I’m a marketing automation lover. I’m also a big Marketo fan and a regular user of most of the major tools. I love it. I’m good at it. For those of you who might not know about any such things … they are the latest rage in the world of sales and marketing.
Some call this permission-based marketing, some call it content-oriented marketing, some still call it e-marketing or even lead scoring or nurturing if it’s a big company with thousands of clients .. some even call it spam. Powerful it is (as Yoda would say) and Marketo is one of the top companies.
Putting together complex landing pages which drive outgoing and incoming email-linked campaigns is the matter of a relative blink of the eye using their interface. This said interface is the ‘iPhone’ of marketing automation …the most highly designed by far. Automator-like smart lists, instant drag and drop landing creation of forms and pages, complex flows and interactions and triggers that generate thousands of personalized emails and sneaky little alerts when someone is caught clicking, reading or requesting.
As a leading company in this business, Marketo is obviously also an active emailer. Hardly a day goes by without getting an email from Marketo; “5 tips for lead nurturing!” “The definitive guide to content marketing!” “Make your email more deliverable!” And the latest “Revenue Cycle Analytics” which is the art of … actually I am not sure what it is exactly the “art of” as sales people are the people who really sell in my book in the B2B world.
So, why this article? One simple thing. Please, Mister Marketo – update your interface!
So why, after all this love-fest, am I whining? Because lost in the Marketo loveliness and revenue generating claims they seem to have forgotten a few basics, and they seem to be so in love with themselves I don’t see them looking for feedback.
So please get back to some basics please! Do some upgrades your fancy interface .. please! It’s like an iPhone with a call button that requires you to press six other buttons first.
For example .. who ever got the dumb idea that a lack of activity filter should be a double negative? Where is a simple Eastern US States filter? Where is an easy volume de-duping tool? Where is an easy ‘only export clean data’ filter? Where is the ability to turn annoying approval buttons on and off at will so that I don’t have to reapprove everything over and over again if I don’t want to? Most importantly, why do I have to remember to link and relink everything together (the email, the landing page, the form, the workflow email, the smart list and so on) just to send a simple email campaign! Even Microsoft now knows what Apple knows .. increasing integration between functions is a goal. To create an email campaign is actually harder with Marketo than many other tools with a fraction of the UI investment.
Enough of the rant. Please update your interface Mister Marketo.