Item: Oracle Marketing
Rating: 9
Author: Verified User

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Eloqua is used for all email marketing across our organization. We use it for our B2B prospects and customers and our B2C prospects and customers. It solves the problem of having specific email welcome tracks for those who have purchased our software recently (welcome track). We also use it for customer retention and have specific tracks that are automated for those who are coming up for renewal. We use it for our general B2B nurture email programs to help convert leads to opportunities. We also use it on the B2C side for those who are trialing our software to convert them to paying customers.

Pros and Cons

Automating emails
Data segmentations
Syncing with Salesforce CRM

Program builder user interface is not the most user friendly.
When viewing members in a segment you cannot click on the record and then view it separately. You have to close out of the segment and then find the record in the contact search. It would be great if you could double click on a record and it opens a separate window.
When you want to click on another area it won't open a separate tab. You have to log in separately for each tab you want open if you are working on multiple areas in Eloqua. Compared to Marketo (where this is allowed), this is not ideal.

Scalability

There are several areas that make this product scalable across our organization. We are are doing more and more with Eloqua each month. Finding new ways to automate emails and work with custom data objects (opportunities in Salesforce). We run campaigns based on responses we receive from our events, paid search (PPC) organic and other demand generation vendors we work with. It is the engine that runs everything with several individuals who access and use the product within North America.

Return on Investment

It has had a great impact on our ROI at least from the B2C side, driving customer retention through renewal purchases made as a result of automated emails.
We have also been able to drive net new revenue from automated email campaigns on the B2C side.
As far as B2B, we currently have had some struggles with attributing revenue and integrating Salesforce properly.

Alternatives Considered

I have used the following marketing automation systems: Marketo and Pardot. I think that Pardot places a distant third compared to Marketo and Eloqua. But I do believe Eloqua squeaks through to the top position when compared to Marketo. I really like how I can visually see automated campaign flows in Eloqua. That is a huge plus. In Marketo it is not possible as the product is built in a more linear fashion. However, the data processing programs are easier to work with in Marketo. Their email editors are on par with each other. I do think the sales person alerts are a little bit better in Marketo.

Likelihood to Recommend

Eloqua works great if you have your CRM properly integrated and have the ability to use custom objects. You can then sync customer data and fields appropriately, which you can trigger actions based on that data. You can easily load HTML and create email templates for those who do not want to work with HTML. The email template editor needs some work though. There is an ability to create these editable templates, but the UI could be easier. I have worked with Pardot and Marketo and those UIs are much better. The data segmentation is fantastic in Eloqua. I love how you can exclude certain lists, filters and other criteria. There are also a ton of decision steps to be used within a multi-step campaign flow. The visuals are great and it's very clear what paths a record can take. I do wish the wait steps could be less than 15 minutes though.

Eloqua Rises to the Top

Software Version

Overall Satisfaction with Oracle Eloqua