Latest / Marketing Automation with Fexingo: HubSpot, Marketo, and Automated Customer Journeys / How Marketo Lost Its Edge to HubSpot in ABM
Transcript
- Lucas: If you are a B2B marketer and you have had to pick a marketing automation platform in the last couple of years, you have felt this tension. HubSpot keeps adding enterprise features. Marketo, since Adobe bought it, has been in this weird holding pattern. And the place where it shows most clearly right now is account-based marketing, or ABM. Luna: ABM is where the money is in B2B. Everyone wants to go after named accounts, not just spray and pray. So who does it better in 2026? Lucas: That is exactly the question. And I want to start with a concrete number. On G2, as of this month, HubSpot's ABM features are rated 4.3 out of 5. Marketo's ABM module? 3.7. That gap has been widening for about eighteen months. Luna: Three point seven is not terrible, but for a platform that was the gold standard in enterprise automation for years, that is a signal. Lucas: It is. And the story behind that number is what I want to unpack. Because Marketo was early to ABM. They acquired a company called Insightera back in 2014, then built their ABM module on top of that. For a long time, they were the platform to beat. But then Adobe bought Marketo in 2018 for four point seven five billion dollars. And since then, the pace of innovation on the Marketo side has slowed. Luna: Adobe had its own ABM product, didn't it? I remember they had Adobe Experience Cloud and they were pushing that for account-based advertising. Lucas: Right. So you have this internal tension. Adobe wants to sell its Experience Cloud — which includes Adobe Target, Adobe Audience Manager, Adobe Campaign — and Marketo becomes one piece of a bigger puzzle. But Marketo's own ABM roadmap gets deprioritized. Features that users have been asking for — like native LinkedIn account targeting, better predictive scoring, a modern UI — they just did not arrive on Marketo's timeline. Luna: And meanwhile HubSpot, which was historically seen as the tool for smaller companies, started building upward. When did they really lean into ABM? Lucas: I would say the inflection point was late 2024, early 2025. HubSpot had already introduced their ABM tools in 2021 — things like company-level tracking, target account lists, and a basic intent data integration. But the 2025 overhaul was significant. They added predictive lead scoring for target accounts, deeper LinkedIn ad integration, and a whole reporting dashboard focused on account engagement. And they did it without making you buy a separate add-on. Luna: That last point is huge. Marketo's ABM module is a separate SKU. You are paying extra, on top of your Marketo subscription, to get the ABM features. HubSpot includes it in their Enterprise tier. Lucas: Exactly. So the cost equation shifts. Let me give you a real example. I spoke with a marketing director at a cybersecurity company — about 200 employees, selling to mid-market and enterprise. They had been on Marketo for three years. They were paying roughly sixty thousand dollars a year for Marketo, plus another fifteen thousand for the ABM add-on. That is seventy-five thousand before any services or data costs. Luna: And what did they switch to? Lucas: HubSpot Enterprise. Their total cost dropped to about fifty thousand a year, and they got the ABM features included. But the real story is what happened after the switch. They migrated in January of this year. By April, their target account engagement rate had increased by forty percent. Their sales team started getting more meetings from named accounts. And the marketing team could finally see, in one dashboard, which accounts were showing intent, which ones were visiting the website, and which ones their sales reps should call. Luna: Forty percent is not just a lift, that changes how the sales and marketing teams work together. What was the main driver of that improvement? Lucas: According to the director, it was the integration between HubSpot's CRM and the ABM tools. Marketo has always had a complicated relationship with CRM — you need a separate connector, data sync can be messy. HubSpot's CRM is native. So when a target account's contacts engage with content, that activity flows into the same record the sales rep is looking at. No lag, no confusion. Luna: That is the kind of detail that does not show up in a G2 score but matters enormously day to day. Lucas: Absolutely. And it points to a broader pattern. Marketo is still a very powerful platform if you have a dedicated team of admins and you have been using it for years. The learning curve is steep, but the depth is there. The problem is that for the mid-market — companies with one or two marketing ops people — HubSpot is becoming the easier, cheaper, and faster choice. And that is where the growth is. Luna: Let's talk about the September 2025 Marketo UI update, because I remember that generating a lot of frustration in the community. What actually happened? Lucas: Marketo rolled out a redesigned interface — they called it the 'modern experience' — and it was not optional. Users logged in one day and everything looked different. But it was not just a visual change. They moved common actions, buried features that power users relied on, and some functions actually broke. I remember seeing posts on Reddit and in the Marketo community where people were spending hours just trying to find how to clone a smart campaign. Luna: And the feedback was loud. But did Adobe respond? Lucas: They did roll back some changes in November. But the damage to trust was done. When you are a marketing ops person and your core tool changes overnight in a way that hurts your productivity, you start looking at alternatives. And HubSpot was there, with a UI that is consistently clean, with updates that are communicated well in advance. Luna: So if I am a mid-market B2B marketer evaluating platforms in May 2026, what should I be looking at? Lucas: I think you have to assess your own complexity. If you have very sophisticated multi-touch attribution needs, complex lead scoring models that involve dozens of fields, and a large team that is deeply trained on Marketo, the cost of switching may not be worth it. Marketo can still do those things at scale. But if you are building your marketing automation stack fresh, or if you are frustrated with Marketo, HubSpot's ABM offering is genuinely competitive now. Luna: And what about the other players? There is Demandbase, 6sense, Terminus — pure-play ABM platforms. Lucas: Those are real options too, especially if you want best-in-class ABM and are willing to layer it on top of a separate marketing automation platform. But then you are managing multiple tools, multiple data integrations. For a lot of mid-market teams, the appeal of HubSpot is that it replaces both the marketing automation and the ABM tool. One platform, one login, one data set. Luna: Makes sense. And it is a decision that will affect the team's workflow for years, so the evaluation matters. Lucas: Yeah. And I think one of the underrated factors is the community and support ecosystem. HubSpot's user community is massive, very active, and the company invests heavily in training and certification. Marketo has a strong community too, but it is older, more fragmented. When you hit a problem, how quickly can you find an answer? That is a real productivity factor. Luna: Totally. And before we move on, I want to mention something that keeps this show going. We do not run ads — that is a deliberate choice. If you want to support that, buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo is the place. Lucas: Yeah, it is a small way to keep these conversations coming. And if today was useful to you, that link helps. Luna: Alright, back to ABM. So given what we have seen, do you think Marketo will ever regain its lead, or is HubSpot the default now? Lucas: I think it depends on Adobe's strategy. If Adobe decides to deeply integrate Marketo with the rest of the Experience Cloud and build genuinely innovative ABM features that leverage Adobe's strength in content personalization and analytics, then Marketo could come back. But that would require a significant investment and a clear product vision. Right now, the signals are not there. Luna: What would that look like? For example, using Adobe Sensei AI to predict which accounts are most likely to convert, and then automatically serving personalized content across Adobe Target — that could be powerful. Lucas: Exactly. That is the kind of cross-product synergy that Adobe should be able to deliver, but they have not executed on it yet for ABM. Meanwhile, HubSpot is adding AI features too. They rolled out their own predictive lead scoring in 2025, and they have content personalization tools that are getting better. So the gap may not close unless Adobe makes a move. Luna: Let's also talk about intent data. That is a big piece of ABM — knowing which accounts are researching your category. How do the two platforms compare? Lucas: HubSpot has a native intent data integration through their partnership with Bombora. You can see which target accounts are showing spikes in content consumption around relevant topics. It is not the deepest intent data on the market, but it is built in and it works. Marketo has integrations too, but again, it is an add-on. You have to buy a separate Bombora license and then set up the integration. For a mid-market team, HubSpot's approach is simpler. Luna: And simplicity matters when your team is small. I want to circle back to that cybersecurity company. What was the migration process like for them? Lucas: It took about three months from decision to full cutover. They had to map their lead scoring model, rebuild their email templates, set up the new tracking. But the director told me that HubSpot's migration team was very hands-on. And because HubSpot's CRM already had the company data from their sales team, a lot of the account structure was already in place. The hardest part was retraining the team on the new interface. Luna: But you said they saw results within three months? Lucas: Yeah. They went live in January, and by April, the engagement metrics were up forty percent. Some of that is the new tool effect — people pay more attention when you launch something new. But the director was confident that the improvement was sustainable because the workflows were actually more efficient. Luna: That is a strong signal for HubSpot. And I think for listeners who are considering a switch, the key takeaway is: evaluate your specific needs. Do not just follow the hype. Lucas: Exactly. And if you are happy with Marketo and it works for your team, there is no emergency. But if you are feeling friction — if the UI frustrates you, if the cost of add-ons is piling up, if you want a more integrated experience — it is worth a serious look at HubSpot. Luna: I think we have covered the main points. For anyone who wants to dig deeper, the G2 comparison reports are a good start, and there are some good community threads on the HubSpot subreddit about ABM. Lucas: Yeah. And we will keep tracking this space. The ABM platform landscape is shifting fast, and we will have more episodes on specific tools and tactics. Luna: Thanks for listening, and if you found this useful, you know where to find us. Buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo.