There is a vast difference between our clients’ data and transactional requirements (think Big Data and B2C) and the world we operate in as a customer engagement agency with a very narrow B2B focus. So we necessarily utilize different tools internally and always look for ways to elevate our game.

It’s a truism that when marketing automation is done well, it improves the quality of interactions—driving timely, relevant communications—and when done poorly, it reveals a lack of insight and drives disinterest. This makes it essential to rally around best practices.

Eloqua is a company that, over the years, has continued to distinguish itself with the quality of its platform and as a thought leader in aligning marketing with sales. They enable effective engagement at all stages of the buyer’s journey and maintain consistent focus on revenue attainment—supporting detailed analysis of success factors so they can be replicated.

In the Road to Revenue Tour, Eloqua provides an opportunity for its clients to spend a day learning how local peers utilize the application to increase marketing efficiency and sales performance, get updates on software enhancements, and network with other Eloquans from newbies to super-users.

On a recent stop in Austin, Texas, the Tour included a presentation by Jennifer Horton, Revenue Performance Management (RPM) Program Director. Eloqua describes RPM as “a systematic approach to identifying the drivers and impediments to revenue, rigorously measuring them, and then pulling the economic levers that will optimize top line growth.” Jennifer is also a product manager for analytics, which provides a good vantage point on upcoming enhancements in Eloqua 10.

One of the more interesting features for marketing organizations aspiring to best in class is the Benchmark Dashboard. Drawing on aggregate data from Eloqua clients across 13 industry segments, Eloqua users can now analyze key metrics for contacts, campaigns and lead management, relative to other organizations similar to their own.

Index constituents are chosen for being consistent users of a significant feature set of the application for the past 6 months or more, and are re-evaluated for inclusion every 3 months. Eloqua does not divulge names of constituent members. The number of members varies by industry with an average of 50 members per index. The benchmarks are recalculated on a daily basis and users can do comparisons for the current month, previous month, and current quarter. Users can also compare against their own performance over the same periods.

By increasing marketers’ visibility of their own performance and that of their industry peers, Eloqua is raising the bar on marketing effectiveness. This has been a consistent theme from the company over the years and an example of their thought leadership in the space.

Part 1: Today’s Environment

In order to be successful selling to businesses, it is important to recognize the role of the individual. It is all too easy to lose sight of the fact that organizations – from small businesses to global corporations – are comprised of groups of people with not much more in common than the shared enterprise called “work” that brings them together 40 or so hours each week. Allowing for 8 hours of sleep each night, there remains 112 waking hours each week to devote to things other than work. How we fill our non-working waking hours provides important clues to what motivates, inspires, and defines us as people.

Whereas the workplace used to be the primary location that cutting edge technology was encountered, decades of increasing power and miniaturization and decreasing cost have driven highly sophisticated technologies into every facet of life – extending far beyond the workplace, to virtually every place an individual spends their time. Experiences online and increasingly offline include an information-driven component that is tailored to an individual’s preferences. As a result, we expect a level of customization commensurate with our history of visiting and interacting with people, places and things of interest.

What are the implications of this pervasive, highly personalized world of information in the context of business-to-business marketing?

• There is a melding of personal and professional life driven by mobile devices, cloud services, social media and changing nature of work.
• Laptops, tablets, smartphones move fluidly between workplace and home.
• An increasing array of broadband connectivity options provide an always-on experience delivered by cellular carriers and home/office/public networks.
• Cloud services provide access to applications and data, allowing individuals to be untethered to a specific access device.
• Social media further blurs the lines between personal/professional personas and connections; products and services that are used in the home can also be used in the office; influence of widely followed individuals extends across the work-life divide.

There is an expectation of high levels of recall and personalization. Information provided is remembered across multiple sessions and channels, and is used to drive personalized content and offers.

• Days of one-and-done, spray-and-pray marketing are over – not only is it an inefficient use of marketing resources, it has a negative impact on customer experience which diminishes brand value.
• People want to be listened to: “your opinion counts;” and people want to be remembered: “we know you.”
• Savvy customers – the ones who tend to drive highest value and influence purchase decisions of others – recognize the inherent value of information provided. Information is the currency of the networked world.
• When an individual provides information it is with an implicit understanding they will receive something of appropriate value in return for it – relevant information/offers, customized options, connections to others with similar interests, etc.

Coming Next…

Part 2: Technology enablers

Part 3: It’s all about the dialog