Hosting over 6,000 marketers, this year’s Marketo Summit was the biggest and most energetic yet. San Francisco was buzzing with eager marketers and beaming with 72 degree weather. Marketo spearheaded this year’s event with “Innovation” as the central theme — and their announcements delivered just that. They demonstrated their industry leadership in marketing strategies, tactics, and technology.

For those who were unable to attend the summit, here is a quick recap of key announcements made:

• Acxiom & Marketo Bring The Customer Engagement Platform
  
  Acxiom and Marketo’s new partnership will give Marketo’s users access to enterprise data and analytics, enabling marketers to respond to their target audience in real time. Hence, marketers can reach unknown web visitors without needing to convert them before changing content dynamically, thereby moving closer to the desired one-on-one engagement that CEO Phil Hernandez dubs, “the holy grail of marketing.”

• Hootsuite & Marketo Bring Customers Deep Social Insight
  
  Marketo and HootSuite's integration helps marketers to capture key social media activity and conversions to uncover more opportunities for engagement. For an indepth dive into this new integration, refer to our dedicated blog post, "New Marketo & HootSuite Integration Drives Deeper Social Insight."

Key Functionality Changes

• My Marketo
  
  This is the new look and feel of the Marketo interface, designed to be easily utilized for all end users. Their partner ecosystem, Launchpoint, is brought right into the tool.

• Real Time Personalization
  
  With the acquisition of Insightera, Marketo offers something unprecedented: the ability to create a dynamic experience to anonymous website visitors. Using a robust database of IP addresses, marketers are able to segment by datapoints, such as “country” and “industry,” to show targeted content to visitors who may yet to convert. The targeted content should signify higher engagement and conversion rates from your website.

• SEO Dashboard
  
  Marketo’s plan is to establish Marketo as the hub for marketers. By incorporating SEO dashboards to their suite, they provide incentive for users to spend more time in the platform. The set up is simple: just add your keywords. In real time, you can now see how your SEO is performing overall, as well as individually on each of your landing pages. From the SEO dashboard you can also see which pages need attention to rise in rankings.

• Planning Calendar
  
  This feature procured the most excitement from the live audience, as it puts Marketo way ahead of the curve from other marketing automation platforms. The calendar allows your entire marketing team to collaborate in real time. It enables a high level view of your marketing activities — think large events or campaigns, as well as more detailed views of individual components like email sends and blog posts. Features include the ability to reschedule emails and filter by type right from the program. This tool is available on tablets and mobile devices, and can also be published into CRMs.

As its theme proposed, this year's Marketo summit boasted some incredible marketing innovations that will doubtlessly change marketers' processes for the future. Have questions about these new features and functionalities? Contact us to connect with our marketing experts. To learn more about effective marketing, download the guide we created in partnership with Marketo, 3 Pillars of Digital, Modern Marketing.