--- title: "The next wave of marketing automation is taking aim at Marketo" url: https://adtech.lol/articles/af290217-fee7-45ed-a0b6-95d54355dd04 source_url: https://martech.org/the-next-wave-of-marketing-automation-is-taking-aim-at-marketo/ source_site: martech author: "Moni Oloyede" published: 2026-10-26T00:00:00+00:00 tags: ["Adobe Marketo", "Marketing automation", "AI in marketing", "B2B marketing", "MarTech"] publisher: AdTech Radar --- # The next wave of marketing automation is taking aim at Marketo > Some of Marketo's original architects bet AI can replace the complex workflows and manual configuration marketers have relied on for decades. # The next wave of marketing automation is taking aim at Marketo ## Some of Marketo's original architects bet AI can replace the complex workflows and manual configuration marketers have relied on for decades. By [Moni Oloyede](https://martech.org/author/moni-oloyede/), Owner/Founder, MO MarTech Published on 2026-10-26 --- Marketo, watch your back. A new generation of marketing automation platforms is taking aim at the software giant, promising alternatives to its longstanding complexity and high operating costs. Paminga, Inflection.io, Conversion.ai, and Phave are all positioning themselves as alternatives to traditional MAPs. Some are going after HubSpot, Pardot, and Eloqua customers too, but Marketo keeps coming up in the conversation. They aren’t being subtle about it. Inflection tells marketers to “Replace Marketo, finally.” Paminga has a Marketo Translator to help customers migrate from Marketo to its platform. Phave was founded by people who helped build Marketo in the first place. I’ve spent years working in Marketo, and I understand why these companies see an opportunity. It’s powerful software, but it’s also expensive, complicated, and notoriously difficult to learn. Its architecture might not keep up with the changing landscape. But these frustrations aren’t new. What’s changed is AI’s potential to replace the complex, rules-based workflows that traditional marketing automation platforms depend on. ## Why traditional marketing automation took hold In the early 2000s, B2B marketing faced increasing pressure to prove its contribution to revenue. CRM systems gave sales organizations greater visibility into their pipelines, and marketing needed a more measurable way to demonstrate its role in generating opportunities. The SiriusDecisions Demand Waterfall, introduced in 2006, helped formalize a process for moving prospects from inquiries to marketing qualified leads and eventually into the sales pipeline. Marketing automation platforms made that process scalable. Marketing teams could manage thousands of prospects, automate follow-up, and demonstrate how their activities contributed to the pipeline. However, the technology centered on a particular understanding of how B2B buying worked at the time. Someone expressed interest, marketing nurtured that individual, and sales took over when the person was ready. We know this isn’t really how B2B buying works. Much of the traditional marketing automation operating model remains rooted in this outdated process. ## AI challenges the rules-based automation model One of the biggest limitations of traditional MAPs is their dependence on predefined rules. A MOps professional determines what should happen and translates that decision into platform logic and workflows. This model of decision-making and workflows can get incredibly sophisticated. The more complex the customer journey, the more rules, exceptions, and dependencies marketers must manage. But AI gives software companies another way to approach these problems, especially regarding how buyers actually buy today. Jon Miller, Marketo’s co-founder and now CEO of Phave, recently described the shift as moving from rules to reasoning. Instead of requiring marketers to anticipate every possible scenario, newer platforms are designed to evaluate customer context, interpret signals, and determine appropriate actions based on objectives and constraints. Rules don’t necessarily go away. They just have a different role, particularly around consent, compliance, and other requirements that demand predictable behavior. The opportunity is to reduce the amount of judgment and manual configuration that marketers must encode into those rules. That’s the broader competitive threat facing traditional MAPs. The emerging platforms are challenging how much human effort is required to operate marketing automation. ## Marketo’s complexity comes at a cost Anyone who has spent significant time in Marketo knows that using it requires learning how Marketo thinks. What makes the learning curve so steep is all these little rules and dependencies you discover only by breaking something in the platform. I remember early in my MOPs career, I changed a Wait step in a campaign from three days to five days in Marketo. Naturally, you’d assume the people in that step wouldn’t move to the next step for five days. Not in Marketo world. Anyone already in the Wait step retains the original three-day duration. Only people entering after the change get five days. Classic Marketo. But once you learn it, that expertise has tremendous value. It also creates a significant dependency. Companies need experienced administrators to build campaigns, maintain integrations, troubleshoot problems, and manage the infrastructure. Even relatively straightforward marketing activities can require specialized knowledge. That expertise isn’t cheap. Adobe doesn’t publish standard Marketo pricing, and contracts vary. In my experience, companies can spend upwards of $50,000, $60,000, or $70,000 annually while primarily using the platform for email, lead scoring, nurture, website tracking, and Salesforce synchronization. For organizations using Marketo’s full capabilities, the investment may be justified. For those using a fraction of its functionality, the cost becomes harder to defend, especially when you have to account for the people and salaries required to operate it. This creates a compelling opening for competitors promising easier implementation, more intuitive interfaces, and less manual work. Marketo’s interface has been a point of contention for years, even among Marketo loyalists. The company introduced Marketo Sky before Adobe acquired it in 2018, attempting to modernize the user experience. The transition was difficult because users still needed functionality available in the Classic interface. It never reconciled the differences between Sky and Classic, and Marketo Sky was sunset in 2022. Adobe rolled out another refreshed Marketo experience in 2026. But the changes are mostly updated icons and a refreshed UX layout. The base platform remains the same, and the UI hasn’t fundamentally changed. New competitors have the advantage of designing their systems around current expectations for usability, data access, and AI from the beginning. Marketo is hardly the only established MAP with legacy architecture. Eloqua has its own complexity, Pardot grew out of the same lead generation era, and HubSpot continues to evolve its automation capabilities. ## Why competitors are targeting Marketo Marketo’s market position, customer economics, and reputation make it a particularly attractive target. Marketo occupies a valuable segment of the B2B market. Its customers often have sophisticated MOps teams, substantial databases, complex integrations, and meaningful technology budgets. These are precisely the organizations that might benefit from reducing operational complexity. They’re also capable of spending significant amounts on a replacement platform. Marketo is synonymous with sophisticated but complicated marketing automation. That reputation gives competitors an immediately recognizable problem to solve. They can promise a simpler way to accomplish work that Marketo users already know requires considerable effort. Then there’s the insider knowledge. Phave was founded by Jon Miller and former Marketo product executive Nick Bonfiglio. Inflection’s co-founders, Aaron Bird and Dave Rigotti, also worked at Marketo. These are people who understand why customers love the platform, what makes it difficult to replace, and where its limitations create opportunities. It’s particularly telling that people who helped build the original marketing automation model are returning 20 years later to build alternatives to it. ## Why Marketo won’t be easy to replace Marketo has defenses that shouldn’t be underestimated. Its Salesforce integration is mature, Adobe has a substantial enterprise technology ecosystem, and the platform has a long track record of handling complicated operational requirements that newer vendors still need to prove they can support. Marketo has its people. This may be one of its strongest defenses. Marketo practitioners will complain about Marketo all day. But once you suggest replacing it? Whoa, whoa, whoa. Let’s not get crazy. Some people have spent 10 or 15 years becoming exceptionally good at Marketo. They’ve built very successful careers around the platform. The Marketo community has tremendous value. "Bleed Purple" is a very real thing. That type of loyalty is an asset. But loyalty and the pain of switching only protect a product for so long if customers begin to see a fundamentally better way to accomplish the same work. Adobe isn’t standing still. It has introduced AI capabilities, including Marketo AI skills and an MCP server, as it continues developing the platform. The question is how far Adobe can evolve Marketo’s operating model while maintaining the infrastructure its existing customers depend on. ## Marketo’s competitive threat isn’t going away Marketo must rethink its complex, rules-based operating model while preserving the enterprise functionality its customers depend on. Competitors see an opening to deliver that same sophistication with less complexity, less reliance on specialized expertise, and lower operating costs. And some of the people leading the charge helped build Marketo themselves. Marketo, you’re in trouble, girl. They’re coming straight for your neck. Source: [https://martech.org/the-next-wave-of-marketing-automation-is-taking-aim-at-marketo/](https://martech.org/the-next-wave-of-marketing-automation-is-taking-aim-at-marketo/)