Item: Oracle Marketing
Rating: 7
Author: Verified User

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use Oracle Eloqua to solve our marketing automation needs. We use the product to manage and send email campaigns, manage webinars in conjunction with various Oracle Eloqua apps, event management; asset management (digital assets), lead scoring and MCL/MQL to CRM integration. Via automation, the product allows us to perform many tasks without the need for a large staff.

Pros and Cons

Flexibility: when the need arises, the ability to customize: emails, forms, landing pages and processing of data to CRM
Custom objects: the objects provide an extension of the database to allow for countless data storage configurations thereby enhancing the segmentation capabilities
Segmentation: The ability to literally create a segment in minutes leveraging 100s of criteria for laser accuracy of target audience

Campaign level A/B testing, you cannot do testing within a multi step campaign and have to create a manual process to perform testing
Product has a lot of advanced functions that increases the learning cycle to 6 months and beyond
Reporting lacks the ability to easily create reports using both contact and account data

Scalability

The product is very scalable if, and a "big if" you have two key people on staff; a developer and an Eloqua architect with advanced Eloqua knowledge. We have been able to create everything from a digital asset management system, custom in-house event management process as well as a sophisticated washing machine process for data hygiene. So if you can think of it the product can most likely do it. But remember, just because you can do something, should you? Are there other options such as 3rd party apps that can do the job without a developer?

Return on Investment

Positive: Campaign canvas allows for quick deployment campaign and the ability to create a reusable template
Positive: Scalabilty allows our shop to more with less
Negative: CRM integration can be delayed due to the need for a 3 step process of creating lead, updating lead then associating a lead to a campaign
Negative: Difficult to capture multiple activities performed in a short period of time, an activity could get missed

Alternatives Considered

We are currently looking at Marketo and Pardot

Likelihood to Recommend

Oracle Eloqua is best suited for the advanced marketer where the need for large complex campaigns is the norm. Its campaign canvas (UI) allows for a multitude of decision steps to provide maximum automation. Because the product is software, an in-house developer really can up the game by leveraging APIs and custom scripting. For the basic marketer, the product may to be more than needed.

Un-wrapping the Oracle Eloqua cloud

Software Version

Modules Used

Overall Satisfaction with Oracle Eloqua