Updated March 06, 2015

Oracle Eloqua Review: "Great product and Eloqua community is incredible!"

Verified User

Manager in Marketing

Computer Software Company, 501-1000 employees

Score 9 out of 10

Vetted Review

Verified User

Software Version
Team

Modules Used
RLC, Cloud Connectors, Lead Scoring, Program Builder, Campaign Canvas, Integrations with Kapost, Vidyard, ReadyTalk, Linkedin, and Facebook, Eloqua Engage, Eloqua Discover, Eloqua Profiler

Pros and Cons

The ability to easily manage campaigns is great. The have increased the intuitiveness of campaign building and have an error bubble reports when something is missing. This is especially useful for new users.
We can also easily get sophisticated with campaigns too. With a simple drag and drop we can connect third party vendors, such as webinar vendors, we can pass contacts into data cleansing programs, and incorporate social media.
Their lead scoring is very easy to utilize due to its slick UI. You can also set several scoring models. However, we have found some bugs with the UI. It is also kind of hard to manipulate the interactions score because Eloqua can generalize it a bit too much. (Similar, but not as bad as the RLC tool)

Database management and reporting.
In order to pull reports specific to what you want outside of their canned reports you need to have an extra reporting license and training for it. The contact fields are also limited, so if you need to have hundreds of data fields recorded per contact you need to use "DataCards" and have some JavaScript experience.
Salesforce.com and Aprimo are MUCH, MUCH better in this arena.

Return on Investment

We can definitely handle more campaigns with fewer people, minimizing human capital. The sales tools directly impact the standardization of the sales process and gives an advantage to our sales team by exposing them to prospect's digital behavior (especially the email notifications). This eliminates cold calling all together. Also, due to the ease of setting up a variety of nurture streams, we don't have to focus on nurturing once our campaigns are underway, until we update the streams. Little time is spent in-house on training because of Eloqua University and the increased intuitiveness of the tool (especially if you have past MAT experience.

Alternatives Considered

Marketo, Aprimo, Eloqua

Likelihood to Renew

Although it is not perfect, I feel it is the best. Even if Marketo has some better SFDC features, there you cannot set price on the Eloqua community! There is NO problem that cannot be solved by reaching out to the Eloqua community on TopLiners. You also get very fast responses from TopLiners.

Likelihood to Recommend

The one piece of Eloqua that has not been and probably never will be matched is the INCREDIBLE marketing community they have created. Their user conferences, user groups, TopLiners, and member functions are second to NONE. As I stated before, with the help of the Eloqua Community, I AM ABLE TO ACHIEVE ANYTHING!

Users and Roles

12 - Marketing operations, data management, marketing campaign managers, customer marketing manager, channel partner managers, product managers, communications director, webmaster, graphic designer

Support Headcount Required

3 - We have one person who's job is to make sure it is running smoothly, a Sr. Operations Manager. To go along with that, one person reports to him who perfects the behind the scenes and I also step in when needed to fix issues.

Business Processes Supported

True lead nurturing, managing events, integrating standard sales follow up processes, lead scoring, sales tools (digital behavior monitoring and email tools), email and landing page building, Salesforce.com integration, seamless and streamlined 3rd party vendor integration