Waiting on the edge of your seat for new Marketo features? Prepare yourself, because the wait for their fall release is finally over! Marketo has been quiet these past few months since their previous update in July, and you’ll find out why: Marketo’s product team has been working hard to add some serious heft to the platform.

From the long-awaited Smart List subscriptions to Marketo Insights for Google Chrome, the fall release has something for both Marketo experts and sales teams to celebrate. Here are a few of the highlights:

How will this help me work better?

• Subscribe to a Smart List.
  Previously, Marketo reports were limited in their ability to show leads with multiple columns of data; while Smart Lists addressed that gap, they had to be exported and shared manually. Now, marketers and sales teams can receive weekly reports on leads who have registered for a tradeshow in the last seven days, complete with company name and phone number.
• Code Better in Rich Text Editor.
  Sometimes a marketer needs to dive into the HTML to make their rich text look and behave exactly the way they want. Now, anything can be inserted in a valid HTML content. The editor will accept any element or attribute, even if it’s deprecated or non-standard. Pre-existing table properties are now visible. This, in addition to previous changes deployed, makes the Landing Page Editor a much more flexible platform to work from.
• Personalize and Test Marketo Mobile Engagement.
  The Marketo Mobile Engagement platform, now has access to Marketo’s personalization tokens. In addition, marketers can now preview and send samples of push notifications to ensure everything appears as it should. This is an important basic functionality, and shows Marketo’s commitment to building out their mobile offerings.

How will this help me go further?

• Access Marketo Insights for Google Chrome.
  For sales reps who use Google Mail on Chrome, Marketo updated their Sales Insight extension to give reps access to lead data as they’re about to write an email. They can choose from any number of Marketo email templates for a polished look, or use a simple template to enable real-time engagement tracking.
• Create Marketo Custom Objects.
  Marketo now allows administrators to create child custom objects that relate to the Lead and Company objects in Marketo. This provides a more flexible data structure for marketers who wish to integrate customer data into their campaigns. Definitely not the right solution for everyone, it is best utilized by advanced marketers who are handy with the Marketo API.
• Optimize Assets in RTP with Analytics and Recommendations.
  RTP Content Analytics now provide marketers with a snapshot of how well their content is performing on their website. It also enables marketers to control what content is enabled for RTP’s predictive content engine. Marketers can then stay on top of how well RTP’s recommendations are performing by navigating to the Assets page.

The Final Word

The subscription to Smart Lists is by far the new feature I am most excited to see. This one has been on a roadmap for a while, and for anyone who has visited the Marketo Community, they will recognize that this is a frequent request. Following that, changes to how Marketo handles custom objects shows a lot of potential for a more robust data model. I definitely have it on my to-do list to further explore how Marketo handles custom objects. Integrating different source data as companies move to streamline their digital communications one of the biggest challenges the modern marketer faces, and it’s encouraging to see Marketo take it on, one release at a time.

What feature of the Fall Release excites you most? Let us know on Twitter @Bluewolf @deandrathtan. Connect with a Bluewolf Marketo Consultant to bolster your marketing initiatives.