3 tips for CX-centered always-on Eloqua campaigns
July Eloqua User Group Webinar
Overview
In the course of your always-on campaigns, it’s likely that people’s profiles will be enhanced. As you learn more & observe more about a person, it’s likely you’ll want to change their journey through the campaign. Keep reading to discover how.
Why this topic?
Last month we talked about the mechanics of always-on campaigns and how to create them using Eloqua’s Campaign Canvas.
This month we wanted to continue the conversation by taking a close look at how you could adjust the journey of one person based on their observed or implied behaviour.
In addition, we looked at how monitoring changes to a person’s Lead Score would be the trigger to change their journey.
We looked at how website behaviour could also be observed and used at the trigger to change a person’s journey.
76% of Australian CMOs say acquiring new customers is their dominant growth approach in 2022
What role will you play in supporting your CMO to deliver on this growth approach?
As net-new leads are brought into Eloqua you will need to underpin this “growth approach” with one of more lead nurture campaigns, helping to progress the buyer on their journey
Make some time to review the State of the CMO 2022 report
This report arrived in my in-box about three days after we went live with invitations to join us this month. As I read through it, I was convinced there was a role for Eloqua to play in supporting marketers and their growth strategies.
A lead nurture campaign is generally the key always-on campaign. We added lead scoring, segmentation and more to help you explore this subject in detail.
Keep reading…
Automate a person’s journey based on…
You have the ability to observe and act on a person’s behaviour. From there, you can adjust their journey. You can do this in a single campaign or more holistically based on their overall behaviour or engagement, across many campaigns. However, we first need to understand how a person enters an Eloqua campaign.
How do contacts enter a campaign?
There are four main ways that an Eloqua contact can enter a campaign:
- From a Segment, either a static or dynamic segment.
- From a Program Canvas or Program Builder
- Added to the campaign from an Eloqua Form or,
- Added or moved to your campaign from another Eloqua campaign.
Once the Contacts are “Campaign Members” you can adjust their journey.
You have a range of Canvas Elements to help you adjust a person’s journey. You will most likely use Decision Elements to learn more about the Contact and then the Action Elements to adjust the journey.
You will also find Shared Filters helpful. A Shared Filter allows you to be very specific in the query you have and will then use it to adjust the Contact’s journey.
Access the webinar replay to see examples from the Campaign and Program Canvas.
Create scenarios for your Contacts to enter an always-on campaign
Last month I spent time with a client, coaching her on this exact subject. The campaign’s main objective was to educate people about their flagship product. There were eight or so emails in the campaign stretching across a four-week period.
The most challenging part for the client was determining the criteria to move the more engaged campaign members from this initial campaign to a second campaign where the key objective was to “request a demo”.
This wasn’t a technology problem, it was a matter of trying to understand what “more engaged” looked like and how to define it. We created a Shared Filter with a range of filters like “opened X email”, “clicked X email”, “had a lead score of X” and “Visited Landing Page X or Website Page X after e.g. Campaign Launch date”.
The above criteria can either be a Segment that refreshes daily and adds new campaign members to your always-on campaign or it could be a Shared Filter used on the Campaign Canvas to either send MQL’s to the CRM or to move them to a campaign designed to accelerate their journey.
Try this as an example: Your recent product launch campaign
You have several thousands of people who have been through your recent product launch campaign and hundreds of people who attended the webinar product launch. You also have five or so new website/CMS pages specific to the new product, along with highly targeted Eloqua Landing Pages.
Over the coming months, you want to automatically identify when any of these past campaign members revisit your website, Eloqua Landing Pages or access the replay from the launch webinar.
Each of these actions can be observed by Eloqua enabling you to automatically drop them into a new campaign. Of course, you could also send them to your field sales or inside sales teams as an MQL.
Whatever the experience you choose to deliver, be sure it’s underpinned by your overarching CX strategy.
This month’s Eloqua Hack
One Gmail Account = Multiple Test Email Addresses
Easier campaign testing by profile
Eloqua provides an easy way to test your email and landing pages. Generally, you will send a test email to yourself or use the Preview function where you can select any contact in Eloqua and view the asset as one of your Contacts will see the asset.
The Preview function is helpful where you have Dynamic Content and Field Merges in play and need the confidence than when your campaign launches, people will see what you expect them to see.
Why this hack?
Some of us like to see an email in our email client e.g. Outlook, Gmail etc. to be absolutely certain that the Dynamic Content and Field Merges will do as you expect them to do.
How can we do this? Gmail has a solution that helps make this easy.
Why Gmail, what’s so special about Gmail?
Gmail allows you to create additional, unique email addresses linked to your primary email address, that will arrive in your Gmail inbox. For example, your Gmail address may be: acme@gmail.com
By simply creating a new email address e.g. acme+AUprospect@gmail.com you achieve two things:
- A unique email address which you can use to create a Contact in Eloqua with associated profile attributes to help with your testing. You must use the plus symbol “+” as shown above.
- All test emails you send from Eloqua to acme+AUprospect@gmail.com will arrive in your acme@gmail.com inbox. Shazam!
What I find helpful is…
I have a range of sample contacts in Eloqua utilising this Gmail feature. We use Industry and Geography data in many of our campaigns and I find it easier to view emails either in my inbox or using the Eloqua Preview function against specific Contacts with varying profile data. These are just a few of the unique Eloqua Contacts I use for testing.
- derek+AUEducation@gmail.com
- derek+AUFinance@gmail.com
- derek+NZEducation@gmail.com
- derek+NZFinance@gmail.com
- derek+Customer@gmail.com
- derek+Prospect@gmail.com
- derek+Oracle@gmail.com
- derek+QLDProspect@gmail.com
When you’re trying to test the timing or speed at which a form submission makes it to your CRM, try something like this e.g. derek+1020am@gmail.com. This tells me I submitted a form at 10:20 am. I then view the time the Lead/Contact was created in the CRM – simple.
Remember, all of the above, unique email addresses, will all arrive in my primary Gmail inbox.
TIP: When you use your own email address over and over again for testing, you have to be sure to edit your Eloqua Contact every time, especially if you’re testing unsubscribe functionality or email group level subscription. If you don’t have a Gmail account, go ahead and create one.
These are some always-on campaigns we have in play in Marketing Cube
- Our primary Lead Nurturing campaign. There are various entry points for this campaign. e.g. CRM users can tick a checkbox on the CRM Lead to add a person to the campaign. This campaign currently has a 10.17% Unique Open Rate and a 3.59% Unique Clickthrough Rate.
- Eloqua User Group onboarding campaign i.e. new subscribers are taken through a series of 8 emails over a 4-month period providing insight into Marketing Automation and access to User Group webinar replays on a range of topics. This campaign currently has a 30.23% Unique Open Rate and a 10.47% Unique Clickthrough Rate. The real measure however is attendance at the monthly Eloqua User Group webinar.
- Oracle employees contact update campaign. As our key business partner, this campaign identifies new contacts with an email domain = oracle.com and invites them to tell us a little more about themselves and provides detail on our areas of expertise.
- Test Drive for SMS. From this page on our website, people can “test drive” SMS by submitting their details.
- Non-work-related email accounts i.e. Gmail, Hotmail, yahoo etc. We’re in the business of working with businesses. We consider a person sharing their work email address and company name as a fair and equitable value exchange as they access our content. When a person enters an email address, typically a free web-based email address we allow them access to the content they’re after, and then we reach out to them and invite them to share their work details. All web-based free email accounts e.g. gmail.com, hotmail.com, yahoo.com etc are excluded from our campaigns.
- A CRM initiated invitation to subscribe to the Eloqua User Group. This specific campaign takes advantage of the CRM integration allowing the CRM user to add a person to a specific campaign. Once the CRM user adds the person to the corresponding Eloqua Campaign, they’re sent an email from our User Group host, that’s me, Derek. The email essentially says something like “Hello [First.Name], our Account Director [Insert CRM Lead/Contact owner] asked that I forward you an invitation to subscribe to the Eloqua User Group….”. This campaign currently has a 60% unique Open Rate and a 26.67% Unique Clickthrough Rate.
What’s new? What’s coming soon?
Details for Release 22C were not available in time for the July Eloqua User Group. Release 22C is due in late August and early September. As soon as we have details, our Eloqua Important Update subscribers will be notified. Subscription details are below.
With Release 22B you will have a new metric available in Insight – Auto Click. It’s added from the Email Clickthrough Subject Area. You can use this metric to view the number of click-throughs detected as being auto-generated by scanning or privacy tools. These click-throughs are not included in the Total Clickthroughs metric or any associated click-through rates.
IMPORTANT: Auto-Click metrics will only start being captured after the 22B update. Auto-Opens became available in Insight during Release 22A, mid-February 2022.
You may find our recent Blog Post “Apple’s Mail Privacy Protection: What does it mean for Oracle Eloqua email marketers & what to do now” of interest as it explains Auto-Opens and Auto-Clicks.
Release Highlights
- Updates to Oracle CX Apps for Eloqua are now scheduled as monthly maintenance and do not require any platform downtime.
- If you are an Eloqua administrator, you will be able to limit the number of sales emails that a rep can send to the same contact over a period of time.
- Oracle Eloqua is moving toward securing all customer-branded domains with Eloqua-owed DV SAN certificates. This will include automatic renewal of the certificates prior to their expiration. Eloqua clients on PODS 6 and 7 will have access to this feature first. If you have questions, please contact us today.
We filter through Oracle Eloqua Release details, then deliver what you need directly to your inbox.
Oracle Eloqua Releases take place once per quarter, typically in the second month of the quarter i.e. February, May, August & November.
As details become available, our Customer Success team read through the documentation and consolidates the most important information into this subscription.
Summary
When creating any campaign in Eloqua, you have the chance to listen, observe and act. If you think of a campaign as a binary, single line of events – essentially you sending emails, you’re missing an opportunity. We know that the people we talk to are demanding more personalised engagement with brands.
If you fail to listen and act on what you know about a person, you’ll likely lose that person to a competitor.
Next month we’ll be taking a closer look at Welcome Campaigns. We’ll explore exactly what this means in more detail. Is it someone who simply provides their email to obtain content you have on offer or is it someone who has purchased a product or service? Or perhaps, it’s a mix of both.
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Thank you for reading our blog.
Oracle CX Marketing Agency Services
The team at Marketing Cube has been supporting Oracle CX Marketing customers since 2007. We’ve been using Eloqua ourselves for that period and provided agency services as well as traditional application support for close to 100 customers across a wide range of industries & geographies.
If you’ve been using Oracle CX Marketing for some time and are looking for agency services e.g. strategic services, end-user coaching/training, campaign support and more, contact us today to talk further about how we can help you.
