If you’re wondering “why are we talking about administration, if the last round was emails?” Well, frankly, because it was the next thing I thought about. I kept trying to think of a logical order to do these in and just came up short. Then I remembered that this is my blog, and I can do these in whatever order they come to mind.

So let’s talk about what Administration means here.

A lot of marketing automation functionality focuses on marketing (true story). And a lot of comparisons and ratings focus on that. That’s good; it matters. But if you’re responsible for managing the platform, there’s more than email templates, campaign managements, and calendars. There are integrations to consider, user management, and what-have-you.

Round 3 of our cage match focuses on common administration functions: user management, integrations, system maintenance, and certification.

User Management

How easy is it to create users and control their access to the database?

Marketo

If you can read and click on checkboxes, then you can manage users and permissions in Marketo.

Users and Roles that can be assigned are managed in the same place, under the Admin section of Marketo.

Roles should be set up first, and editing or creating them is simply a matter of checking off the items that the role should have access to. Access and abilities are provided in handy sections – you can check the global setting or get granular, if need-be.
Easy as that.

Adding users is about the same. Simply click on the New button, put in the email, select their Role, provide an access expiration if necessary, and boom – the new user is emailed.

Access to Marketo is not controlled by license, but some functionality – namely the Calendar – is. Keep that in mind.

Pardot

Maybe it’s because I just handled issues surrounding this, but one thing that you must understand about Pardot users – if you want sales reps to see Pardot info in Salesforce, they MUST have a license. And if you want it to be easy for them to access, you MUST turn on SSO for each of them. Not doing so can cause issues.

Point, Marketo.

Other than that, it works much the same. Create  a user, send them an email, and there is no user license cost.

Integration

Beyond integration to a CRM (which is important. I did a session about it!), which is important, how easy is it to integrate with other services?

Marketo

LaunchPoint. LAUNCHPOINT.

For the uninitiated, LaunchPoint is basically a big book of available integrations that just require you to sign into the thing you want to integrate. They have a pretty good list of things that do this.

Is the integration that you need NOT on LaunchPoint? I bet they use REST or SOAP API, in which case you can access your endpoint, userID, and encryption directly in the Admin area of Marketo. They have a host of partners out there that can be setup and integrated in 15 minutes.

As far as Salesforce integration goes, it’s easy to set up and maintain. Create a Marketo user (with its own Profile), put in that user’s information in Marketo, and that’s it. Ok, that’s not it. There’s other setup – creating the fields that are needed, making sure to hide anything you don’t want Marketo to have access to, etc. But essentially that’s it.

From there on out, every 5 minutes there’s a sync. You can sync Leads, Contacts, Campaigns – it all fits together really well.

Your Sales reps can see Marketo information via the AppExchange packages Sales Insights. This creates Visualforce pages that you can add to the page layout (now Lightning compatible), as well as a custom object where ALL Marketo information can be found. Reps do not have to have a Marketo license in order to use these features.

Pardot

Pardot calls them Connectors – a series of pre-built integration between Pardot, certain CRMs, and other marketing software types (webinar platforms, social media platforms, etc.).

They have a pretty good list of options.

But if you use something else, you need to know how to create some API integrations.

Connecting to Salesforce here is similar – you create a Pardot user in Salesforce and then use those credentials to create the connection. Then you have to individually map custom fields to Salesforce. Once that’s done, you can use Automation rules to sync the lists that you want, or you can sync individual Prospects. Syncing happens ongoing based on changes and automation rules.

In order for Pardot information to be available to Sales reps in Salesforce, those reps must have a Pardot license, as well. While not necessary, it is also recommended that those users be setup with Single Sign On, too. While this isn’t a big deal in Classic because it will just not load the Visualforce pages, if you’re using Lightning, and the sales rep doesn’t have Pardot access, the page will not load at all.

System Maintenance

I’m going to spare us all. This is the age of cloud-based platforms. System updates happen automatically in both systems – Marketo has 3 major releases and 3 minor releases per year. Pardot has them whenever they feel like. Just kidding! Monthly.

Certification

Getting certified in these platforms are fantastic ways to expand your career, so being able to do so is important.

Marketo

I took the Marketo certification twice. I took it twice because in order to re-certify, you have to take the whole the test again. And it even costs the same!

I don’t get to play with Marketo anymore. There are no training sandboxes or anything like that, so many of my screenshots have to come either from previous presentations or from their docs site. It makes it really daunting to consider re-certifying. There have been some big changes in the Marketo game, and I wouldn’t have the hands-on practice that I’d need to really get in there.

Pardot

I’m working on my Pardot certification right now, but I can tell you this – sandboxes and an entire certification track of training. There are so many resources out there, and recertification is like Salesforce’s process. Take a release exam. You stay up-to-date on those new functionalities and changes, and you are golden.

Salesforce, as a whole, makes certification a relatively painless process, so that the only really difficult part is the actual exam. Which is the way it should be.

Summary

Administering any platform application is going to come with some challenges, but those challenges should not be caused or exacerbated by the platform itself. Software is designed to make people’s jobs easier, and while being the administrator doesn’t mean using the platform to streamline our own job, it shouldn’t be hard, either.

Marketo and Pardot both provide easy ways to support users and customize the platform, with the exception of certification, Marketo wins this round.