marketer who prefers staying away from code, these tools both offer WYSIWYG editors that meet marketer's basic needs for email and landing page creation. Overall, both platforms are fairly similar when it comes to content management.
User Experience and Navigation
Both Marketo and SFMC suffer from a difficult-to-use interface. This has been the case for a while, but they seem to be making efforts recently to improve user experience. Salesforce has announced that it is bringing Lightning Experience to Marketing Cloud, which should bring a consistent look and feel across Sales and Marketing. At the same time, "Marketo Sky"—the newly designed interface for Marketo—looks promising and is currently in beta for those who want to test it out.
For the time being, Marketo's UI has an advantage for marketers because access to the functionality that marketers need on a day-to-day basis is housed in a single “Marketing Activities” area. Another slight advantage for Marketo is the Marketo User's Community. My experience has been that it is easier to find answers and help in Marketo's community than it is in Salesforce's. This is likely related to the flexibility and customization available in Marketing Cloud which results in sometimes encountering questions or problems that have not been documented yet.
In Marketing Cloud, the tools marketers use on a daily basis are more scattered. Email, Automation, Data, Content and Landing Page management each have their own modules that operate as different applications. A user’s experience in Marketing Cloud is more dependent on the channels and modules they are paying for. This separation of functionality (with even more builders and studios being added) means it takes longer to get the hang of Marketing Cloud, which can be overwhelming for beginners and is a weakness for Marketing Cloud. This also speaks to the fact that Marketing Cloud has more overall multi-channel functionality and therefore needs a UI that separates each set of capabilities.
Overall both tools are highly capable and will, if implemented and managed properly, get the job done for most enterprise marketing teams. The key differences lie in how data is structured and how each platform is designed to meet the needs of different marketers. To be successful with either tool, your data architecture, implementation, marketing strategy, and talent must be organized around the platform to actively engage with your customers in meaningful ways.
