Marketo Launches the Marketo Institute to Educate Marketers and Empower Leaders for Era of Engagement Marketing

SAN MATEO, Calif., Sept. 30, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- Marketo Inc. (NASDAQ: MKTO), the leading provider of engagement marketing software and solutions, today announced the Marketo Institute, a first-of-its-kind marketing research center focused on providing global marketing leaders with fact-based insights and data-driven best practices on how to succeed in an ever-changing digital world. These insights will be derived from a unique data set – the aggregate, anonymous data from Marketo's seven year history with more than 3300 customers in 36 countries across 20 different industries – as well as primary research conducted in collaboration with market-leading agencies, management consultancies and research firms.

The formation of the Marketo Institute comes at a time when marketers face rapid change and rising complexity, new channels and techniques and rapidly diminishing consumer attention. Digital, social and mobile technologies have forever altered the way organizations and marketers need to interact with people. Organizations need to engage with people, building personal relationships over time, instead of talking at them. Marketers need to respond with "engagement marketing," where brands shift from campaigns and transactions to conversations and building true relationships.

"The mission of the Marketo Institute is to educate marketers and empower leaders in the new era of engagement marketing," said Jon Miller, executive director of the Marketo Institute and co-founder of Marketo. "The marketing classes in today's universities and business schools don't teach the new techniques and strategies required for today's marketing. And without the right guidance, marketers are forced to rely on guesswork, tribal knowledge and trial and error to figure out what works. Marketers are hungry for data-driven benchmarks and actionable insights that they can use to drive their future plans and determine the success of their current efforts."

The Marketo Institute will provide brands with insights based on aggregate, anonymous data derived from the experience of more than 3300 companies using Marketo as a system of record, spanning more than 12 million digital marketing campaigns, 900 million unique people and 224 billion unique activities. Statistical data used and produced by the Marketo Institute will be solely in an aggregated and anonymous form and coupled with industry insight. Unlike surveys and other marketing benchmarks that rely solely on self-reported data, insights from the Marketo Institute will be based on analysis of actual trends in marketing and what actually works, what doesn't and why. 

The Marketo Institute will focus on helping marketers gain a deeper understanding about the key topics of marketing success including:

• Customer lifecycle
• Customer engagement
• Digital marketing
• Marketing ROI
• Marketing operations

Initial research topics include how many marketing touches should occur before a customer makes its first purchase, the mix of channels and devices brands are using to interact with customers at different stages of the customer journey and what percentage of revenue marketing should generate across different industries.

The Marketo Institute will also serve as a hub for collaboration with other organizations on marketing research and thought leadership. It will join forces with higher education institutions to create curriculum based on the Institute's research and real-world best practices, as well as with leading marketing agencies, management consulting firms and research organizations to provide additional insights and analysis about where the broader digital marketing profession is headed. This research will include insights and best practices related to marketing strategy, including organizational structure and design; the impact of new technologies such as wearables; and new standards for interaction between marketing and other functions in the enterprise.

Finally, the Marketo Institute will seek to be a resource for CMOs who seek peer-driven collaboration and learning. CMOs are often in a lonely role and expected to keep up with an ever-changing environment, but don't have the resources or networks to support them. By providing online community and in-person networking, the Marketo Institute will provide vendor-neutral, research-based forums for marketing executives to learn from and inspire each other.

To learn more about the Marketo Institute, visit www.marketoinstitute.com.  

About Marketo

Marketo (NASDAQ: MKTO) provides the leading marketing software and solutions designed to help marketers master the art and science of digital marketing. Through a unique combination of innovation and expertise, Marketo is focused solely on helping marketers keep pace in an ever-changing digital world. Spanning today's digital, social, mobile and offline channels, Marketo's® Engagement Marketing Platform powers a set of breakthrough applications to help marketers tackle all aspects of digital marketing from the planning and orchestration of marketing activities to the delivery of personalized interactions that can be optimized in real-time. Marketo's applications are known for their ease-of-use and are complemented by the Marketing Nation®, a thriving network of more than 320 third-party solutions through our LaunchPoint® ecosystem and over 50,000 marketers who share and learn from each other to grow their collective marketing expertise. The result for modern marketers is unprecedented agility and superior results. Headquartered in San Mateo, CA with offices in Europe, Australia and Japan, Marketo serves as a strategic marketing partner to more than 3,300 large enterprises and fast-growing small companies across a wide variety of industries. For more information, visit www.marketo.com. 

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SOURCE Marketo Inc.