October 14, 2020
Pardot? Or Marketo? Which should you choose?
The old adage, “people buy from those they know, like, and trust” is true. A good relationship with a salesperson goes a long way and can influence your purchasing decision. But remember too, a product will always shine during the sales pitch. It’s after the sale is over when the reality of your decision kicks in.
With that being said, this guide is intended to help you make a more informed purchasing decision between marketing automation platforms (MAP) Pardot and Marketo.
A MAP is a big investment, not only in the software cost but the time and resources an organization will put into the implementation and ongoing maintenance, not to mention whether or not its performance will meet your expectations. Choosing wisely from the start can save you time, frustration, and a potential migration to a new platform down the road.
For the purpose of this guide, we review only the features and not the costs, because if the features aren’t sufficient, then the cost is irrelevant. Additionally, using price as a reason to choose one platform over another can be a costly mistake.
As you’ll see in this guide, Pardot and Marketo have similarities but also significant differentiators— and those differences can amount to more than you may realize. Let’s dig in.
Basic Functionality – The Similarities
When looking at both Marketo and Pardot side-by-side, they appear similar. And to some extent, they are. Both platforms, of course, are designed to help organizations execute, manage, and measure multi-channel marketing campaigns and track prospects throughout the buying cycle.
Functionalities common to both platforms:
On the surface, both Pardot and Marketo have commonalities and appear to meet basic marketing automation objectives. But do they?
How Marketo and Pardot Differ
Choosing one platform over another is often based on core functionalities, but it’s the subtle, or many times, hidden differences that greatly impact whether your marketing automation platform will be able to accomplish your desired outcomes and how efficiently (and effectively) your marketing team operates.
As an example, ease of platform use may be initially attractive, although a simpler platform may also mean less sophistication to accomplish more complex tasks, thereby limiting your capabilities as your organization grows and scales.
Let’s break down a few specifics to consider— features not always covered in the sales process or included in product brochures.
Automation Rules
Automation rules are the engine of your marketing automation platform, and allow you to perform specific actions based on the criteria you stipulate. Marketing automation rules are typically used for managing data, creating tasks, sending alerts, and assigning leads.
This is one of the areas where Marketo and Pardot greatly differ, so you’ll need to carefully consider how you’ll be using your marketing automation platform, now and as your marketing maturity advances.
Examples of how automation rules are used:
Customized Follow Up
Scenario 1: A prospect downloads and views a video on your website and you want to wait 2 hours after the video play to email a complimentary ebook, to further engage the prospect.
Scenario 2: You want to send an email to anyone who filled out a specific form in the last 2 days.
Data Management
The scenario: Let’s suppose you want to run a nightly campaign for state/country normalization, evaluating records who have state abbreviations, translating them to full spelling.
Automation Rule Limitations
All marketing automation platforms come with certain out-of-the-box features; automation rules enable a marketer to customize the platform to meet specific organizational needs and objectives. As you advance and grow with marketing automation, it’s not uncommon to create more rules— be sure to understand your options and limitations between Marketo and Pardot upfront.
File Storage
Every marketing automation platform comes with file hosting, typically used for hosting content assets, such as email images or .pdf content. File storage limits will vary by platform and contract level, which means depending on how many images you have, their size, and your storage maximums, you may need to actively manage your assets to stay within your limits or upgrade to increase your capacity. Here’s how Marketo and Pardot compare:
Tokens
Tokens aren’t essential to how a marketing automation platform functions but are a key component for the efficiency of those using it. Tokens are editable variables and eliminate repetitively and manually keying the same data point. Additionally, using tokens can reduce program build times by as much as 50%.
As an example, let’s say you’re doing the same event in 15 different cities. The difference between the events might only be “Location”, “Start Time”, “End Time”, “Hero Image”, etc.
These data values are included in many program assets, such as invitation emails, landing pages, registration confirmation pages, etc.— wouldn’t it be nice to copy/clone/duplicate an event program and only change those variables that are different instead of building each asset from scratch for each individual city?
Tokens are what enable these types of efficiencies and if you’ve never used marketing automation before, you will absolutely use them more than you might initially expect. How the two platforms compare:
Global Forms
The benefit to global forms is much like tokens— they improve staff efficiency and save build time as well as standardize data collection. Using a global form allows a team to create one form, then reuse it across web properties/landing pages. Updates are also easily accomplished with a single effort vs. manually updating every occurrence. But, how Marketo and Pardot handle global forms are very different.
Global forms are tremendously impactful for marketers, and the use cases for them are abundant. Organizations that have multiple products or higher education institutions are prime use case examples. To illustrate: if you have a 150-course catalog, and a web visitor requests information on multiple courses, in Pardot, this would require 150 emails and 150 forms. But in Marketo, you can accomplish the same thing with just one email and one form, using tokenized programs.
API Calls and Webhooks
Every time your marketing automation system accesses data from your CRM, it uses either an API call or a webhook to sync the two systems. Webhooks function similarly to an API call and can help to stretch your API allotment, which is typically managed across an organization.
If, however, your marketing automation platform is using excessive API calls resulting in organizational overages, it can result in incremental costs. How the two systems compare:
Counting and Tallying
This one might sound basic on the surface, but tallying is another significant differentiator between Marketo and Pardot. As marketers, we know there’s a big difference between an email being opened once versus being opened eleven times, which may indicate the email has been forwarded. And, this information will absolutely impact what you do with that lead.
Counting and tallying are what allow marketers to track repeat behaviors, such as multiple visits to your website in a single day, multiple clicks within an email, repeat visits to specific pages of your website within a short time period— indicators a lead may be ready to make a purchase.
If tracking this nuanced customer behavior is part of your strategy, only one of the platforms will easily support your objective.
Automated Actions
Automated actions are used to automatically send messages and control the user experience, based on the behavioral activity of your prospect, customer, or anonymous web visitor. As an example, a prospect downloads a white paper; it’s common practice to send a confirmation email.
Additionally, your sales team may also want an automated email sent a short period later. (After all, no one wants to feel like their every action is being watched!) Automated actions are the driving force behind both operations, but how Marketo and Pardot handle them is wildly different.
Platform Implementation
Of course, when purchasing a marketing automation platform, you want to know how easy it is to set up and how quickly before you can send your first email. Using an agency partner for either platform is best practice, to ensure your foundational framework is solid and reliable, and to jumpstart your success.
A Comprehensive Comparison of Pardot vs. Marketo
Now that we’ve highlighted a few of the operational similarities and differences, let’s take a look at how the features compare, per the sales materials produced by each company.
Note both Pardot and Marketo have one higher tier— Pardot’s Premium and Marketo’s Enterprise level. For more information on either, please contact your account representative.
Pardot vs. Marketo FeaturesThe scenario: Let’s suppose you want to run a nightly campaign for state/country normalization, evaluating records who have state abbreviations, translating them to full spelling.
The scenario: Let’s suppose you want to run a nightly campaign for state/country normalization, evaluating records who have state abbreviations, translating them to full spelling.
Pardot vs. Marketo Features
User Reviews
Before making your investment, it’s well worth your time to read the comments of actual users of the two platforms. Of course, any product will have its advocates and critics. As you read the comments, look for common trends as well as the recency of the reviews. G2, the world’s largest review site, also provides a comparative breakdown of features and user satisfaction.
We’ll give you a summary of notable variances here but, again, encourage you to read the complete comparison as well as actual user comments on G2.
Total reviewers
Reviewers by Company Size
Highlights
Most significant variances:
Lastly— the Financial Discussion
Your marketing investment is much more than the price of a marketing automation platform. We encourage you to focus on the features and if the marketing automation platform you’re considering will support your marketing objectives.
As you enter financial discussions, remember too, there is a difference between price and cost. Price is the dollar amount paid at the time of purchase, whereas cost is the investment you make to achieve a desired outcome in the future.
If your marketing automation platform doesn’t improve efficiency, enable better targeting and campaign insights, or isn’t structured to grow and scale with your organization, you’ll quickly outgrow it, resulting in lost time, missed opportunities— and expensive technology that can’t accomplish your objectives.
Basing your decision on the platform price is an expensive mistake. While Marketo may have a higher price than Pardot in many cases, Marketo’s cost, when compared against the return it delivers, is undoubtedly far lower than that of Pardot’s.
Carefully consider the operational differences and the outcomes you’re trying to achieve, because at the end of the day, it’s the outcome that will determine your ROI, and it’s ROI that matters the most.
Does your organization need help achieving ROI from Marketo? Learn how the Marketo experts at MERGE can help. Contact us today!
