Marketing Manager
5/1/2024
At the end of 2023, we published a survey to the Marketo community asking you all about your experiences with Marketo, your biggest challenges, and what you want to tackle in 2024. Your opinions are invaluable to help us create the most relevant content that helps you and your colleagues go further with Marketo.
The responses we received were incredibly interesting! We’ll be using your opinions to help inform the content and services we create in 2024. From blogs and checklists to webinars and training courses, we can’t wait to put it into action!
Until then… we have compiled some of the key messages from your collective responses. Read on to find out what your peers are focusing on, what their biggest challenges are, and what resources are already available to help.
What kind of Marketo Engage users did we hear from?
The majority of respondents were experienced Marketo users. 62% of respondents have used Marketo for over 2 years, with just over ⅓ of that group having over 5 years of experience.
66% of respondents have had formal training in how to use Marketo Engage. Despite the high percentage of respondents that had invested in training, 76% of respondents have not held a Marketo Engage qualification in the last 12 months. Of those who have held a certification in the last 12 months, the majority have held an Expert (Business Practitioner) certification (16% of total respondents). The remainder hold the Professional certification (8% of total respondents).
The final question we asked to gauge how respondents feel about using Marketo was “On a scale of 1-10, how confident do you feel when using Adobe Marketo Engage in your role?”. The average of all responses was 7/10, showing a good level of understanding and confidence.
We’ll explore some of the areas that could help to move people up to 10/10 confidence later on!
What are Marketo users’ priorities and plans for 2024?
When asked about their top Marketo priority for 2024, the most common response was nurture programs, closely followed by Predictive Content. Other notable mentions were CRM integration, segmentation, and preference centres.
When asked whether they plan on implementing any Marketo Engage features in 2024 that they aren’t using now, the most popular answers were:
- Preference Centre – 38.5%
- Interactive webinars – 35.9%
- Predictive Content – 33.3%
- Dynamic Chat – 30.8%
It’s great to see that users are keen to adopt many of the new features Marketo has been releasing. We’re looking forward to seeing use cases and results in these areas! Preference Centre sitting at the top of the list is interesting, and perhaps suggests that users are planning to revamp their approaches to preferences in 2024. With email marketing being the most-used feature in Marketo, this is an area that will always be important, especially in light of Google and Yahoo’s email policy updates coming in February 2024.
What are the biggest challenges facing Marketo users in 2024?
Our priority is to help solve the biggest challenges of Marketo users across the globe. So, of course we had to ask a few questions about what these are!
When we asked respondents what their biggest challenge in Marketo Engage is, we received a huge variety of answers, as this will depend on the individual, their organisation and its level of Marketo maturity, and even the industry they work in.
However there were some key themes across all responses. Reporting and analytics was a clear winner, mentioned by 24% of respondents. In a similar area, but as its own distinct category, data and database hygiene was mentioned by 15% of respondents.
Along a similar theme, when we asked what features or functionalities users find most difficult to use, 31% of respondents highlighted reporting and analytics. There was a huge variety in the other responses, but there were multiple mentions of engagement programs.
Finally, when respondents were asked what they find to be most time-consuming when using Marketo, the most common answers were dynamic content and again – reporting! There’s a clear theme across all of these questions that reporting is something not a lot of people feel they are maximising in Marketo. If this is you, take a look at this free Marketo Reporting Success Handbook available to help you get started.
There was also a theme of program build time for instances where there is a large volume of emails and programs to create. Luckily, this is an area that can be hugely improved by the use of email and program templates. A number of our clients have reduced their campaign build time from days to minutes by implementing custom templates!
What about training?
As mentioned earlier, 66% of respondents had undergone some kind of formal training related to Marketo Engage. When we asked which areas users felt they would benefit from additional training in, the top responses were:
- Revenue Lifecycle Modeller: 76.9%
- Predictive Content – 69.2%
- Lead Scoring – 53.8%
- Engagement Programs – 46.2%
- Dynamic Chat – 43.6%
- Analytics – 41%
We can see a clear appetite for analytics training in general, with a specific focus on Marketo’s Revenue Lifecycle Modeller. Based on the challenges and priorities highlighted earlier, it’s no surprise that Predictive Content, Engagement Programs and Dynamic Chat are high on the list too!
We’ll be expanding our training offer in 2024, so keep your eyes peeled for new courses to meet your needs. In the meantime, check out our new Predictive Content course to get started, or for a comprehensive overview of Marketo (including analytics, lead scoring, engagement programs and more), we offer Marketo courses for all skill levels.
What’s next?
First, we’d like to extend a huge thank you to everyone who took the time to fill out our survey. Your feedback is incredibly useful, and we look forward to reviewing the content and services we share in 2024 to make sure we’re meeting your needs!
Until then, we’d love to know what you think. Do you agree with the key themes that emerged from the survey? Do you have different priorities, or a Marketo challenge that hasn’t been mentioned?
Tag us @JTF Marketing on LinkedIn with your thoughts!