Cleaning House: 5 ways to maximise your Marketing Automation performance
Eloqua User Group Webinar
Published: 8 July 2026 | Derek Bell & Macy AI*
Overview
The July Eloqua User Group focused on a topic close to every marketer’s heart: getting the absolute best out of your marketing automation platform.
We want to help you cut through the noise, secure your environment, and deliver exceptional experiences for your customers.
If you missed the live session, don’t worry. I’ve gathered the key takeaways right here so you can start moving the needle today.
On this page
Why this topic?
We selected this topic because getting the best from your marketing automation requires total control. You keep your platform safe by staying vigilant.
We focus on three critical pillars: tightening your security, managing user access, and improving data quality to protect email deliverability.
In this post, you will find practical steps to audit your database, manage generative AI permissions, and keep your costs predictable. We help you run a clean system.
Healthy contacts mean better deliverability
Are you actually communicating with your entire database? You might be surprised to discover thousands of contacts sitting in your system that you haven’t emailed in 12 months or more.
Leaving unengaged data in your system does more than clutter your dashboard; it actively hurts your email deliverability. When you consistently email people who ignore your messages, email providers notice, and your sender reputation drops.
We recommend running a regular data health check to identify these dormant profiles. Focus your energy on the people who want to hear from you, and watch your engagement rates climb.
Lock down your platform security
Oracle delivers an incredibly secure platform out of the box, but the final line of defence rests with you. Think about your current user list: are all active users still employed at your business?
User administration is one of the easiest security gaps to fix, yet people frequently overlook it. When staff members move on, their platform access must move on, too.
Make it a habit to audit your user logs quarterly. It takes just a few minutes to deactivate old profiles, but it protects your customer data and keeps your system completely secure.
From a best-practice perspective, deleting user accounts is not a good idea. In addition, it can be time-consuming with no real advantage over simply disabling the user account.
“Before you delete a user account, Oracle Eloqua runs a dependency check. If the account has any dependencies, you must resolve them before you can delete the account. If you cannot resolve the dependencies, you can still prevent the user from accessing Oracle Eloqua by disabling the user account.”*
*SOURCE: Eloqua Help Centre
Eloqua Data Governance Health Check playbook
Sometimes, small changes create the biggest impact. To help you support your system right away, we built a comprehensive playbook with 10 High-Impact Quick Wins.
These are straightforward, practical fixes that we know work because we deploy them every day to help businesses like yours succeed.
Download your copy of the playbook here to kickstart your platform optimisation
Keep a close eye on your database size
Managing your contact data is not just about clean lists, it makes great commercial sense, too. Maintaining your total contact numbers within your contracted band prevents unexpected costs and keeps your budget predictable.
Achieving this requires a continuous focus on data quality. Instead of hoarding every email address you’ve collected, establish an automated cleanup workflow. By regularly removing hard bounces, duplicates, and invalid addresses, you keep your database lean, efficient, and cost-effective.
Understanding what contact data Oracle Eloqua retains and restores*
After you delete a contact, Oracle Eloqua keeps the following information from the contact record indefinitely:
- Global subscription status
- Email address status (hard bounceback status or global subscription status)
- Bounceback history
- Email group subscription status
For reporting purposes, any previous activity associated with the deleted contact is still available from Insight.
Any custom object records remain in the database, but Oracle Eloqua removes the linkage to the contact record.
*SOURCE: Eloqua Help Centre
What happens in the CRM, when you delete Contacts from Eloqua?
Great question.
Once you define the Eloqua Contacts you plan to delete, consider what will happen when the next CRM integration cycle runs.
Without any tailoring to your current integration, all of your contacts will be restored, at least those that were also in your CRM.
This can be solved.
Contact Marketing Cube support for technical advice on how to make this happen.
Control access to GenAI features
Artificial Intelligence brings exciting opportunities to marketing teams, but you still need total control over your environment. Enhanced user profile controls now give administrators the power to manage exactly who has access to Eloqua GenAI.
AI works best when the right people use it correctly. By managing these user permissions thoughtfully, you ensure your team uses generative tools safely, consistently, and in total alignment with your broader brand guidelines.
Eloqua Release 26C | August
What’s news? What’s coming soon?
Release 26C is due in August 2026. The Eloqua product marketing team will be announcing release details in mid-July. Once we have the details, we’ll review them and provide them to you via our quarterly Important Eloqua Update subscription.
You can subsribe below ↓
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.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q: How does unengaged data affect my email deliverability?
A: Leaving inactive contacts in your database lowers your sender reputation with email providers. Regular data health checks ensure you only message engaged users, which quickly improves your overall campaign performance.
Q: What is Eloqua Fatigue Analysis?
A: It’s an automated AI tool that tracks contact engagement over 180 days. It groups your audience into nine distinct fatigue levels weekly, helping you easily optimise your campaign frequency.
Q: Can my sales team see Eloqua fatigue insights?
A: Yes. You can share these weekly updates directly with your team using Eloqua Profiler. This helps sales reps understand prospect engagement levels and time their outreach perfectly.
Q: How often should we audit Eloqua user access?
A: We recommend auditing your user logs quarterly. Deactivating profiles for former employees is a quick way to patch security gaps and keep your valuable customer data safe.
Q: How do we avoid unexpected Eloqua database costs?
A: Build automated workflows to regularly clear out hard bounces, invalid addresses, and duplicates. Keeping your database lean ensures you always stay within your contracted pricing band.
Q: Can we manage who uses GenAI features in Eloqua?
A: Yes. Platform administrators can use enhanced profile controls to manage user permissions. This ensures your team uses generative AI tools safely and stays aligned with your brand guidelines.
Q: What is the Quick Wins Playbook?
A: It’s our free, practical guide packed with 10 high-impact fixes. We designed these straightforward strategies to help you easily optimise your platform performance today.
Meet Macy AI, the newest virtual member of our team
Where we use GenAI to support the development of content, you’ll find Macy AI mentioned as a co-author. Our approach is to always keep a human in the loop. Macy will be used to support various aspects of our content development.
