Your ability to create a targeted audience for your campaigns is enhanced when you use Eloqua’s Segment filters and don’t simply rely on uploaded excel files. Uploaded excel files are generally static in nature and don’t allow you to maximise the power of Eloqua’s segmentation capability.
It begins with a paradigm shift
For the longest of time, digital marketers have been laser focussed on the idea of “lists”. These lists usually live in excel and are static by nature. There may be manual processes in place to add people to those lists and perhaps remove them. As marketers move to an email marketing platform, their “list” approach is generally reinforced by the same terminology used in the email marketing platform. When you add current legislative requirements like the EU’s GDPR and California’s CCPA, managing opt-ins and opt-outs becomes a very complicated and commercially risky exercise.
The paradigm shift we speak of is one that returns the customer/prospect to the centre of the experience with all process designed to support a more holistic approach to audience management.
Cast aside your excel spreadsheets and your static view of people and move to a way of thinking that encompasses a dynamic and responsive approach to a person’s expressed preferences, implied preferences and their subscription to specific content assets.
Begin your approach to segmenting in Eloqua with a paradigm shift
As Eloqua users, you have the ability to use filters to build an audience. These filters allow you to build an audience based on both profile and engagement data. We also refer to engagement data as Digital Body Language™.
The paradigm shift is to stop, or at least heavily limit the use of excel spreadsheets when creating Segments.
We suggest the following four steps to help you arrive at an audience that matches your campaign objectives while including both profile and engagement data.
Stop
The key to this step is to remind us to stop and not simply do as we have always done. You know the old adage, we can’t expect different results if we continue with the same behaviour. Before you develop your excel filter skills, stop. Stop & consider a different approach, a more dynamic approach that incorporates not just profile, static data, but so much more.
Think
Think about where the data resides today that is going to help build your audience. Think through not just profile and static values, but about specific web pages that relate to your need for an audience. Think about recent campaigns, where members of those campaigns could possibly find value in the campaign you’re thinking about.
Objective
The objective relates to the “Campaign Objective”. Your Eloqua Campaign may be just one piece of a larger campaign. However, the Eloqua component must have an objective. What are you expecting people to do should they enter the campaign? With a clear objective you will then be in a solid position to build your Eloqua Segment.
Audience
Now, with the thinking done and the objective clear, it’s time to create your audience in Eloqua Segments. You will use both the Profile Contact data, typically from the CRM and then also Eloqua’s Digital Body Language™. Combining these two data sets will help you arrive at a more targeted, engaged and better profiled audience.
It’s a bit like the old “Chicken or the egg?” scenario.
There will always be appropriate reasons to start with the Campaign and or similarly valid reasons to start with the the Audience. If you follow the four steps above regardless of the starting point, you will end up in the right place.
When the Campaign comes first…
You will generally have a campaign brief, clearly defined objectives that will help shape your audience/segment creation. While your campaign brief will include a target audience, usually with a set range of profile points, don’t forget about the people Eloqua is aware of and that you can uncover with smart use of Segment Filters.
Watch the webinar replay to hands-on how to use these filters.
When the Audience comes first…
Would you ever consider that a campaign could come to life because of behaviours you’ve uncovered in Eloqua? For many, a campaign begins outside of Eloqua, perhaps part of a strategy meeting or regular calendar events run each year.
If you take the time to explore Segments, using filters to look at a range of variables, you may be surprised to learn you could have a range of campaigns
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Using Eloqua Segments to build your audience
Segment and target with precision. Unite behavioral and firmographic data from multiple sources to build, filter and segment audiences so you can precisely target individuals with rich customer/student profiles based on specific attributes, interests and geography.
Take a moment to watch the webinar replay to see these tips and ideas in action. The key message in this session was that you really need to use Segment templates. Templates are faster, more accurate, more consistent – for you and your audience and overall ensure greater compliance with existing organisational process & policies around who should and should not be receiving specific communications from you.
“Firmographics are sets of characteristics to segment prospect organizations. What demographics are to people, firmographics are to organizations. However, Webster suggested that the term “firmographics” is a combination of demographics and geographics.” WIKIPEDIA
Creating Segment templates
Segment templates will save you time, deliver a far more consistent experience for both Eloqua users and the audiences you’re engaging with. Everyone’s data is different, however there are common themes we see across Eloqua customers. These common attributes are the number of exclusions used in Segments, these are just as important as the inclusions.
If your Eloqua user community has to remember to add exclusions each time they build a Segment, mistakes will be made. Or, even worse using the “save-as” function to copy a previously used Segment is not a best-practice approach. Segment Templates is the answer.
Release 21B, nothing huge or amazing, but one feature did get a “Wahooo” from one webinar attendee.
During the 21B release webinar the Oracle Eloqua Product Marketing team made the comment that they felt there was nothing overwhelming about this release because there are a range of bigger projects underway for subsequent releases. Nice little teaser there for Release 21C and perhaps 21D.
However we had to disagree with them, two new features are cause for some excitement.
