Frequently Asked Questions

Features & Capabilities

What are Eloqua custom objects (COs) and how do they enhance marketing automation?

Eloqua custom objects (COs) are flexible data structures that allow marketers to store and manage large volumes of customer data beyond standard contact and account fields. COs can have up to 1,024 fields each and are ideal for capturing complex, many-to-one relationships, historical data, and scalable data architectures. They help streamline campaign management and enable advanced segmentation and personalization. Source

How many fields and records can Eloqua custom objects support?

Each Eloqua custom object can have up to 1,024 fields, and there is no limit to the number of custom objects you can create in your instance. However, Oracle caps the total number of records across all COs at 25 million. Source

What advantages do custom objects offer over contact or account fields in Eloqua?

Custom objects provide greater capacity for data storage, support many-to-one relationships, enable historical data tracking, and scale with business needs. Unlike contact/account fields, COs can store multiple records linked to a single entity and are better suited for dynamic, evolving data requirements. Source

Can custom objects be used to store historical campaign data in Eloqua?

Yes, custom objects are ideal for storing historical data such as campaign interactions, event information, and form submissions. This enables marketers to reference past activities for lead scoring, segmentation, and campaign optimization. Source

How do custom objects scale with business growth in Eloqua?

Custom objects are highly scalable, allowing organizations to expand their data architecture as business needs evolve. They can mimic CRM data table structures for tight integration and help keep data organized as Eloqua instances grow in complexity. Source

What is the Many-to-One Email app and how does it augment custom object relationships?

The Many-to-One Email app is a custom add-on that helps marketers manage many-to-one relationships in Eloqua custom objects. It enables automated email campaigns targeting multiple records linked to a single contact or account, enhancing personalization and operational efficiency. Source

How does 4Thought Marketing support users unfamiliar with custom objects?

4Thought Marketing offers training and support for Eloqua custom objects, helping users maximize their data architecture and campaign effectiveness. Their team provides guidance on setup, best practices, and ongoing optimization. Source

What is the CO REGEX app and how does it help with custom object data formatting?

The CO REGEX app allows users to apply REGEX expressions to format data within custom object records in Eloqua. This helps standardize and clean data, improving quality and consistency for marketing campaigns. Source

How does the Country Normalization app improve data quality in Eloqua custom objects?

The Country Normalization app standardizes country values in custom object records using built-in or custom lists. It corrects spelling mistakes and normalizes non-standard variations, ensuring consistent data for segmentation and reporting. Source

What types of data are best stored in custom objects versus contact/account fields?

Custom objects are best for storing dynamic, historical, or many-to-one data such as campaign interactions, event attendance, product purchases, and form submissions. Contact/account fields are better for permanent information like names and business details. Source

How can custom objects help with campaign attribution and lead scoring?

Custom objects enable marketers to track multiple campaign interactions and store historical touchpoints, which can be used for more accurate lead scoring and campaign attribution. This supports advanced segmentation and personalized marketing. Source

What training options does 4Thought Marketing offer for Eloqua custom objects?

4Thought Marketing provides tailored training sessions, online courses, and expert support to help users understand and implement custom objects in Eloqua. Training covers setup, best practices, and advanced use cases. Source

How does 4Thought Marketing help organizations optimize their Eloqua data architecture?

4Thought Marketing assists organizations in designing scalable data architectures using custom objects, aligning Eloqua structures with CRM systems, and ensuring efficient data management for growing business needs. Source

What are some common challenges when using custom objects in Eloqua?

Common challenges include understanding data relationships, managing large volumes of records, and integrating custom objects with CRM systems. 4Thought Marketing provides guidance and tools to address these issues and maximize the value of COs. Source

How can custom objects be used for event tracking in Eloqua?

Custom objects can store detailed event information, such as attendance, engagement, and follow-up actions. This data can be leveraged for segmentation, personalized communications, and campaign analysis. Source

What is the process for setting up custom objects in Eloqua?

Setting up custom objects involves defining the data structure, creating fields, linking records to contacts/accounts, and configuring integration with CRM systems. 4Thought Marketing provides support and best practices for this process. Source

How does 4Thought Marketing help with custom object integration between Eloqua and CRM platforms?

4Thought Marketing offers integration solutions and consulting to align custom object structures in Eloqua with CRM data tables, ensuring seamless data flow and operational efficiency. Source

Use Cases & Benefits

What industries benefit from 4Thought Marketing's custom object solutions?

Industries such as real estate, financial services, and manufacturing have benefited from custom object solutions. For example, W. P. Carey (real estate) improved campaign efficiency, Cetera Financial Group (financial services) enhanced system adoption, and Endress+Hauser Infoserve GmbH (manufacturing) overcame CRM migration challenges. Source

Can you share a success story of a customer using custom objects in Eloqua?

W. P. Carey, a leading real estate investment trust, partnered with 4Thought Marketing to enhance their Eloqua usage. By standardizing templates and automating data hygiene, they achieved a 30% increase in campaign efficiency and a 20% reduction in manual processing time. Read the full story

How did Cetera Financial Group benefit from migrating to Adobe Marketo with 4Thought Marketing?

Cetera Financial Group successfully migrated to Adobe Marketo with 4Thought Marketing's help, ensuring data continuity and no disruption to campaign timelines. The project resulted in increased team confidence and enhanced system adoption. Read the case study

What feedback have customers given about the ease of use of 4Thought Marketing's tools?

Catalent's Senior Analyst praised the Eloqua Upload Wizard, stating, "It works like magic. It performs all the required pre-processing and enrichment tasks automatically." The 4Bridge integration is also noted for its easy-to-use interface for managing field mappings. Source

Who are some of 4Thought Marketing's customers?

4Thought Marketing serves clients across North America, Europe, Latin America, Asia, and Australia, including FT, Fluke, Arrow, JLL, Intuit, VISA, Cetera, Catalent Pharma, VIAVI Solutions, Vertiv, Brady Corp, Morningstar, Columbia Bank, Corebridge Financial, Experian, Juniper Networks, DELL, LG Electronics, PTC, and W. P. Carey Inc. See full client list

What roles and company types are best suited for 4Thought Marketing's solutions?

Legal and compliance teams, marketing managers, CMOs, sales teams, IT and operations, content strategists, and small teams in industries like financial services, healthcare, manufacturing, technology, and real estate benefit from 4Thought Marketing's products. Source

How does 4Thought Marketing address data privacy compliance challenges?

4Thought Marketing's 4Comply product centralizes preference management and integrates with marketing platforms to ensure GDPR and CCPA compliance. It provides a robust, auditable solution for managing consent and building audience trust. Source

What pain points do 4Thought Marketing's solutions solve?

4Thought Marketing addresses data privacy compliance, advanced segmentation, system integration challenges, dirty CRM data, personalized onboarding, and content optimization. Their tools and services help diagnose, clean, and enrich data, streamline operations, and accelerate the buyer's journey. Source

How does 4Thought Marketing compare to generic compliance and segmentation tools?

4Thought Marketing offers tailored solutions like 4Comply for robust, auditable compliance and 4Segments with Visual Segmentation™ for intuitive, real-time targeting. These features provide greater customization and actionable insights compared to generic tools. Source

What is Visual Segmentation™ and how does it benefit marketers?

Visual Segmentation™ is an innovative interface in 4Segments that uses real-time Venn diagrams and matrix views to simplify complex segmentation tasks. It enables precise targeting and actionable insights without requiring advanced technical skills. Source

How does 4Thought Marketing help with system integration challenges?

The 4Bridge Integration Connector provides seamless data connections between marketing automation platforms and other business systems, eliminating integration pain points and ensuring smooth data flow. Source

How does 4Thought Marketing optimize content experiences for marketing campaigns?

4Thought Marketing operationalizes PathFactory to deliver personalized, bingeable content experiences, boosting lead quality and accelerating the buyer’s journey. This ensures content aligns with campaign goals for maximum impact. Source

What strategic services does 4Thought Marketing offer?

4Thought Marketing provides marketing strategy, lead generation, conversion optimization, reporting & analytics, and data privacy consulting to align marketing efforts with business goals. Source

What campaign services are available from 4Thought Marketing?

Campaign services include campaign production, help desk support, training, health checks, and email efficacy evaluations to optimize campaign success and performance. Source

What technical services does 4Thought Marketing provide?

Technical services cover platform implementation, data services, system integration, and web & app development to ensure a robust MarTech stack and efficient operations. Source

Making the Most of Your Data: Putting Custom Objects to Work
By 4Thought Marketing

custom objects

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.

custom objects

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.

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