Managing Custom Objects in Eloqua

Out of the box, Eloqua can handle a staggering amount of information. Your marketing team can store data on both individuals and accounts, and Eloqua’s easy-to-navigate interface allows for easy segmentation. But as any marketer knows, your data needs constantly change. Not all the information you’ve gathered belongs in the contact or account tables. So, what do you do? Eloqua has a built-in solution: custom objects.

What are Custom Objects?

By default, Eloqua stores information like company locations, parent companies or brands, individual names, addresses, job titles, phone numbers, and more. All of these are essential for proper segmentation, but more thorough segmentation may require additional data. For example, segmenting by purchase history—providing general marketing to a potential customer and more personalized marketing to a customer who has purchased from you—goes a long way toward increased revenue. But how do you add purchase history data to Eloqua? That’s where custom objects come in.

Simply put, a custom object is a free-form table you can build to do exactly what you need it to do. You can add, remove, or modify columns as you need to hold all your data. Custom objects allow you to expand Eloqua’s capabilities to hold more data than you otherwise could, while making them available for segmentation.

Marketing Segmentation Using Custom Objects

Let’s continue the example of segmentation based on purchase history. Your custom object might store information like the purchase’s description, cost, size (if applicable), the date of purchase, and any warranty that was also purchased. Two customers might buy the exact same product, but maybe only one purchases an extended warranty. Storing this data in a custom object allows for even more segmentation—and by extension, more detailed marketing. The customer who opted for a warranty might receive promotions for related products, along with relevant warranty information and general marketing. Meanwhile, the customer who did not initially purchase a warranty receives similar advertising with continued promotion of the warranty thrown in.

Info Management: Many-to-One

Custom objects are especially useful if multiple individuals provide the same data. For instance, let’s imagine a husband, wife, and their kids sign up for a cruise with a single shared email address. Eloqua’s default system would only allow you to store one name with that email address. With a custom object, you can store each family member’s data separately while still using the same email address and keeping their details separate.

From the family’s perspective, this means they can each plan their own activities on the cruise and each receive an email with their own agenda. This certainly makes planning easier for them. And for you, it allows you to treat a single email address the same way you would normally treat multiple contacts for marketing purposes.

Eloqua-Compatible Apps for Custom Objects

Eloqua’s custom objects unfortunately cannot move data from a contact record into a CO table on their own. Fortunately, there’s an app for that. The 4Thought team has developed multiple apps to expand Eloqua’s functionality, especially as it relates to custom objects. Whether you need to transfer data from a contact record to a CO, delete COs you no longer need, or do something else entirely, one of our apps can help you out.

How Will You Use Custom Objects?

Eloqua boasts a long list of useful functions for marketers. Even when its default functions aren’t quite enough, constructing a solution using  custom objects is a simple process. Mastering everything Eloqua has to offer can provide a much-needed boost to your marketing team. Want to take advantage of Eloqua’s full range of abilities? Get in touch with us for a demo and get on the path to greater success.