Key Steps for Improving Eloqua Segmentation

The first page in your marketing operations playbook probably stresses the three R’s: Get the right message to the right people at the right time.  And it goes without saying that sending an email that isn’t timely or relevant won’t generate the desired results.

For your campaign to work, you need accurate segmentation data in order to pull the correct list of contacts for your campaign.  Ask yourself, do you have the correct information and is it standardized for accurate segmentation?

• How good is your Geographic information including Country, City, Zip/Postal Code? If your products or services vary by region, getting this wrong might confuse your customers and cause awkward questions for your sales team.
• Can you target the correct people within an organization? If you’re just using Job Title, this may not be accurate enough.  Marketers who divide and standard Titles into Job Level and Job Role are at the top of their game.
• What about Industry classifications, area of Interest, and organization Size? If your game is this strong, you’re ready for the big leagues.

As a marketer, you must have accurate data.  For example, it does you no good if you try to pull a list of prospects who reside in the United States, are Directors or Vice Presidents or higher and work in the Healthcare industry if your data is incomplete, inaccurate and not standardized.

Oracle Eloqua offers many ways to standardize data as it enters your system.  It’s always best to normalize the data as it comes into your system, whether on forms, list uploads or from other systems.  However, we all know that data inputs are not always well controlled, and so inaccurate or non-standard data can creep in.  Using the Eloqua Contact Washing Machine App will go a long way to solving that problem.  But using it alone may not be enough.  Sometimes what you need is fresh talent, some new players for the team.

At 4Thought Marketing, we offer Data Normalization Apps for Oracle Eloqua that add new capabilities to your data management process.

We offer two Data Normalization apps that easily standardize your State and Country fields into your standard list of values (either 2, 3 characters or full name).  Another pair of apps will parse your Job Title field (normally a free text field) into the standard list of 8-10 values for Job Level and Job Function.

If you’re struggling to win the results you desire using your current playbook, consider adding some new talent and technologies to up your game.

Contact us for a price list of all our apps or for more information on these apps, or if you have a special need that you just can’t seem to solve via the built-in Eloqua functionally — a custom app could deliver everything you’ve been wanting.