by James Lawson.

5th Jun 2011: Despite what their vendors say, packaged CRM applications for the midmarket lack much in the way of useful marketing features. What to do? Simple, just bolt on one of today’s lead management tools. These SaaS applications generate and nurture sales leads through a combination of email marketing, web analytics, lead scoring, and tight integration with CRM packages. This month, we’re looking at the latest version from the current leader of the pack: Eloqua 10.

Integrated approach

Though marketing automation has been around for years, these tools take a different approach to familiar names like Unica or Smartfocus. Aimed chiefly at buyers with low volumes of customers and prospects, but with (relatively) high value customers, lead management applications are firmly in the b2b marketing camp. For more discussion of this market sector, see this month’s b2b marketing automation feature.

Version 10 of Eloqua was launched in November last year and, with its new interface, aims to be far easier to use and navigate than its predecessor which attracted some criticism for its complexity. Bar a new analytics and reporting module, most of the functionality is the same as the previous version though some elements remain to be ported to v10.

This product is pure SaaS with no installed option. Whether that’s good news or not depends on your company’s (and your IT department’s) opinion on SaaS. It certainly makes linking to on-demand CRM tools straightforward. This application is most often implemented to add marketing functionality to an existing CRM tool. Salesforce is most frequent partner and there is also pre-built integration with MS Dynamics, Siebel/OracleOD, and NetSuite.

 The application runs on an all-Microsoft .Net architecture, with a SQL Server database platform. Typically, this will mirror the linked CRM tool’s customer database via real-time synchronisation, while providing extra space for all the other data types that Eloqua requires, including a table into which to pull temporary data.

The web services API includes dozens of pre-built connectors to external applications and services such as the Jigsaw and Hoovers online b2b prospect databases or the Radian 6 social media monitoring tool. It looks relatively simple to build new connectors as long as the external system can be called as a web service.

The completely revamped interface was built using the same developer tools as used by Apple, and manages to feel like a classy desktop application with a strong flavour of iPad. A mere five buttons on the top bar cover the main options: Campaigns, Assets, Contacts, Insight and Setup, and the sub menus are also pleasantly graphical and simple to navigate.

It’s no surprise then that the new, object-based Campaign Builder is a lovely piece of work, replacing v9’s Program Builder in this area. Using the selection of configurable, drag-and-drop boxes and arrows representing decisions, actions, delays and so forth, flowcharting the various steps of a campaign is a breeze and it’s now possible to link campaigns too. Prospect selection (“filtering”) resides in one of the boxes, offering standard Boolean logic to narrow down the target group using include and exclude statements.

You can select on any field in the database, including individual lead score (see below) and many other criteria such “responded to campaign X” or “visited web page Y in last 30 days”. This ability to target based on tracked behaviour is not unique but is a good example of how the “lead nurturing” process can work.

Back in the Campaign Builder, the current count is displayed on the box, but the actual selection process only takes place at run time in order to use the most up-to-date records. It’s also possible suppress individuals and groups from campaigns based on imported suppression lists or various other database criteria, and there’s a universal stop list too.

The Program Builder uses a similar object-based approach but retains the old interface from v9 for now. With this, it’s possible to construct and automate any process, including calling in external web services, data cleansing, A/B testing and so forth. One key use lies in scoring leads based on their behaviour.

By attributing scores to behaviour (website visits, email responses, purchases) and then tracking the total score, it’s possible to work out the appropriate action to take. Is this lead ready for a sales call?

This necessitates placing tags on web pages so that Eloqua knows what’s going on and can log it. It’s certainly not a fully-featured web analytics package, nor does it claim to be. This ability to nurture leads automatically and infer readiness to buy by tracking behaviour is the key attraction of this tool and others like it.

Web and email are by far the most important channels, and Eloqua provides all the tools you would expect to support the planning, design, execution and reporting of email campaigns. That includes setting up dynamic message content based on individual attributes, a full HTML editor, heat map reporting to show the most-clicked areas, deliverability testing and so on.

Other necessary functions include the ability to build and host landing pages and web forms, including forms with conditional questions. One-click validation for both pages and forms is handy and you can pipe form data straight into the database. Incidentally, Eloqua offers a range of Email Service Provider options including email delivery.

The new reporting tool looks lovely with its various funnel diagrams and so forth, along with clear dashboarding options. However there’s nothing that particularly stands out over the reporting tools found in similar products, though having a custom report builder is a definite bonus and the 16 new standard marketing revenue reports are worth having too.

Within the wide selection of functions are some very basic cleansing tools for stripping out poor form data or to run exact matching for duping. These could come in handy for quickly checking a target list but won’t be much use for rigorous deduplication and validation. There’s also a new salesforce app called Discover. This is a detailed Eloqua lead report which sales staff can access through the salesforce interface and click through to look at recent individual lead behaviour.

Smart idea

B2b lead management makes a huge amount of sense, no matter which tool you buy. As well as providing outbound capability, the nurturing approach means sales teams can approach prospects with far more idea of where they are in the buying cycle and what their needs are. Simply by being able to prioritise lead follow-up based on the information provided by the marketing tool, most clients see improvements in conversion rates and sales value.

This version is still an early release, and much functionality remains to be ported. Although the previous version catered for offline channels such as direct mail, call centres and so forth, this has yet to be implemented; currently it’s web and email only in v10. Its easy integration with web services opens up a huge opportunity to build complex processes at low cost. You can connect to online data sources, incorporate external systems and use info from other company systems in a swift and easy way that simply would not have been possible in earlier versions.

For those seeking a strong lead management tool, Eloqua 10 is a truly accomplished application whose deep functionality we have only been able to skim over here. The new interface is a generation ahead of the previous one and represents a major upgrade, as is the Campaign Builder along with the other new features. Eloqua has always been on the larger company’s shortlist; now it should have a much wider appeal.

Eloqua 10 is an on-demand SaaS application accessed via a web browser. There is no installed version of the software. Pricing details can be found here.