Oracle Eloqua offers numerous tools to help businesses leverage their customer data and execute personalized marketing campaigns. Among these tools, custom objects (often abbreviated COs) stand out as a particularly powerful feature. Eloqua custom objects allow you to store important data points to use in more precise segmentation and customer targeting.

In this guide, we’ll explore what custom objects are, why they are crucial, and how you can maximize their potential to drive your marketing efforts.

What are Oracle Eloqua Custom Objects?

Custom objects are data tables that allow you to store information outside the standard contact and account fields. While Eloqua provides a robust set of default fields for contacts and accounts, these fields might not cover all your business needs, especially as your organization grows. Custom objects step in to fill this gap. You can add or remove columns in custom objects as needed, making connecting a single customer ID with multiple departments or product purchases easy.

Custom objects can store various types of data, including purchase history, areas of interest, transactional information, and more. They enable marketers to link multiple records to a single contact or account, providing a more comprehensive view of customer interactions and preferences. This flexibility makes COs a valuable segmentation, personalization, and campaign management tool.

What Can Eloqua Custom Objects Do?

Eloqua custom objects offer a variety of practical uses, some of which aren’t obvious at first glance. Just a few examples include:

Tracking Products or Services of Interest

Custom objects allow you to track customer interests, such as products or services they have shown interest in. You can store information like the original lead source, the most recent product of interest, and other relevant data. This helps you understand your customers’ preferences and tailor your marketing efforts accordingly.

Managing Leads

Custom objects are particularly useful for managing leads, especially when you need to associate multiple leads with a single contact or route different types of leads to various sales teams. By using COs, you can maintain clear connections between leads and contacts without overwhelming your team with unnecessary data.

Leveraging Purchase History

Storing purchase history in custom objects allows you to capture a complete record of products or services purchased, along with a timeline of customer activity. This information can be linked to a contact or account record, providing valuable insights for upselling, cross-selling, and personalized marketing campaigns.

Handling Shared Email Addresses

In some cases, multiple contacts might share a single email address, which can create issues since Eloqua uses email addresses as unique identifiers. Custom objects can solve this problem by associating multiple contacts with the same email address while maintaining distinct records for each contact.

Creating Subscription Centers

Custom objects can be used to manage subscription preferences, allowing contacts to update their communication preferences, preferred language, and products of interest. This data can be connected to the appropriate contact record and displayed accurately on the user’s preference center page.

Deleting Eloqua Custom Objects

As powerful as custom objects are, managing them effectively is crucial to avoid performance issues and data clutter. Over time, your Eloqua instance may accumulate a large number of custom object records that are no longer needed. Regularly cleaning up this old CO data should be a regular part of your routine to keep Eloqua running smoothly and streamline data management. Tools like the Mass CO Deleter Cloud App will let you automatically delete outdated or unnecessary custom object records.

Why Use Eloqua Custom Objects over Contact & Account Fields?

When setting up your Eloqua instance, it might seem logical to store all customer data directly on contact or account records. However, this approach can lead to several challenges as your data needs expand. Custom objects offer several significant advantages, most notably:

• Custom objects can hold significantly more data than contact and account fields. Eloqua’s default setup provides 62 contact fields and 18 account fields, with the option to create up to 250 custom fields each for contacts and accounts. Custom objects, on the other hand, can contain up to 1,024 fields each, with no limit on the number of custom objects you can create. The only restriction is the total number of records, capped at 25 million across all COs.
• Custom objects let you easily associate a single contact or account with multiple data records. For example, a customer might purchase several products from your company, each with its own set of details. Storing this information directly in account fields can quickly exhaust the available custom fields. Custom objects allow you to link multiple records to a single contact or account, enabling you to efficiently manage and reference this data within your campaigns.
• Custom objects can store both historical and dynamic data. Contact and account fields are ideal for storing relatively static information, such as contact details or business information. However, they are less suited for storing data that changes frequently or needs to be retained over time, such as campaign interactions or purchase history. Custom objects enable you to store this changing data, which can be invaluable for lead scoring, segmentation, and creating more targeted campaigns.
• Custom objects easily scale as your data management needs grow. Custom objects offer a scalable solution that can adapt to your changing requirements. By setting up a custom object structure that aligns with your CRM’s data architecture, you can ensure that your data remains organized and accessible, even as your Eloqua instance becomes more complex.

Expanding Eloqua’s Functionality with Custom Objects

To fully leverage the power of custom objects, you might need to move data between different records or even between custom objects themselves. This is where cloud apps can be incredibly beneficial. These apps can help you manipulate data in ways that Eloqua’s out-of-the-box functionality does not easily allow.

A few of our favorite built-in-house Eloqua cloud apps for custom objects include:

• Account CO to Contact CO Updater: Easily update all Contact COs associated with an account with data from the appropriate Account CO or static values.
• CO Cloud Feeder: Eloqua currently only allows standard, out-of-the-box filters on the program canvas. However, the CO Cloud Feeder app adds this ability to the program canvas.
• CO Count: Search for matching CO records and store count in the contact field using the campaign or program canvas.
• CO Date Calculator: Add or subtract days, weeks, months, or years in a date field and store the results in a custom object (CO) field in a CO program.
• CO Deleter with Archive: As the number of Eloqua custom objects (CO) increases, the more challenging it can be to maintain accuracy and peak performance. The CO Deleter with Archive allows you to delete large or small quantities of COs quickly and easily. (A version of this app for the campaign canvas can be found here.)
• CO Form Submitter: Automate form submission on the program canvas for contacts or custom objects.
• CO Lookup to Contact Record: Update contact records from custom objects matching your search criteria.
• CO to CO Lookup Multiple Match: Find matching CO records and copy data to the source CO.
• CO to CO Updater: Move data from one custom object to another on the program canvas smoothly.
• CO to Contact Mapper: Map custom object records to contacts based on a designated contact field.
• CO to Contact Updater: Update a contact record from a custom object on the campaign or program canvas.
• CO to Contact Updater (CO based): Enhance your Eloqua program canvas functionality to modify contacts from linked CO records easily.
• Contact CO Deleter: Remove mapped custom object records from a contact in a contact program or campaign canvas.
• Contact to CO Updater: Create or modify a custom object from a contact on the campaign canvas or program canvas.
• Embed CO Records in Email Table: The Embed CO Records in Email Table Cloud App enables you to embed multiple rows of data from Eloqua custom objects (COs) into an email using HTML.
• Mass CO Deleter: The Mass CO Deleter Cloud App can be configured to remove all mapped CO records, all unmapped CO records, or both. You can also specify which custom objects to exclude from this process.
• Unlinked CO Mapper: The Unlinked CO Mapper matches orphaned Eloqua custom objects records with matching contact records to create a complete customer profile for your marketing campaigns.
• Update All Contacts COs: The Update All Contacts COs Cloud App makes it easy to keep custom object (CO) data consistent across all mapped records with just a few clicks.

Unlocking the Full Potential of Oracle Eloqua with Custom Objects

Custom objects are a versatile and powerful feature in Oracle Eloqua that can significantly enhance your marketing automation capabilities. Whether you’re tracking purchase history, managing leads, or simply organizing data more efficiently, custom objects provide the flexibility and scalability you need to grow your business.

Ready to unlock the full potential of Eloqua custom objects? Contact our team today for expert assistance.

Custom objects are a simple yet powerful part of Eloqua that can enhance the ways that you’re able to connect with your customers. While they may seem daunting if you have never worked with them, custom objects (often abbreviated as COs) can become your best friend as your marketing automation needs increase.

Why Use COs Instead of Contact or Account Fields?

When getting started with Eloqua, it can be tempting to want to store all customer data on the contact and account records. But this can cause problems as your business needs change over time. As your company grows, you’ll need to store more customer data and be able to reference it quickly. Today, we’re looking at four advantages that COs offer over contact or account fields.

1. Eloqua Custom Objects Can Hold a LOT of Data

Out of the box, Eloqua provides 62 contact fields and 18 account fields, and you can create up to 250 custom fields each for contact and account. This sounds like a lot, and it is. But you’d be surprised how quickly the custom fields fill up as you begin adding the data points that your company needs.

COs, on the other hand, can have up to 1,024 fields each. There is also no limit on how many COs you can create in your Eloqua instance. The only limitation is on the number of records across all your COs, which Oracle caps at 25 million.

2. COs Can Accommodate Data That Has a Many-to-One Relationship

You will often need to capture multiple records for a single entity, such as when a single customer purchases multiple products from your company. Using account fields to capture this information could work. However, if each product has a large number of data points associated with it that also need to be referenced in Eloqua, that quickly eats into the 250-field limit.

COs provide an elegant alternative because they can hold multiple custom object records linked to a single account or contact. You can use filter criteria to select the correct CO record for a particular campaign. Custom apps or add-ons, such as our Many-to-One Email app, can also help augment the capabilities of a many-to-one CO relationship.

3. Custom Objects Can Store Historical Data

Contact and account fields are ideal for storing relatively permanent data such as contact or business information. However, they are less well-suited to storing information that changes frequently. For example, when tracking campaign attribution, you can easily set up your system to overwrite the Last SFDC Campaign ID field, but what if you want to be able to see more than just the last touch campaign interaction?

COs enable you to store historical data, which is extremely useful for things like campaign interactions, event information, or form submission data. You can then draw on the historical data for lead scoring, segmentation, and more when you go to build a new campaign.

4. They Can Scale With Your Business Needs

As Eloqua instances grow, they increase in complexity. Having a data architecture plan in place ahead of time can save you numerous headaches down the road. COs are a great tool to keep your data organized. You can even set up a CO structure that mimics the data table structure of your CRM so that integrations are tightly aligned.

The Value of Eloqua Custom Objects

The beauty of COs is in their capacity and their flexibility. While it can be tempting to want to store all data on the contact and account records, especially if you are less familiar with custom objects, COs are often the better option. Incorporating COs into your Eloqua data structure now can save you lots of headaches down the road as your Eloqua instance continues to grow.

But for those less familiar with custom objects and everything they can do, we’ve got you covered. Our team is ready to provide the training and support you need to get the most out of your Eloqua data. Contact us today to learn more.

Eloqua custom objects (abbreviated as CO) provide a simple and flexible way to store additional data, such as purchase history or areas of interest, for segmentation and personalization. To maximize how the data can be used, Eloqua users may want to copy or move data between a contact or account record and a linked CO record, or between CO records. That’s where 4Thought Marketing Cloud Apps come into play. We’ve built a variety of apps that expand Eloqua’s functionality and give your team tools to enhance your data manipulation options, streamline integration, and supercharge your marketing campaigns. Let’s look at a couple of examples of how our apps can help. 

Storing Current Status in an Eloqua Custom Object

Often an outside system, like a purchasing or CRM system, sends transactional data to Eloqua—for instance, a record of a product renewal transaction. Eloqua will store this information for future use in nurturing, segmentation, or reporting campaigns. However, you might also like to see and filter on the most recent status of a product renewal. In this case, transactional data will be difficult to use, since there will be multiple transactions for the same product—and you only need the most recent status.

In this case, you might want to build two CO tables, one for the ongoing transactions and one for the current status. Incoming data would feed the transaction table. But how do you populate the current status table?

4Thought Marketing has built an app for that purpose—the CO-to-CO Updater. In this example, you would be able to take data from the transaction record and populate data in the second CO table to record only the current status. If you use COs frequently, the CO-to-CO Updater app has a long list of potential uses.

Handling Multiple Products of Interest

In a related process, let’s say that you have an integration process that feeds your contact record with current product interest. This particular contact has shown interest in several of your different product lines. Since your integration is feeding your Eloqua Contact record, how would you create a series of CO records that show the breadth of interest from this individual?

The 4Thought Marketing cloud app Contact to CO Updater is just the solution to this problem. By using this app, you would be able to create CO records linked to the contacts, one for each product of interest. In this way, you can segment this contact based on multiple product interests or lack thereof. For example, you could build an upsell campaign for everyone showing interest in Product X, but not in Product Z. Or you could build a campaign for everyone showing interest in both Product A and Product B. The applications are endless.

Sending Recent Products of Interest to your CRM

Finally, let’s say that you have an integration that feeds your CRM system from Eloqua with the most recent product interest. You also have a custom object that stores multiple product interests accumulated over time. If you want to send the most recent data, you would either need to build a new integration for the most recent CO record, or you could just move the data from the CO record into the contact record, and continue with your integration. This can easily be accomplished with our CO to Contact Updater app.

Expanding Eloqua’s Capabilities with Cloud Apps

We have run across dozens of real business use cases that require data manipulation that is not easily accomplished with Eloqua’s out-of-the-box functionality. But we believe in getting the most value out of Eloqua. Our cloud apps are designed to build on Eloqua’s existing capabilities to make your job easier and more streamlined than ever.

Our clients have used Eloqua Cloud Apps and custom objects to demonstrably improve their revenue and customer engagement. For instance:

• A global health care company and a global distributor used the Eloqua Upload Wizard Cloud App to make data transfers more efficient and get leads to the sales team faster.
• Sophos, a cybersecurity provider, used several Eloqua cloud apps to filter out bad data from uploads, allowing the team to focus on legitimate leads.
• Fluke used several of our cloud apps to integrate Shopify with Eloqua, increasing both their email open rate and transaction values.
• First Tech Federal Credit Union used custom objects to create personalized email campaigns and increase customer revenue, as well as optimize data imports.

In addition to the cloud apps discussed above, 4Thought Marketing offers apps like the CO Form Submitter, the CO Deleter, and more to take your custom object development to a new level. And if our existing suite of apps doesn’t quite meet your needs, don’t worry—we can build a custom cloud app for your Eloqua instance.

Contact us for more information and a price list of all our apps.

It’s not uncommon for routine data cleaning to remove contacts from your Eloqua database, breaking the mapping to custom objects (CO). But don’t worry, if they come back through purchases or form submissions, you can use the Unlinked CO Mapper Cloud App to restore all of that valuable segmentation and personalization data you might have lost. With this tool, you can easily re-map those unlinked custom object records and get your data back on track.

Click here to learn more about the Unlinked CO Mapper Cloud App and request a free trial.