Eloqua is great company but product can be hard to use.
February 24, 2013
Eloqua is great company but product can be hard to use.

Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Software Version
Team
Overall Satisfaction with Oracle Eloqua
Pros
- We've loved the program builder. It can be a little tricky to use if you are not well trained (the Eloqua remote training classes are awesome). But through program builder, we have enabled our nurture and demand gen strategies. The automation of emails-- right message, right time-- was exciting because we did not have that before.
- We have improved our response rates and our lead conversions by a few points through changing our marketing strategy-- Eloqua sparked that kind of thinking with our marketing team.
- Copying programs is another small thing that helped us tremendously. We were able to create templates for the marketing team to standardize our sequences so we weren't recreating them from scratch every time. This is pretty standard for marketing automation, but was a new concept to us that we were happy to take advantage of.
Cons
- The cloud connectors were exciting, and we were planning to significantly reduce manual workflows by using them. For example, we planned to automate webex registration confirmations and attendance emails (thanks for coming, sorry we missed you) and then send the contacts into different nurture paths. The connector was very slow to provide that data back to Eloqua from webex (over 24 hours in some cases). We didn't see the efficiency gains we desired.
- Building things like Progressive Profiling was difficult for anyone other than a Master. It's possible, but not that easy. You've got to really love geeking out to get into it. Once built, it's great.
- We recouped our first year investment with the first campaign we ran-- the sheer reach that we were able to get would have cost us 200% of what we spent on our Eloqua subscription in year 1. Our thought leadership content consumption broke records. We also later closed 3 deals from that campaign that I believe we would not have been able to touch previously.
Marketo. We picked Eloqua because we were using a less common CRM, and Eloqua was able to solve our needs via batch integration. Our sales process and experience with Eloqua was also a defining factor-- they have been amazing to work with.
Using Oracle Eloqua
- We use this to run our demand generation and nurture campaigns. It enables our go to market strategy.
Evaluating Oracle Eloqua and Competitors
Marketing Automation was a new concept for us; we were previously using a couple of smaller point solutions for emails, but we were not doing anything sophisticated with campaign flows, lead scoring or nurturing. We had poor visibility into our funnel conversions and no visibility into our contacts' online behaviors.
Oracle Eloqua Implementation
- Professional services company
Bulldog Solutions performed our quick start implementation.
Oracle Eloqua Training
- Online training
Oracle Eloqua Support
Not Sure - When we first started with Eloqua we had a dedicated Customer Success Manager (for at least the first year). I think that has changed, so I'm not sure what our current status is. If the CSM is an extra expense now, I'd recommend it for any new users/companies. Once you're up and running.... it's still nice, but not as necessary. Especially not if you have a power user on staff.
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