Oracle Eloqua’s extensive marketing automation capabilities allow companies to construct, manage, and measure the results of a marketing campaign. In the hands of an expert, Eloqua is a powerful tool. However, its capabilities are extensive and require advanced training for even the savviest of marketers to get the most out of the tool.

International law firm McDermott Will & Emery had an innovative marketing team, but needed expert training to deepen their Eloqua skillsets. The team leader, Kelly Hernandez, began searching for personalized lessons. That’s when she discovered 4Thought Marketing. “We were looking for an Eloqua training workshop that would help us advance our skills and execute complex campaigns,” she said. “Working with a Sr. Marketing Operations Consultant at 4Thought, we developed a plan for four 90-minute classes for a remote training workshop.” Each session would focus on Eloqua functions and their practical applications in marketing programs.

The first session focused on the Campaign Canvas, one of Eloqua’s most powerful features. As that first session progressed and the marketing team began asking questions, the plans for the remaining classes changed. “Our team was very interested in learning more about reporting capabilities and progressive profiling after the first session,” said Kelly. The remaining classes focused on these topics, as well as a more hands-on tutorial of Eloqua’s other functions.

The curriculum even incorporated actual emails from McDermott’s current outreach programs as examples. The last training session, or “final exam”, consisted of working on an actual future marketing project the team had been planning. They worked step-by-step, leveraging what they had learned. They got hands-on, practical experience setting up the project in Eloqua, preparing it for launch, and tracking the results afterward.

Overall, the McDermott marketing team was very satisfied with the training 4Thought Marketing provided. “We now have a deeper knowledge and skill set that will allow us to continue to innovate on our marketing automation plan,” said Kelly. As a result of the training, the team is better prepared to leverage the full range of Eloqua’s capabilities, and can now get far more business value out of their Eloqua system.

Is your marketing team in need of personalized Eloqua training? Get in touch with us today and we’ll make it happen.

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.

Oracle NetSuite recently announced that Bronto, a reliable and widely used email automation software, will no longer be supported after May 31, 2022. For companies and marketing agencies that relied on NetSuite Bronto for promotional campaigns, this means it’s time to find a new solution as soon as possible.

Keep Your Email Marketing Campaigns Going

Marketing is a constantly evolving field. And with Bronto going the way of the dinosaurs, it’s time for companies that relied on it to find a more up-to-date solution. We’d like to invite you to take a closer look at Oracle Eloqua, one of the most comprehensive marketing automation systems available. But don’t take too long to decide! NetSuite Bronto won’t be around much longer, and the time to find an alternative system is now.

As you consider migrating from NetSuite Bronto to Oracle Eloqua, here are several important factors to consider.

1. Campaign Flows & System Capabilities

Email marketing plans range from single email blasts to multi-step campaigns. Eloqua can support both, but the transition does bear considering. Moving from a simpler program focused on single emails requires updating your strategy to Eloqua’s campaign-based system. Once the transition is complete, you’ll have access to far more capabilities than you ever did in your original system.

But maybe your current tool already supports multi-step email campaigns. If this is the case, take care to transfer your workflow rules and process to Eloqua correctly. Not everything can be exactly replicated after the move. See what can be replicated and update the rest accordingly.

2. Moving Data from Netsuite Bronto to Eloqua

Chances are, your current email marketing system contains far more data than you actually need. Take the opportunity to clean up your data and remove unusable or expired information. You can also standardize your information by state, country, etc. to easily replicate your database in Eloqua.

Duplicate data is more complicated. Sometimes more than one lead will use the same contact information, like a husband and wife sharing an email address or home phone number. Some email marketing software allows for situations like this, but Eloqua does not. Before you migrate duplicate data, either remove the duplicate or note the reason to retain it. You’ll then have to construct a custom object in Eloqua to store the duplicate information.

3. Asset Migration

Your old software has all of your assets—emails, landing pages, forms, etc.—that you constructed within the system. Eloqua allows you to keep these assets in their original HTML format or to transfer them straight into the built-in editor, depending on your preference. But Eloqua has more to offer here than a simple drag-and-drop transfer system. During your asset migration process, you can take advantage of Eloqua’s systems to clean up your collected forms. Eloqua allows you to:

• Merge identical or nearly-identical assets into a single file
• Standardize your templates and/or designs for easy future use
• Recreate forms and/or emails in the Eloqua designer
• Easily create new forms and/or emails with the same design and branding as the originals

While Eloqua is designed to make asset migration as simple as possible, migrating activity records like email clicks or website visits requires a little more care. You absolutely need this information for segmentation purposes. However, Eloqua cannot perform a one-to-one transfer of activity history. Instead, you will need to transfer the data and save it as an external asset or a different element within Eloqua. You can also choose to simply archive the data until you need it. Either way, the transfer process requires a little more thought.

4. Running Two Email Systems at Once

Migration can take two months or more to do properly. But since no company wants put their marketing campaigns on hold for two months, the best strategy is to run both systems in parallel. Your original email marketing software will continue to manage campaigns for the moment while you work on duplicating those campaigns and their assets in Eloqua. This gives you plenty of time to ensure that Eloqua can pick up where your previous system left off. Once the transfer is complete, you’ll enjoy a seamless transition with no interruption to your marketing plans.

5. Give Yourself Room for Testing & Troubleshooting

Finally, remember that no migration is perfect, and despite the best planning possible, things can and do go wrong. Maybe you have way more unused emails than you remember and have to clean up your collection before transferring. Maybe you can’t fully replicate your design in Eloqua and have to make a few changes. Maybe your computer will hiccup and interrupt some of the data transfer. Any number of things could happen. Be ready to deal with problems quickly when they do happen, and more importantly, give yourself enough time to handle them.

Marketing experts advise setting aside between 4-6 weeks and 2 months, if not more, to complete your migration. Plan for a longer process if you anticipate trouble. You owe it to your company to perform a successful migration for successful future campaigns.

Get Help from Eloqua Migration Experts

At 4Thought Marketing, we are experts at helping companies migrate to Oracle Eloqua. Give us a call today for more information on Eloqua and how to successfully migrate from Netsuite Bronto.

Who doesn’t love a time-saving trick that can make our everyday work easier? With our calendars filled with endless meetings and projects to take care of, one of our top priorities should be to find resources that will help us be more productive throughout our workday. Nobody really enjoys sacrificing extra time to finish a last-minute task, after all. Anything that can lighten up our schedule is certainly very welcome. And that’s exactly what the new content block feature in the Eloqua Design Editor does.

As part of the release 20B that rolled out in May 2020, Eloqua content blocks are here to stay. We love them at 4Thought Marketing, and our clients love them. Why? Simply put, they save both of us a lot of time.

What are Content Blocks Anyway?

To quote the Oracle Eloqua Help Center, “Content blocks are groups of layout containers and cells that can be re-used when building responsive emails or landing pages. They can be a combination of different cell types such as text, images, dynamic content, shared content, and more. By breaking down your most commonly used components and re-assembling them to meet the unique needs of each new email and landing page, you can more quickly create brand-compliant content with ease.”

Our clients take advantage of content blocks in various ways, from quick fixes to overall layout and formatting consistency. We found this to be especially helpful when organizations have teams across different regions all working together on a particular project. With a simple drag and drop, anyone can create eye-catching email and landing page designs that are compatible with all email clients and render beautifully across different mobile devices. Reusable Eloqua content blocks provide a seamless, no-code approach that will ultimately help you create and edit templates much faster than before.

Ready to get started? Here’s a quick walkthrough of the content block system that’s helped so many marketers.

Creating Content Blocks in Eloqua Design Editor

Content blocks are managed from Eloqua’s Design Editor, which is why they are automatically responsive. When you select the content blocks section highlighted in this picture, you have the ability to search or manage your block library.

To create custom and reusable content blocks from an existing content section, select the layout that you would like to save as a content block and click on the block icon that appears on the right-hand side. It will prompt you to name your block before saving. You will now be able to find your block in the block library.

In our example below, we have a two-column set up with an image and a text block:

Once you have created and saved your custom content block, a simple drag and drop from the library will add it to the email canvas.

Editing a Content Block

After the content block has been saved and is visible from the block library, you may edit it as needed. Go to the block’s options menu and click “Edit”, as shown here:

In the “Edit Block” screen, you can adjust and tailor your block to your design needs.  Your new workshop will look like this:

Save Yourself Some Time with Eloqua Content Blocks!

When used efficiently, content blocks provide a hassle-free way to quickly build emails while increasing quality control and adhering to your company’s branding guidelines. If you haven’t tried creating your own custom blocks in our Eloqua marketing software yet, we strongly suggest you give them a try. You won’t look back! The increase in efficiency and design will be more than worth the effort.

Still have questions? Get in touch with our team for pointers on properly using Eloqua content blocks in the Design Editor.

Checklist for Expanding Oracle Eloqua to New Business Units

For many large organizations, they implement Oracle Eloqua phases. Or they may acquire a company and eventually need to move them into Eloqua. When it’s time to onboard a new business unit, a plan is essential to ensure everyone is on the same page. It’s also an opportunity to address the organization’s unique challenges and address potential issues early in the project.

One way to ensure a successful deployment is following a checklist to confirm you ask and answer all the relevant questions.  In this article, we’ll explore many of the planning steps and discuss the various tasks involved.  An Eloqua SmartStart from a qualified partner also covers many but not all of these steps.

Key Considerations

Depending on your Oracle Eloqua license, you may have the option of using an existing or creating a new Oracle Eloqua instance. There are many factors when making this decision, but the key is minimizing disruption to existing users and setting the new business unit up for success. The following are a series of questions that will uncover the best approach for your unique business case.

Contacts

• Are there overlapping contacts within the two business units?
• Does the new business unit share a large number of contacts with existing business units

Yes, share contacts – Having them use the existing instance will allow for better email frequency monitoring to prevent email fatigue. And your total contact count (which Oracle Eloqua uses to determine the cost) will not increase substantially. The contact count is performed across all Eloqua instances and counts the total number of contact records, regardless of duplication across all instances.

No, contacts do not overlap – Does access to contact records need to be restricted using Contact Level Security? If yes, and this is not already set up in the existing instance, consider this an additional piece to configure.

Subscription Management

• How is subscription management configured in the existing instance, and would it be different for the new business unit?

Same subscription management – use existing

Different – To use the existing instance, you may need to make modifications that allow each business unit to manage their subscriptions separately, i.e., create unique preference management pages. Contacts previously globally unsubscribed may need to be re-subscribed and preferences updated on the email group level, especially if contacts are shared mainly with the new business unit.

Integrations

• Are there additional integrations required by the new business unit, or can they leverage existing integrations?
• Do they use the same CRM system, and if so, are the lead creation processes similar?

Yes — You eliminate the need to set up a new integration by using the existing instance.
No — evaluate how the existing CRM integration would need to be modified. If integrations require substantial changes, there may be no benefit to using the current instance. The level of effort to configure the integration may be the same as setting up a new instance and different integration.

Another consideration if using a different CRM system and overlapping contacts is how to implement Account Linkage.

Whether or not there are non-CRM integrations shouldn’t impact the decision, as new integrations, whether it’s a webinar platform or SFTP import, need to be set up in the existing in a new instance. There may even be existing non-CRM integrations that can be leveraged by the new business unit in the current instance.

Third-Party App

Are there any third-party apps in the existing instance that require licensing for a new instance? If so, consider the additional costs.

Campaign Responses

• Does the new business unit define campaign responses the same way as the existing business units?

Yes – The same Instance

No – New instance. Response Rules in Eloqua apply for ALL activities in the instance, and you cannot modify them for each business unit. You may need to evaluate how campaign responses are currently sent to the CRM system and change the process if the new business unit has different definitions.

Branding

• Does the new business unit have specific branding requirements? For example, will they require separate subdomains to host landing pages, branding & deliverability, and out-of-the-box subscription management?

Yes – consider creating a new instance for a separately branded send, image, and apps domain.
No – existing instance

Additional Considerations
IP Warming

If leaning towards setting up a new instance, remember you must first warm up the new dedicated IPs before sending large volumes of emails, a process that can and should take up to 4 weeks.

Reporting

• Are the reporting requirements similar, or are they very different?

Many standard dashboards query the entire database, such as Campaign Analysis Overview. Some campaign dashboards display metrics based on a custom campaign field, such as Business Unit, to allow more granular reporting for each business unit. Most Insight reports are also configurable for specific asset metrics.

Asset Templates

• Are there asset templates (email/form/landing page/campaign) in the existing instance that can be leveraged by the new business unit?

Yes – save time recreating asset templates by using the existing inst
No – Similar level of effort is required to create new templates in the existing instance or new instance.

Data Quality and Processes

• Are your data standards such as country to region, job title to a job role, or level the same?

Yes – reduce effort by using existing lookup tables and automation without rebuilding them.

Conclusion

When adding new business units to your Oracle Eloqua CX Marketing platform, carefully consider your options when choosing to use an existing or creating a new Eloqua instance. Following a checklist can help ensure you ask and answer all the relevant questions during the decision-making process. While there are many factors, the choice is mainly dependent on how similar, or different the customer data and sales processes are between the respective business units

Get the Help you Need

Need help choosing the best path forward? 4Thought Marketing has deep experience helping companies consider their options carefully when adding a new business unit. Contact us to discuss your requirements with one of our specialists.

About 4Thought Marketing

4Thought Marketing is a software development and privacy compliance company founded in 2008. We help customers align business and legal objectives, translating them into strategies that produce results. Our services include Marketing Automation and Privacy Compliance Software Implementation, Integration, Customization, Consulting, and Service.

Shared Email Addresses and Eloqua – Top 5 Considerations

Most Eloqua users are probably aware that each Contact record in Eloqua has a unique email address.  Oracle Eloqua doesn’t allow different individuals to share a common email address or receive their own unique email – at least not with ‘out of the box’ functionality.

Your customers aren’t bound by these rules. There are cases where multiple people may share an email address, such as household members, or a single person may wear enough hats to require more than one record in Eloqua.

Some examples:

• Cruise Ships. A family may book their reservation using a single email address, but you need to send itineraries and special event information to each individual in the household
• Education. Parents of multiple children need information about each of their kids’ school activities
• Auto dealerships. A vehicle owner needs to be kept informed about services for multiple vehicles
• Corporations. A large company with multiple business units needs to email business unit-specific information to a shared lead

In these cases, it often is necessary to use Custom Objects (COs or Custom Data Objects) to store the information about each individual.

Five things you need to do if you want to market to customers with a shared email addresses in Oracle Eloqua

#1: Consider All Your Data Sources

How you load the data matters.  If you use Oracle Eloqua CO to store individual data (for example product preference, job title, or area of interest) you will need to find a way to create and/or update the CO when you get new information. Data in Oracle Eloqua comes primarily from three places: Form Submissions, List Uploads, and CRM integration.  Each input source has its own set of concerns to consider.  For example, if you are doing a list upload, do you want to create a new CO each time?  What is the unique ID for the CO and can the list upload determine if one already exists? 

If the source of the data is a form submission or CRM integration, you’ll want to answer the same questions.

#2: Pay attention When Integrating with Your CRM

In the same way you need to determine if a CO should be created or updated, you’ll need to understand what records will be created or updated in the CRM. Just like a standard CRM integration, you need to look at the business rules for creating and updating Leads and Contacts in the CRM, and retrieving that data back into Eloqua.  Many-to-One scenarios make these decisions a little more complex because you also have to understand which fields go to the Contact, and which go to the Lead CO.  

For example, First Name and Last Name belong at the Eloqua Contact.  But what about Lead Score – that is probably linked to the Lead, as is Lead Status.  And then you have other fields such as preferences or whether the individual is a customer.  You need to look at the business use of these fields to determine if they are at the Lead or Contact level.

These are just a few of the many situations where your CRM integration will need to be examined even more closely than before.

#3: Revisit How You Manage Subscriptions, Preferences and Opt Outs

When two or more people share an email address and one globally unsubscribes, all individuals linked to that email address will automatically be unsubscribed. 

One way to get around this is to use Preference Management. This way each individual can identify which emails they would like to receive, and which they don’t.  This introduces a new layer of complexity when segmenting data for campaigns.

#4: Revisit Lead Scoring

How you score and how you store these scores needs to be addressed  Just as you’ll want to manage email preferences on an individual basis, you may want to score each individual separately from others who share the same email address.

#5: Be Deliberate with Segmentation and Personalization Merges

When you have multiple COs for a single email address, and want to use data from the CO for field merge purposes – e.g. start the email with “Hi [fname]”, you’ll need a mechanism to perform the following functions:

• Find all Contacts who meet your campaign segmentation criteria
• Find the correct CO record from which to pull the data to be used on the field merge
• Move the data from the CO to the Contact

You’ll then want to cycle through the COs in case there are multiple CO records that meet your campaign criteria.

The Many-to-One Email cloud app from 4Thought Marketing meets all of the segmentation and field merger criteria described here, and more. 

One More Thing…

Finally, you’ll want to carefully review your other data flow processes to identify which would be affected by sharing email addresses. 

Going down the household email path requires expertise – but it can be done. 

4Thought Marketing has successfully implemented Many-to-One email processes for B2B and B2C clients.  We take a holistic approach to your problem. We’ll  help you clearly define your needs and then determine if Many-to-One is right for you.  Just like you, we don’t want to make your life more complicated than it already is…but if you have complex business needs, we’re there to help simplify where possible.

For more information call us at 1-888-356-7824, or contact us  and we’ll get in touch shortly.

Email Related Contact Cloud App

The Email Related Contact Cloud App solves an age-old challenge every Eloqua marketer has heard from Sales at least once, especially after launching a new email campaign.

“Next time, could you please include me when you send an email to my accounts? It will help me prepare to answer any follow-up questions I might receive.” 

Score One for Marketing! This is precisely the behavior you want: an email that results in an account calling to their salesperson, and moving them one step further down the funnel.  However, Oracle Eloqua does not offer a solution.  At 4Thought Marketing, we hear this request all the time, and so we created an Eloqua Cloud App that provides a quick, convenient solution to send a carbon copy email.

Introducing the Email Related Contact Cloud App

The Email Related Contact Cloud App is an Action that works on either the campaign or contact program canvas.  It retrieves the account owner or other related contact’s email address and sends it to the related contact feeder running on the same canvas.  When your campaign runs, the Salesperson will also receive a copy of the email*. Other uses include subscribing related contacts to a group or adding them to a shared list. 

Watch a 2-minute demo

Want to see even more? Watch our 2-minute demo:

Using the Email Related Contact Cloud App on the campaign canvas

Let’s take a look at an example using the campaign canvas. Here are the steps:

• • Select your Segment

• • Add both the Export Related Contacts and Import Related Contacts actions to your campaign canvas, as shown below:

Next, configure the Email Related Contact app:

• • Select the field containing the related contact’s email address

• • Select the Feeder Step for import-related contacts

Now, when you activate this campaign, the account owner will also receive one copy of the email for each included account.*

Subscribing Related Contacts using contact program

Another use case is subscribing account owners to Eloqua Groups used for newsletters or similar communication. You can automate this using a contact program:

• • Select your segment

• • Add the Export Related Contacts and Import Related Contacts actions to your canvas, as shown below:

Next, configure the Related Contacts to Campaign Cloud App:

• • Select the field containing the related contact’s email address

• • Select the Feeder Step for import related contacts

These are just two examples of how the Email Related Contact Cloud App works.

Contact Us if you would like to learn more or purchase the Email Related Contact Cloud App. 

Need help with your campaigns, experiencing staffing, or bandwidth issues?  Let our campaign services team help you.

Building a Delete Contact Program for Oracle Eloqua

Let’s face it; there are contacts in your Eloqua system that don’t belong there.  They take up valuable real estate, living in the dark alleys between “reachable” and “engaged” contacts.  They may think they are living rent-free, but they are not.  Even after building the “contact washing machine to rule them all,” these pesky goblins somehow find their way into your system.  Still, others are long-time residents, who like cockroaches, seem to be indestructible.  Even with routine contact maintenance and manual deletion, some just refuse to leave.  And for a few of you, despite your best efforts, management wants to keep contacts around, forever, “just in case.” 

Deleting contacts is also time-consuming.  If your system is small, it may be an easy task performed monthly.  However, if your Eloqua system holds hundreds of thousands or millions of contacts, you need some type of automation to help.

The good news is that there are simple solutions to help keep your database clean and tidy without breaking a sweat.

Deleting Contacts with Oracle Eloqua

Eloqua offers two built-in methods for deleting contacts: 1) searching and removing them one-by-one, or 2) importing a list of contacts for deletion.  There is also a clever Eloqua hack using deduplication rules to trick Eloqua into exposing delete contact functionality that you can build yourself. And here at 4Thought Marketing, we offer a Contact Deleter with Archive Cloud App that you simply drop into your program or campaign canvas.  Plus, it can also archive data before deletion, something not possible to automate with Eloqua alone.

But contacts aren’t the only thing you’ll have to delete. Any Custom Object records mapped to a deleted contact may still be there, taking up space and making your database confusing. Fortunately, 4Thought has another app for that. Use our Contact CO Deleter Cloud App to clean out these unused Custom Objects with just a few clicks.

Note: be mindful of what happens if contacts return.  Oracle details what contact data Oracle Eloqua retains and restores when deleting contacts.

The Usual Suspects

At the top of our list of least-wanted contacts are those from known spam domains.  These temporary, or in some cases, semi-permanent addresses are often easy to spot.  Many of these are also temporary or throw-away email domains.   While there are legitimate reasons for using this type of address, too often, bad actors exploit these systems, and they should be part of your spam domain list. 

Test Data

Virtually everyone performs testing in their live production systems, either to validate that all your hard work in sandbox environments works correctly or to monitor if systems continue to function through routine checks.  And it’s not always ideal to use real company email accounts for testing.  Here, a temporary email address service may be the correct choice.  In our experience, we prefer using email accounts that expire within a specific time, enabling testing but get removed after they expire.

Hard Bouncebacks

Removing hard bouncebacks should be a simple choice for most organizations.  Until they return through new form submission or data integration, Eloqua excludes hard bounceback contacts from communication.  Keeping them around isn’t a good idea.  While you could remove them immediately, some of our clients established short waiting periods for external metrics gathering and archiving.  You should carefully consider if you should delete immediately or briefly pause.

Because It’s the Law

New privacy regulations are the law, and keeping personal information around when it’s unlawful can get expensive fast.  In certain jurisdictions, if you don’t have consent, or cannot demonstrate you’ve got permission to process data, or keep a record longer than permitted by law, you could be in violation.  Also, for many, people’s rights include having their personal information removed from your systems.  If you have not already done so, or you are unhappy with your current privacy solution, 4Thought Marketing offers 4Comply, a complete full privacy compliance solution for Oracle Eloqua.

Other Considerations

Don’t forget to update your integrations, so your CRM or other systems doesn’t re-create deleted contacts.  If you have one, consult your Eloqua data dictionary on integration fields and rules.

Conclusion

Keeping unreachable, unresponsive, or test accounts in your Oracle Eloqua system is problematic, may cost you money, impact reporting, and cause privacy issues. While Eloqua includes some tools to help, they are not ideal for every customer. 4Thought Marketing makes it easier with the Contact Deleter in the Archive Cloud App, which marketers can drop into the program or campaign canvas. It also provides peace of mind by allowing you to archive contacts before removal.

Contact Us if you would like to learn more about the Contact Deleter with Archive Cloud App. We can also help install, configure, and build your delete contact programs.

Event Integration Best Practices for Oracle Eloqua

With the dramatic increase in online and virtual events in 2020, it’s more important than ever to have a well-designed integration between your event management platform(s) and Oracle Eloqua.  Many meeting, webinar, and virtual event platforms offer native integrations to Oracle Eloqua.  But that is typically where the hard work begins.

In today’s article, we’ll discuss some key questions and best practices we’ve used with our customers to ensure we meet all their requirements.

Making the Connection

When exploring an event management platform, a key consideration should be if they offer an out of the box (OOTB) Oracle Eloqua integration. Start by checking the vendors’ site for integrations, or try searching the Oracle Cloud Marketplace. The Marketplace may also include listings for 3^rd party integrations.  And if a third-party solution isn’t available in the Oracle marketplace, integration platforms like Zapier are also available. Integration platforms may require a bit more planning and configuration. Also, they may not support every data element you hoped for, but it may be sufficient for what you need.

Depending on your integration, your solution may offer built-in data mapping tools.  These tools are similar to field mapping tools in Eloqua for list uploads.  But not all integrations are customer-configurable.  For some, you must provide a list of fields and data types to the vendor, and they set up the configuration for you.

Data and Process Mapping

Once you’ve decided how to connect your systems, the next step is to explore the data available through the integration and how it maps to Eloqua.  Before we go further, it’s critical to consider the big picture.  While Eloqua may be the tool that connects and receives event data, very often, it’s not the only destination.  Eloqua may store the data as is, or it may perform operations and transform the data, and then pass it to your CRM or other systems.  Take time to understand the data, how it maps to Eloqua and other systems. If you have one, refer to your Data Dictionary, it should contain details on fields, formats, usage, and history.

Required and Optional Data Elements

Event data drives segmentation, lead nurturing, and other sales and marketing processes. Many integrations offer an extensive list of data elements available from the event platform.  However, it’s essential to evaluate each data point and determine if it’s necessary or is merely informative.  Required elements may include but are not limited to contact and company details, consent, event details such as event name, event id, campaign id, area of interest, and if they registered or attended.   

Other elements may be useful, but you need to evaluate each based on how and who uses it.  For example, you might consider data available for the total event duration; time watched, Q&A questions asked, and their answers as useful but informative.  In this case, and your sales team wants this information added to a lead, you could combine them into a single text field and store it as a note in your CRM.  If a savvy salesperson reads the note, they’ll learn their customer or prospect attended the widget webinar and during the Q&A asked if widgets work with sprockets.  That information may be a great reason to follow-up and sell them more sprockets. Bring this topic up in your next meeting with sales, train them on the data they should look for, and where to find it in the CRM.

Campaign Association and External Activities

Many platforms offer fields to enable campaign attribution for events.  You simply need to configure it once, and all records should include a value for campaign id.  If you create external activities for your events, the data is available for automated lead scoring.  Someone who registers and attends or watches a replay could receive a higher score than someone who just registered.  Some platforms offer an attendee score, which may be useful in your lead scoring model.  It’s another data point to consider.

4Thought marketing offers the Campaign Membership Cloud App, which streamlines the process of creating campaign associations and external activities automatically.

Importance of Nurture Campaigns

While your goal when hosting events is to generate new sales leads, not everyone who registers and attends qualifies as a lead.  A critical part of your event strategy should be a nurture foundation and topic-specific nurturing campaigns. While your event may provide almost everything the lead wanted, it may not be sufficient for them to MQL.  Nurtures continue the conversation automatically, providing additional details to help the customer as they evaluate your product.

Conclusion

Companies are increasingly marketing and promoting their products and services through virtual events and meetings, which demands quality integration between your event platform and Oracle Eloqua.  Many of these platforms directly support Oracle Eloqua. At the same time, some are available through 3^rd party integration or via general-purpose integration platforms.  Connecting systems is just the start.  Mapping the data to your existing internal processes and data formats is vital.  And don’t forget to leverage campaign associations to track effectiveness.  And finally, support your virtual events and meetings with nurtures that further qualify leads until they MQL.

Contact Us if you need help with your event integration. We’ve helped countless customers build robust event integration solutions that drive results.

Why Would You Ever Delete Eloqua Custom Objects?

Many Eloqua owners don’t actively manage their data until they have problems, especially with Custom Objects (CO). This article describes how to get ahead of the curve with COs and proactively manage your old and unneeded CO data using the CO Deleter Cloud App.

You’re Up Against Eloqua’s Limit – Reason #1 

When Eloqua starts generating errors or stops performing due to reaching system limits, this is the ultimate reason. While the upper limit for COs is very high, it may not necessarily be out of your reach:

• The system limit on the total number of custom object records is 25 million across all custom objects.
• A single custom object should have no more than 5 million custom object records.

At first glance, they may seem like more than sufficient records. However, if you have a million contacts, and are a dot com company pulling in eCommerce, or a large B2B company pulling in Data Warehouse data, this space can be used very quickly. We’ve run across a variety of other reasons as well. For example, a medium-size B2B software company with a decade of product download history can burn through these quantities.

Removing old record records by hand can be a completely unrealistic task, and what’s more, its not a task that anyone would want to do every week or month.

Performance – Reason #2

We had a customer who got a huge number of inquiries every day and tracked them via COs to measure multiple inquiries against a single contact. They also defined inquiries very loosely so that many web page visits also became CO records. Combined with their massive number of inquiries received each day, they caused reports and dashboards to slow down after a while.

A quick bit of analysis revealed that certain types of records were not needed for more than 24 hours, and others didn’t need to be kept for more than a month. Feeding these records into our CO Deleter Cloud Connector solved the problem. It regularly removes CO records automatically with no human interaction.

Improved Reporting –Reason #3

Old data may clutter your reports because your useful data gets mixed up with old and obsolete information. If you’re getting suspicious results in your reports caused by old data, this is a great time to clean up your COs. Of course, understanding what you’re reporting on, and how to separate the junk from the gold sometimes takes some thinking, but it can be done.

Bonus Reasons #4, #5, and #6! 

There are other reasons too. Often old project/architectures will leave a trail of CO structures and data that make your Eloqua life more complicated than it should be. Sometimes testing a new system results in a bunch of COs that would be a real pain to delete manually. And sometimes you want a clean ship.  If a CO is no longer required, why leave it around?

Is It Safe?

Whenever you’re deleting something programmatically, you should double or triple your testing efforts to make sure Eloqua is doing what you want. It IS possible to create a filter or a program flow incorrectly. And while the 4Thought Marketing CO Deleter does give you a manual path of recovery, it’s not fun.

Contact Us if you would like to learn more about the CO Deleter with Archive Cloud App, or with any other data quality tasks you need help with.