In the digital-first world of B2B marketing, a CMS (content management system) and a MAP (marketing automation platform) should be like best friends or tight-knit neighbors who “play nice” together. They are natural complements that “complete” each other: for instance, a B2B marketer might send out the monthly newsletter from their Eloqua MAP and take content assets like videos or images from a content management system (like Adobe’s). In an ideal world, that CMS and MAP integration would be so tight and built in that you, as a time-strapped B2B marketer, wouldn’t need to manually pull those content assets from your CMS and painstakingly drop them into your MAP.
Even worse than having to manually “bridge” the gaps in your MAP and CMS would be having to pay a third-party app to bridge those same gaps. Since we don’t live in an ideal world where systems automatically play nice with each other, many B2B marketing teams find themselves paying not just for their CMS and MAP, but also for an app to connect them (or else face being bogged down in manually pulling CMS content into their MAP).
As Oracle’s Bob Meixner demonstrated in detail at a recent Eloqua User Group meeting hosted by Karin Pindle (Senior Marketing Automation Consultant at Sojourn Solutions), Oracle Content Management (OCM) plays nice (and for free) with Oracle Eloqua. “If you use Eloqua and another (non-Oracle) CMS, you’ll need to pay separately for an app to integrate them, which can get expensive,” said Pindle. “With OCM and Eloqua, a tight integration is already built in without any additional cost or hassle for users.”
OCM’s enhanced Eloqua integration rolls out
Meixner is Oracle CXM’s Director of Product Strategy, and he began his EUG presentation by defining what Oracle Content Management does: “OCM is a CMS that manages all types of content and delivers that content to the channels you define.” He shared some great news for Eloqua users - “OCM is about to release an enhanced integration to Eloqua.” The enhanced integration, Meixner said, enables the following benefits for B2B marketers:
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The creation of richer experiences in less time by adding HTML content with embedded streaming video from OCM while in Eloqua;
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Streamlines content creation with collaboration, workflow and approval for content items published in Eloqua;
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Improves consistency across channels with content delivered from a single source.
As Meixner summarized these benefits: “no other CX vendor embeds enterprise CMS capabilities within its applications while also providing a broad range of capabilities for content creators and marketers to fully support the content creation process from inception to delivery.” OCM and Eloqua play together beautifully to create synergistic value, making 1 + 1 more than 2 (even better, you pay for 2 in order to get more than 2).
When making Eloqua integrations outside Oracle/OCM, you have to pay another party (an app vendor) for 3 and end up getting 3 (CMS + Integration App middleware + MAP). As Meixner asks, why not cut out the middleware and get a more efficient, built-in integration of OCM and Eloqua MAP?
Demo time: How OCM works and integrates with Eloqua
Meixner presented a quick demo, starting with OCM’s “assets panel” which lays out content assets and organizes content by channel, content type (images, videos, documents, etc.) and by campaign. “Through the assets panel, you can access and organize content by type or product or channel,” he said. “You can also use OCM’s search capability to find content by keyword or tag.” When it comes to categorizing and searching for images, OCM is even better, using machine learning to automatically categorize images and making them searchable (and thus shareable to Eloqua). “OCM takes all the guesswork out of categorizing and finding visual assets,” he said.
OCM also allows B2B marketers to edit images with streamlined tools that support the repurposing of assets for multiple B2B campaigns delivered through Eloqua. For example, noted Meixner, “you can add and change text from an image, crop images, and then invite collaboration before submitting the content for approval.” The same holds true for video content, which can easily be edited and repurposed for multiple uses.
Best of all, once content has been found, edited or approved, “you can easily publish it out to Eloqua from OCM.” Meixner demonstrated a pull down menu that enables marketers using OCM to do exactly that, clicking and instantly sharing out found and/or edited content assets to Eloqua. The integration is built in and comes at no additional cost for Eloqua/OCM users.
Takeaway: The value of playing nice together
Meixner’s presentation clearly illustrated one main idea - that Oracle Content Management’s tight, in-built integration with Eloqua empowers B2B marketers like you to insert assets from the OCM asset repository into Eloqua in order to easily build out and deliver responsive emails, forms, and landing pages. This tight integration creates synergistic value. You save time and, since you don’t need an app to get your CMS and MAP to “play nice” together, you also save money. Using OCM as a single source for all content saves rework because you can find, edit and share these content assets easily across your CMS and MAP.
Interested in learning even more about how Oracle Content Management’s enhanced integration with Eloqua can improve your B2B marketing efficiency? We can help. Reach out to us here.
