Just as annual physical checkups are crucial to maintaining our overall well-being, periodic Oracle Eloqua Health Checks ensure your marketing automation systems operate at peak performance. By treating an Eloqua Health Check as an annual physical, businesses can identify potential issues, improve processes, and optimize customer experience before any challenges arise. In this article, we’ll delve into the value of an Eloqua Health Check, highlighting the advantages of engaging external experts for an independent evaluation. Furthermore, we will explore real-world examples of how businesses have benefited from these evaluations, illustrating the critical role they play in enhancing marketing effectiveness.

Why Annual Eloqua Health Checks Matter

Consider a marketing team at a mid-sized company that performed an Eloqua Health Check last year. They discovered several outdated processes and integrations that were affecting their campaign performance. By implementing the recommendations provided by the external expert, they streamlined their workflows, resulting in a 20% increase in lead conversion rates over the next quarter. This case exemplifies how proactive health checks can lead to tangible performance improvements.

Additionally, annual Eloqua Health Checks provide an opportunity for teams to reassess their goals and objectives. For instance, a large enterprise discovered during their health check that their target audience had shifted due to market changes. By adapting their marketing strategies accordingly, they were able to engage a previously untapped demographic, significantly expanding their market reach.

Early Detection and Prevention

Moreover, adapting to changes in the marketing landscape is critical. An example of this is a company that traditionally relied on email marketing. After an Eloqua Health Check, they realized they needed to diversify their approach to include social media and content marketing. As a result, they developed a multi-channel marketing strategy that increased their engagement rates and overall brand visibility.

An annual Eloqua Health Check enables businesses to identify and address weaknesses and vulnerabilities in their marketing automation systems. Identifying these issues early on can prevent costly and time-consuming problems from arising. For instance, if a business identifies a disconnect between their email campaigns and their CRM data, they can address it swiftly, preventing missed opportunities in lead nurturing and follow-up.

For instance, a case study highlighted how a small business utilized insights gained from their health check to implement machine learning tools that predicted customer behavior. The result was a 30% increase in sales attributed to more accurately targeted marketing efforts and improved follow-up processes.

Adapt to Changing Landscapes

Furthermore, streamlining processes can also lead to significant cost savings. One company reported after an Eloqua Health Check that they eliminated redundant marketing processes, allowing their team to focus on high-impact tasks. This shift increased their productivity by 25%, demonstrating how effective health checks can lead to not just systematic improvements but also enhancements in team efficiency.

The world of marketing automation is constantly evolving, with new tools and strategies emerging frequently. An annual Eloqua Health Check ensures your business stays up to date with the latest developments and trends, making it easier to adapt and stay ahead of the competition. By integrating new technologies, such as AI-driven analytics, companies can refine their targeting and improve return on investment for various campaigns.

The potential for growth stemming from regular Eloqua Health Checks can also be seen in the context of digital transformation. Companies that regularly assess their marketing automation systems are often more open to embracing new technologies and processes, which can lead to groundbreaking innovations in how they connect with customers.

Enhance Customer Experience

Regular system checkups can help businesses fine-tune their marketing strategies to better meet customer expectations. By reviewing and analyzing data, companies can gain valuable insights into customer behavior and preferences, enabling them to deliver more personalized and relevant experiences. For example, a retail company found that by segmenting their audience based on previous purchases identified during their Eloqua Health Check, they could craft tailored email campaigns that resulted in higher open and click-through rates.

The benefits of engaging external experts for your Eloqua Health Check cannot be overstated. With an independent evaluation, organizations often find opportunities for innovation that they may not have identified on their own. By working with specialists, companies can also access the latest industry trends and technologies that can further enhance their marketing strategies.

Streamline Processes and Improve Efficiency

Additionally, hiring an expert can provide a benchmarking opportunity. A knowledgeable consultant can compare your company’s practices against industry standards, enabling your team to understand where they stand in the competitive landscape.

An Eloqua Health Check can reveal inefficiencies and redundancies in existing marketing processes. This, in turn, will help businesses increase efficiency and save more money. For example, a business that discovered an outdated lead scoring system during their health check was able to revamp their approach based on current buyer behavior, leading to more qualified leads and higher sales conversions.

Foster Growth and Innovation

Moreover, experts can assist with adopting new features that the internal team may not yet be familiar with. This education ensures that the team can fully leverage Eloqua’s capabilities, ultimately enhancing their marketing strategies and customer outreach.

Regular system checkups can encourage a culture of continuous improvement within an organization. By conducting regular Eloqua Health Checks, businesses can set realistic goals and expectations for future upgrades or migrations, laying the groundwork for innovation and growth. For example, a tech company used their health check findings to pivot their product marketing strategy, leading to the launch of a successful new product line that aligned with market demands.

Additionally, a fresh perspective can lead to the identification of underutilized features within Eloqua that can be leveraged for greater impact. This not only enhances the overall marketing strategy but also fosters a culture of innovation within the team.

By outsourcing the evaluation process, teams are empowered to concentrate on strategic initiatives rather than getting bogged down in operational reviews. This focus can lead to more innovative solutions and enhancements that drive business success.

The Benefits of Independent Expert Evaluations

Hiring an outside expert to perform an Eloqua Health Check ensures that the evaluation is unbiased and objective. Independent experts can identify areas of improvement that internal teams may overlook due to familiarity with existing systems and processes. For example, one company found that their internal team had become complacent with their strategy, but an external evaluator identified key areas where they could revamp their efforts for better engagement.

Hiring an outside expert to perform an Eloqua Health Check ensures that the evaluation is unbiased and objective. Independent experts can identify areas of improvement that internal teams may overlook due to familiarity with existing systems and processes.

Specialized Knowledge and Experience

Outside experts have extensive experience with various Eloqua implementations and can provide valuable insights into best practices, helping your business make the most of its marketing automation platform. For instance, a case study showcased how an expert helped a company optimize its use of Eloqua features, leading to improved ROI on their marketing campaigns.

Fresh Perspective

Bringing in an external expert can offer a fresh perspective on your marketing strategies and processes, leading to innovative solutions and ideas that might not have been considered otherwise. For example, an external consultant might introduce the concept of cross-channel marketing, which an internal team may not have previously utilized. This new approach could broaden the business’s reach and maximize customer engagement.

Resource Efficiency

An independent evaluation allows your internal team to focus on its core responsibilities while benefiting from the expertise of an external consultant. This can save time and resources that would otherwise be spent on self-assessment and internal evaluations. Moreover, the consultant can provide training to internal staff, ensuring that the knowledge gained during the health check is retained and utilized for ongoing improvements.

Conclusion

In the fast-paced world of marketing automation, staying on top of your game is crucial for success. Treating an Eloqua Health Check like an annual physical is a proactive approach to maintaining optimal system performance and staying ahead of the competition. By identifying potential issues, adapting to changing landscapes, enhancing customer experience, streamlining processes, and fostering growth and innovation, businesses can ensure that their marketing strategies remain effective and relevant in an ever-changing environment. Engaging an outside expert for an independent evaluation can bring benefits such as objective insights, specialized knowledge, fresh perspectives, and resource efficiency. Ultimately, regular Eloqua Health Checks empower organizations to thrive and adapt in a competitive landscape.

Schedule your annual Eloqua Health Check today and give your marketing automation system the preventive care it needs to flourish. Remember, the key to sustained success is not just in performing the checks but in implementing the recommendations for continuous improvement.

Email marketing remains a highly effective marketing strategy in 2023. However, to make the most out of email marketing, it is crucial to create a compelling email subject line that encourages recipients to open the email. In this article, we will explore the importance of email subject lines and provide ten actionable tips to craft better subject lines for email marketing.

Why are Email Subject Lines Important?

The email subject line is the first thing that recipients see when they receive an email. If it fails to capture their attention, they are likely to ignore or delete the email. Therefore, it is essential to craft subject lines that are engaging, intriguing, and relevant to the recipient.

Compelling email subject lines can make a significant difference in the success of your email marketing campaign. As a result, it is essential to put effort into crafting a subject line that will motivate your target audience to open and engage with your email.

How to Improve Your Email Subject Lines

• Experiment with teaser subject lines: Teaser subject lines can pique your audience’s curiosity and motivate them to open your email. However, ensure that your subject line is not too vague or confusing.
• Be direct: Some individuals prefer direct and straightforward subject lines. If you want your audience to take specific action, mention that in your subject line.
• Stay away from spam words: Avoid using spam words or phrases, such as all-caps alphabets, multiple exclamation marks, or overly sales-y language like ‘buy now’ or ‘free free free.’ Such tactics can send your email straight to the spam folder. Instead, focus on providing valuable content to your target audience.
• Include numbers & figures: Using numbers and figures in your subject line can make it more eye-catching and memorable. For instance, you could use a number to announce a specific discount or the price of a product.
• Create a sense of urgency: Creating a sense of urgency in your subject line can encourage recipients to act quickly. For instance, if your email is about a limited-time offer, mention the window of time in your subject line.
• Begin with action-oriented words: Starting your subject line with an action verb can make it more engaging and encourage recipients to open your email.
• Leverage the power of personalization: Personalization can help create a sense of belonging and loyalty. Using the recipient’s name in the subject line can significantly increase your click-through rates.
• Make announcements: Announcing something new or exciting can create excitement and motivate recipients to open your email. For instance, you could announce the launch of a new product or a special offer.
• Highlight multimedia in your subject line: If your email contains multimedia such as a video or podcast, mentioning it in the subject line can increase your click-through rates.
• Analyze your results: Analyze which subject lines are working best for your audience by measuring click-through rates, responses, conversion rates, etc. Use this information to adjust and improve your future email marketing campaigns.

Conclusion

In conclusion, crafting a compelling email subject line is crucial for the success of your email marketing campaign. A well-crafted subject line can increase your click-through rates and help you achieve your desired outcomes.

Contact our team of digital marketing experts today for help writing better subject lines for email marketing, and to improve your overall strategy.

Oracle Eloqua users should be quite familiar with the wide variety of built-in functions this marketing software offers. But it’s possible to expand both the value and functionality of Eloqua to improve your marketing strategy even further. What’s the best way to do this? For many Eloqua users, the answer is to use specialized Eloqua Add-Ons called Cloud Apps.

Here at 4Thought Marketing, we have several favorite Eloqua apps that we use, including several we made ourselves. Let’s take a look at what they are and how they make our workday easier.

Motiva AI

Artificial intelligence and machine learning now play an increasingly significant role in marketing optimization. The Motiva AI app uses the same AI that Google uses for paid searches to improve your email engagement and analyzes customer data for future campaign improvements.

What It Does: Motiva uses real-time data from your Eloqua instance to automatically optimize your campaigns and increase engagement.

Key Benefits:

• Increased engagement through hyperspeed content testing, per-contact send-time optimization, and subject line advice
• Monitors contact data quality to help you clean out unreachable contacts, find bots, fix deliverability issues, and lower your licensing costs
• Automated segment discovery and rich reporting
• Frequency management and touchpoint optimization
• 5-minute integration, GDPR/CCPA and HIPAA compliant

Vidyard

CTAs are an invaluable part of your marketing strategy, and can be used everywhere from emails to blogs and even videos! The Vidyard app allows you to generate leads from within your video content.

What It Does: This app allows you to embed CTAs and data collection forms before, after, or even during a video.

Key Benefits:

• Choose the perfect time to add CTAs in the video’s runtime
• Create gated video content to gather data at the beginning of the process
• End videos with a CTA to encourage customers to continue
• Gather and follow up on leads faster
• Track watch time and determine quality of leads based on their apparent interest

Campaign Contact Remover

If you have more than a hundred contacts in Eloqua, the Campaign Contact Remover app can make your average workday much easier.

What It Does: This app does the heavy lifting of ensuring your marketing contacts receive the correct campaigns.

Key Benefits:

• Set campaign filters once so you never lose track of what you are working on
• Avoid sending the same offer to contacts multiple times

What to Remember: This isn’t the only cloud app developed by 4Thought Marketing. Browse a complete list here.

Contact Washing Machine

Once dirty data gets into your contact record, it’s hard to get rid of. Manual review certainly isn’t an option for the vast majority of businesses. That’s where the Contact Washing Machine comes in.

What It Does: This app reviews your collected contact data to remove dirty data quickly and efficiently.

Key Benefits:

• Trim left and trim right to clean data, similar to the trim function in Microsoft Excel
• Improved automation: use regular expressions to change data in a contact

Facebook Lead Ads

It’s possible to generate a lead from Facebook without the user ever leaving the Facebook site. But how do you move those leads from Facebook into your system? One reliable method is using the Facebook Lead Ads app.

What It Does: This app automatically transfers leads from Facebook to Oracle Eloqua.

Key Benefits:

• Increased productivity for businesses that already rely on Facebook Lead Ads
• Improved lead quality resulting from current information shared with Facebook, leading to higher customer response

LinkedIn Campaign Manager

Connecting to leads is a critical step in the sales process. With the LinkedIn Campaign Manager app, you can now engage more directly with your contacts on LinkedIn and even follow their profile to tailor promotions to their latest preferences.

What It Does: This app integrates Eloqua with LinkedIn for a more meaningful customer connection and lead follow-up.

Key Benefits:

• Capture and nurture leads from LinkedIn
• Target individual LinkedIn users with specialized ads

SMS Gateway

In a study of more than 1,000 campaigns, Cellit found that SMS has 8 times the response rate of email. The SMS Gateway app allows you to take advantage of the very lucrative potential of text message-based campaigns.

What It Does: This app optimizes your SMS campaigns for better delivery and increased customer response.

Key Benefits:

• Two-way support: no more “do not reply” email addresses necessary
• SMS-Friendly Copy: counts characters in your message to ensure optimal delivery
• International support: generate numbers unique to each country you contact

What to Remember: Without consent, your SMS campaigns could be labeled as spam by the FTC. Don’t get in your own way!

“There’s an Eloqua App for That”

When used correctly, Eloqua apps can provide a much-needed boost to both your workday productivity and your profits. But it’s important to remember not to get so focused on finding the next great app that you lose sight of your competitors stealing your customers right from under your nose—or of privacy laws challenging your practices and putting you at risk of fines for noncompliance.

Once you have your favorite Eloqua apps all in a row, what’s next for your marketing strategy? Focus on issues with potentially long-lasting consequences, such as your compliance (or lack thereof) with relevant privacy laws. Talk to us about achieving GDPR compliance without endangering your newly revamped marketing strategy—or the profits it’s bringing in.

Oracle Eloqua Insight, powered by Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition (Oracle BI EE), is a powerful tool to analyze your data across Eloqua. It contains several out-of-the-box reports which cover different facets of campaigns, contacts, emails, forms, and landing pages. I learned my way through Insight through exploring these reports.

My analyst journey grew from standard reports, to editing these reports to make my own, and ultimately to creating my own reports and formulas from scratch. It was not a smooth journey. To (hopefully) make your journey easier than mine, I’d like to share several important lessons I learned the hard way about Eloqua Insight.

1.      Report & Agent CANNOT Share the Same Name

I personally prefer to give related files the same name so that I can cross-reference between files if needed. On my hard drive, my Excel document can have the same name as my PowerPoint and Word documents in the same project, and there is no issue. In Eloqua, my campaign can share the same name as its email, form and landing page, and there is no issue. This is not the case with Eloqua Insight.

I had hoped to keep a similar organization style in Insight to make it easier to search and lookup reports and their scheduling agent. Accordingly, I attempted to assign the same file name to my report and its scheduling agent. When I went to run the agent, I received this error message:

Yes, Eloqua did give me a warning message before saving the agent, but I wrongfully assumed I was safe. Besides receiving this error message, my custom analysis report was gone since the agent overwrote it.

To recap: Whatever you do, do not give your report and agent the same name in Eloqua Insight. You will have to start all over with your analysis!

2.      Reports Cannot Be Moved After They Have Been Scheduled

My Insight library was a mess with no rhyme or reason. I attempted to tidy things up by creating folders sorting by time and product. The good news is that my shared library was beginning to look in order. However, the next day I started to receive notices that stakeholders were not receiving their scheduled reports. When I went to check the agent, I received this error message:

I was able to modify the agent via the Condition tab to the updated location of the file, but it was a lot of work. This headache could have been avoided had I just followed the correct folder structure from the start.

To avoid making the same mistake I did, I recommend creating folders in Insight following naming conventions and rulesets similar to the ones you use in Eloqua. This makes it much, much easier to find the reports you need. I also keep a running tally of the reports I create in a spreadsheet including the following columns: date, cadence, report name, agent name, distribution list, subject line, and email.  There have been many times I have been asked, for one reason or another, to remove a certain person from receiving scheduled reports. I can easily look up their email in my spreadsheet, locate the agents they are part of, and remove their email address.

3.      Avoid Scheduling Multiple Reports at the Same Time

You can technically do this, and Eloqua will display all the reports as delivered. But as I discovered, when several reports are scheduled at the same time, not all of the reports reach the distribution lists even if they’re marked as delivered. When I began to set the report at random times throughout the hour instead, the queries of people looking for their reports dropped significantly. I began following this rule religiously with my scheduled agents after finding this out. A few extra minutes of work on my end saved me and my contacts a lot more time later on.

The Potential of Eloqua Insight

As you explore, build, and analyze Eloqua Insight, you will find just how powerful this tool can be. Want to see what it can do for your company? Our team of Eloqua experts can get you on the right track. Get in touch with us today to get started.

We take it for granted that a phone screen, tablet screen, computer monitor, or laptop will show us crystal-clear graphics. Blurry images tend to be blamed on malfunctions or just low-quality files. But the introduction of retina displays created another potential issue: an otherwise high-quality image displayed on a screen it wasn’t designed for.

What are Retina Displays?

Apple introduced Retina displays in 2010. Retina displays use twice as many pixels as standard displays, a design intended to make graphics even crisper. But increasing the screen’s pixel count doesn’t increase the pixel count of any images that the screen may be displaying. In other words, an image that looks fine on a standard screen might look blurry or even pixelated on a retina display.

The problem here is obvious. Not only are blurry images hard to look at (especially if they contain text), but they can also make your marketing materials look low-effort and unprofessional.

How Many People Use Retina Displays?

As of 2021, more than 113 million Americans (or 47% of all smartphone users in America) owned an iPhone. Meanwhile, in 2017, Apple estimated that there were about 100 million active Macintosh users, compared to Microsoft’s 400 million Windows 10 users. There’s also a 40% chance that these currently active users either bought their device recently or upgraded to the newest model when they could. All of these newer devices would have a retina display.

Let’s do a little math here. Between iPhone and Macintosh users, at least 213 million Americans regularly use Apple products as a primary or secondary device. 40% of them have recently upgraded to a new device. That’s 85.2 million Americans alone that regularly view websites and emails on a retina display!

Marketers focused on ROI tend to cater to the majority. If a few users don’t have the right technology or behavior to warrant nurturing, they may be brushed aside in favor of more profitable contacts. It may sound like retina display users can be safely ignored—they aren’t necessarily the majority, especially when the solution is so simple. But 85.2 million people is far too many to simply overlook.

Optimizing Images for Retina Displays

Since a retina display has twice as many pixels as standard displays, marketers should focus on doubling the number of pixels in their promotional images. Let’s look at email design for an example. Standard email width is 600 pixels, which will look blurry on a retina display. An email banner 1200 pixels wide will render much better.

To produce a retina display-friendly graphic, create the image with the doubled number of pixels. In the case of an email banner, that would be 1200 pixels by 400 pixels as opposed to 600 by 200. Save the completed image file. In your Eloqua email template, set the width and height in your <img> tag to 600 and 200 pixels respectively, then insert your high-pixel image. This allows you to retain the higher quality without disrupting your email formatting.

Of course, increasing pixel count usually means increasing the file size of the image. Since larger files take longer to load, only increasing pixel count doesn’t necessarily fix the problem. Use a file compression tool (like this one recommended by Hubspot, or this one from Website Planet) to decrease the file size while retaining as much image quality as possible. This way, you can keep the best of both worlds: high-quality, crisp images with a quick loading time.

Finally: consider which images in your email need the retina display treatment. The most noticeable differences in resolution show up in images with high-contrast elements, text, or geometric shapes. Many photos don’t have any of the above. While creating higher-quality versions of nonessential images certainly can’t hurt your campaigns, the extra time required to create them may not be worth it. To get the best retina display results quickly, stick to optimizing unique elements such as your logo, any icons in the email, and your branded font.

Keep Up with New Marketing Technology

Effective marketing teams know to keep up with customer behavior and developing trends. But your team should also keep track of new marketing technology, especially anything that impacts email as much as retina displays can. See how you can use these new developments to your advantage and improve your engagement rates.

Want some expert help bringing your marketing strategy up to speed with evolving trends? Contact 4Thought Marketing today for more information.

In 2021, Apple deployed its latest privacy feature: Mail Privacy Protection (hereafter MPP), allowing Apple users to hide their IP address and other information when opening emails. For email marketers, MPP presents an interesting challenge. How much of an impact will privacy measures like MPP have on your email metrics?

To answer this question, we need to take a closer look at what MPP is and what exactly it does.

What is Apple Mail Privacy Protection/MPP?

MPP is an option on Apple devices that users can toggle on or off depending on their preferences. When toggled on, MPP blocks certain private information from being shared with email senders.

Apple Support explains MPP this way:

Email messages you receive may include remote content that allows a sender to collect information when you view a message, such as when and how many times you view it, whether you forward it, your IP address, and other data. Mail Privacy Protection prevents senders from learning your information.

Apple Support

To summarize, MPP privatizes the following information:

• The recipient’s IP address
• Whether they opened the email at all
• The time they opened the email
• How many times they viewed the email
• Whether they forwarded the email to anyone else

Email marketers will recognize the problem immediately. Without this information, how can you analyze your email performance?

Other Measures to Focus On

Fortunately, the introduction of MPP does not spell the end of your email campaigns. It simply means that it’s time to focus on metrics that drive revenue, such as clicks and conversions, instead of just email opens.

As an example, let’s look at an imaginary contact named Mike. Mike is an Apple user who has activated MPP on his phone, so you can’t see which of your emails he’s opened nor how many times. But if Mike is interested in one of your products and clicks through an email to visit your website, your marketing tools can keep track of his visit and what he looked at while he was there. You can track any purchases he makes, allowing you to draw a picture of Mike’s interests based on his activity outside of email. With this in hand, you can send Mike emails tailored to his preferences and hopefully encourage him to be a repeat customer.

To summarize, instead of looking at email opens to calculate ROI, watch these metrics instead:

• Clickthroughs
• Website activity
• Products viewed on your website
• Products purchased (or potentially added to wishlists)

Segmenting Your Contacts Ahead of Time

As Apple users choose to activate MPP, you might notice a sudden drop in your email open rates and panic. Don’t worry—thousands of people are not just randomly dropping off the face of the earth. Chances are, they’re still engaging with your emails even if you can’t see them.

To keep MPP from skewing your email engagement rates and confusing you, consider creating a unique segment for Apple users in your contact list. You can then segment further based on who seems to have MPP activated and who doesn’t.

Keep Your Email Game Going

You should already be tracking website engagement. But even if you are, connecting that information to emails can be tricky—especially when MPP is involved. Let us help! Contact 4Thought Marketing today for help maintaining your email ROI regardless of data blocking measures.

Watch an on-demand replay of our February 2023 webinar, “Solve Unique Business Requirements with Eloqua Cloud Apps”, here.

Modern marketers go beyond the click-through and open rates. Although good to track, they just scratch the surface of how you are performing. When asked the question “how did that campaign do?” what do you measure in order to answer? For a marketing manager, it’s critical to present meaningful data and make sure the team’s Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are focused on what is impactful to success. It’s also important to understand the implications of those KPIs – for better or worse – in order to use the data to make actionable decisions.

Take your rejected MQL (marketing-qualified lead) rate, for example: if 85% of your MQLs are being returned to marketing, do you know what’s wrong? What kind of content needs to be improved? When you focus on the KPIs that really matter, they can tell you about how your marketing campaigns are performing –and point to what to consider.

6 KPIs That Matter

MQL Conversion Rate

The MQL conversion rate indicates the overall quality of leads being handed off to sales. If the conversion rate is low, it indicates that leads are of poor quality or sales, potentially, is not responding to the leads quickly enough – when they are “hot”.

Why This is Important
This is an important metric because the MQL stage is where marketing hands off a lead to sales. This KPI provides the first glimpse into marketing’s ability to generate those sales leads and how well marketing and sales are working together. The measurement itself is a great way to encourage movement through the pipeline.

Rejected leads are not only the important learning metric here; tracking them also creates another way to bridge that divide between marketing and sales. If the rate of rejected leads is high, marketing should look for trends and then meet with sales to discuss why. Solving the ‘why’ is not something that your teams are going to get on the first try. It’s important to keep communication open between the marketing and sales teams to ensure that these sorts of weak points in the overall process continue to improve over time. If marketing and sales are effectively communicating this conversion rate should increase over time.

SAL to SQL Conversion Rate

This KPI measures the next critical point in the pipeline. Sales has created an opportunity and this lead is starting to show some real promise. These leads have become the cream of the crop, and what happens to these is what Marketing should really be learning from.

Why This is Important
The SAL conversion rate is where you can begin to really analyze attribution and find out which campaigns and trends are creating quality leads and which ones are not. Not only does this give insight into which messaging is resonating most with high value leads, your analysis at this stage becomes a tool for correcting course and moving budget to where it will have the biggest impact. Be prepared to dive in to details, such as these examples:

• Did any of these leads attend this year’s costly event?
• What is the least productive lead source? How much did you spend with that content syndication vendor?

Funnel Velocity

This is a great KPI to get a picture of how quickly leads are moving from one stage to the next. There are many insights to gain depending on how you look at the velocity.

Why This is Important

Tying velocity to campaigns can help determine which campaigns are converting leads the quickest and are the most likely to contribute to a steady revenue stream. Measuring velocity makes it easier to draw conclusions when that velocity is tied to a lead stage, such as how quickly MQLs are being accepted or rejected. This can be very telling when trying to measure lead quality.

Being able to demonstrate how quickly a lead moves from SAL to SQL can also help convince sales of the value of marketing’s efforts in keeping that lead in evaluation stage nurturing (a typical debate that marketing loses, particularly without funnel velocity proof).

Journey Nurture Progression

Nurture campaigns are set up to move leads through the buyer journey, so it’s nice to see how leads are progressing through them. Since nurtures are highly content and message driven, and also focused on the stages of the buyer journey, it’s important to make sure that the content you deliver resonates with those stages, or that the message focuses on the right audience.

Why This is Important
The Journey Nurture Progression is a great metric for gauging the overall quality of content, messaging and also how well you’ve segmented your database. If you find a stage in your nurture where leads are not moving from one stage into the next, it might be a good indication that it is either the wrong time to put that particular message in front of prospects, or maybe it is just the right message – but going to the wrong audience. Use this metric as a great way to learn and proactively course correct.

Campaign Attribution

First touch? Last touch? Multi-touch? There is no wrong model. Whichever one you use, you’ll want to track campaign association to learn which campaigns get the most touches, which ones fall flat, and which ones turn into leads and opportunities.

Why This is Important
Tracking campaign attribution is not only useful on its own, it is a crucial building block for other KPIs. In fact, you won’t be able to derive any of the other recommended KPIs without it.

Campaign Attribution helps you identify trends in the content being consumed in addition to quantifying how many touches it takes for a lead to become and opportunity – or better yet, a closed-won opportunity. Eloqua users can even track campaign engagement from unknown web visitors when they use the 4Thought Marketing Anonymous Campaign Attribution App. This app provides visibility into what visitors are interested in and then associates those anonymous visits with the right named lead once that visitor supplies identifying information.

Closed-Won Opportunity Attribution

This KPI is the mother of them all. Closed-won opportunity attribution ties a specific lead source (channel) or campaign to a closed-won opportunity. This is where real revenue is attributed back to marketing. Measure this and you have what you need to prove Marketing’s value to the business.

Why This is Important
Closed-won attribution takes campaign attribution and attaches it to an opportunity.

If a marketing team can track closed-won opportunities to associated touch points, it will be easier to identify which campaigns are the most effective, and which ones need improvement.

Equally important, marketing can quantify what percent of the total opportunity dollar amount closed and won was influenced by marketing and what percent came from marketing-generated leads. This is what puts a real value on marketing’s contribution to revenue and provides management and the C-suite the visibility into how big a piece of the pie marketing contributed to revenue. This is the KPI that justifies budgets and earns organizational respect. This KPI is CMO gold.

Key Takeaway

Getting the benefit of what KPIs can tell you comes down to collecting the right data, applying logic to that data, and then putting it into an easily digestible format. Visit our KPIs page for more information on how 4Thought Marketing helps marketing teams build out their KPI and reporting strategy, or reach out to our team for expert help.

How to Survive and Thrive in the New Economy

by Mark LeVell, CEO of 4Thought Marketing

As a digital marketing professional and an Oracle Eloqua advocate for many years, I’m always looking for indicators of where global markets are heading. And between COVID and significant economic fluctuations, there’s lots to consider.

VUCA and Abraham Maslow

When the Cold War ended in the 1980s, the world entered a new era of re-alignment. In military circles, this is known as VUCA: Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, and Ambiguity. This perfectly describes the period that we’re in right now.

Our customers’ needs are changing.  Getting the latest products at the best prices, collecting loyalty points, and socializing are giving way to safety and security as the guiding principles for many. We’ve slipped down Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs faster than a kid on a scooter.

And all this has massive implications for Customer Experience professionals and, specifically, marketing leaders.

Five Lessons from History

Whenever I feel like I’m experiencing VUCA, the first thing I tend to do is retreat into history to see what lessons we can learn from those who have gone before us.  I came up with five specific lessons that all marketers should consider carefully.

1. Re-Segment & Re-Target

In a down economy, there are always some sectors that continue to spend.  Some of these sectors are obvious (Biotech and Healthcare are obvious choices during Covid-19). As a marketing professional, you should target them immediately to gain some early wins. 

However, many sustaining or growing sectors are not obvious, and identifying these micro-sectors in a sea of data is critical.   Dig into your Eloqua and CRM data.  Look carefully at who is buying, and to catch these micro-segments even earlier at who is responding. 

Then, invest your time and energy into figuring out why these segments are doing well.  For many, once you see who is responding, WHY they are doing well and responding becomes obvious… and this leads directly to the all-important messaging.

For others, you may have to dig deeper.  I’ll assume you know the apparent marketing tactics, including using our visual segmentation solution  4Segments. 

Another easy and effective approach is to talk to your customers.  It’s easy to do, but I’ve always found marketers hesitant to pick up the phone and call their customers.  Why?  I think at some subconscious level they feel it’s sales’ job.

Ultimately, it’s marketing’s job to figure out messaging. To do this, and you need to know what your customers are thinking. Pick up that phone!

2. Focus on Customers

Now is the time that you should focus on your existing customer base. It costs roughly five times more to sell to new customers versus your current customers. And the last thing you want right now is extra-hungry, aggressive competitors stealing away your customers. To continue growing in a down economy, focus on your precious customer base.

3. Innovation Supported by Integration is Your Greatest Weapon.

When stress levels are high, creativity suffers. I’ve discovered this both personally and professionally across my career. Yet innovation can be a crucial customer attraction engine in the age of VUCA. Marketers are famous for innovation and creativity, so is the problem solved? It’s a bit more complicated than that.

Start with innovation. Identify gaps in your processes, data, or systems. Next, identify the business value you could achieve by finding a solution. Then quantify the benefit and prioritize your list.

Next, explore how to integrate your solution. You may want to focus first on existing capabilities. If you cannot achieve the desired results for your highest priority issues, look to new integrations and custom solutions to help achieve your goals.

Therefore, the second lesson is to choose your marketing automation apps carefully and select strategic partners who can handle any integration or functional extensions you may need.

4. Be a Challenger

Challengers are the people who deliver valuable insight to their customers, look at their customers’ problems through a different lens (re-framing), tailor their messaging to match, address their needs and take control of the sales cycle. For marketers, this has significant implications. Re-examine your content strategy and ensure it delivers real, unique insight at a deeper personalization level. This should be easily customizable for your sales teams.

In the last economic downturn following the global financial crisis of 2008, some salespeople (in the complex enterprise B2B area) continued to be highly successful.

One small research company – CEB (now part of Gartner) – set out to find why. What was it about this cohort of sales professionals that made them succeed where many others – even in the same company – failed abysmally?

In their book, The Challenger Sales, they detailed the most successful salespeople’s behaviors. They named the most successful persona “The Challenger.” No longer were the relationship builders, the problem solvers, the hard workers, and the ubiquitous mavericks the best sellers – the challengers stood head and shoulders above all others.

5. Frugal Innovation Rules

Most organizations use around 20% of the horsepower of their existing systems. In my experience, the same is valid for marketing automation solutions. By unlocking more functionality from your current apps, you can leverage frugal innovation to stay one step ahead of your competitors, even with slashed marketing budgets.

By conducting system audits (from those who deeply understand these apps) and implementing effectiveness studies, you can quickly understand your existing solutions’ full, untapped capabilities. It might be as simple as investing in more training for your current staff or asking your Martech partners to create a simple add-on to unlock this latent value.

Insulating Your Organization

As a digital marketing professional, how should you insulate yourself from an economic downturn? Here are three things you should do immediately:

1. Invest in world-class CX. Make sure you maximize the value of your existing customer base. Start with a ‘frugal innovation’ strategy and then see where your gaps in capability are. With Oracle CX Marketing / Eloqua, you’re already in good shape. You can extract even more value by partnering smartly with an organization to ensure you get the maximum value from your investment. Focus on both innovation and integration.
2. Build elasticity into your marketing model. To ride the waves of an undulating economic outlook, ensure you can both expand and contract your business to smooth out the waves. We’re now living in the age of “everything as a service.” Choose the right strategic partners and solution providers. Build a tight organizational core and an agile operating strategy that can elegantly expand and contract to enable you to surf the VACU we’re all living through successfully.
3. Invest in your people. Ensure the key staff in your operational ‘core’ have the right skills and competencies to excel in the age of VUCA. Develop hard skills to unlock your technology’s value, plus the softer skills of psychological resilience and ability to support their fellow workmates through the tough times. To deliver a great customer experience, you first need to nail the employee experience.

Conclusion

To survive and thrive in the new economy, you need to make some fast decisions and adopt a different marketing-department posture.

• Adopt a survive and thrive mindset so that you’re continually learning from your successes and your failures. Don’t descend into a blaming culture. You will succeed or fail as a team.
• Transform your business into being agile by design, applying it to your people, processes, and technology. Each has a part to play in delivering an excellent customer experience
• Build a scalable operating model to ride the economic uncertainty waves, including both upward and downward scalability.
• Assemble an ecosystem of strategic partners who can share the workload. Focus on your organization’s core value, the things your customers care about. Consider outsourcing the rest!

In good times even mediocre organizations can perform well and make money. When a downturn hits, you find out which ones have a robust and sustainable operating model. Or, in the words of the investment guru, Warren Buffett, “Only when the tide goes out, do you discover who’s been swimming naked.”

About Mark LeVell

Mark LeVell has over 25 years of experience in Silicon Valley, including the founding of three start-ups, along with other marketing and sales executive positions at a variety of software companies. He has been at the forefront of both the CRM and Marketing Automation revolutions, starting with building one of the first sales automation software companies, TeLeVell Inc, over 20 years ago. More recently, he was Vice President at Market2Lead and Director of the Market First Group at CDC Software. Mark has helped hundreds of companies find and implement solutions to their marketing and sales needs.

Modern marketing relies on technology to produce and distribute promotional materials. Obviously, this means professional marketers need to have a working knowledge of the technology they use every day and how best to leverage it. However, this knowledge alone isn’t necessarily enough. The intersection of marketing and technology has created the need for a new job title: marketing technologist.

What Do Marketing Technologists Do?

A marketing technologist is a professional who understands both the technical and business sides of marketing. They are responsible for identifying, evaluating, and implementing marketing technology solutions that drive business success. They also ensure that technology is used effectively and efficiently to support marketing efforts.

Marketing technologists play a crucial role in bridging the gap between business and technology. They bring a unique skillset to the table, as they can not only analyze data and make informed decisions but also communicate those decisions in a way that both technical and non-technical stakeholders can understand. By combining their knowledge of technology and marketing, marketing technologists are able to find new and innovative solutions to drive success for their organizations.

Key Responsibilities of a Marketing Technologist

Marketing technologists play a vital role in aligning technology with marketing strategy. They work closely with both the marketing and IT departments to ensure that technology is used in a way that supports marketing goals and objectives. Additionally, they are responsible for staying up-to-date with the latest marketing technology trends and innovations to ensure that the company remains competitive.

Consequently, a key responsibility of a marketing technologist is to ensure the smooth integration of new technology into existing marketing strategies. They help minimize the impact of change by analyzing up-and-coming technology and its potential impact on the business, then developing a plan to ensure a seamless transition. With their technical expertise, they are able to troubleshoot issues that may arise during the implementation process and provide ongoing support for their team. By managing the integration process, marketing technologists help organizations adopt new technology effectively, allowing them to be more agile and achieve their marketing goals.

How a Marketing Technologist Can Help Your Team

Hiring a marketing technologist or an agency with deep expertise can bring numerous advantages to your organization. The most immediately obvious benefit is improved alignment between marketing and IT. With a marketing technologist in place, the marketing and IT departments are able to work together more effectively. This collaboration leads to better use of technology to drive marketing success and increased efficiency and effectiveness of marketing efforts.

Additionally, with a marketing technologist on your team, you have a dedicated resource who is constantly monitoring the latest technology and trends in the industry. They can identify new opportunities and solutions that can drive growth for your business. Their expertise in both technology and marketing also allows for more effective communication and decision-making.

Finally, a knowledgeable marketing technologist can communicate effectively with both technical and non-technical stakeholders. This helps bring two otherwise disparate groups together and drive more impactful results.

Conclusion

With the ever-evolving landscape of marketing technology, companies that invest in this role will be better equipped to compete and succeed in today’s digital age. A marketing technologist plays a vital role in ensuring that technology is used effectively and efficiently to support marketing efforts. The future of marketing technology is bright, and the role of the marketing technologist will continue to be essential in helping companies succeed in the digital age.

Ready to start improving your marketing technology strategy? Contact our expert team today to get started.

The leading technology issues of the 21st century can be summed up in two words: security and privacy. In particular, consumers are concerned with how to preserve privacy and “stay safe”. A kind of paradox arises from these concepts – security requires transparency, and thus privacy is violated (read: lost). To understand that not all is so black and white, we should first explore what cybersecurity and data privacy really are. 

What is Cybersecurity?

Cybersecurity and data security are two key elements of a successful information protection strategy. The difference between them is not so much in the execution of the processing or the results, but in the underlying philosophy and goals. Ultimately, the situation boils down to what data is protected, how it is protected, from whom it is protected, and who is ultimately responsible for that protection. 

Cybersecurity is primarily focused on preventing unauthorized access to data, regardless of who the unauthorized party is. To achieve this, organizations use tools and technology such as firewalls, user authentication, network restrictions, and internal security practices to prevent data leaks. 

It also includes security technologies such as tokenization and encryption to further protect data, making it unreadable which in the event of a leak can prevent cybercriminals from using that data.

What is Data Privacy?

Data privacy is concerned with ensuring that the data an organization collects and processes, stores, or transfers is protected and is managed with the consent of the data owner. This means informing individuals in advance about what types of data will be collected, for what purpose, and with whom it will be shared. 

Once this transparency is ensured, the individual must agree to the terms of use, allowing the organization that processes the data to use it following the stated purposes.

In other words, privacy is less about protecting data from malicious threats and more about its responsible use under the user’s wishes. But it can certainly include security measures to protect privacy. For example, identification of sensitive data by unauthorized parties is ensured, identity or other personal information is removed within the system, and data can even be stored in different locations to ensure privacy. 

Although security controls can be met without compromising privacy, actual privacy is impossible to achieve without first using effective security.

Taking Control

Digital security and privacy should automatically be a priority for businesses, but all too often, they are not. However, there are a few actions organizations can take to ensure cybersecurity as well as privacy of their customer data.

Some solutions allow companies to control all data through a centralized administration system, synchronize all business email accounts, track all business communication and data, and encrypt all files. Because there are so many entry points for attackers, it’s critical for any comprehensive security strategy to leverage a solution that can cover not just email, but instant messages, SMS, voice and video calls, servers, and all documents and files stored in the cloud, local and removable storage, on many devices. 

Several fundamental cybersecurity steps both companies and average users can take include:

• Using an antivirus package that includes a complete internet security service 
• Using strong passwords that are not easy to guess, using different passwords for different accounts, and changing them from time to time
• Protecting your personal information on social networks using the provided privacy settings. 
• Keeping track of which sites you visit and on which sites you create user accounts
• Protecting work (and home) networks with a strong password. Make sure not only your computer but also your mobile phone has a VPN installed to encrypt all traffic leaving your devices until it reaches its destination
• Staying aware of fraudulent e-mails (phishing) supposedly from financial institutions asking you to confirm account information
• Understanding what data your organization has, where it is, and who is responsible for it
• Raising employee cybersecurity awareness
• Conducting regular risk assessments to identify any potential threats to your organization’s data
• Backing up your most important and sensitive data regularly

Cybersecurity & Data Privacy: A Top Priority from The Start

Cybersecurity is a prerequisite for effective data privacy. A simple equation applies: without cybersecurity and data privacy, there is no trust. And without trust, quality digital services cannot be ensured. 

Cybersecurity, like data privacy, is an important success factor for digitization. “Security by design” is a popular approach that incorporates security from the very beginning of product or service development. After all, making sure security is the top priority during development is easier than correcting errors in the IT security architecture afterward. This is especially the case if there are any fundamental adjustments to the system design.

In terms of data protection, this proactive technology design has been conceptually established for a long time. It is important to consider the data protection implications as early as the development phase and to plan how data protection risks can be reduced as best as possible at this early stage of development.

Conclusion

Cyber​security, like data protection, is certainly not a one-off matter that can be clarified at the beginning and then filed away. Rather, it is an ongoing task for the entire life cycle of products and services in the digital world.

Interested in how to improve your own security and data privacy setups? Get in touch with 4Thought Marketing today to get started.

Marketing is all about getting your brand in front of potential customers, but the key is to do so in a way that doesn’t turn them off. Spamming is a common problem for many businesses, but what about our own marketing strategies? Are we guilty of the same mistake?

4Thought Marketing believes that the key to successful marketing is finding the balance between excellent self-promotion and providing a positive customer experience. In this blog post, we’ll explore a few ways to achieve this balance and ensure your marketing campaigns are effective and well-received.

Make a Personal Connection

Cold messaging or cold calling is an essential part of sales, but it doesn’t have to be impersonal. Before sending an email or social media message, take the time to learn about the recipient’s interests and business goals. Show a genuine interest in these goals and demonstrate how your product or service can help.

It’s also crucial to address your recipient by their name. Being addressed as “Sir/Madam” or “Customer” is a quick turn-off for potential customers, so take the time to learn their name and use it in your personalized emails.

Avoid Mass, Worthless Messages

Mass messages are one of the most annoying sales experiences for many customers. These messages often show that the sender didn’t take the time to learn anything about the recipient and just pasted their email into a long list.

Marketing is as much about building relationships with your clients as it is about selling. So, choose your audience based on their interest in your brand and their interactions with you. Don’t just collect a list of email addresses or social media handles and send out a generic promotional message. And never add people to your subscription list without their permission, as this increases the likelihood of them labeling you as a spammer.

Offer Something of Value

Whether you’re sending an email, posting on social media, or commenting on a forum, always offer something of value to your reader. Don’t fill your message with your brand’s logo and multiple links to your website. Instead, make a valuable contribution to the conversation or offer a discount code. Make your audience feel like they’ve gained something from you.

Find the Right Balance

The ultimate measure of your marketing campaign’s success is not the number of ads you post or messages you send, but conversions and customer satisfaction with you and your products or services. As you plan your next marketing campaign, pay attention to customer responses to your ads and find the right strategy for promoting yourself.

Looking to get started with quality promotions for your brand? 4Thought Marketing is here to help! Get in touch with us today and see what other marketing experts recommend for a successful advertising strategy.