Replace Marketo before December, without hitting another ceiling.
Marketo's 100-field API limit, bulk-export throttling, and agentic inflexibility are not a fit for how your team operates. Conversion reads from Databricks zero-copy, ships MCP natively, and replaces the custom Codex integration you built and maintain yourself.
No ceiling
Unlimited custom fields. Marketo caps at 100 via API.
Zero-copy
Native Databricks read. No schema rebuild when data changes.
Native MCP
No home-built Codex integration to maintain.
3-in-1
Marketo, Hightouch, and SendGrid consolidated into one platform.
You hit the ceiling last week. Conversion has no ceiling.
Marketo's 100-custom-field API limit is a hard stop. Its bulk-export API is rate-limited and starts failing unpredictably around 10M contacts. Its daily quota gets exhausted quickly when agents run against it. These are not configuration issues. They are architectural limits. Conversion was built without them.
Marketo today
Custom fields via API
lead.custom_field_*
Hard ceiling. No new fields can be created via API.
Bulk export throughput
/bulk/v1/leads/export
Rate-limited. Fails unpredictably at ~10M contacts.
Daily API call quota
X-RateLimit-Remaining
Shared across the instance. Agentic workloads exhaust it fast.
Conversion
Custom fields
custom.any_field_name
No field ceiling. Add any custom attribute at any time.
Data throughput
databricks.zero_copy_read
Reads from Databricks natively. Handles tens of millions of contacts.
Agent API access
mcp://conversion/campaigns
MCP built in. No home-built integration to maintain.
SQL to live send, without rebuilding the schema.
Your Databricks warehouse is the center of gravity. Operationalizing it into live campaigns has required custom SQL, fragile schema rebuilds, and a Hightouch layer that breaks whenever the data changes. Conversion connects to Databricks with your permissions structure intact. A marketer or data scientist writes a query, and Conversion turns it into a live audience or send without any of that overhead.
Salesforce
CRM
Snowflake
Warehouse
Product
Events
AI Agents
Enrichment
Sarah Chen
VP of Marketing · Acme Corp
Lead Score
0
Replace your Codex and MCP build with something that ships natively.
You built your own MCP into Marketo and run most of campaign ops through Codex. It works, and it is also fragile, undocumented, and something only you can maintain. Conversion ships MCP natively. A request comes in through Slack or Linear, an agent queries Databricks, builds the list and campaign, routes it through human-in-the-loop QA, then syncs back to Salesforce. No glue code. No Codex maintenance window.
Slack or Linear request to draft campaign in minutes
Every output is a reviewable artifact before anything sends
Full audit trail on every agent action, including field writes
RBAC at the object and field level so the team you hire in H2 has the right access from day one
Prompt
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Output values
Conversion vs Marketo
Marketo was chosen because it could be operated with eyes closed. That was the right call then. Here is the honest read on where it stops scaling and where Conversion picks up.
| Capability | Conversion | Marketo |
|---|---|---|
| Scale and API limits | ||
| Custom fields via API | Unlimited | 100-field hard ceiling |
| Bulk export throughput | Warehouse-scale | Rate-limited, breaks near 10M |
| Native data warehouse activation | ||
| Zero-copy Databricks integration | ||
| Permissions-aware warehouse reads | ||
| Agentic operation | ||
| Native MCP (no custom integration needed) | Home-built workaround | |
| Slack or Linear request to live campaign | ||
| Human-in-the-loop approval before every send | ||
| AI SQL editor for non-technical marketers | ||
| Audit trail for every agent action | ||
| Program and campaign parity | ||
| Program-level campaign structure | ||
| Tokens and program-level personalization | ||
| Drag-and-drop email and forms | ||
| Real-time bidirectional Salesforce sync | Partial / delayed | |
| Team and governance | ||
| RBAC to the object and field level | Limited | |
| Self-serve for demand-gen and lifecycle roles | MOps-bottlenecked | |
| Absorbs Hightouch journeys | ||
| Pricing model | Marketable contacts | Database size tiers |
One platform absorbs three tools.
The real opportunity is not just replacing Marketo. It is retiring the three-tool patchwork of Marketo, Hightouch, and SendGrid into one platform your team can actually operate at scale. Conversion handles all three use cases natively.
Marketo
MAP / email / forms / programs
Hightouch
Data-driven journeys from Databricks
SendGrid
Bulk email sends at scale
Conversion
MAP, data-driven journeys, bulk send, and agent ops in one platform. One contract. One team to call.
Enterprise teams with a high security bar are already on Conversion.
Plaid and Veriforce both operate under strict data governance requirements. Both chose Conversion to consolidate their marketing stack and run agents on top of warehouse and CRM data, with the controls their security teams required.
Consolidating a multi-tool marketing stack onto Conversion under strict security controls and a demanding data governance posture.
Migrated off Salesforce Marketing Cloud and Pardot onto Conversion with our forward-deployed team, with no disruption to live campaigns.
Frequently asked questions
Conversion has no hard limits on custom fields, API throughput, or contact volume. The platform is architected to handle tens of millions of contacts and warehouse-scale audiences natively, without the throughput caps and 100-custom-field ceiling Marketo hits.
Conversion connects to Databricks using your existing permissions structure, so no data needs to be copied or re-ingested. A marketer or data scientist can write a SQL query, and Conversion turns it into a live audience or send without rebuilding schemas when data changes. If Databricks ships a CDP, Conversion is designed to complement it, not compete with it.
Yes, and without the maintenance overhead. Conversion ships MCP natively, so requests from Slack or Linear flow directly into the platform. Agents query Databricks, build the campaign, run through human-in-the-loop review, and sync back to Salesforce. No glue code.
Conversion runs alongside Marketo for the duration. A forward-deployed engineer migrates programs in phases, replicating program-level structure and tokens, so the December deadline is a forcing function, not a risk. The goal is a side-by-side pilot from September onward.
Conversion prices on marketable contacts, the contacts you actively market to, not total database size. AI usage and agent runs are included. We will scope the exact range for your volume during evaluation.
Conversion is SOC 2 Type II certified, does not train on your data or metadata, and supports field-level RBAC so your team controls exactly what the platform can read and write. A DPA is in place, and we are prepared for the legal and data-privacy review that OpenAI's procurement runs.
See it on your data before September.
Book a working session with our team. We will lead with data scale, Databricks integration, and agent-native operation, then scope what a side-by-side pilot alongside Marketo looks like before December.