Preference Management Master Class
July Eloqua User Group Webinar
While this blog post is primarily designed for Oracle Eloqua clients, the fundamentals covered in the webinar replay and below in this blog post apply to all email marketers.
Keep reading if you’re using Salesforce Marketing Cloud, Marketo or MailChimp, and your audience are high-value buyers.
Overview
Tired of one-size-fits-all sales tactics for high-value products? The buying journey has become an experience, and traditional methods just don’t cut it anymore.
This is where a preference & subscription centre steps in, giving you the power to understand and engage your high-value buyers in a whole new way.
Why this topic?
Due to upcoming changes to Australia’s Privacy Act in August, we split this month’s content.
While the focus remained the same for subscribers in the Americas and EMEA, the details for Australia were tailored to address the potential impact on local marketers and those marketing to Australia.
We’ll host additional webinars for our global audience once we have a clearer picture of the new regulations.
These webinars will help ensure everyone is up-to-date on any requirements for campaigns targeting the Australian market.
Subscriptions vs. Preferences vs. Interests
If a person visits your preference centre for the first time when they plan to opt out of all communications, something has failed in your CX.
You need to advance the preference management experience in the customer lifecycle. We’ll discuss this further below.
Subscriptions
Subscription | noun An arrangement to receive something, typically a publication, regularly by paying in advance: make sure you get a copy every month by taking out a subscription | [mass noun] : the newsletter is available only on subscription. • an arrangement by which access is granted to an online service.
In most cases, we don’t charge people for a subscription to marketing content i.e. a newsletter.
Preferences
Preference | noun A greater liking for one alternative over another or others: her preference for white wine | he chose a clock in preference to a watch. • a thing preferred: nearly 40 per cent named 80’s house as their musical preference. • [mass noun] favour shown to one person or thing over another or others: preference is given to those who make a donation.
Interests
Interest | noun [mass noun] the feeling of wanting to know or learn about something or someone: she looked about her with interest | [in singular] : he developed an interest in art. • the quality of exciting curiosity or holding the attention: a tale full of interest. • [count noun] an activity or subject which one enjoys doing or studying: their sole interests are soccer, drink, and cars.
SOURCE: Oxford Dictionary of English
Changes to the Australian Privacy Act will more than likely mean changes to your opt in and out out processes
Changes to the Privacy Act will have a broad-reaching impact on marketers. However, our focus is on marketers using email as a channel.
Before discussing “Preference Management”, you must have the basics in place. In this case, we can make assumptions about the basics, but it would be prudent to wait until the legislation has passed Parliament before we make significant changes.
“The Privacy Act reforms aim to enhance data protections for Australian consumers in the same way the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the California Privacy Rights Act (CPRA) enhanced them for consumers in the European Union and US.”*
SOURCE: Privacy, data and GenAI: Are Aussie marketers ready? | Marketing Mag | 13th June 2024
“Last week under a request from Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, the Federal Attorney General [AG] Mark Dreyfus dropped a privacy curveball – the new Privacy Act will be introduced into Parliament in August [2024], well ahead of an end-of-year deadline many thought would spill into next year.”*
SOURCE: It will redefine our industry for the next decade | Mi3 | News Plus | 7 May 2024
The GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) provides a glimpse into what we can expect
From our initial reading of various sources, Australia will arrive at many of the same conclusions EU regulators made regarding the GDPR. We covered the GDPR in detail in 2018; you can learn more about it here.
If you subscribe to our new Privacy & Governance service, you’ll gain access to many more articles, our insight, tips and also receive our Privacy & Governance email newsletter.
Let your content strategy guide your subscription choices
How you roll out your subscriptions should be driven partly by your content strategy, an ideal client profile and personas.
Combining these elements gives you a good idea of how to give people the best choices.
The choices you offer are not only based on content; they could also be the type of content and the channel you offer a person to subscribe to.
What is a subscription?
Eloqua clients manage subscriptions using Email Groups. An email group allows you to easily manage content served to a targeted audience.
If you were to give the subscriptions/email groups names, they may be something like this:
- In-person events
- Webinars
- Newsletters
- Special Offers (perhaps more B2C oriented)
- Investors & Shareholders (e.g. for corporate communications)
- Public Relations/Announcements
- Human Resources (e.g. for an internal audience)
- Partner Updates (as in business partners)
- Annual Conference
- Community Programs
This gives your audience a choice, and notice that it avoids specific details about the offered content. It’s also likely that some of these subscriptions/email groups may not be publicly available, e.g. Human Resources and Partner Updates are targeted audiences.
TIP: When you name an email group, you want to avoid giving it a very specific name*. This often means you back yourself into a corner and end up with a group of people to whom you can send a very limited type of message. Also, avoid dates, e.g. I’d suggest an email group named “Annual Conference” vs. “2024 Annual Conference”.
*AN EXCEPTION: With the 2024 Australian Privacy Act changes due in August, we believed there was value in creating a specific subscription/email group for this topic. I initially named the email group “2024 Privacy Act Updates.” As soon as I saved it, I looked at it and thought it would appear irrelevant come January 1st, 2025.
I took a step back, considered the topic, and then came up with the new title, “Privacy & Governance.” You could say I “drank my own cool-aid” (took my advice). Privacy and governance are two topics good marketers want to stay ahead of, and I’m confident the topic will continue to be in demand in the years to come.
What does a subscription look like?
Generally speaking, most clients I work with see a “subscription” as a newsletter.
Sometimes, they have multiple newsletters branded differently or sent at differing schedules, e.g., once a week or once a month.
The content may differ between the weekly and monthly editions, or the monthly edition may have the same content as the weekly edition, which is just sent monthly. That’s one way to do it.
You could argue that frequency, i.e. weekly or monthly, is a preference.
How you determine your subscriptions will largely depend on your content and your audience.
Think this over…
If a person visits your preference centre for the first time when they plan to opt out of all communications, something has failed in your CX. Bring the preference management experience forward in the customer lifecycle.
The #1 piece of data you need, is an opt in
When a new Contact is created in Eloqua, the assumption is that you have secured the appropriate opt in from that person. Eloqua refers to this opt in as Subscribed Globally as shown below.
You can apply segment filters to include or exclude campaign members based on their subscription status. The same filters can be used with dynamic content.
The more consistent the data format, the “better” that data is. All Eloqua form field types have a purpose and are useful in a range different use cases.
The classification of better and other Form Custom Field types is in the context of gathering responses from people for the purposes of gathering responses and being well placed to easily use that data for segmentation and personalisation e.g. as Field Merge.
Better
- Single Picklist: Inserts a drop-down list (picklist) from which the user can select one option.
- Radio Buttons: Inserts a series of radio buttons from which users can select only one option.
- Single Checkbox: Inserts a single check box that a user can click. You can configure this field to be pre-populated with either the submitter’s subscription status for a specific email group or their global subscription status.
Other
- Single Line Text: Inserts a field which allows users to enter short text data without being connected to existing contact data.
- Paragraph Text: Inserts a field which allows users to enter longer sections of text data (a paragraph) without being connected to existing contact data.
- Multiple Picklist: Inserts a list of options from which users can choose one or more selections.
- Checkboxes: Inserts a series of check boxes from which users can select more than one choice.
Once a person subscribes globally, your next goal is to gather interests, preferences & subscriptions to suit
One of the objectives of Email Groups is to allow your audience members to choose what they would like to hear from you.
For example, they may be interested in your Thought Leadership content and Product Updates, among other topics. Let’s assume they have expressly told you they’re interested because they visited your Preference Centre and selected both options.
Given that they have subscribed, they should be included in all campaigns that focus on thought leadership and product updates.
You may use additional filters to exclude them if you determine a specific campaign is not relevant to them. But keep in mind that they have expressly said they’re interested in these two topics.
This group of people are your baseline as subscribers to thought leadership and product updates. Generally speaking, email group subscribers are the first group you should add to your segment.
NOTE: A common misunderstanding is that the email group subscribers are the ONLY people you can email. That’s not the case. You have a vast database of people who have opted into your brand. You can use additional segment filters to identify others by their profile and behavioural data to determine who else should be in the campaign.
The great thing is that should someone have unsubscribed to an email group i.e. they’re still opted in/Subscribed Globally, Eloqua will not send them an email. That’s a great safety step and risk minimisation for you.
Various opt in methods for permission-based marketing
Your legal advice will likely govern how you capture a person’s opt in. Eloqua can implement an opt in model or process in pretty much any form you need.
The strength of the signup/opt in
An active opt in is almost the only acceptable opt in in most jurisdictions. It requires a person to check a box or select from a single picklist to confirm their agreement to receive future marketing communications.
A double opt in requires the above plus the person clicking a link in an auto-responder email following the initial form submission, to confirm it was in fact them that completed the form.
We can help you design & build a compliant opt in process
There’s no point asking a question if you have no plans to do anything with the response
Once you achieve agreement across your organisation and determine the data that matters, you can choose the best questions to ask in your preference centre.
In addition to the Eloqua system Contact fields e.g. email address, first name, last name etc. you can create a maximum of 250 custom contact fields.
Don’t let your Preference Centre be the only source
In a past episode of the User Group, we covered The Data That Matters.
The focus was on using forms to capture more valuable data vs. simply asking the same questions repeatedly.
Form optimisation is a critical part of your overall marketing automation strategy.
It’s easy for team members across your organisation to build online forms with Google, Microsoft, and many other online tools.
The risk is what happens to the data captured by these forms and if they find their way into the CRM and Eloqua. Where is the record for the opt in.
Multiple email marketing tools in one organisation is risky
Over the years, I’ve had numerous conversations with marketers who have expressed frustration and concern about “the other team and their email marketing platform“.
Multiple risk factors need to be considered if this sounds like your place of work.
The most obvious is the lack of a single source of truth about a person’s opt in and, just as importantly, their opt out.
What’s news? What’s coming soon?
Release 24C is packed with enhancements for Redwood, user management, Oracle Zoom App, Oracle Unity and more.
If you have any questions about the Release 24C update, please email support.
Release Highlights
- On the 25th June, Oracle delivered updates to improve responsiveness for Eloqua’s Redwood experience. We’ve certainly noticed the improvement in load times.
- The Picklist Manager is now available in Redwood under Controlled Availability.
- Template Choosers for Segments, Campaigns and Program are now Redwood UI (user interface).
- The big change from a UI point of view is Launchers. The launcher is the screen from which you access the various areas of Eloqua e.g. Campaign Launcher, Email, Landing Pages and Form Launchers. If you’re using Redwood today, the Redwood version of the Campaign Launcher has been available since earlier this year.
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- Forms
- Segments
- Programs
- Image and File libraries
- Email Headers
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- Signature Layouts and Signature Rules
- Shared Content
- Lead Score Models
- Shared Filters and Shared Lists
- Signature Layouts and Signature Rules
- Disable Landing Pages from Dropping Cookies: This will help users integrate better with third-party consent management systems. When enabled, the landing page will no longer be tracked or drop cookies when a visitor opens it. Personalisation will still work if there’s an existing cookie linked to a visitor or a direct link from an email. This option will only be available in the new Redwood Experience Microsite UI.
- Match/Deduplication Rule on the Contact Program Canvas: Once we get a chance to configure and test this new feature, we’ll provide more details.
New Eloqua User Setting for Assets
- User Access setting enhancements: A new user setting “Asset Manager” enables access to all Eloqua assets for a user. The user will be able to View, Edit, Delete, Set Security and Activate permission to all assets, bypassing the asset permission granted by Security Groups. Our advice at this stage would be to strictly control who has access to this feature, perhaps just current Administrator users to begin with.
Oracle Unity-Eloqua integration
- Oracle Unity Integration Enhancement: Access via a new Decision element on the Campaign and Programs Canvas allows you to evaluate data without having to replicate the data in Eloqua. It’s real-time access to up-to-date data across various sources resolved to identifiers available in Eloqua. The Decision element leverages the existing Eloqua-Unity Integration app. You can action on all of the data and data science model outputs from Unity, including Buying Group, Opportunity Score, GenAL Audience Segmentation and more.
Oracle Zoom App for Eloqua
- Zoom Events: A new Campaign Canvas element On-Demand Feeder
- The new Zoom Events On-Demand Configuration setting allows you to see engagement information of “no-show” registrants who subsequently access the replay of the webinar they missed. Just take care with any emails you plan to send a person who has accessed the on-demand episode of your Zoom Events replay.
- The copy should not be the same as the copy used for those who attended the live event. Just think that through as you configure the CX you want to deliver.
- Registration Action now has greater flexibility with field mapping. When prospective attendees register for an event, marketers can pass additional details to Zoom, such as comments, custom questions, organisation names, etc. Static values can also be configured. More to come on this one; we’re an Eloqua + Zoom client ourselves.
Product update: Oracle Analytics Server (OAS) upgrade for Eloqua Insight
This upgrade primarily delivers a Redwood Experience UI to Insight. We expect a ‘like-for-like’ level of functionality and all of your existing reports, dashboards and agents will remain active and will be migrated.
- Eloqua clients on POD6 are mostly migrated
- By early August 2024, Oracle will begin the migration for POD1, POD2 and POD8
- Oracle will provide you with 2-3 weeks notice
- During the migration process, Insight will be in Read-Only mode and is expected to take no more than 45 minutes.
Redwood Design Experience
Revisit our May 2023 Eloqua User Group Redwood webinar
The evolution of design should enhance the user experience. Oracle’s Redwood Experience does precisely that. In May 2023, release 23B began a fresh new user experience, bringing Eloqua into line with Oracle’s suite of CX applications.
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