‍80% of businesses have experienced increased leads using marketing automation.

77% of the marketers who have used marketing automation tools have seen a rise in conversion rates.

90% of the top CMOs said they would start using marketing automation tools by the end of 2021. It’s 2022 now.

Marketing automation is no longer a thing of the future. It’s the best way forward at present, and if you’re not taking advantage of it despite consistently having a long list of marketing tasks, you may already be behind your competitors.

Marketing automation improves your marketing efforts. Suppose you and your competitors both have complex marketing activities to carry out. In that case, some of your competitors may be already using marketing automation to boost their businesses.

But what tool should you choose for your business? Well, it will depend significantly on what problem you’re looking to solve through marketing automation. 

We’ve discussed the best marketing automation tools out there already. Now, we will compare two of the best tools – AdRoll and Markopolo.

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What is Adroll?

Adroll is a marketing and advertising platform that helps e-commerce brands grow revenue and save time on one streamlined platform. Users can make display, social, and email advertising work together and more effectively structure, measure, and optimize their marketing efforts.

What is Markopolo?

Intuitive, affordable, efficient. This is how Markopolo positions itself. And it’s easy to see why.

Markopolo's cutting-edge Marketing Operating System (OS) driven by artificial intelligence (AI) is transforming the marketing business. This SaaS startup, led by visionary co-founders Rubaiyat Farhan and Tasfia Tasbin (Forbes 30 under 30 Asia 2023), provides marketing agencies with a full suite of solutions to boost audience reach and optimize campaigns like never before. 

Agencies benefit from a 30-40% increase in audience reach when using Markopolo AI's AI infrastructure and novel MarkTag feature.

However, the advantages do not stop there. Advanced Machine Learning models optimize ads on a constant basis, reducing human error and freeing up teams for strategic projects. With Markopolo, you can say goodbye to guesswork and hello to data-driven marketing success.

Now, let's do a feature-wise comparison between the two-

Feature-based Comparison

Cross-Channel Advertising: AdRoll supports a wide range of advertising channels, including display ads, Meta, TikTok, and email marketing.

Markopolo in addition to Meta, TikTok, and Display Ads, supports Google Search and Shopping Ads, LinkedIn, and Amazon Ads.

Audience Targeting: AdRoll uses machine learning algorithms to analyze customer behavior and build detailed audience profiles. This allows businesses to target their advertising campaigns to the customers who are most likely to be interested in their products or services.

Markopolo does it too. The uniqueness lies in the data used and the clustering algorithm used on that for segmentation and fine-tuning the best-performing target audience. Markopolo also has its preset audiences, which it can generate based on every connected data point and of course MarkTag’s Data.

Dynamic Creative: AdRoll's dynamic creative tools help businesses create personalized ads that automatically adjust to each customer's preferences and behavior. This can increase the effectiveness of advertising campaigns.

Markopolo has creative switching in place with its auto-optimization algorithms. It can create multiple sets of experimentation with creativity and copies, ultimately getting the user the best possible ROAS.

Retargeting: One of AdRoll's key features is its ability to retarget customers who have visited a business's website but did not make a purchase. This helps businesses re-engage these potential customers and encourage them to complete their purchases.

Markopolo also has to retarget feature in it. With MarkTag’s implementation, Markopolo can build a synchronous marketing stack where data flows in microseconds among the stack elements.

Also being a cross-platform server-side tracker, MarkTag instantaneously gets connected with Meta Pixel, TikTok Pixel, and Google’s GTM. These enhance Markopolo’s ability to accurately track a visitor’s journey by 25-45%. Coupled with MarkTag’s ease of implementation, omits any possibility of data leakages/funnel leakages, summing up an additional 10-15% enhancement in retargeting ability.

Marketing Automation: AdRoll offers automation features that save time and effort by automating repetitive tasks. These include automatically optimizing ad placements, and scheduling email campaigns.

Markopolo has taken it to a whole new level with its customizable robotic automation capabilities. Being able to manage every aspect of a campaign/ad group/ad, with a huge library of variables, is a huge plus point for an account manager who wants to optimize these 24/7. Also, Markopolo gives the ability to use offsite conversion/offsite data in its robotic automation feature. These include data generated from direct sales, marketplace sales, and affiliate-based sales.

Offsite conversion or offsite data is any data that has been generated outside of the platforms like Meta/Google/Linkedin. Why it’s important because of the sheer amount of volume data that can be generated from direct sales, marketplace sales, and affiliate-based sales.

Performance Reporting and Analytics: AdRoll provides reporting and analytics tools that allow businesses to measure the success of their advertising campaigns and optimize them based on real-time data.

Markopolo also provides this. With MarkTag, Markopolo removes any potential attribution gap/data discrepancy. MarkTag syncs in microseconds with the platforms, and the ease of implementation results in almost zero data leakage. The impact can be seen in the Event Match Quality Score or EMQ Score of the users' marketing stack.

Markopolo comes with custom metrics feature, where the user can generate his custom cross-platform metric to be monitored.

Email Marketing: This is a feature that allows businesses to send personalized emails to their customers. It is used for nurturing customer relationships and driving repeat business.

Markopolo is not focusing on building an email marketing segment for its product roadmap. A user can avail of it in Markopolo through a simple Zapier integration.

Attribution Reporting: This feature enables businesses to understand the customer journey and the touchpoints that lead to conversions. It helps in identifying the channels and campaigns that are driving the most sales, allowing for more informed decision-making. Adroll uses its own Pixel for Attribution Reporting.

Markopolo’s MarkTag gives it a clear edge over Adroll in terms of Attribution tracking. A more detailed analysis of the scene technology difference is described below.

***Pixel-Based Tracking (Adroll)***Pixel-based tracking, also known as client-side tracking, involves inserting a small snippet of code (or pixel) onto a webpage, usually within a specific advertisement or upon the page load. This pixel sends back data to the server when the page is loaded or when a user interacts with the ad.‍

‍Pros of Pixel-Based Tracking:

1. Simple Implementation : Pixel-based tracking is relatively simple to implement. Once the pixel is embedded in the web page or ad, it will start collecting data automatically whenever the page is loaded or the ad is clicked.
2. Real-Time Data : Because the pixel sends data back to the server every time it is activated, you get real-time information about user interactions.

Cons of Pixel-Based Tracking:

1. User's Browser Dependency : Since pixel-based tracking relies on the user's browser to send data back, it is affected by browser settings and limitations. If a user's browser blocks third-party cookies, for instance, the tracking pixel may not work.
2. Latency : Since the tracking process involves making a request to a server and then waiting for a response, it can introduce latency (or delay) to the page load time.
3. Growing Privacy Concerns : The use of tracking pixels has raised privacy concerns, as they can be used to collect a great deal of information about a user's behavior online without their knowledge or consent.

***Server-Side Tracking (Markopolo)***Server-side tracking, on the other hand, involves capturing and processing user data at the server level. Instead of relying on the user's browser to send data back, this method involves the server directly receiving and processing data.

‍Pros of Server-Side Tracking:

1. Less Affected by Browser Limitations : Since server-side tracking does not rely on the user's browser to send data back, it is less affected by browser settings and limitations. It can still capture data even if third-party cookies are blocked.
2. Faster Load Times : Since the tracking process takes place on the server, it does not introduce additional latency to the page load time.
3. More Robust Data Collection : Server-side tracking can capture a wider range of data than pixel-based tracking, as it is not limited to the data that can be captured by a pixel.

Cons of Server-Side Tracking:

1. Complex Implementation : Implementing server-side tracking can be more complex than implementing pixel-based tracking. It requires a deeper understanding of server-side technologies and may require the collaboration of both developers and marketers. Markopolo solves this with their Implementation Helper Suite.‍
2. Possible Data Inconsistencies : Since server-side tracking involves processing data on the server, it can lead to data inconsistencies if the server and the client (i.e., the user's browser) are not perfectly synced. This is solved with Markopolo's Instant Sync Technology.‍
3. Delayed Data : Unlike pixel-based tracking, server-side tracking does not always provide real-time data. Depending on how the server is set up, there may be a delay between when an event occurs and when it is recorded. However,  Markopolo fixes this, providing Data in <2 microseconds.

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AI Optimization: AdRoll's platform utilizes machine learning and artificial intelligence to continually analyze advertising data and optimize campaigns for better performance.

When we launched Markopolo, it was built keeping in mind MSMEs who don’t have that much data in their marketing stacks.

These added a uniqueness itself, as all the algorithms that we have built till now are built keeping low data scenarios in mind, including our submitted provisional patent ‘Method of suggesting high performing audience interests and keywords for online advertising.’ (EFS ID: 44479531, Application Number: 63287822).

Businesses that suffer from unorganized siloed data in marketing stacks got to see major improvements with Markopolo from these algorithms.

Markopolo utilizes offsite conversion/offsite data in its optimization architecture. These include data generated from direct sales, marketplace sales, and affiliate-based sales.

While setting up cross-platform budget optimization, users can select these variables as the primary goal to be improved too.We trained the software to be efficient in a range of monthly advertising budget limits across platforms. Till now we trained it with 13 million campaign performance data points. CMOs/Marketing Managers can now let the software spread their whole monthly advertising budget across platforms. Markopolo can do it seamlessly based on cross-channel campaign performances.

Integration: AdRoll integrates seamlessly with various e-commerce platforms like Shopify, Magento, and WooCommerce, among others. This allows businesses to easily import their product catalogs and automatically track sales and conversions.

Markopolo integrates with Shopify, HubSpot, Amazon, and any Marketplace available currently globally. We have built a generalized proprietary architecture to get connected with these Marketplaces.

Markopolo vs AdRoll: Finding The Better Financial Option

Markopolo and AdRoll have different sets of features and focuses. So, it’s understandable why Markopolo and AdRoll would have different types of pricing. Let’s take a look at where their pricings stand to get a clearer picture.

Pricing: Markopolo

For its wide range of features, Markopolo charges a very fair price.

We have 2 types of pricing plans for you depending on your organizational needs: Self-Serve & Enterprise.

Under Self-Serve, we have-

• Starter: $47/month
• Growth: $152/month

And under Enterprise, we have-

• Starter: $999/month
• Growth: $1999/month
• Evolution: $2999/month

Pricing: AdRoll

AdRoll uses a dynamic pricing model. For retargeting, AdRoll uses a CPM model. Basically, you’ll need to pay a specific amount of money for every thousand impressions on the ad you’re using. AdRoll has a very helpful ROAS Calculator, using which you’ll get a better idea of the amount which you’ll be spending, and the expected return as well.

AdRoll also offers marketing solutions, and they have three different plans: Starter, Essentials, Pro. The starter plan is free, so it come with limited features. For the Essentials plan, you’ll need to spend $9 per month. The Pro plan will cost you $19 per month.

The Verdict

The tool for you to choose? Well, there’s no outright winner ever for marketing automation tools because it depends a lot on what goals you have from your tool.

However, if you want to get an all-in-one solution, a tool that’ll take care of every marketing operation that can be automated, then Markopolo is your tool.

We hope you find the perfect marketing automation tool for your business. All the best!

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