How can marketers use Marketo Engage to align stakeholders on marketing initiatives while also driving efficiencies?
At Adobe Summit 2023, Adobe announced a new visual journey interface facelift, a potential game-changing capability in the way we all use and see Marketo Engage.
From audience qualification to triggers to filters to advanced multichoice flow steps, visual journeys will offer a better picture of what marketers are trying to do with their campaigns. And the new modernized rule builder brings the view into the world of 2023. Other solutions have leveraged a similar model and now Marketo takes that experience to the next level.
In theory, the new capabilities address several key challenges marketers face today around ease of use, adoption, and alignment.
Storytelling for Better Alignment
You know the old saying–a picture tells a thousand words. The intuitive interface will enable marketers to improve internal alignment by telling better stories.
Marketo Engage is more like a marketing development language than a storytelling application. If you have tried to paint the picture of lead scoring or other Marketo Engage campaigns, you may have received some blank stares when explaining these concepts to stakeholders. The lack of visuals can lead to misalignment among Sales, Marketing, and other stakeholders.
According to a recent marketing automation stat, 98% of leaders believe Sales and Marketing leaders will need to have better alignment in the coming years.
State of Marketing Automation Report
The new visual journey interface will offer a single picture of the campaign to help marketers communicate the campaign workflows across key stakeholders. Rather than show a complex set of rules that can make stakeholders dizzy, the output provides a clearer visual to tell the story of what’s happening behind the scenes.
Visuals Just Make Things Easier To Understand
Visual journeys in Marketo Engage will offer users the ability to SEE AND EXPLAIN their campaigns in a simple and visual way.
Anyone who uses Marketo Engage knows that it is extremely powerful but the solution has a pretty steep learning curve. Over the years, Adobe has beefed up the application but the user experience has not kept up with those innovations. With companies looking to do more with less, these complexities have often slowed onboarding which has hindered enterprises’ ability to scale.
One of the goals of the new interface is to improve ease of use with a visual drag-and-drop editor. Because things are visual, errors will be easier to manage. As companies scale, new users will be able to get up and running faster to improve onboarding.
Advanced Capabilities for Scale
With the visual journey feature, Marketo pros will get the ability to connect campaigns in a drag-and-drop diagram interface. This will change the way Marketo pros work by bringing multiple campaigns together.
For example, when Marketo Engage pros create complex lead-scoring campaigns, the new journey builder can reference that premade campaign rather than requiring the user to recreate it. The current Marketo does offer similar functionality but the visual editor is what pulls all these concepts together.
The way Adobe is creating this capability, Marketo Engage admins will be able to use either the current flow step method or the new visual journey method. The new visual editor method is designed to be a complement to what users are doing today. And there is supposed to be a mode that automatically converts flow steps to this new user interface–can’t wait to see how that works.
Will We Really Get Our Flow On?
Remember the big Marketo Engage calendar feature from a few years ago that was going to streamline campaign management? It just didn’t take as the change effort wasn’t worth the benefit for most organizations.
Let’s talk about the flipside. There was also once a time in Marketo Engage when the concept of Programs didn’t exist. There were all these assets spread all over the place with little organization. Converting to the Program system was a BIG change to the Marketo Engage process but the effort was worth it.
Summary
After a long time with the current user experience, seeing Adobe push through this new feature demonstrates its commitment to the Marketo Engage platform. Is this new feature worth the time investment? Time will tell but I like the direction and investment by Adobe in this usability area.
