Marketo Replacement RFP Checklist: Questions to Ask Before Switching B2B Marketing Automation

Most Marketo replacement RFPs start the same way. Someone pulls the RFP from the last platform evaluation off a shared drive, swaps the date, and sends it to five vendors.

That RFP was written in 2015. It scores every vendor on lead scoring, list segmentation, email deliverability, and workflow builders. Marketo invented most of those categories. So it's no surprise when the incumbent, or something built on the same architecture, wins the evaluation.

If you're evaluating B2B marketing automation platforms now, the RFP itself is usually the problem. It tests for what marketing automation used to do, not what it needs to do with product data, AI agents, and a real data warehouse behind it.

Below is the full checklist we'd hand you if we were on your side of the table: every question, grouped by category, ready to copy into your own RFP. A few categories deserve context first, because the answers reveal more about a vendor's actual architecture than the yes/no box suggests.

AI capabilities: the question behind the question

Every vendor will tell you they have AI. The real test is whether that AI can act inside the platform or only talk about it.

Ask for a specific number: what percentage of the platform can an AI agent operate through an API or MCP server, with read and write access, not just read? Ask how many distinct agents exist and what each one does. Ask whether you can bring your own enterprise LLM account (Claude, ChatGPT, whatever your team already has) instead of being locked into the vendor's native assistant.

Then go further: can a chat-based agent actually build a journey, create a dynamic audience, or draft an email, and present it for approval? Or can it only summarize a report someone else built by hand? Can a campaign request from Asana or Slack trigger an agent to build the program end to end without a human touching six screens? That's the line between an AI feature and an AI-native platform.

One more question that rarely makes it into standard RFPs but should: what data, including your customers' PII, does the vendor train its models on? Get a direct answer in writing, not a policy link.

Data and CDP: the architecture question that decides everything else

This is where legacy platforms usually reveal themselves fastest. Does the provider connect to your data warehouse and to Segment as both a source and a destination? Does it support Segment replay? Can it handle your actual product data volume, which for most PLG companies means billions of events a month, not thousands?

The follow-up questions matter more than the yes/no: is any SQL required to set up or maintain the connection? If a new product event shows up in your warehouse, does a new field appear automatically, or does someone have to build it by hand? Can product data be grouped by organization or workspace without a professional services engagement? A vendor that needs a services project every time your data model changes will cost you that same tax for as long as you're a customer.

Salesforce: past the lead object

Anyone can sync a lead field. Ask whether the platform connects to SFDC Accounts, Campaigns, Campaign Members, and Opportunities, not just Leads and Contacts, and whether Campaign Member status syncs bidirectionally. If you're mid-migration and running two platforms at once, ask how the new provider coordinates with whatever you're sending from today, Marketo, HubSpot, or Outreach, so sends don't collide.

Account intelligence: does it need another vendor bolted on

Ask whether the platform does native ICP modeling and account scoring on firmographic, technographic, and behavioral signals, or whether that requires layering on 6sense, Demandbase, or ZoomInfo. A lot of "AI-powered" platforms are AI-powered right up until you ask about enrichment and intent data, at which point the answer becomes a partner integration and another line item.

Security and compliance: read past the SOC 2 badge

Every serious vendor has SOC 2 Type II. Ask if it's continuously monitored, not just an annual point-in-time audit. Ask for the sub-processor list and whether servers are US-based if that matters to you. Ask directly whether customer data is used to train models across other customers. If the platform has an MCP server, ask whether it supports OAuth 2.1, and whether a read-only viewer role exists for people who need visibility without write access.

Onboarding and migration: get the real numbers

Ask for the typical timeline from signed contract to first live campaign, in weeks, not a range that spans a year. Ask whether the vendor offers AI-assisted tools to audit and migrate your existing Marketo or HubSpot programs, versus a manual rebuild. Ask whether a dedicated technical resource, sometimes called a forward-deployed engineer, is included for implementation, or billed separately.

What a strong answer looks like

You'll get vague answers to a lot of this on purpose, because vague is the safest answer when the real one is unflattering. A few reference points from teams that already went through this evaluation:

Bill.com ran a campaign that used to take 23 people, 35 meetings, and 3 weeks. The same campaign now takes 3 people and 2 hours. SauceLabs saw a 75% increase in activation once their platform could see product usage instead of just form fills. Clay went from under 1% email open rates to 3x engagement by personalizing off product activity instead of static lists. Mural doubled pipeline by extending marketing past the MQL handoff into full lifecycle motions. Nylas saw an 80% increase in free-to-paid conversion once onboarding emails were driven by actual product usage.

None of that came from a bigger team or a bigger budget. It came from a different architecture underneath the platform.

The full RFP checklist

Copy this into your own RFP. Ask every vendor the same questions, in the same order, and score them the same way.

AI Capabilities & Agentic Workflows

Describe your AI product strategy to make marketing efforts more effective and end users more efficient.

Does the platform enable goal-based marketing, where marketers input business goals and receive strategic recommendations based on business context, product activity, sales, marketing, and web data?

How does the platform support AI-enhanced marketing workflows through native integrations and API connectivity, an AI integration framework, and workflow orchestration? Include specific use cases and technical capabilities.

Does the platform support an MCP server? Does it support both read and write functionality?

How many agents does the MCP server enable? Can you list them?

Does the platform offer AI-powered audience segmentation?

Can we use our own enterprise LLM account (e.g. ChatGPT, Claude)?

Does the platform use business context to inform marketing recommendations and personalization?

Does the platform offer agents that automate the building of audiences, journeys, and email content?

Can users analyze all available data in the application through a chat-based agent, and receive strategic recommendations tied to business outcomes?

What data, including PII, does the vendor use to train its AI models?

Do the AI capabilities meet enterprise data and security policies?

Does the platform offer customizable agent frameworks for building business-specific agents tailored to your workflows, personas, and GTM motion?

Can campaign requests from a project management tool (e.g. Asana) automatically trigger agents to build programs, audiences, journeys, and email content, without manual intervention?

Does the platform offer AI-powered data normalization (e.g. standardizing "VP Marketing," "Vice President of Marketing," and "VP, Mktg" into one value)?

Can users edit and maintain the business context (ICP, personas, products, positioning) that powers AI recommendations and agent behavior?

What review and approval workflows exist before agent-built campaigns go live? How is human oversight of AI-generated output enforced?

Can journeys be drafted and edited via chat-based agents?

Can dynamic lists and audiences be created via chat-based agents? What filter types are available?

Can segmentation categories be edited via chat-based agents?

Can email templates be created and edited via chat-based agents?

Can personalization tokens be created and managed via chat-based agents?

Can workspace assets be organized into folders and tags via chat-based agents?

Can chat-based agents answer product and how-to questions inline?

Data Warehouse & CDP

Does the platform connect to Segment.io directly as both a source and a destination?

Does the platform support our volume of product data (e.g. billions of product events a month)?

Does the platform support Segment replay?

Does the platform connect to a data warehouse?

Can the platform export or write data back to the data warehouse?

Is any SQL required for setup or ongoing management?

Is there a limit on data volume sent via data warehouse or CDP? Are there pricing implications?

Can product data be grouped by organization or workspace? Does that require professional services?

Does the platform support a 1:many relationship between users and organizations?

If new product events are added to the CDP or warehouse, are new fields created automatically?

Is manually creating fields in the platform required to sync product data?

Can users view imported product events and their properties? What audit capabilities exist?

How often does the platform sync data from Segment?

How often does the platform sync data from the data warehouse?

Does the platform support triggering in-app notifications or nudges?

Does the platform expose sync status and error detail for data warehouse connections?

Does the platform connect to Amplitude as a product analytics source?

What admin controls exist for mapping and managing fields?

Web Tracking, Forms & Webhooks

Does the platform have native forms and the ability to connect to web forms?

Does the platform support custom forms?

Does the platform have web tracking?

Can audiences and email personalization be built from web activity?

Does the platform support inbound and outbound webhooks?

Can outbound webhook responses update contact fields automatically?

Can form and inbound-webhook entry criteria combine multiple conditions?

Salesforce Integration

Does the platform connect Salesforce lead and contact fields to platform fields?

How does the platform handle duplicate Salesforce leads and contacts?

Does the platform connect SFDC Accounts to platform Accounts?

Does the platform connect to Salesforce Campaigns and Campaign Members?

What controls exist for Salesforce sync (selective sync, API limits, sync intervals)?

How does the platform coordinate with other sending platforms (e.g. Marketo, HubSpot, Outreach) during a transition?

Does the platform connect to Salesforce Opportunities?

Does the platform support bidirectional sync of Salesforce Campaign Member status?

Account Intelligence & Enrichment

Does the platform offer native AI-powered ICP modeling without requiring a separate vendor (e.g. 6sense, Demandbase, ZoomInfo)?

Does the platform score accounts on firmographic, technographic, and behavioral signals natively?

Does the platform capture buyer intent signals at the account level? What types of intent data are available?

Does the platform natively enrich accounts with firmographic and technographic data, or is a third-party enrichment tool required?

Audience Building & Targeting

Can audiences be built from:

Forms data?

Website activity data (UTMs, sessions, pageviews)?

Product events data (users, orgs, product event streams)?

Product event properties data?

Salesforce lead and contact data?

Salesforce Account data?

Salesforce Campaign data?

Email and campaign data (e.g. opened a specific email, qualified for a campaign)?

Dynamic lists that update based on criteria or actions?

Static lists (CSV-uploaded emails)?

Account-level grouped properties?

Salesforce Opportunity data (deal stage, amount, close date)?

Can dynamic lists be built using boolean logic?

Can users customize CSV exports of contacts and audience lists?

Does the platform show field-level data insights while building audiences (population, data types, value ranges)?

Campaign & Journey Orchestration

Does the platform have a visual journey builder?

Does it support branching within a journey? What types?

Does it support A/B splits for experimentation, including adjustable split percentages?

Can entire journeys be copied and used as a starting point for another?

Does the platform support nested journeys with exit criteria?

Does it have an internal email alert flow step?

Does it have a webhook flow step?

Does it have an add-to-Salesforce-Campaign flow step?

Does it have an add/remove-from-static-list flow step?

Does it have an update-value flow step to manipulate platform data?

Does it support journey exit criteria?

Can journeys be stopped and restarted?

Can live journeys be edited?

Does the platform support campaign qualification rules (every time, once per N days, etc.)?

Does it support batch campaigns?

Does it support recurring, scheduled, and triggered campaigns?

Does it support product-event-triggered campaigns?

Does it support journey organization (folders, tags)?

Can a CSV be uploaded directly to an audience?

Does it support dynamic list preview and export?

Can journeys qualify based on both product users and SFDC contacts?

Can journey qualification use Account or workspace-level data?

Does the platform support transactional emails (non-marketing, service-related, bypassing unsubscribe and send limits)?

Does it have a "wait for Salesforce sync" flow step?

Email & Personalization

Does the platform have a WYSIWYG email editor?

Does it have an HTML email editor?

Can the "send from" address be customized (e.g. sending as the CSM owner of an SFDC Account)?

Can "reply to" be customized?

Does it support CC/BCC?

Does it have a personalization editor?

Can personalization be done without SQL or a scripting language?

What personalization template language, if any, is supported?

Can charts be created within emails to visualize product usage?

Does the platform have lead scoring?

Can new personalization components (product events, SFDC fields, forms, web activity) be added without code?

Can aggregation and sums across user product activity be done without code?

Can aggregation and sums across workspace product activity be done without code?

Can all product events for a single user be viewed in one place?

Can email communication limits be set on a daily and weekly basis?

Reporting & Analytics

Can marketing events be sent back to Segment for closed-loop and ROI analysis?

Does the platform have email performance reporting (sent, opened, clicks, link tracking)?

Does it report on journey volumes?

Does it offer near-real-time reporting on usage against your contracted pricing mechanism (contacts, product events, API calls)?

Does it have conversion tracking tied to journeys?

Does it maintain a chronological activity log per contact?

Can users see the full recipient list for a sent email inside the report?

Use Cases to Test in the Demo

Ask the vendor to demo, live, not on slides:

B2B-aware onboarding: match a new product user to the right SFDC contact/account and personalize based on account owner, lifecycle status, and other SFDC data.

Free-trial activation: customize the user's experience based on in-product activity.

Sales pipeline creation from the existing customer base: alert the account owner of an upsell opportunity as usage approaches a threshold.

Prompting an admin to assign unused licenses.

Weekly account activity roll-ups to decision makers (e.g. VP-level contacts who have never logged in).

Abandoned upgrade/cart flows (e.g. a user completes billing steps but doesn't upgrade).

Usage-threshold emails: aggregate activity across all users in a period and alert the admin near or over the entitled threshold.

Weekly org-level activity updates aggregating product events across the org or workspace.

Campaign qualification based on product activity across the org, or activity on the SFDC Account.

Qualification based on user role (e.g. user vs. admin).

Alerting a sales owner when a free trial starts at a company with an open enterprise opportunity.

Scale, Speed & Reliability

Does the provider have other customers of similar type and size? Who?

Security & Compliance

Is the provider SOC 2 Type II compliant?

Is that compliance continuously monitored, or point-in-time only?

Does the provider have a published security policy?

Does the provider maintain a sub-processors list?

Does the provider have servers in the US?

Does the provider use customer data across accounts to train AI models?

Does the provider carry technology E&O/cyber insurance?

Has the provider had a data leak, breach, or inadvertent customer data exposure?

Does the provider support data subject erasure requests (DSRs)?

Does the MCP server support OAuth 2.1 authentication?

Does the provider support a read-only viewer role?

Onboarding & Migration

Does the provider offer AI-assisted tools to audit and migrate existing programs from a legacy MAP (e.g. Marketo, HubSpot)?

Does the provider offer a dedicated technical resource (e.g. forward-deployed engineer) for implementation and custom workflow development?

What is the typical timeline from contract signature to first live campaign?

Deliverability

Does the provider support multiple sending domains and subdomains (e.g. 5+ subdomains across acquired brands)?

Does the provider offer both dedicated and shared IP options? Which is the default?

Does the provider offer deliverability monitoring and inbox placement reporting?

How does the provider manage email size and tracking-link overhead that can cause clipping?

Pricing & Commercial

Are there additional charges for contact database size or product data volume beyond the base platform fee?

What should be included in a Marketo replacement RFP?

Beyond standard email, list, and CRM questions, a current RFP needs to test AI agent execution (not just AI features), native data warehouse and CDP connectivity at product-data scale, full Salesforce object coverage beyond leads and contacts, and native account intelligence. The full checklist above covers all of these plus security, migration, and pricing.