Applying Design for Automation thinking to your Emails
Eloqua User Group Webinar
Published: 10 March 2026 | Derek Bell
Overview
Email marketers don’t usually struggle with ideas.
We struggle with execution: inconsistent templates, last-minute requests, unclear ownership, and emails that look fine but don’t actually move customers forward.
That’s exactly where Design For Automation helps.
On this page
Why this topic?
At Marketing Cube, we built Design For Automation as a practical methodology for designing customer experiences that can actually be delivered through marketing automation platforms (Eloqua, Salesforce Marketing Cloud, HubSpot, etc.).
This blog post focuses on the application of Design for Automation for Eloqua users, however the principles are universal.
The problem with “email design” as a standalone activity
Most teams treat email design like a production task:
- Write copy
- Add a hero image
- Drop it into a template
- Send
But the moment you try to scale (welcome series, nurture streams, onboarding, event comms, lifecycle triggers), the cracks show:
- The design doesn’t flex for different content types
- Personalisation breaks layouts
- Mobile behaviour is inconsistent
- Templates become “precious” and hard to update
- The experience feels disjointed across the journey
In other words: the design wasn’t created with automation in mind.
What is Design for Automation™?
We’ve been working with Eloqua clients since 2007, and one thing we determined very early on was the lack of consideration for how best to maximise the ‘automation’ in marketing automation.
Some clients moved from an ’email marketing’ platform that was essentially an email blast tool and lacked the automation capability of Eloqua.
Enter, Design for Automation™, a set of guiding principles to maximise your ability to deliver an outstanding, personalised customer experience.
Keep reading for more tips.
What are the building blocks?
Once you get past all of the hip terms, marketing spin and phrases, the building blocks are your data.
Your ability to personalise, create tailored segments and deliver the right content to the right people at the right time is all governed by your first-party data.
The key point I made in this section of the webinar was to ensure you “look at your data”. I don’t mean just a sideways glance; look at the data and understand what you have linked to each Contact.
Once you build your Segment/Audience, you can view Contacts. From there, you can apply various Views to analyse the contact data in context.
For example, you may create a Segment based on the campaign objectives and the provided brief. Or, you may be playing a little retro and upload Excel spreadsheets.
At this stage, review your data and identify opportunities to enhance the CX. You may observe that you have high-quality Industry data for most Contacts. While industry was not a key part of the campaign brief, it may provide an opportunity to further personalise the campaign.
That personalisation may take the form of imagery that reflects the Contact’s industry. It may also be worthwhile to share what you’ve discovered with your copywriter and explain how you can use Industry data to further personalise the copy.
This is Design for Automation. Taking into consideration how to enhance your CX and driver better outcomes overall.
Personas are an extremely helpful tool for marketers. As email marketers, we’re in a unique position compared to our colleagues. With good quality first-party data and well-defined personas, we can hyper-personalise the entire email experience.
Developing personas will help you deliver a richer CX
If you have already invested time in creating personas, are you well placed to associate a persona to your Eloqua Contacts?
This can be as simple as a single select picklist on the Eloqua Contact. It’s vastly improved and of even greater value if the CRM users can contribute to the assignment of a persona to a Contact.
Eloqua offers a range of intelligent tools to help you automate assigning a persona to a Contact.
If you need assistance, please contact us for advice and support.
Do you have a first-party data strategy?
In April 2021, we posted a blog titled “The value of first-party data“.
The principles outlined in that blog post remain constant. If you’re unsure where to start or how to implement a more robust process for collecting and enhancing your first-party data, read the blog post.
Amplifying your organisation’s first-party data through strategic planning and technology is an essential part of sustained marketing success.
Owning your data removes the reliance on any third-parties and safeguards your organisation from future regulatory changes or third-party data breaches.
Marketing leaders need to accelerate their investment and double down on their collection and amplification of first-party data.*
*SOURCE: Marketing Cube Blog | The value of first-party data | April 2021
Designing personalisation that doesn’t break
Personalisation is only as good as the data behind it. To get it right in Eloqua, you need to look beyond the “what” and master the “how” specifically, where your data comes from, how it flows, and how fresh it really is.
The core data relationships
Most Eloqua setups rely on three primary data sources, typically structured like this:
-
Contacts & Accounts: These are almost always linked, with your CRM acting as the ultimate source of truth for that relationship.
-
Custom Objects (CDOs): About 90% of the time, CDOs are mapped directly to a Contact (though specialised setups may vary).
Why data structure matters
Understanding these connections is the difference between a seamless customer journey and a broken one.
These are expanded on in the webinar replay.
Here is the visual breakdown:
When you create a Field Merge, a Segment or rules for Dynamic Content you need to know where the data sits in Eloqua so you can reference it. The diagram above serves to explain how your account, contact and custom object data can be referenced by each of the Eloqua areas listed.
How to eliminate “breakage”
When we refer to personalisation “breaking”, it usually means the content is presented incorrectly or not at all.
For example, if you want to greet someone by their first name but don’t have it, your email design may look odd without it.
More dramatic failures can occur when the copywriter requires specific data to be inserted at a specific location in the copy, and the data is missing for whatever reason.
Figure 1.0 This is what you wanted the email to look like…
Hello Sebastian,
Thank you for your interest in our recently announced program, Design for TikTokers. Applications open on the 2nd of April. We look forward to receiving your application.
Figure 2.0 And this is what you delivered… opps! “broken”
Hello Sebastian,
Thank you for your interest in our recently announced program, . Applications open on the . We look forward to receiving your application.
The example above shows how Eloqua Field Merges work. The error shown in Figure 2.0 is a user error, not a platform error.
The solution is in two or perhaps three parts:
- The Contacts impacted by the error should have been excluded from the Segment before the campaign was launched if the key data was missing.
- Using well-crafted, well-thought-out default values could eliminate the error. This often means rewriting the sentence to accommodate a default value, which makes sense.
- Depending on the nature of the data and the campaign objectives, Dynamic Content mixed with Field Merges may be a better solution than a single email with one version of the copy.
Our Oracle-certified Technical Support team can help you avoid these scenarios.
Marketing Automation Agency Services
Since 2007, Marketing Cube has been a trusted partner for marketing automation clients, specialising in Eloqua. In 2018, we expanded our expertise to include services for Salesforce Marketing Cloud clients. Our team excels at implementing your chosen platform and providing comprehensive agency services.
With a track record of assisting nearly 180 customers across diverse industries and geographies, we offer traditional application support and efficient help desk services.
If you’re seeking agency services, such as strategic guidance, end-user coaching, training, campaign support, and more for Oracle CX Marketing, Salesforce Marketing Cloud or HubSpot, reach out to us today to discuss how we can best assist you.
Common failure points
We’ve been doing this for a long time, and there are common failure points that can lead to suboptimal outcomes. These are expanded on in the webinar replay.
- Audience design – less is more. We mean fewer people, smaller segments. Constantly including most of your database in most campaigns doesn’t generally lead to the success you’re looking for.
- Copy that doesn’t resonate – Informed copywriting is key. By ‘informed’ I mean ensuring the copywriting team is aware of the first-party data you have access to, along with the Digital Body Language that can also be used to shape the CX you deliver.
- Lack of optimisation – “Set & forget” is not a winning formula. In the fast-paced world of B2C campaigns, optimisation can happen in minutes. The typical protracted, high-value B2B sales cycle requires regular reviews of campaigns. It’s looking at each email asset in a nurture, reviewing the CX you deliver for event registration campaigns, and evaluating form abandonment rates on your thought leadership campaigns. There are many other opportunities to optimise your campaigns, the key is making time – scheduling optimisation reviews ahead of time and committing to the process.
Eloqua Release 26A highlights
What’s news? What’s coming soon?
The year has kicked off with significant enhancements to the Redwood Experience being rolled out for Eloqua. We expect significant enhancements to multi-step campaigns in mid-2026.
- Fatigue Analysis contact modification change
- New Security Group Action: Import Asset Permissions
- Bulk API: STATUS operator support for Email Groups
- New App Developer Endpoint: Retrieve Active Executions
Eloqua + Salesforce CRM integration app enhancements
Each Eloqua release generally includes enhancements for Salesforce CRM clients. We’ve captured these updates and consolidated them into a single resource for you to review.
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 reads through the documentation and consolidates the most important information into this subscription.
