Improve Your Eloqua Data

Just how do you improve your Eloqua data?  It’s something every Marketing Automation professional deals with all the time. Because data comes from a wide variety of sources including Form Submissions, Lists, and other systems, sometimes, the data is not in the format you want or need.

For example, you might have two fields that you want to combine into one field for segmentation purposes or for field merge onto an email or Landing Page. 

You might have values in a field from one source and needs to be modified before storing them in another field.  Or The requirement might be to shorten the length of a text field; or remove certain character strings; or format your phone field to a specific format.

While some of these are possible within built-in tools in Oracle Eloqua, they are not always as flexible to meet your requirements, or easy to use.  

To help our customers, we created a number of Eloqua Cloud Apps that can help.  Don’t struggle with your formatting and manipulating your data – find an app to do it for you, and remove that problem. 

You’ve got bigger problems to solve than formatting data.  Improve your Eloqua data using cloud apps from 4Thought Marketing.

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

You
want to optimize your marketing campaigns and get results faster. Do you need
to hire a new agency to accomplish those gains? Not necessarily. You might
achieve your objectives with better marketing automation.

Why You Need Marketing Automation Experiments

According to G2 Crowd, a business software reviews website, there are hundreds of marketing automation software tools on the market. The entire marketing technology

If
you include the options made possible by tools like Zapier,
which allows you to connect virtually any part of any application to any other
application, the possibilities expand exponentially.

How
can you make smart choices on which automation tools are right for your market?
Reading reviews and lists of product features helps. Yet that doesn’t tell you
much on how that tool will behave in your environment.

To
help you evaluate marketing tools quickly, we recommend carrying out five day
experiments. Each quarter, experiment with a new marketing automation app, tool
or process. If you find something that works well, continue implementation. If
it doesn’t, you have only invested a few days in testing it .

For
marketing leaders and managers, there is another reason to pursue marketing
experiments. It is an excellent way to grow your team with a challenge. It is
also an opportunity for your team to own a project and lead it. Just think
about your junior marketing staff. They may have joined the organization and
spent most of their time working on marketing campaigns and projects that
others have created. With this process, everyone on the project team will have
the chance to work on a new project.

Are
Five Days Enough For An Experiment?

A
single work week is enough time to launch a small project and test the results.
For the best results, prepare in advance. Complete other projects ahead of
time. Let your key stakeholders in sales, operations and other areas know that
you will return to their requests after your experimentation week is over. With
that preparation work done, get started with the steps below.

What
if you find that an interesting marketing automation tool simply cannot be
implemented in a week? There are two ways to address that reality. First, you
could set aside those tools and focus on smaller scale Software As A Service
tools instead. Look for companies that have a pricing page on their website
rather than custom pricing developed by a sales representative. Second, if you
want to pursue a larger scale solution, adapt this framework to develop an
in-depth demo with the vendor.

Schedule Tip: Determine steps 1-2 on the first day of the week. That will give you three days to run the experiment itself.

Step
1) Choose a marketing objective

You
need to know what you are aiming at in your experiment.

• Do you want to move the needle on a
  tactical measure like increasing email marketing open rates?
• Alternatively, you might focus on
  using marketing automation to further a different goal such as developing your
  marketing automation program.
• Do you want to save time on
  marketing tasks like cleaning or segmenting lists?

Tip:
Do not let your enthusiasm for a shiny new tool dictate your objective!

Step
2) Choose the risk level for your marketing automation experiment.

You
have a few options available to consider depending on your risk appetite.

• Launch An Experiment With Your Current Platform.

If you have a powerful platform in place like Oracle Eloqua, consider testing one of its capabilities. We have found that few clients have fully exploited all of their existing platform’s features. For example, you may want to explore the Oracle Sales Cloud Integration app enhancements available in Eloqua. This is the lowest risk type of marketing automation experiment because you are not adding any new software.

• Extend Your Platform With An Add-On or App.

Did you know that you can use third-party apps to extend Eloqua’s
capabilities? To find out more, check out our related article: 7 must-have apps
for Oracle Eloqua. This is a medium risk marketing automation experiment where
you combine something known and something unknown.

• Experiment With A Brand New App.

With
this approach, the sky’s the limit. Since there are more than 100 marketing
automation tools on the market, you may feel overwhelmed with the available
options. Refer back to your objective from step one to guide your choice.

Since you are moving into new territory, this is the highest risk
marketing automation experiment. Don’t worry – you are limiting your risk
exposure by keeping this to the one-week timeframe.

3) Launch the test

Now
that you have chosen your objective and risk level, it is time to launch the
test!

If
you are in a risk averse organization, start by running a simulation with with
dummy data to identify technical problems. However, do not let that be your
entire test.

 As a rule of thumb, we recommend running your
marketing automation test with 1,000 prospects. That will give your experiment
some measure of statistical validity.

4)
Adjust the test mid-flight

As
results from your campaign come in, make adjustments as needed. This step is
critical if you see no results at all. For example, if your email open rate
drops to zero or you see zero ad impressions.

Look
for these warning signs and adjust accordingly.

• Corrupt data. Before you start your marketing
  automation test, create a copy of your database to experiment on. Before writing off the app, check to
  see if a configuration or programming error contributed to the problem.
• Non-delivery of email or advertising. Compare
  delivery rates
  to your standard operating model. Check if
  integrations between apps are working correctly.
• Technical errors. Expect these errors to happen
  when you test something new. Fix as much as you can and continue with the
  experiment.
• Customer complaints. Use your judgment to assess
  this point. Are the complaints about accessibility (e.g. a customer cannot open a web
  page) or something else?  If the complaints are about the copy or
  offer, that doesn’t tell you anything about whether the automation experiment
  was a success.
• Stakeholder complaints. If other departments
  complain that marketing is non-responsive to their needs during the experiment,
  that’s a warning sign. You can reduce the chances of this situation by engaging
  your stakeholders prior to starting the experiment.

5)
Assess the test results

At
the end of the five-day experiment, review your results. To make the most of
your review process, use the following tips.

• Seek An Outside Perspective.
  Invite someone from outside the experiment group to look at the results. They
  will help you overcome blind spots in examining the test results.
• Develop Lessons Learned. What
  would you do again? What would you avoid? Integrate these lessons in your
  marketing operations.
• Consider Further Investment. If
  your marketing experiment involved a new application or outside resource, you
  have an investment decision to make. Is there
  merit in scaling up the test? If so, what budget and resources would be
  involved? For instance, can you double the scale of your marketing experiment
  (e.g. 1,000 prospects to 2,000 prospects) to see if the experiment holds up at
  scale. .

What
Should You Do If The Test Doesn’t Accomplish Results?

Don’t
feel bad if this happens! Few marketing automation experiments deliver
perfectly against expectations. While tests help you to grow, recognize their
limits. If you want to save 5% of work time or increase conversions by 1-3%,
marketing automation experiments may provide what you need.

If
you are seeking a more transformational change, you may need an outside
perspective on your business. Contact us to schedule a discussion.

Why Delete Eloqua Contacts?

It’s a good idea to clean up your Eloqua contact database every so often. Over time, many contact records are created, and not all contacts are created equally. Oracle charges per contact, so deleting Eloqua contacts that you never use from your list is a good financial strategy.

There are several additional reasons to delete contacts, including:

• The law! Privacy regulations like the GDPR require companies to obtain consent before processing (read “storing”) data. If you don’t have consent in one form or another, you might be required by law to delete contact information.
• Hard bouncebacks waste space: Once a contact has been flagged as a hard bounceback, it only takes up space in your records. You’re much better off simply deleting it.
• Reduce Cost: A leaner contact list means reduced subscription costs.
• Deliverability score: Reaching out to long-inactive contacts increases your changes to get flagged as spam, resulting in a lower deliverability score and in ALL of your emails being less likely to reach their destination!
• Faster processing, better metrics: Removing inactive contacts will speed up processing times, improve your metrics (since you won’t be sending emails to uninterested contacts), and provide you and your management team with a better view of your pipeline.
• Remove SPAM and test records: Use segments to identify spam domains and test records and remove them automatically.

Deleting Eloqua Contacts

You can either delete your contacts manually, or implement an automated process. The manual approach requires continuous effort and monitoring, and of course, there will always be the chance of human error. Topliners has a detailed outline of the steps required for a manual approach.

On the other hand, automation presents a far simpler process. 4Thought Marketing created the Contact Deleter with Archive cloud app which removes unwanted contacts automatically in the background. Simply set it up, let it run, and watch your database clean itself up. This app gives you the upper hand to delete any part of your contact list based on criteria that you define. You can have different instances of the app running to deal with different groups of Contacts you wish to delete. Best of all, this app not only deletes the Contacts, but it also creates an archival backup on your SFTP server. Just remember to check your archived record periodically to make sure you don’t accidentally delete contacts you want to keep.

What About Related Custom Objects?

If you have custom objects related to contacts you’re deleting, these custom objects likely need to be deleted as well. Fortunately, 4Thought Marketing’s suite of Eloqua apps includes these solutions:

• Custom Object Deleter
• Campaign Contact Remover

Why Archive Your Deleted Contacts?

If you ever require the deleted data for unforeseen situations, it’s always good to have an automatic backup system. This archive also ensures you can prevent legitimate contacts from being accidentally lost forever.

Clean Up Your Eloqua Contact List

It’s easy and cost-effective to get started with the 4Thought Marketing Contact Deleter app. After a simple installation process, this powerful tool can quietly run in the background to keep Eloqua clean.

Our Cloud Apps are available individually or in groups, and are simple to implement directly from within Oracle Eloqua. Find out more or get a demo and see for yourself.

Happy Groundhog Day!

 

Do you ever feel in marketing, like you’re rerunning the same campaigns, the same landing pages, sending the same emails and most importantly getting the same results every day?

 

Bill Murray, has exactly the same problem in the movie “Groundhog Day”.  He ends up mindlessly repeating the same day OVER and OVER again until it seems he might go crazy.  We all have days like that, right?

 

Halfway through the movie, Bill Murray figures out what he has to do to get out of his boring cycle…

It’s the same thing Marketers aim to do: build a real relationship.

It seems so simple, and so obvious.  Most marketers know this already.

 

But just like us, despite knowing that building a relationship is the key to success, Bill’s problem doesn’t easily go away.

He tried to date Andie Macdowell lots of ways.  Most of them fail… humorously and spectacularly, while we, the audience, laugh and enjoy his attempts, because it is clear; Poor Bill didn’t know HOW to build a real relationship.

Do you?

Many boring days go by as Bill tries everything to build a relationship.  He tries all the obvious stuff.  Flowers.  Chocolates.  Poetry.  All with minimal success.

 

 

 Finally he has his first breakthrough

1. The Secret is Personalization

Bill tries to romance Andie over and over, and fails until he starts to personalize the experience.  He starts to care about what SHE is interested in and what SHE wants.  He begins learning about Andie (his prospect) and tailors what he’s doing to what fascinates her.

 

And suddenly something magical happens…. HIS DAY STARTS TO GET MORE INTERESTING!

Why?  Because he is getting better results.  Andie is responding!

Wouldn’t your day go better if you were continually getting better results?

 

Bill then progresses even farther when he realizes…

2.  He’ll have to try lots of things

Listening is half the battle.  But then you have to test lots of things to match up what you’re hearing with what really works.   Bill tries ALL sorts of things that SEEM like they’ll work at first, but don’t.

But that’s ok, because learning what his prospect DIDN’T want is also important!

You too will need to try lots of relevant personalized things… and they won’t all work.

But some will.  Track those.  Use those and then…

 

The final step is:

3.  You need to Practice it. Tune it.  Perfect it.

In the final stage, Bill figures out what he needs to do.  But it’s just not smooth enough.  He says a wrong word here, makes a misstep there.  There are rough edges that he has to figure out.

 

This is just like a nurture campaign.  Even after you’ve figured out the main personalized elements that will resonate with your Buyer Persona, you still need to adjust the exact wording.   Swap out the subject line a few times, and change the size of the picture, for example.

 

 

 

Finally Bill graduates!  All his work of figuring out that:

1. Building a relationship is the key
2. Personalization is the essence to building a relationship
3. Testing many things to really connect the personalization
4. Tune and perfect the personalization

These all pay off and Bill’s day ends, he and Andie continue on with wonderful lives.

How will your day end?

 

In a recent blog post, we discussed the amazing power behind Oracle Eloqua Custom Objects (COs – also known from their legacy name initials as CDOs).  As an Oracle Partner, we often are asked what can be done with the data in COs. Unfortunately, the answer is very little when you look at out-of-the-box functionality within Oracle Eloqua.

With the new Program Canvas, you have the ability to add CO records to a program and perform a limited number of decisions or actions on the data.  You can compare the value in a single field to create a decision tree; you can perform some basic update rules; and you can now delete a CO record.  But we have found that Oracle Eloqua users are very creative, and want to use COs in a wider range of functions.

Some examples we have come across lately include:

• Perform arithmetic calculations on fields within a record, or across records
• Compare the value of two different fields within a record, or again, across records
• Update fields on linked Contact records from data in a CO record
• Update fields in a CO record from linked Contact records
• Lookup data in a CO and match it to the Contact record data to determine the correct sales rep
• Append values from different fields within a record, or, of course, across records
• Perform a wide variety of date filters and manipulations, such as:

  • Find all records with a renewal before a certain date
  • Find all records created in the past NN weeks
  • Add 2 weeks to a date field
  • And many more

The amount of data manipulation that is requested on CO data is endless.  As stated at the beginning of this blog post, Oracle Eloqua just does not have the functionality built into the system to meet these needs.

That’s where Cloud Actions, Decisions, Apps, and Connectors come into play. Using the development platforms and API capabilities provided by the Oracle Eloqua system, sharp developers can create apps that perform these and many more functions.

At 4Thought Marketing, we have built dozens of custom and product-worthy Cloud Apps to meet these needs.  If you have tried everything that Oracle Eloqua has provided and still cannot meet your business goals, it’s probably worth a call to see what we can do for you.  We haven’t yet found a CO problem that we can’t solve.

We’d love to hear your ideas and help you realize them. Reach us at 888-ELOQUA4 (888-356-7824) or click on Contact Us.

We’ve been helping more of our customers with Marketing Automation Process Definition lately.  It seems obvious… well done, marketing automation gets quite complicated.  When you add in Executive Change, Software Upgrades, Personnel Turnover, and just plain old communication, keeping on top of the new world of Eloqua and CRM and maybe a couple of other systems without processes becomes almost impossible.

But still many marketers are unused to this level of complexity and have yet to realize that creating processes that successfully bridge the sales-marketing gap, communicate well to both executives and agencies doesn’t come easily.

If you’re still at the very early stages of Marketing Automation, perhaps you and everyone in your department can still keep it all in your head.  But at some point you’ll want to convey what’s happening to executives, new team members, or agencies, and when you do, well defined processes are the answer.

This cartoon makes the point well.