Migrate from Adobe Marketo Engage to HubSpot

Smart campaigns, smart lists, and engagement programs do not migrate — only the data does

Marketo's smart campaigns, smart lists, and engagement programs are workflow constructs stored as Marketo-specific logic, not as contact records. Smart campaigns define trigger conditions and flow actions that evaluate at runtime — they have no stored member list to export. Engagement programs with nurture streams (including cadence rules, stream content assignments, and exit criteria) are entirely Marketo-native. We migrate the program membership snapshot (which contacts were in which program at cutover) and the smart list member rollups, but all automation logic — triggers, filters, wait steps, score changes, CRM sync rules — must be rebuilt in HubSpot's workflow builder. We provide a structured export of your Marketo workflow definitions as a rebuild reference for your HubSpot admin.

Lead scoring models cannot migrate — only the score values transfer

Marketo's behavioral and demographic lead scoring uses a weighted scoring engine with grade thresholds (A, B, C, D, F), scenario rules, and change-logic triggers that are evaluated continuously in Marketo. The numeric score value at cutover migrates as a static property on HubSpot contacts, but the scoring engine itself is Marketo-specific. HubSpot's native property-based scoring and Predictive Lead Scoring operate on different rule structures. We flag all scored contacts and preserve the Marketo score as Marketo_Lead_Score__c, but your team will need to configure a new scoring model in HubSpot that reflects your updated lead qualification criteria.

Activity history extraction is rate-limited and requires Bulk Extract for large datasets

Marketo's standard REST API limits activity exports to 50,000 API calls per day with a 100-call-per-20-seconds rate limit and a maximum of 10 concurrent calls. For a Marketo instance with 200,000 contacts and 5+ years of activity history, the getLeadActivity endpoint can generate millions of activity records — at REST API throughput, this can extend the migration timeline significantly. We use Marketo's Bulk Extract API (available via Marketo's Asset API for leads and activities) to accelerate large activity exports, but bulk extract operates on a 500 MB per day default limit per Marketo instance. Planning the activity extraction window before the HubSpot cutover is essential to avoid extending the delta-pickup window.

Many-to-many custom object relationships need HubSpot junction objects — Enterprise plan required

Marketo supports native many-to-many relationships between custom objects using an intermediary object with two link fields. HubSpot's custom object model does not have a native many-to-many relationship type — you must create a junction object with lookups to both the contact/company and the target custom object. This requires a HubSpot Enterprise plan (custom objects are not available on Starter, Pro, or lower Enterprise tiers). We deliver a schema plan before migration specifying which Marketo custom objects need junction objects, what fields on the junction object to populate, and whether the relationship cardinality should be collapsed (e.g., one primary association) to simplify the HubSpot model.

HubSpot's lifecycle stage model differs from Marketo's person lifecycle — no automatic equivalent

Marketo doesn't have a native lifecycle stage property on person records — lifecycle is implicit through program membership, campaign engagement, and CRM sync status. HubSpot has an explicit lifecycle_stage property with defined values (subscriber, lead, MQL, SQL, customer, evangelist). When migrating person records to HubSpot contacts, we apply a lifecycle assignment rule based on the contact's most recent program membership and activity profile: contacts with closed-won opportunity associations route to 'customer', contacts with program membership but no opportunity route to 'lead' or 'MQL' based on engagement history, and all other contacts default to 'subscriber'. The routing logic is configurable — your admin can define the threshold rules before migration runs. Original Marketo program membership is preserved as a custom property for audit purposes.