By Chuck Leddy
Oracle Eloqua has a new release coming in May (20B) that B2B marketers should be preparing for, meaning they should understand its features as well as be ready to optimally use it. In order to help you do exactly that, we spoke with Sojourn Solutions Account Director Charlotte Currie, who has been researching and preparing for the latest Eloqua release in order to help B2B marketers like you get ready.
As for the timing of the new release, you’ll see it between the 15th and the 22nd of May, depending on the POD your Eloqua resides on. Click here or here to access more specific information from Eloqua about the upcoming release. Otherwise, read on to learn more about some of the enhancements and new features Eloqua has in store . . .
Some of what’s coming in 20B
- Eloqua will now have an enhanced integration with Zoom to seamlessly connect webinar and online programs, the use of which has been accelerating at a time of COVID-driven social distancing and everybody working from home. As Charlotte Currie explains, “our clients are really eager to start using Zoom as part of Eloqua. From a business perspective, we’re moving away from face-to-face events, so the challenge is how can marketers deliver events virtually?
- Eloqua has improved the way videos are embedded into Landing Pages to ensure they are responsive. With 20B, says Currie, “Eloqua is making sure that how a customer sees the video on their landing page is going to resonate properly, and play properly, and not stall. Eloqua is making sure that there’s deliverability and best practice there,” which means better marketing effectiveness and engagement across channels and devices.
- Eloqua has also made it easier for B2B marketers to archive and perform housekeeping on their Eloqua platform. The API will have access to this new feature as well. As Currie describes the benefit of this capability: “We work with large clients who have a lot of users inside their Eloqua platform. They also have a lot of different campaign assets (emails, landing pages, forms, etc.) that they’ve built. So things can get a bit messy, Eloqua is now making it easier to archive all those assets, take them out of the general view, while also making them easily searchable.”
Sojourn helps its clients optimize the use of their campaign assets, making sure each asset is as responsive as it should be. After that, says Currie, “it’s all about helping clients maintain a clean and efficient working interface” in order to support clean reporting and scalable marketing operations.
- Eloqua’s new release is continuing the controlled availability of send time optimization or STO for email, which remains by far the most effective campaign asset. The 20B STO wouldn’t optimize for the total list, but for individual people on the list. “So if Sarah tends to open her emails on Tuesday at Noon, and Bill opens his Monday at 9am, the STO would enable marketers to send to both people at the optimal time for each individual,” explains Currie. That’s a super-valuable optimization tool. We asked Oracle when it will be generally available (GA) and they responded by saying that they hope later this year.
- Eloqua’s latest update is offering email template updates. Eloqua has what it calls default templates. In 20B, says Currie, “Eloqua has enhanced the user experience, and the responsiveness of these email templates, which is obviously best practice. Since email remains a highly-effective engagement channel for so many customers, it’s good that Oracle continues to invest in it.”
You can re-use and re-assemble these micro-templates (or re-usable blocks) to build your localized landing pages and emails (and other campaign assets). These reusable blocks can be tweaked to fit your needs as they evolve, and in general can help you scale more content, more quickly, while maintaining the flexibility to localize blocks.
- Salesforce.com app improvements. “20B will support new & existing functionality,” says Currie. Improvements in 20B include the following:
- Form submit form activity support is being added to create new SFDC tasks for leads or contacts who fill out a form;
- Check for email address change to prevent duplicate Eloqua contact records;
- Sync all Eloqua campaign status to increase effectiveness of campaign tracking;
- New integration before import (not manual import): Campaign members. Campaign related data is maintained and synced between Eloqua and Sales Cloud thus enabling improved Campaign Management and Reporting.
- While apps aren’t new in Eloqua, we wanted to offer you a reminder about selecting the “right” apps for your needs. While apps in Eloqua can be tremendously helpful, their pure number and complexity can make choosing the right ones for your B2B marketing needs a challenge.
“At Sojourn,” explains Currie, “we discuss a client’s needs and future aspirations, then concentrate on sourcing apps that would be most relevant to address their specific needs. We put together a roadmap with information about the apps we’re recommending, providing details of how other clients have found using these apps and what the pros and cons of each could be. This roadmap, and the collaborative dialogue that goes with it, helps the client really understand use cases and optimize their selection and use of apps.”
Final word on Eloqua’s latest release
Eloqua’s 20B release will clearly offer many exciting and useful features to help you work smarter, some of which we’ve described above. “For big marketing teams, some of these new features will be more relevant to some people and less relevant for others,” says Currie. “Sojourn is always here to help B2B marketers fully understand the new changes, help them determine their value and actually start deploying them, and help marketing teams as they optimize all they do.”
We’d love to hear from you! Please reach out to us to share more on the new release or with questions.
The post 7 things B2B Marketers should know about Oracle Eloqua’s upcoming release (20B) appeared first on Sojourn Solutions.
